#nine has Sort Of proven he can be relied on when he actually cares about you yk

[brainworms-all-night-long]

Baby Nine AU: Has Tails ever been a little brat to Nine unintentionally while playing with him? Did he get his lesson, comeuppance, or punishment for it.

For example, Tails discovers that Nine can be scuffed and picks him up that way over and over while giggling due to him curling up or going limp. Sonic sees this and picks Tails up by his scruff after first giving him an ignored warning not to do it. So, Tails is curled up or limp in air jail for some time due to still having his own scruff reflex and Nine is laughing at him while playing.

Hmm, no. At least definitely Tails would never do such a thing, intentionally or unintentionally, since he's like one of the people to know how much distress unwanted physical contact would bring to the poor little guy. And I also don't thinks Nine would really be up to "playing" and openly giggling in like the innocent baby sense. Ik is said "baby" Nine but I actually meant like, a four year old baby. Like just a little guy, Classic Tails age. Little-er than he was in the show, but not as little that it would get him classified medically as a literal baby. I need him to already comprehend and have some of his trauma for later story purposes :)

But if someone were to roughhouse or obviously bring little Nine to distress with no signs of stopping – let's say... Renegade – who's not actually trying to be deliberately malicious or anything, but also doesn't necessarily understand Nine's trauma (cuz why would anyone tell him abt it) and just can't help it because the fox is literally just so so tiny and so so adorable with his little angry face.

Either way doesn't excuse him and he's definitely in for a stern talking-to from a certain other fox and a hedgehog pretty soon...

[sepublic]

Why did Odalia allow Emira and Edric in Illusions?

I’ve seen people wonder how Emira and Edric are in Illusions if they seem to be looked down upon, especially with a parent like Odalia expecting the best of her kids! To dabble into some potential explanations;

For starters, illusions might not be looked down upon to begin with? Bria, Angmar, and Gavin give me major jock vibes, what with the physicality of their magic, bullying the smaller Gus and Mattholomule, and seeing the Galdorstones as a litmus test for ‘real’ magic.

Given their immature tendencies, it’s possible that they’ve made an easy and shallow mistake of reducing the value of magic down to its physical strength, instead of the wider applications- Which fits young and overconfident kids from Glandus, which evidently had some toxic ideas.

This could be a shallow Glandus perception that doesn’t grasp the full extent and potential of magic beyond just physically smashing and fighting in a straightforward manner, which might just add to the school’s rivalry with Hexside; But I digress...

The thing about Odalia is that she’s definitely underhanded and a cheater herself- So it makes sense of her to approve of ‘lesser’ tactics anyway, because she might see herself as Lilith, having to use whatever it takes to win. Doesn’t matter if it’s honest or has integrity, Odalia never cared about that... So she wouldn’t be approaching Illusions with the sort of dismissive bias of jocks.

After all, Oracle magic doesn’t seem to be entirely physical- It is to an extent, hence why Selene is able to fight Willow for at least a few seconds... But otherwise, Oracle magic seems to focused on more intangible things. It’d be hypocritical of Odalia to embrace Oracle magic but then judge Illusions, but then again she’s no stranger to hypocrisy either.

Maybe she’s tried to vicariously place her kids in ‘real’ magic tracks and only succeeded in Amity... But again, Illusions might not actually be looked down upon, at least on a societal level. There might be some bias amongst covens who think their magic is superior to that of another, but Belos designated Illusions as one of his nine major covens for a reason- And he is definitely a ruthless pragmatist with a utilitarian view of magic.

After all, Boscha mocks Willow’s choice of Plants despite her friend Amelia being there, and Angmar is played off as supposedly better than Gus for it! Granted Plants might be considered lame, while Illusions are even lamer... Bria and her friends evidently weren’t so popular themselves at first;

But regardless, it seems that it could just be a case of kids being hypocritically biased and insulting someone’s choice of magic if it isn’t the same as their own, especially since Potions could easily be seen as weaker than Plants! But maybe it’s just a matter of class, with Potions evidently being an industry that rakes in a lot of snails, so who knows?

Boscha probably doesn’t have a place to speak, and amongst narrow-minded kids, some assumptions might take place, but once you’re an adult... You cool down and can see the importance of these things. And as a seasoned and successful entrepreneur, Odalia is someone always looking for an opportunity to use someone or something;

As an adult with actual real-world experience, Odalia is able to recognize the value of illusions... And, as a gaslighter and manipulator herself, who uses Oracle magic to literally get into people’s heads, and she’d definitely appreciate the mind games and trickery of illusions.

If anything, Odalia might see physical magic as more demeaning and to be offloaded to the lesser workers, to people whose hands are meant to be dirty (with Alador as an exception), while a prim and proper, higher-class person such as herself needn’t bother with labor-associated magic! If there is some bias towards some forms of magic as lofty and for prissy blue bloods, Odalia might just be an example of that.

Plus, illusions could help her business! Amity is clearly set up as the next Alador, as the mindless worker who puts together and innovates with Abominations... With the twins welcoming people into the expo, while Amity physically participates, and it’s likely that Emira and Edric are set up to be the social factor of the business!

They’re meant to be like Odalia, as the managers who organize people, who broker deals and appeal to customers! And illusions would be perfect for presentations, Illusionists have a knack for showmanship as Gus said.

Illusions could be used to cover up the flaws of Blight Industries’ products while embellishing them. It’s implied that Alador’s creations aren’t always as good as they claim to be... Possibly as a result of cutting costs, because this guy CAN make some effective products, but unless Odalia wants him to compensate with an Abomaton 2.0 after the first failed, she otherwise prefers quantity over quality.

So yeah, a deal broker and social butterfly who attends these kinds of gatherings, makes business alliances and appeals to people- Odalia would definitely approve of illusions, even beyond her own treatment of her kids! For all we know she insisted upon it from the get-go, and luckily for Emira and Edric, illusions worked out for them as their personal calling.

Who knows, maybe Odalia wanted to be in another magic track, only for her actual talents to speak for themselves- She proved best at Oracle magic and was placed in it anyway, despite her attempts for other tracks she wasn’t as naturally talented in. It could be a similar case for the twins, who already like to rebel- And Bump could’ve made a case for them to be in Illusions too! Though we know Odalia can threaten Bump to get her way...

But in the end it doesn’t matter, because I think it’s fully in Odalia’s character to appreciate a more subtle approach, especially if she likes to manipulate and use underhanded tactics to compensate for a lack of ‘genuine’ power. If she has the same biases against non-physical magic, she could be just like Lilith, accepting her need to use lowly means to keep up with more honest witches anyway.

And given how Belos’s system makes people compete, it’s possible that EVERY coven thinks the others are weaker in some capacity- Every coven thinks one of the other eight is weak and ‘worthless’, because of bias and arrogance. A bard might dismiss a construction worker as a menial labor brute, while a beast keeper might mock a potion-maker for relying on bottles and elixirs, instead of controlling powerful demons!

This type of elitism ingrained into society, resulting in bullies and competition, possibly some people trying to make peace with covens they didn’t truly want to join through and inflated sense of superiority... These seem in-character for the coven system, and how bullies like Boscha exist, while people like Kikimora and even Lilith feel the need to betray, backstab, and cheat to win.

It’s all a toxic system... And at the very least, to get back to the original point- I think it makes sense for Odalia to approve of illusions, or at least tolerate them enough to live with it, especially when you already have rebellious twins who are willing to stand up to their parents and can’t be threatened to stand down the way Amity initially was.

Emira and Edric might’ve chosen it for themselves, and it was something Odalia knew they’d insist upon to Bump, no matter how hard she tried- So it was out of her control, and Alador might’ve convinced Odalia to let them be. He recognizes the value of letting his kids be independent, because it adds to their strength and ‘usefulness’.

As a long-term thinker not blinded in the moment by personal pride and need for control like Odalia, Al very well could’ve explained to her how illusions can work; Again, what I said about presentations and advertisement. Alador could’ve spoken to Odalia and gotten her to calm down, reasoning why illusions could be better in the long run, because they need another Odalia to run the company after her.

As for who will work Abominations, it only takes one witch as Alador himself as proven, and they’ve got another daughter who is much more under their thumb and easy to control. Let Amity take that burden, they can make her do whatever they want, unlike the twins... And again, that pressure to make up for the roles the twins had forsaken, and live up to her father’s genius, would just add to Amity’s need to be perfect.

Granted, Alador and Odalia expected Amity to join the Emperor’s Coven until only recently, which doesn’t seem like a position she could reconcile while working with Blight Industries. But maybe Alador intended to keep working, and use Amity as a means to secure an alliance with the Emperor’s Coven that has Blight Industries set, no longer needing to innovate, just replicate his work... In which case, be careful what you wish for!

Plus, if it’s Alador who suggested the use of the twins in illusions, maybe it was always more his idea to have his kids split between different roles to continue the company on their own, while Odalia had looked to the more ambitious option of a deal with the Emperor’s Coven, military-industrial complex style, to secure their futures.

[thoughtsofanexcitedspacechild]

Kataang: An In Depth Analysis

Hello again! I apologise for the inactivity. It’s been a busy month as far as school goes for me, so let’s just say I’m a lot busier solving chem equations and working on stuff for AP art. Don’t get me wrong though! These analysis and essay format posts are my favorite and I wish I could do them more often! Seriously, it’s the only thing that keeps me wanting to write! I’ve also decided that I’m going to make these little intro paragraphs separate to the actual essay, because while I’m at this, why not kill two birds with one stone and practice writing essays for my actual AP Lang. class? I mean I’m obviously not gonna turn them in or show them to my teacher, (unless this gets 1000 notes or more, in which case  I’ll show this to her ;)) but this is a good way for me to work on formatting a thesis and developing arguments, all while doing and talking about something I love! Speaking of which, let’s dive right on into today’s topic; the much debated, and thoroughly analyzed ship: Kataang. (Buckle your seatbelts hotmen, because this is gonna be one hell of a sky bison ride) I got inspired by a creator on Tik Tok that I follow, Amanda Castrillo, to write this. Her username is @theamanda2d and I highly recommend you go check her out and give her a follow. A lot of the arguments in this are my own, but I also sourced a lot of information and arguments for Kataang from her series “a case for Kataang”, which I highly recommend you go watch. I’ll insert her quotes directly so you know exactly where her points are coming from as well as mention where I elaborated on a point she made but didn’t directly quote her. I’ll also be sourcing a lot of information from the show and including exact episodes and scenes that support my case. So without further ado, here is my *unofficial* case for Kataang.

     In our lives, there’s usually one point at which most of us make a choice. That choice is to love someone. Yes, you heard me right. You make the choice to love someone. Of course, the feeling that most people know as love, but is really just sexual or romantic desires, tends to be confused with real love. Authentic love that comes from the choice to love someone. This kind of love persists through even through the darkest times. This kind of love truly does burn brightest in the dark. 

 It stems from a strong base of mutual understanding and friendship first, and doesn’t rely on a spark of passion to keep burning although it can fuel the flame that already burns strongly. There are many great examples of this kind of love, both in our own world and daily lives, but also in literature. One of the greatest examples of this, is the relationship explored between the fictional characters Aang and Katara from Avatar: the Last Airbender. (Oh, what? You don’t think Avatar is a legitimate form of literature? Pity, you must not have read my previous posts or even watched the show at all, because it IS.)

     From the time I first watched the show, I was rooting for them to end up together. Right off the bat, Aang and Katara have this instant connection. Within the first episode, they already become friends, and not only that, they act as if they’ve been friends for years, almost like they were meant to meet each other. Aang finally getting together with Katara just feels right, but there’s more to their relationship than the feelings that Katara and Aang both experience and the feelings that we the audience feel seeing them together. Throughout the series we see them both make the choice to love each other, not only as lovers, but as friends too. Their relationship thrives, and we’re able to see them both grow as people and better themselves because of each other.

Firstly I want to address the counterargument that many people bring up and that is that Kataang, in and of itself, is one sided. Fans (often Zutara shippers. More in depth analysis on why this ship DOESN’T work out realistically to come) will argue that Kataang is forced and one sided, and that Katara doesn’t share Aang’s feelings. Although I can see where this is coming from from a first time viewer’s perspective, this argument can be extinguished by looking deeper at Katara’s actions and intentions towards Aang. We see them bond as friends very early on in the series, but the earliest hint at a romantic relationship actually shows up in season one episode four, when they go to Kiyoshi Island. Katara acts snarky and jealous when Aang gathers quite a fan club of little girls. 

Nevertheless, when this fan club fails to stick around for Aang’s encounter with the unagi, Katara’s the one that’s there making sure he’s okay. (S1, Episode 4, The Warriors of Kiyoshi) This is ultimately foreshadowing for their relationship as a whole. Although his role as Avatar lands him many friends, and in this case fans, the only person that truly stays with him the whole time is Katara. She’s the one who shows up and has his best interests at heart. Most of her intentions are in fact platonic in this episode, but the hint of romance comes out when we see that Katara doesn’t like the idea of Aang with another girl.

     After half way through season one, specifically the Fortune Teller episode, we do see that Katara does in fact have feelings for Aang, albeit complex ones. In this episode we see her pester Aunt Wu for information about her future husband and she’s informed that he’s a very powerful bender. She doesn’t consider Aang until Sokka mentions that it freaks him out how powerful of a bender Aang is while Aang protects and saves the village from it’s demise by an erupting volcano. Her hopes were set high on a muscley, extremely strong looking bender, and I’d like to imagine that before her realization, Katara was probably picturing someone more like Haru or even post redemption Zuko as her future husband. For the first time, that image is replaced by Aang, and she doesn’t mind it. (S1, Episode 14, The Fortune Teller) We see these new found feelings develop further in the Secret Tunnel episode, when Katara is finally forced to confront the romantic feelings that she’s pushed down while trying to sort them out. At this moment, Katara finally acknowledges her romantic feelings and attraction to Aang. (S2, Episode 2, The Cave of Two Lovers) The creators intentionally showed us the story of the two lovers for a reason. “Avatar is a very smart show,” says Amada Castrillo, Avatar fanatic and creator of the Tik Tok and youtube series “A Case for Kataang,” “and we’re never told or shown anything for no reason...A war was keeping them apart maybe not physically, but romantically.”

     Later in the series during the season finale of season two we see her absolutely distraught when Aang nearly dies and she does everything in her power to save him. We see her almost break. Only when he wakes up does she feel better, and start to be happier again. She doesn’t care about anything else but making him feel better, and even when he does wake up, she still focuses mainly on healing him. Here we see Katara make the choice to love Aang both in sickness and in health. (S2, Episode 18, The Guru/The Crossroads of Destiny and S3, Episode 1, The Awakening) She of course would have done this for any member of team avatar, but the way in which she treats Aang when he’s nearly taken away from her points to the extreme love and affection that she carries for him every day. This happens multiple other times throughout the series, with many of the occurrences being in book three. When Zuko joins the Gaang, she flat out tells Zuko that if he were to hurt Aang, (not Sokka, not her, not Toph, but Aang specifically) she would personally see to his demise. (S3, Episode 11, The Western Air Temple, 23:30) (Some Points taken from, but not directly quoted from Amanda Castrillo’s “A case For Kataang Part Nine: Text and Subtext”) This is why the assumption that Kataang is one sided can be proven wrong.

     Two other arguments stem from the previous argument, one being that Aang is a simp, and/or that Katara is a trophy. First of all, the later argument is easily disproved by the fact that Katara is not a prize to be won. “Katara is, and was never a prize for Aang,” says Castrillo, “And to say that she was, grossly mischaracterizes and undermines her as a character.” (Amanda Castrillo, (@theamanda2d) “A Case for Kataang: Chapter 2, Katara the trophy) Katara is shown multiple times throughout the series being able to speak up and defend herself without Aang’s, or anyone else’s help. 

Aang, although viewed as a simp, is not. Yes he respects Katara, and all other women for that matter, but he doesn’t fawn over her. He allows her to defend and take care of herself. The definition of the word “simp” is the abbreviated term “simpleton”, meaning “a silly or foolish person.” Although Aang is silly at some points, he’s also not foolish. He’s a smart and capable individual that many fans fail to recognise as legitimate because of his innocence and softness. So no. Aang isn’t a simp that bases his entire self worth on his status with Katara.

     Another point that must be acknowledged is the fact that Aang and Katara are actually complementary characters. Although many people would bring up the argument that Air and Water aren’t opposite elements, the type of bender they are doesn’t necessarily tend to point to the exact type of person they are. The creators aren’t dumb, and the characters in this franchise are so well developed, that there are many sub personalities in each type of bending, and all of them can be analyzed further than the type of element they bend. Judging a character solely by the element they can bend is like judging a person on the color of their skin or a book by it’s cover, and when diving deep into each of their personalities, we can see that their personalities are actually complementary. Katara is high strung and anxious while Aang is usually calm and collected. Aang is very good at regulating his emotions while Katara is not. This aspect extends further than their personalities as well. Katara grew up in a very family oriented and close family while Aang only had one parental figure in the form of Gyatzo and occasionally a few friends. Katara is also more grounded and a home body while if he could, Aang would probably continue to explore whatever corner of the earth that he could. (Some points taken, but not directly quoted from Amanda Castrillo (@theamanda2d), “A Case for Kataang: Chapter 10, Balance”)

     Another thing that I found is that when looking at color theory, Aang’s signature orange toward the end of the series and Katara’s signature blue are actually complementary colors. I’d like to think that as Katara develops and explores her feelings for Aang, Aang’s color palette changes slightly. It goes from being red and yellow in the beginning when Katara didn’t know she had feelings quite yet, to eventually shifting to orange when we see her feelings start to fully become clear. I thought this was a super interesting detail and despite it being a bit far of a stretch, I think it must have been planned. If you consider the time when we see Katara start to develop feelings, it’s about the same time that Aang’s outfit choice shifts to orange. Of course, this piece of evidence is mostly based on my personal observation and knowledge of color theory, but it’s a detail that I personally found super compelling.

     Kataang also works because of the extremely well executed communication and dialogue that happens between them. There are multiple different examples throughout the series and as their character’s develop, we’re able to see a beautifully efficient and respectful form of communication between them. We see Aang clearly express his feelings of anxiety to Katara, and in return, Katara is able to help him and offer advice on what he’s feeling. Katara also is able to confide in Aang in return and oftentimes he’s the one that she’s most comfortable being vulnerable in front of. We see her almost mother Aang alongside Sokka in the first season, but her relationship with him changes and shifts to one where both her and Aang feel comfortable and contribute and receive equal care from each other.

     One issue in particular also comes to mind when talking about this ship, and that is the issue of boundaries. Counter arguments against Kataang often bring up one scene in particular, specifically in the Ember island players episode about halfway through when Katara confronts Aang on the balcony. (S3, episode 15, the Ember Island Players) Episode Aang is understandably upset with the way that he and specifically he and Katara’s relationship is portrayed in the play. He obviously has feelings for her and at that point we know that Katara also has feelings from a few episodes prior when they kiss before the invasion. That kiss was mutual, and she kissed him back, meaning that from that point on, both of their feelings towards each other are very clear. The night of the play on the balcony, Aang does cross a boundary that had been established. The kiss before the invasion made sense, and Katara didn’t do anything to stop him from doing it, and Aang had her consent in this case. Aang’s kiss on the balcony was a mistake, and in this case it was uncalled for, but many people misread Katara’s feelings of confusion. When Katara mentions being confused, she’s not saying she’s confused about her feelings for Aang. Since season one, we’ve seen her show multiple forms of affection towards Aang, and not only that, she was usually the one initiating the many hugs, cheek kisses, etc. 

She’s not confused about how she feels about Aang. She’s confused about the timing and if it’s a good idea or not. (Some points taken from, but not directly quoted from, Amanda Castrillo (@theamanda2d) “A Case for Kataang Part 7: The Camelephant in the room)

     Regarding the consent for the kiss, yes. That was Aang’s mistake. He’s human, and he did mess up there. But his intentions weren’t meant to harm anyone. He, like so many of us watching at home, read Katara’s confusion to be about him, and wanted to see what she really felt. Afterwards, he knows he messed up, and feels bad about it. “...[Aang’s] very self aware. He knows how he feels about Katara, and he’s said it multiple times...Aang is human. He f***s up. He says the wrong thing. He makes mistakes. And he was just as confused as Katara at this moment.” (Amanda Castrillo, (@theamanda2d) “A Case for Kataang Part Seven: The Camelephant in the room)

     Lasty, I want to acknowledge the visual and audio parallels portrayed in the show and how they can effectively work towards supporting Kataang. If you observe the angles at which characters are shown as well as the framing, it visually sets up and can represent how two characters feel about one another. First let’s consider the framing of a scene from the very first episode after Katara breaks Aang out from the ice. Aang is lying down and katara is directly positioned above him. When he wakes up from being trapped in an iceberg for 100 years, her face is the first that he sees. 

This positioning and framing is shown multiple more times throughout the series, establishing their strong connection. So is this one:

(For a better visual reference please see Amanda Castrillo’s video “A Case for Kataang Part Four: Parallels) “Its built up and set up for us time and time again. Their interactions aren’t framed like that for no reason. Scene framing matters.” (Amanda Castrillo, “A case for Kataang Part Four: Parallels.”

There’s also the fact of the score and what specific music points to what character or what mood the creators were trying to enforce with the music. Avatar’s score is genius and every song and note was hand crafted to set the tone for each scene and help explain what’s happening. (This is one of the many reasons Avatar would translate well to be a musical or even a ballet. Post/informal rant on this later to come.) There are many great examples, like how Azula is represented by a clash of chords, (To quote my previous post: “I love how Azula is just represented by a pair of clashing chords and when you hear it you know that she’s about to f*** s*** up.”) or that Aang has a lively flute melody that plays when he gets really happy/excited, but perhaps the best example of the use of music in the franchise is the use of the “Avatar’s Love Theme.” It’s my personal favorite song from the show, and it’s used extremely effectively and efficiently throughout the show to provide a very specific and recognisable feeling: romantic love. When you hear it play, Aang is ALWAYS with Katara. Go back and listen to the times where it plays, and it’s always when he and Katara share a special moment together. We only hear part of the melody for the majority of the series, but in the final episode, right towards the end when Aang and Katara are left alone on the balcony looking above the city by themselves, we hear it play again, and this time, we hear all of it. The kiss between them also happens right at the crescendo and peak of the music, emphasizing and establishing that Aang and Katara are officially canon. The music plays a huge part in this story, and all musical elements as well as visual point to Aang and Katara being a team, and not just that, but a romantic couple.

In conclusion, Aang and Katara are a couple that was meant to happen. Throughout the series, their love is shown through their undeniable chemistry, complementary characters and personality, and the visual and musical elements set up for us within the show. Aang and Katara love eachother very much, and although their feelings were often being confused by looming threats to their lives or tainted by the war they were both fighting, in the end they’re able to fully and completely allow themselves to love each other. Despite their romantic love, they are ultimately friends before they are lovers, and don’t rely on a spark of passion to be able to keep their love for one another burning. They love each other wholly and in so many different ways, and that my friends, is why Kataang works and will always work.

[askmicrowavegaster]

Microwave grapes ending summary

Gaster does jump down the elevator shaft, and uses his magic to craft bones as steps to slow his descent, and finally rip through the elevator at a basement level, far below where the elevator usually goes. Beneath Fig’s arboreum and everything. 

And he does find sans, but more importantly-- 

He finds Ursama and Serptrine’s assistants looking over another skeleton, a little bit taller than Sans, and hidden away in a separate room. He doesn’t have Sans’ odd bone deformity from the DT overdose, but almost looks the same age all the same. 

Ursama demands to know what is going on that Gaster burst down like this, clearly destroying the elevator and definitely committing a crime in doing so if nothing else, on top of his kidnapping charges. 

Gaster is going to uh. Take those kidnapping charges again. He walls up the room with bones and grabs Sans to run--and Sans talks to the other little skeleton, who todders over, and holds on, too. 

Unfortunately, Gaster has only really one place to go, and that is back to his apartment. Which he does. And then barricades the door. And then shouts across the wall to Po-Yo that he needs someone to deliver a letter for him. Po-Yo gets a carrier (from chapter 6, Ava) and Gaster slides the message he needs delivered and the handful of gold pieces under the door. 

The letter is addressed to Asgore. 

Gaster never thought he would want to call the attention of an old monster down on himself, but right now, he’s the only one higher ranked than Serptrine that Gaster can think of who might object to the discovery of creating child monsters for warfare. 

In the meantime, Gaster barricades his wall and sets the kids up in the back room of his house and tells Sans to tell-- the boy’s designation is ‘PS-1’ (Prototype Skeleton 1) rather than ‘CS-1’ (Control Skeleton 1)-- to hide if anyone other than he comes in. 

But PS-1 seems to understand his speech just fine. And he doesn’t know what to make of that, except that someone has been teaching PS-1 the same way he taught CS-1. 

He makes them tea, and ignores anyone pounding on his door, and hopes no one pulls out magic or the royal guard. But the pounding on the door stops, and he isn’t sure how much time passes, but there’s not quite enough food in his apartment for three people. There was hardly enough for one. 

He doesn’t want to leave his apartment and come back to find both skeletons gone. 

He tries to pass the time by talking to them and figuring out what was going on. And this is what he learns: 

PS-1 has been outside of the building before. PS-1 knows how to summon his magic. PS-1 has a rotating series of caretakers. PS-1 has seen Sans before. 

PS-1 has a LV of 7. 

Gaster dreams about murder. 

Eventually through a lot of hand gestures and struggling conversation, he starts making a plausible scenario: 

Sans has been taken from his room at night periodically. This is probably where PS-1 met him and they had a ‘comparison’ between the control subject (Sans, who is not being pushed to learn much or learn an agenda) and variable subject (PS-1, who is being trained very specifically towards a goal.) The mistakes and ‘mistakes’ Gaster makes with Sans are corrected with PS-1 and it’s led to a very strong, dangerous, and unhappy toddler in his apartment, and that toddler is getting very hungry. 

The good news is that PS-1 seems to like Sans and will calm down when comforted. The bad news is that while Papyrus (Sans named him) doesn’t seem interested in ‘rebelling’ by attacking his new ‘handler,’ that doesn’t extend to furious pouting tantrums, fits, and crying. 

At some point, Papyrus summons the biggest attack he has— a strange, toothy skull sort of thing. It might’ve been dog-ish if not for the horns. 

Gaster recognizes someone trying to copy his dragon skull design and has to retreat for… a while. It’s sort of like setting off a firework show at a wake, maybe a ‘celebrating of life’ if you were being optimistic, and then turning around and finding your fireworks being pointed at people.

After a long while of hiding where Gaster can start to feel exhaustion weighing on him and is certain the low-magic meals are really starting to affect the kids, too, there’s a knock on the door and a familiar voice coming through.

Choris is a cat monster with a messed up ear and bad personality, but he grew up under Gaster’s parents and they went through college together. It is not an affectionate relationship by a stretch, but jealousy doesn’t mean you want them to fail, and so they’ve kicked each others’ asses through things a handful of times.

Today, Choris has shown up to say things like ‘I bet you haven’t been outside this whole time’ and ‘do you even have food in there? I bet you don’t. You haven’t even checked your mail. Get your shit together.’

Then the mail is shoved under Gaster’s doorway and the thump of several bags of groceries is heard outside the door. Once the footsteps are gone, Gaster reaches out to grab the food and hurriedly makes the kids a meal before checking the mail. 

One of them is a response from the king, alerting him to an investigation and for his testimony to show up at x day. Which is almost immediately. Tomorrow, or in nine hours, even. People probably would’ve shown up to his house and broken in if he didn’t show up, holy shit, he would’ve died (but only emotionally, not literally.) 

The idea of showing up in front of a Fucking Boss Monster is absolutely psyching his little traumatized brain out, but he has already kidnapped like two people barricaded himself in an apartment building for several days, so he doesn’t really have any room to say he’s paralyzed by nerves.

Still paranoid that someone is going to come swipe them when he’s not looking, Gaster gets Sans’ crutches and tells him he’s in charge of Keeping Papyrus Chill, and takes them with him (in a backpack for transport) to the castle for a Fucking Hearing. 

(Once they’re there, they get out of the backpack, but he is extremely not interested in people spotting them on the street and asking questions, because he has absolutely no doubt that someone has gossiped this all the way back to Snowdin by now. )

Serptrine and, unfortunately, Ursama are there as the ‘hey we need to break the barrier’ team, and Gaster shows up with two skeletons half his height wearing stripes, holding onto both his leg and each other. 

It’s pretty obvious who Asgore sides with. Everyone knows the moment he looks over at the kids. 

That doesn’t mean everyone is happy. Serptrine is removed from his post as head scientist, the position is suspended, and Ursama is on leave for a bit, or at the very least is no longer Gaster’s direct superior. They also forget to really give him a new superior. Or if someone is assigned, they aren’t claiming him, and when he’s told to return to the lab for regular work, he finds no one is really looking at him or minding him much at all. People he casually spoke to seem to acknowledge him a bit, but that’s about all. 

Whether they thought he was in the right to kidnap Sans and Papyrus or not, a lot of people also now view him as The Guy Who Stole Our Best Chance at the Surface. 

Yes, humans are falling down, but it’s… taking a long time. And then people are in danger and killed each time. And they’re still relying on the strength of humans when they use that captured power. And what about when they get to the surface, and then there are still humans out there to deal with? 

If they’d just Had Someone Who Could Handle the Barrier and the Humans Beyond It…

Haven’t you ever heard of the needs of the many? If five children die to save a city, how is that the wrong choice?

It’s easy to dream big about a project that barely got off the ground, but seemed to have some promise—especially if one of the experiments was successful and managed to end the last human’s rampage. 

...but Gaster has a child at home who has just learned about jigsaw puzzles, and who takes the newspaper from him to do the word searches and junior jumbles in pen. 

Then again, Gaster has an advantage in being kind, here. He’s never believed they would make it to the surface again, anyway.

++ 

As Gaster raises the two and deals with ostracization at work (which started out as just spite, but then was picked up as a hint by others, and has grown into a Habit) he uses the lack of oversight to start building small CORE experiments. 

He’s doing his best with the CORE but still works a lot on it at home, which Sans watches him do when he’s not watching over Papyrus. 

Because that is unfortunately quickly becoming Sans’ job. He’s still pretty young and needs crutches to stay upright for long stretches of time, but Papyrus has proven to be A Little Troubled, especially since he started talking more. 

He’s fond of fighting, which is normal for a monster child, but he’s actually fighting with intent to harm, because that’s what fighting has been for him this whole time, and at LV 7 it’s very difficult to break that sort of habit. You can think of LV as a disability almost— it makes it more difficult to move through life, as you’re on constant “when all you have is a hammer” mode. They had a fun incident where upon getting very frustrated with a puzzle, Papyrus summoned bones from the floor and one of them happened to have Moderate Contact with Sans’ knee. 

Sans ultimately has a monster version of hemophilia—a small cut can still cause him to bleed out. This eventually affects his magic to create KARMA, where his max ATK being small still bleeds out a little bit longer than would otherwise be expected. 

It is still a very frantic and uncomfortable trip to a healer, where Papyrus ends up left alone in the house because Gaster didn’t know what to do when you had two kids, and one needed the healer, and the other had caused the wound. 

Papyrus has been extremely careful about injuring Sans since then, and they’ve gotten him to somewhat release his pent up energy by doing ‘trick shots’ with his magic. Spelling things with his bones, biggest and smallest bones you can possibly make, haha hey kids what about bones that go backwards? 

Whatever was in that DT was fucking potent, because Gaster was a pretty good kid with magic for his age, but Sans and Papyrus outstrip him fast enough that at some point theyre just swapping tricks with each other and doing things Gaster is pretty sure aren’t physically possible but. Whatever. Fuck it. 

He’s going to do physically impossible shit too if he ever gets this geothermal shit up and running. 

...it is definitely not all fun and games. Most of the time, it is the opposite. When Papyrus grows old enough to start to care more, he starts thinking a lot about morality, and LV, and finds that he can’t even remember where all of it came from, and he doesn’t know if he should want to or not. But he still likes using magic. Even though he’s careful now, he still thinks fighting is fun when he goes out and duels kids in the backlots (the monster equivalent of kittens fighting each other) . 

He and Gaster eventually work out that maybe it’s okay to be happy, even when you’ve done something bad in the past. Puzzles are very popular now, even though they’re historically military traps. Magic is even more innate and expressive than a hobby, though, and over the years Papyrus can hone it to be something different. Maybe knives aren’t only used for murder. Maybe you can fight to defend, too. 

Papyrus decides he’s going to be talented enough he never loses control of his magic ever , and can avoid even the most accidental, normal mistakes. 

(Sans, who curls up on the couch and watches Gaster do physics on the coffee table at night, also starts talking about those sorts of things. Some childhood conversations cropping up that Gaster doesn’t know if they’re normal or if it’s because of where Sans and Papyrus come from-- or if they’re the only ones talking about this at all, even, because these talks feel like the only conversations that have mattered in his whole life sometimes. His parents were kind, and supporting, and loving, but no one has ever said ‘I’m sad’ and then followed up with it—with something other than a quip, or a joke.  But he and Sans and Papyrus keep talking instead.

The people in the underground don’t like talking about the unfixable. Maybe it’s because of the puzzles, he thinks. Maybe the underground has decided that no one would ever make a problem there wasn’t some way to solve.

He doesn’t think there are ways to solve some of them. He doesn’t think there’s a way to break the barrier that will let them survive outside. He doesn’t think there’s an answer he can give Papyrus about how he can feel the LV in him surging with excitement when he fights. He doesn’t think there’s a way he can tell Sans that no one person can fix everything.

“But I guess I have to try,” he says, like a joke and a quip, and exhausted. 

“you just said you couldn’t,” says Sans, who has grown out of his crutches and gained a few centimeters height.

“Yes. But if you’re in a position to do something , aren’t you obligated to try?” Gaster replies, trying his best to stay in this conversation for Sans, who is so distressed lately, and yet he is already so very tired.  “If you’ve got the ability, aren’t you obligated to try?”)

++

(Gaster dreams about finding Serptrine, wherever he is in retirement, and murder. He also thinks about Papyrus, and how frustrated he is at his LV, and his childhood stolen away by other people’s choices, and the cessation of possibility. He thinks about Papyrus who has changed, and so has decided everyone can change if they want to, even if Gaster argues that Papyrus didn’t choose to be a killer— Gaster never chose to be an angry, lonely child. But maybe he did. Maybe he decided going with his emotions was easiest, and maybe he had to grow enough to find the will to reach for something that wasn’t his first impulse. The first impulse to violence. 

He doesn’t know. He was just a kid. But he dreams of killing Serptrine, and when he wakes, he does not follow his dreams. For a crime committed only in imagination, maybe that’s the best he can do.)

++

Gaster talks a lot about Snowdin, when he’s feeling good. He wants to go back some day, because it was such a strange little town, and so much room, and so much more welcoming than he remembers being anywhere before. They never go back to Snowdin. 

His work on the CORE gets him promoted to head scientist after several years of the position vacant and in limbo. A lot of the anger has had time to die down, though there are a few brief surges after he takes the position and starts focusing the whole of the lab towards electrical production. 

Sans and Papyrus have started schooling. Sans tests well and is good at theory, and is rocketing towards college, while Papyrus gets stuck in the minutiae, and seems to be enjoying himself plenty well refusing to move up until he has gotten a perfect score on every assignment each level can throw at him. Fudging to give him a perfect score does not work, as he only trusts his own grade evaluations, and his criteria are mysterious and vague. 

Sans—in a very aggressive move on his part—starts to work at the lab. 

Many people have gone and been replaced since he was a child here. He wanders through halls he barely remembers. He rediscovers Fig and Jam (still very young— fish mature differently, though Jam has sprouted some legs and walks on their own sometimes) and helps some in the medical wing before Gaster Very Firmly transfers him into field work and sets him about laying the wires through the underground that will eventually carry their charge. It is an absolutely mind boggling undertaking, especially with something not actually functioning yet, but Sans finds he’s actually a pretty social guy, and laying groundwork gives him a lot of time to goof off some and talk with the locals. 

Fig and Jam transfer to the CORE building site. The tubing twists and turns like roots an the central walkway is laid out like a maze. It was almost inevitable, with how more areas grew upon each other as needed, more power rods and catwalks anywhere they could go. 

In what seems like a very short time, the CORE starts to tower at the deepest edge of Hotland. It reaches so deep they need elevators to reach the lower floors by the end, and yet they still have to build on the outside around those same elevators. Eventually the moving floors are installed, just to try and keep everything stable.

DT extracted from the atmosphere over the years starts to be moved to the CORE site, because as volatile as DT can be, it’s also one of the few substances that can temper materials steeped in magma, without allowing the metal to melt. 

The channel from Snowdin is dug. Wires are laid. Small central generators are set up, to distribute the energy from within the communities— 

And Sans gets a feeling one day. Not a bad feeling or an omen. A whim, probably, and goes to visit the CORE, knowing they’re near the end of construction and Gaster is going on three days of nauseas energy and Red Buffalo, and soon he is going to explode. 

Sans finds no one on the upper floors, and no one on the walkways. Someone’s been posting motivational posters on the wall, things that started to sound a little like sentimentality and anxiety and a wild hope holding all the mess together. 

When Sans descended to the lowest levels of the CORE, on the floors just above the magma, something was wrong. Different. 

It was cold, for one. Or chilly, at least. The heat from the magma was always rising, but this wind had a bite of cold to it— and as Sans opened the first door to the observation deck, there was light that shouldn’t have been there. The whole platform down here was lit by magma glow, and yet, this light was shining instead.

For a moment, he thought, perhaps, it was electricity. A lightbulb. The first one to turn on, maybe. 

And then he opened the door wider, and he saw oblivion. 

It looked like a hole. A white hole, hovering just above Gaster’s head, in the dead center of the room. 

He could see other things around that said there should be others in the room— Fig and Jam’s water cooler. Head Guy’s binder of notes. A plate of lightly smoking bagels, partly eaten. 

And Gaster, just staring into oblivion as it grew slowly bigger, like a dark drain letting all the world around it just spill in.

And Sans, who was small and lightweight, and who hadn’t had a thought to brace— stumbled forward, and was caught in the current. 

It did feel like water. Like the world rolled up around him, and all the air sucked away, and plunged him into a bright, white ocean. 

...and like a fish, something hooked him. Caught him right in the soul. 

It flung him out, bright purple, and into the elevator a room away, where he didn’t crumble, but blacked out just long enough to miss how The End, losing one mass, took another in his place. 

(And for the first time in his life,

Gaster 

Saw 

Stars .)

[smugbugunderarug]

Smug Bug Reads: Sonic the Comic #9

        Back to Reality gave what I think to be a pretty big twist for so early in the series. I mean, it’s only issue nine and Robotnik has already won? So soon??? Dang...

        ... Well, lets start from the beginning.

        Remember in the last issue, Sonic, Tails, Johnny, and Porker went to the Special Zone to see Sonic and Robotnik’s origin story courtesy to an inhabitant of the zone: the Omni-Viewer. After story time, Robotnik comes out of hiding and demands that the Omni-Viewer send Sonic and co. into the future, that way they can’t interfere with his plans. Although the Omni-Viewer is reluctant, he has no choice but to do as Robotnik commands (somehow, Robotnik controls everything that goes on in the Special Zone; it hasn’t been explained yet, but for now we’ll just roll with it).

        And now that leaves us here.

        (Maybe I’m not that perceptive, but I’m just now noticing the the credits at the bottom left. I think I might go back to past issues to see if I can spot them.)

        While the Omni-Viewer cannot disobey Robotnik, he can take liberties when the doctor isn’t being specific. Before the Omni-Viewer can explain himself further, he vanishes, leaving Sonic and friends to realize there are two massive badniks just behind them. Soon enough, Sonic recognizes that these badniks are tougher than the average bot since a super spin attack just isn’t cutting it.

        Instead of using brawn, Sonic shows more of his witty side by tricking the super badniks into destroying themselves, showing that this Sonic is pretty clever and can think on his feet.

        Nicely done! Robotnik’s badniks being dumb and prideful has been a reoccurring thing for quite a while now. Glad it’s a thing in this series (so far at least).

        Out of these badniks come a dog and a walrus, both shocked to see Sonic. Said hedgehog is confused why the two critters are surprised to see him, and the two tell him that he’s been gone for six months, so they all thought was dead. Even Sonic is shaken by the thought of that, asking the critters if this was some sort of joke. Luckily, Johnny steps in to provide a hypothesis of his own:

        (Shout out to Johnny for being the only useful main side character so far) So it’s revealed that the Omni-Viewer found a bit of a loop hole and brought Sonic to an early enough time when Robotnik has taken over the area but doesn’t have a full blown empire going on for him...

        Or does he?

        Sonic and co. then head toward the nearby village, only to be greeted by this sight...

        Pretty 1984-esque, although it doesn’t really look like the mechanical empire one would think Eggman would turn Marble Hill into. There’s still a lot of green, but given six more months who knows what he could do with the place?

        We move on to see something happening in the village. A villager is being interrogated by some scary looking badniks as to why he didn’t show up at the Chemical Plant for work. It’s finally here that we see Robotnik actually using critters for something else other than powering his machines; all the villagers left are slaves.

        Anyways, the squirrel says he couldn’t go since he had to take care of his sick wife. Skipping work (or anything else for that matter) is punishable by death, according to the robotic enforcer. He’s just about to shoot the critter when Sonic dashes in just in time. He mentions how he’d trash them if it weren’t for the critters stuck inside, but he’s then informed by the squirrel that these guys are just robots and that there are no critters to hurt. With that being said, he plows through the bots before boldly confronting one of Robotnik’s egg... spy... things.

        He knows Sonic is around, but Robotnik is confident that the hedgehog doesn’t stand a chance. Also, lets point out that he’s already conquered the entire planet in six months time! It’s crazy how much Mobius relies on Sonic in order to keep safe. As far as we know, there is no resistance like from SatAM, Underground, or Forces, so for all we know Sonic is the only person stopping Robotnik from having his way with the planet! That’s a lot of pressure on one hedgehog alone...

        We’ll see how they fix this in the next issue.

        Anyways, stuff I liked about this issue:

        At first I thought it was stupid that the Omni-Viewer would send Sonic and co. six months into the future. Robotnik didn’t specify his instructions, so the Omni-Viewer could have just sent them a week or so, that way Robotnik can’t get much done and Sonic could just take him down like usual. But then I thought that Robotnik would have been very suspicious of the Omni-Viewer if he did something like that, and who knows what the doctor would have done to him, so six months seems like good timing. That way Sonic can stop the doc early on and the Omni-Viewer can’t take too much of the blame from Robotnik... hopefully.

        It’s good to see one of Sonic’s companions stepping up and doing something. Well, none of them really did anything very notable, but Johnny provided a theory (which was proven correct) about why the Omni-Viewer did what he did. Props to him for being beeg brain.

        That brings me to stuff that I didn’t really like: Sonic and company, specifically company. Like stated earlier, they don’t really do much. They sort of just followed Sonic around, but none of them could really fight or do anything to the badniks, so they’re just... there.

        Now I thought about it, and I guess it’s okay at the moment that they don’t really do much if in the future they learn how to be heroes of their own (especially Tails given he had a pretty big role in Sonic 2, but doesn’t seem to act like it in here) and not have to rely on Sonic all the time. There are a lot of issues left, so I’m hopeful that’s what’s going to happen.

        Something for discussion! What makes a badnik a badnik? We’re seeing now that not all of Robotnik’s robots are powered by critters, and it would seem that they do just fine without one as a battery. In fact, he’s using the villagers in this issue as slaves, and he seems to have no problem letting them die if they even disobey one of his rules. Is he just being evil for evil’s sake by doing this? I’m not sure how badly the incident with the ROCC messed with his mind, so I’m not really sure what his motives are for taking over Mobius or why he chooses some bots to have organic batteries and some bots to not have them. Hopefully we’ll get to see the method to his madness sometime in later issues.

        TL;DR: Sonic dead??? Sike... but Robotnik is dictator now :-(

[thomasjefferson1318]

Voltron S8 predictions

With the ending of Voltron S7 the fandom was left with several complaints as well as a lot of confusion and questions. Like what was up with the weird interaction between Keith and Acxa? Why is ATLAS so THICC??? And yes I type ATLAS in all caps and I totally think that it should be a thing. Continuing, what ever actually happened to Haggar? And finally, what was with that Altean piloting the ship they fought at the end of episode 13? Well, I think that I have some answers and some general predictions as to the direction that the show is heading. I want to start off by saying that I LOVE ATLAS. It is huge. It’s totally going to be a thing where they are going to have the team from the garrison piloting ATLAS full time and that it will act as their new castle base, despite being parked on Earth for whatever amount of time went by in the montage towards the end. I also think it’s great they they were able to get a working Teleduv and that they can just make wormholes now, but I’m not sure if they installed that in ATLAS itself or on Earth. Okay, the more serious stuff. Something that really caught me was the interaction between Keith and Acxa throughout episode 3. A lot of fans were freaking out because they thought it was being set up as a romantic interest, but it never actually crossed my mind. Keith and Acxa actually met for the first time back in season two episode nine, “The Belly of the Weblum”. She was the silent Galra pilot that he saved in that episode, so of course she remembered him and had some sort of attachment to him. He saved her life when he had no good reason to except out of the bottom of his heart, which is a concept that is foreign to a lot of the Galra out there. But what really caught me is what she said towards the end of the episode, “Zethrid, Ezor and I were marooned on that meteoroid for days. Finally, a galra ship came to investigate Lotors last known whereabouts. We took it over. With Lotor gone, it was clear that there was a power vacuum in the Galra Empire. Zethrid and Ezor wanted to exploit that for their own gain... but I knew that I had to find my own path. And it led me to you.” and then she looks directly at Keith for a solid few seconds. The you is directed specifically to Keith, they literally cut everyone else out of the shot to emphasize that fact. But this is a really important line. It could be interpreted in a lot of different ways. She could have gone on an inner emotional journey to find herself and thought back to when he saved her and decided to live by his lead, helping others out of kindness. Although, it could be something literal as well. Keith is part Galra, just like Lotor, Ezor, Zethrid, and Acxa. He has some sort of special ability, that granted we haven’t seen much of, because of Krolia. What special Ability? I’m not sure yet. Facial markings have proven to be very important and Keith gets his single Galra facial mark during his battle with Clone!Shiro, but we never really get much explanation as too what it actually means. Not to mention it was something he had to earn, similarly to the blade, because you can see the the mark flickers on and off of his face multiple times throughout the episode, before becoming something more permanent. Galra alone don’t have any special abilities as far as we have seen, but it was really weird how the mark burned it’s way onto his face. At first I thought it was an actual burn from the laser sword that Clone!Shiro was using, but then it also matches up exactly with Krolias marks and I found the mark appearing on his face multiple times in different frames of that episode prior to that scene and I doubt the animators would let those frames make it into the final cut if they weren’t supposed to be there. I am somewhat hoping that that this will be formally addressed in S8 and that it’s connected to Keith’s emotional state. In Keith’s battle with Shiro it was probably some of the most pure emotion we have seen from him aside from his interactions with Krolia, but even then the emotions weren’t nearly as strong or heart wrenching. Keith is probably the most emotionally constipated character we have seen on the show and while he has improved vastly since season 1 and he was smiling more than ever throughout S7, he still has a lot of emotions that he keeps bottled up. Part of that is because he it the head, literally, of Voltron now. The paladins need him there to hold everything together and so he needs to be there for them. Although, with how fast paced the show has been lately there hasn’t been time for him to emotionally vent. He has always relied on Shiro for emotional support, but Shiro hasn’t really been available for Keith to actually have this extremely personal/private and draining conversation with since his resurrection. Although, with things calming down a bit at the end of S7 it would be to be some sort of emotional exploration for the paladins. Specifically, Allura, Lance, and Keith. A lot has happened to the each of them and they need to actually process some of what happened. Lance died. Keith was gone for months. Allura was in love with someone who was bonkers and tried to kill her and all of the people she cares about. S8 is the season to make it happen. To tie up loose ends. To finally pick see if our ships become cannon. To figure out how to slip in more lgbt+ representation without driving away from the plot of the show too much. Speaking of the plot, I’ve been talking a lot about relationships and foreshadowing and paladin self discovery, but I haven’t actually discussed anything specifically main plot related yet. I’m going to start off with some facts. We have defeated Sendak, so who is going to be the next main Villain in Voltron? I would love to say that Ezor and Zethrid become our main “bad guys”, but I honestly think of them as more of a neutral evil. I think that in S8 we will be seeing the return of Haggar, more specifically Honerva. The last we know of her was that she went Orinade and successfully unlocked the secrets of Altean Alchemy and that she ditched all of her druids. It’s been nearly three years since then and counting if we include the small time ski at the end of S7. I’m just going to straight out say that Haggar knew the location of the Altean colony and she went there. Haggar had been controlling Clone!Shiro who was there when Romelle told the story about the colony and what Lotor had done, which means it’s a pretty safe assumption. My guess is that something happened between her and the other Alteans when she got there and it lead to the Alteans abandoning the Colony, which is why it was empty when the blade group went to look for them. It also explains the crazy Altean robot weapon we saw in S7 ep. 13. That robot was only the beginning. They sent one out as a test. They had no intention of winning that fight, but it was more like they wanted to see how well matched their ship was against Voltron. But that’s just my theory. Feel free to let me know what you think.

[suggestionsofthecaribbean]

The Gloriana: James and Elizabeth

The Pirate King boards the Gloriana to inspect how Captain Norrington runs his ship.  Not that anyone buys that.   

It’s all fun and games til someone forgets his quondam on the Dutchman.

CW: Glossed over sexual content, considerable lengthiness (not a pun).

Featuring @norringtonsuggestions and @lizzyswann-turnersuggestions.

It was unlikely that anyone was actually fooled by the alleged purpose of the King’s coming aboard the Gloriana late one afternoon in early July, but its captain kept up the pretense regardless. It would be good for the crew’s own morale, as well as his reputation among his former comrades, to be seen paying homage to the Pirate King- a public declaration of intent on his own terms.

When the Empress and the Gloriana were arranged at just such a careful angle as to allow a gangplank to be stretched between them, it was Captain Norrington who stood by the egress, hands folded stiffly behind his back (though rather lost under the already weathered-looking red cloak), face shaded by a long-peaked cocked hat that actually provided enough shade to do so in the first place. The King brought a relatively small posse with her, Tai Huang notable among them. It was doubtful that Tai Huang was deceived by the motive for his inclusion, but he bore it as well as he bore anything - with a composure that threatened to become a sulk.  

“Your Majesty.”

First came the bow, then the emergence of one arm from under the cloak to extend her his hand and help her step aboard.

She wore a fine pair of leather boots and her step was sure and certain, but her heart jumped invisibly when their hands touched.  Her hair streamed behind her in the wind, except for the braid secured along the top of her head, hidden beneath the leather cap, and for several long seconds when she disembarked, she locked her eyes on his, radiant with excitement and uncharacteristically shy to be there.

The moment barely lasted, as the men behind her also had to get off - Chen Ping, her ship’s navigator, talking excitedly with his brother.  They spoke Cantonese so quickly that Elizabeth struggled to understand them, besides the speech impediment the younger brother had, but she had promised that they could talk to James’ own navigator on arrival.  This was for her benefit even more than theirs, which they could not have been unaware of, but she had framed it as permission, instead of obligation, and enough of the other men on her crew were curious about the Big Ship that it had been surprisingly easy to hide her motive and frame this as a necessary lookover, to ensure that Captain Norrington was fit to sail under her.

Tai Huang, however…

“Make it quick,” he said to her quietly as he stepped aside, looking for all the world like a perfectly obedient second-in-command, his insolence only clear in private or under close study.  

“What’s the point if it’s quick?” rejoined Elizabeth, causing him to roll his eyes and look away so as to conceal his own embarrassment.  She did not precisely smile, but a certain contentment settled on her features, before looking James in the eye again embarrassed her in her turn.

“I hope you will find the accommodations suitable,” he said, as carefully inscrutable as he had been through their original courtship. “We are still getting the hang of things, as a company, but the crew are willing, able, and cognizant of the risks involved.”

As he lead her toward the stern, he leaned closer, without looking directly at her, and said, in a low voice, “On the topic of risks- once last night, and again before rising this morning.”

Elizabeth inhaled sharply and glanced at him with the barest turn of her head. From Captain Norrington, there was the very briefest flash of a smile, which just as quickly vanished. He was, if nothing else, exactly as competent at maintaining a poker face at the helm of a stolen pirate vessel as he had been at the head of Jamaica Station.

“No doubt Tortuga has made them very clear of where we stand,” said Elizabeth definitively, her voice, naturally much higher, enough lowered to carry better at a distance, “but these men were not pirates a month ago, nor were you mine.”

The meaning of it was clear enough, that he had turned coat so recently and could probably not be trusted; her tone was equal parts mockery, wariness and challenge. The other meaning of it was even clearer, and as the Pirate King bore her eyes mercilessly into his she made it clear she intended him know and understand it.

“A good number of them have prior experience in the profession,” he said, “which makes their enlistment all the more surprising. I can only assume that is your influence and not my own.”

“See to it you earn their allegiance while proving your own,” she said, in leisurely tones, daring to extend a hand, in full view of anyone who cared to look their way, to brush the backs of her fingers over his cheekbone.  It stank of mockery and implied the less tender caress of a backhand.  She smirked as she looked at him.

He winced and grimaced a little, which effectively kept him from giving the game away and smiling.

“Of course, Your Majesty. I can assure you, however, that the crew I brought to Tortuga before enlisting the others have already proven themselves most admirably. It is not common to find seventy-five men to willingly serve under a captain best known for sailing into a hurricane.”

His tone was lofty, but he did allow himself a smile at this- smaller, and more abashed than was usual for him. It faltered, and then he forced it to widen.

“Such a captain himself is not common,” said Elizabeth drily.  “I suppose we need your sort of crazy to combat Beckett.”

James’s composure broke, and he looked at Elizabeth in curious concern.

“Is that what they’re saying now?”

“I might have heard the phrase ‘crazy navy sonofabitch’ once or twice,” said Elizabeth, the corner of her mouth lifting reluctantly, warmth in her eyes.

He sighed, and only the intensification of his grimace kept it from being petulant.

“That’s… lovely.”

“Yes, as is much in connection with you,” said Elizabeth. Her voice dripped contempt and merriment in it, but her eyes fixed on his and promised the sarcasm was for show.

“Crazy,” he repeated. “That’s a new one.”

“You can mourn your perceived or actual sanity later,” said Elizabeth, as though bored.  “I expect a tour of this place.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

He was appropriately obsequious as he lead her around the ship- the crew often greeting him with sudden startled eye-widening and assurance they were working, no matter how much they had indeed been on their assigned tasks when he and the king arrived to take a look at what they were up to. He responded, almost automatically, with tight smiling and bluff pats on the shoulder, much as he had always done, but the sudden awareness of how he was considered by the rest of the pirate community informed how he read their faces. He had never been a feared commander in the Navy, and the difference here was disquieting.

Elizabeth, for her part, wore intimidation like a cloak on top of her leather dragon-scales - she had to, or she would not survive.  A man like Jack could be rum-drunk and charismatic nine days out of ten, and dangerous only seldom, and still maintain his reputation as someone not to cross; a man like Barbossa had barely to smile in your direction before you decided you would not risk it.  A pampered governor’s daughter from Port Royal, accustomed to brocade and curling tongs and midday teas and riding sidesaddle and politely rejecting suitors - no, Elizabeth had to work to make people afraid of her. It was clear to James, who knew how she felt, that she was relying on his own reputation to inform her own; if James Norrington himself was her little bitch, as they said, well, then what kind of a bitch could she be said to be in turn?

By the time they did approach his cabin, a good number among his crew were convinced he was going to be bent over his own bed for her, and debating whether or not he tolerated it or enjoyed it.  A vocal minority had heard a different and more interesting story in Tortuga, which they claimed was more credible as they had it from someone on the Pearl.

It had it that that immortal terror, Barbossa, had had hold of the Pearl and captured the governor’s daughter on it, and who knew what she saw or suffered on that dread vessel, or what suffered her fiancé (that being Norrington) as he sailed after her, not knowing if she be dead or alive, but that the experience changed her.  After Lord Beckett had her arrested and was himself going to see her swing for helping Captain Jack Sparrow, she escaped her prison bars, they said, and joined up with her former captors, and one thing led to another, and that’s how she came to be the King; but as her fiancé had never stopped loving her, he’d turned his coat for her, and now he did not care that she would sooner spit on him than ever speak his name in love again, as long as it was her spit.

“Dobbin,” said a friend of his, “that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.  King’s name is Turner, not Norrington.”

“But she didn’t marry him, did she?  Seeing as she became a pirate and scorns all pirate-hunters now.  Still, you can see our captain still loves her, sometimes when he looks at her, I thinks.”

“He’s cunning.  He might take us straight on back to Beckett and turn us all in for the noose.”

“He’d never betray her.  If nothing else, she’d skewer him for it.”

“I think she’s skewerin’ him right now for a lot less,” guffawed his friend noisily, joined in by a collection of tanned, coarse men acquired in Tortuga, ready to abuse their captain behind his back as they were terrified of him to his face, while Robert “Dobbin” Ballard, nineteen and a wee bit of a romantic, sulked in silence because no one else appreciated the three seconds longer than strictly necessary that Captain Norrington tended to look on the king’s countenance when they were together, and he had no way of recording their interactions on his phone without being spotted and most probably whipped.

Once they were in his quarters, James locked the door. He wasn’t nearly as surly as he had been in Tortuga, but this reassessment of his reputation had given him an unpleasant lot to think about.

However, in the span of seconds in which his back was to her, Elizabeth had thrown her hat aside, shrugged off her coat and approached him.

“Might I offer you a coconut?” he asked as he turned around- or at least, he had begun to ask when he found himself pushed against the door and assaulted by his commanding officer, who was forced to stand on tiptoe in order to kiss him.

“Elizabeth-“

He had to smother his own laughter to avoid causing a scene that could be overheard. The best way to do that turned out to be kissing her right back.  Her hands snaked round to his throat, found his collar and pulled him backward with her into the rest of the room; but as she did not actually get an opportunity to look around, she had to release him in order to let go, to see a place to take him.

“My God, that’s maddening,” said Elizabeth, running her hands through her hair and catching her breath. “I can’t say I don’t enjoy it at all, but enough is enough.”

“Isn’t authority such a fine burden?” James asked as he pulled off his cloak. He folded it over one arm and set it down on one of the chairs facing the captain’s desk, followed by his hat and coat. His shirt was laced but untied, opening on an irregular V of chest that disappeared down a closed blue-gray waistcoat, around which he had tied a dark gray sash. The sash itself was secured with a belt, which also held in two flintlock pistols that he removed and lay on the desk along with a knife he pulled from somewhere in the cuff of his right boot. “I trust you’ll grow accustomed.”

The flintlocks and knife were joined by his baldric, still sheathing the now otherwise fine but dingy-tasseled sword he had received at his promotion to commodore not quite three years ago and then received back from Beckett, followed by his sash and waistcoat. His hair had been trimmed again, and in being evened out now lay even closer to his head, particularly at the back of his neck, but it had the side effect of looking fuller and more styled at the same time, rather than roughly chopped off. It tousled over itself in little loose, dishevelled waves instead of jutting out in prickles, as Elizabeth had put it.

James strode over to a barrel in the corner, near the floor-length windows that opened onto a small balcony at the stern of the ship, and pulled out a pair of young, pale coconuts, which he carried back to the desk.

Elizabeth leaned back, hands on the desk, crossing her legs at the ankles, which, particularly from a woman in trousers, had the effect of seeming scandalously inviting.  Underneath her very elegant jacket she was dressed more plainly - a high collared white shirt, untied, and a black waistcoat visibly non-Western in make, long and belted at the waist. She casually looked him over, but the mood from their walk about the Gloriana had not much changed, and she stood there as though she owned the place, and him with it - to her pleasure.  

“I suppose I have the quartermistress to thank for your looking so very delectable on this fine day?”  The sense of her own authority wavered as she grew self-conscious enough to glance downward.  “No, you really look very excellent right now. Your hair suits you like this.”

He looked up from the hole he was carving in the rind of one of the coconuts and smiled, flattered, lowering his eyes in turn. The previous captain had left a collection of tin cups behind, and James poured the fluid from the coconut into one of them and passed it toward her.

“I suppose a... particular appearance has its own benefits in such a career,” he said quickly as he began working on cracking the second coconut for himself. This was probably the most specific compliment he had ever received from her, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to not keep smiling like a fool. “I… thank you. I do find it less troublesome now than I did previously.”

He gave up on trying to hide his smile after that. She reached out and touched him on the cheek, hesitant both because their departure had reminded her of whatever else was on her mind and because, outside of the murk and debauchery of grimy, festive Tortuga, this thing they were doing felt much more serious.  For a moment she paused, moving her hand as though she were going to pull it away - and then she raked her fingers through his hair, instead.

“Elizabeth,” he laughed. “Elizabeth, do you really like it so much-”

“I’m not going to be the first person to remark on the wig, so I won’t,” she said with a tiny smile.  “If there’s no point in competing, why bother?”

“I know,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Believe me, I never enjoyed the wretched thing. I’m quite accustomed to being without it at sea. Truly, if you like it so much as it is, I need not let it grow long- it’s far less of a strain on my mind at sea than it was in Tortuga.”

“Giving me nothing to pull on? Oh, dear,” she said, her smile widening to expose her teeth. “Whatever will you substitute?”

“You’re clever,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

He kissed her after that, before she could try to outmaneuver him. Having just spoken about competition, she could recognize when she was being outplayed, but she wanted his lips so badly she let him have this one, leaning into him and pulling herself up on her toes again.

“You must be dreadfully hot,” he observed. “I don’t mean to rush things but you’re welcome to take off your waistcoat.”

“Are you inviting me to do so?  Who is the king here?” she retorted, amused.

“I am your host,” he said, “seeing to Your Majesty’s comfort.”

“See to removing my waistcoat yourself,” she whispered, pulling his hands to the tie at her waist.

James undid the tie with a small frown of concentration, but made up for this methodical approach by slipping his hands into the waistcoat as it loosened and over her waist.  It felt like a parallel to the moment in Tortuga in which she’d had him assist her in lacing up a dress in the back - this time, however, no matter how flushed her cheeks were, she didn’t pretend to be ignorant of the intimacy involved.  She pushed the waistcoat from her shoulders and laid her hands over his without any words, her eyes seeking his questioningly.

“Come sit,” he said encouragingly. “Drink the coconut water. You don’t have to be the king in here.”

She pursed her lips in an attempt to hold off the smile forming there. It didn’t work. She glanced downward and laughed.  “I do like ordering you around, though.”

“I am aware,” James said dryly.

“Look,” she laughed again, “as a woman, when else was I going to get the opportunity?”

“According to most of my former friends, it would have begun the day we married.”

Now she could not stop laughing.  It didn’t seem appropriate, but this was certainly a new piece of information, and she could not process it any other way.

“Really, we’re only fulfilling another certainty others held for the progression of my life,” he said. “You’ve come aboard my ship and asserted your dominance as though you own the place, exactly in accordance with the prophecies.”

“Try though we might to avoid it, Fate will have her way with us,” said Elizabeth, discreetly, and taking advantage of the very different teasing she was doing to surreptitiously hold his hand, or, at least, wrap one of her fingers around one of his, while lifting the coconut tin in a toast.

“Do you want to toast, or I?” he asked. “I can’t think of anything but the traditional Navy toast.”

“I don’t know it,” said Elizabeth, lifting her eyebrows.  There was not much of this kind of thing she did not know, or so she thought; she liked to acquire trivia on seafaring life the way some people pinned butterflies.

He cleared his throat, unable to look at her, and lifted his cup as well.

“Er. To wives and sweethearts- may they never meet.”

“Charming,” Elizabeth said flatly.

He clinked his cup to hers and gave her a wry sort of look as he took a drink. She met his eyes in visible consternation over the brim of her tin, and spoke as soon as it was lowered.  

“Really.”

“That’s probably the first time I’ve ever started it,” he admitted. “I tended to mumble something that ended in ‘meet’.”

“You do know what that sounds like,” said Elizabeth in something that would have been scorn had her voice carried more emotion. “That sounds like: “ She raised her voice in imitation, sounding ironically more feminine than ever, “‘yes, yes! We do like women around here! Lots of them, in fact!’”

“You would be amazed at how many midshipmen attempt to hide honest women on board,” James pointed out. “One has to go about lifting hats when there are suddenly too many aboard in line and seeing how much hair falls down- which, I suppose, is a testament to your ingenuity.”

“How the hell did I get away with it,” asked Elizabeth in some alarm.  If she hadn’t, she would probably be dead now.

“Merchant marine,” James said, with a shrug as he took another drink from his cup.

She shrugged her assent, then her mind slid downwards again as her thoughts returned to the Navy toast.  Poor honest James, thinking about taking on a wife, embarrassed at the thought of being disloyal to a purely hypothetical woman who was to eventually reject him.

“Wives and sweethearts,” she repeated miserably.  “I guess I always wanted to be a sailor.”

“I’ve heard that sometimes women were found on ships, having enlisted as men,” he said. “I never witnessed it myself, but on the occasions when it did, it was typically permitted. Women can die as well as men can, I suppose.”

“I meant-”

She lifted her eyes to his and went silent as soon as they found them.  She no longer had the words.

“...pardon me,” he said uncomfortably. “I did not think.”

“I didn’t mean to bring this up-”

“Bring what up-”

“Will,” she said desperately.  

“Has he come back? Elizabeth, I don’t want to make things difficult-”

“Not yet,” said Elizabeth unthinkingly, miserable now that she had to explain it. She’d thought he was on the same page as she was, but now she saw she could have skipped this nonsense if she’d realized he wasn’t.  “You’re not making things difficult, it’s just- they already were.”

“All right,” he said distantly, his expression clouding over. “I don’t desire to cause any more trouble-”

She squeezed his hand. “Please don’t - don’t be like that.  In case you hadn’t noticed - I dropped the husband before I acquired the sweetheart.”

“...all right,” he repeated. “Forgive me, I don’t mean to… react so.”

“You were perfect,” she assured him, even though saying even that hurt; she hoped she would not be called on to reassure him further.  

“Elizabeth,” he said, holding up a hand to assure her that wasn’t necessary.

There was an uncomfortable pause, during which he lowered himself onto the edge of the desk. He drummed his fingers to fill the silence, and then suddenly looked at her.

“...sweetheart?” he repeated.

“What else am I to call you?”

“There’s been a great deal of ‘dog’ as of late.”

“If you were my dog, I wouldn’t hide you from my husband, now would I,” she said with a quiet snort.

“I suppose not,” he said. “Would you like to try the toast again? I seem to have chosen poorly.”

“Yes,” she said promptly, lifting her tin from where she sat, meeting his eyes again, and saying, unerringly: “To Fate, then.”

“To Fate.”

He finished his cup and went to refill it.

“Anyway, what did you mean, ‘ah yes, we love women here’? Half of my first crew were going blind with the pox. Most of them could be said to love women to excess.”

“Oh, my kingdom for a man that can take a joke, James!”

“You joke so often that it-”

“The former commodore doth protest too much!” she cried, looking as innocent as possible, leaning forward in the chair, and, unhelpfully, between the former commodore’s knees. “Is that it, James?  Hath I struck a nerve? You did chase Jack halfway around the globe, after all?”

“Really,” he said. “We’re really doing this now.”

“Is that why you let me bugger you senseless? For shame, James-”

“Elizabeth-”

She put a finger to her lips to shush him, then laid her hand deliberately on his thigh, baitingly.

“Really- and what of you and Red Jenny?” James pressed on.

“Are you asking me about that?” asked Elizabeth in a low - one might even say sultry - tone of voice.

“I didn’t miss the suggestion that it happened,” he retorted.

Elizabeth tried to smirk at him, but eventually she flushed and dropped her head, burying her face. Unfortunately for him.  “I told you that in confidence-”

“And I have not told a soul,” James said loftily, “but I haven’t forgotten-”

“Did it propel your obedience on my little assignment last night?” Elizabeth volleyed back at him, turning her face so her cheek rested on his thigh, but she could look up at him directly.

“No-”

“Ooh, James. Not being honest.”

“Let it be known that I thought only of you after we had gone dancing,” he said. “That was my… source, as it were.”

He cleared his throat.  Elizabeth used the desk to pull herself to her feet, but she did not remove herself from her position between his knees, leaning in and touching him on the chin with her thumb.  “Oh?  And what of me?”  She leaned in still further, until her nose touched the edge of his jawline, and her breath was on his throat; then she whispered into his ear, “I don’t remember which night that was-”

“That gray dress,” he said, “with your hair braided over your crown…”

“I recall the gray dress,” she said, wrinkling her nose in good-natured distaste. “Did we talk of something particular that night?”

“...yes,” he said. “We spoke of… well. What our marriage might have been like, had we gone to sea together.”

After an initial flash of pain, Elizabeth’s expression softened and she cautiously pressed her cheek to his shoulder, putting her arm around him, the other still propping her up on the desk.  But after a moment had passed of that, she pulled back enough to look at him in abrupt confusion. “...you climaxed thinking of that?”

“And of a wedding night, I suppose,” he admitted. “I haven’t a great deal to go off of yet.”

“You know,” said Elizabeth, dragging her hand around to his waist and then very idly down his hip, “I could help you with that. It would really only be polite, seeing as you are doing this practicing on my orders.”

“That would be… appreciated,” he said cautiously, “in due time.”

“And our wedding night?” she asked, after a pregnant pause.  “What did you imagine?”

“...fulfillment, I suppose,” he said, with an apologetic grimace. “I know you’d like a more salacious story, but…”

“I just want the truth,” she said, her wide eyes and hurt tone deceptively innocent.

“Elizabeth,” he said, “I know your virginity shall be done away with presently, but for now I would like to respect it.”

There was another pause.  Elizabeth glanced at his lips, then down again.  “...all right, I’m sorry.  Truce?”

“Of course.”

He took her hand in his and kissed her deeply, to show there were no hard feelings. She pressed herself against him, cupping his cheek with the other hand and pulling away from him in a moment. “....then,” she suggested, eyes lighting up with wickedness, “perhaps you’d like to know what I think about?”

“...yes, of course,” he murmured, following her with his eyes. He didn’t know what to do with himself, so he leaned on the heels of his hands in quiet anticipation, watching her.

She moved in, letting her hips lean on his, to whisper into his ear, “...Red Jenny-”

And instantly burst into laughter, which she smothered in his shoulder.

“Elizabeth-“

He couldn’t chide her too hard- in fact, he began laughing too, and put his arms around her in exasperated fondness. She hugged him back, content to hold him like that, no matter how much she’d been teasing him. It felt good to be light-hearted; at present, he seemed to be the only thing making her feel that kind of good.

“What did you do with her? I didn’t realize women could-“

He stopped himself.

“Never mind, I realize now.”

“Well, nothing happened - nothing I haven’t done with you, at least,” she said sheepishly. “I started to panic a little.”

“-ah,” he said. “Well- good, I should think. Even a dog may desire his mistress to himself.”

She pulled back enough to smile up at him.  

“Really, James. I was drinking rum. She was drinking rum.  I got a little carried away as the Pirate King…. She and her crew left two days later.  Nothing much happened.  Though I can’t help but wonder what might have,” she teased, rubbing the back of his hand.

“How good to know,” he said, perfectly seriously. “I shall make myself most inconvenient the next time we run across one another.”

“Oh, don’t-”

It was his turn to burst into laughter.

“Of course not, Your Majesty.”

James smoothed her hair from one cheek and added, gazing at her, “And my God, but I do prefer you over the last Majesty to whom I owed my service.”

“How very flattering,” she teased.

“The man is German,” he said incredulously. “Imagine being a small child brought up on Arthur and what have you, and then being brought before this- this slovenly aristo, and told to bow and scrape and all that-”

She laughed, but listened sincerely, still holding his hand. “I grant you the comparison would flatter anybody, but this is going to go straight to my head-”

“Your efforts to learn Cantonese cast the greatest of shame on His Majesty’s command of English, did you know that?” James said archly. “I know he was newly crowned the first time I encountered him, but as little as two years ago-”

She kissed him to shut him up.  She was starting to feel self-conscious. James, thankfully, took the hint and pulled her up beside him on the desk for easier access.

Elizabeth’s lips were reddened when they pulled away, and her face was flushed.  She touched his cheek and then his hair in what was becoming a pattern for her.

“We should have done this years ago,” she said, not bitterly, but wistfully and a touch frustrated.  “Talked like this. You are my oldest friend.”

“When we were friends,” he pointed out, “I must have seemed a great deal older to you-“

“You’re right. I’m getting ahead of myself,” she sighed.  “I wish we had stayed friends, and I have only myself to blame for that.”

“No, we can blame the Navy for that one,” he said grimly. “One must work tremendously hard at distancing oneself from all that disease and debauchery to make a proper account of oneself to a prospective father-in-law- and in doing so I suppose I drove you away.”

“I could have done more,” she said softly, touching his cheek again.  “I didn’t even consider you.  More fool I.”  

She smiled painedly.  

“You said that was because I bored you,” James protested. “The blame there falls on myself. I could hardly have sat down at tea to give you an account of the musket ball in my shoulder-“

Elizabeth’s eyebrows went all the way up.  

“Musket ball?”

“You saw it under the dinghy, it’s not terribly distinct from the others-“

He pushed down the side of his shirt and showed her a little pitted indentation in the muscle along the top of his right shoulder, surrounded by a little flare of healed burns.

“I didn’t see anything under the dinghy - it’s still in there?” she asked, touching it.  She could see it now.

“Here. Press it, if you like. It doesn’t hurt, save in the cold, and there’s not a lot of that to go around here, is there?”

An unfeigned smile broke over her face.  

“Cool.”

“They couldn’t remove it,” he said, “or I’d have likely bled out. They just… poured a great deal of brandy over it and waited for it to heal.”

“That must have been dreadful for you,” she said, somehow managing to strike a balance between truly sympathetic and morbidly fascinated with the prospect.

“I wasn’t conscious for much of it,” he said, with a dismissive shrug. “I spent quite a lot of time passing in and out of a fever for the next few days.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen. I had only just made Lieutenant.”

“It only made you braver,” she said with a grin.

“In a manner of speaking,” he laughed. “I was mainly relieved it hadn’t been a limb or my face.”

“Vain,” she laughed back at him, touching that face now.  “You’d look dashing with a hole through your cheek, hm?”

“You laugh,” he said, “but the only thing I can recall on my sickbed is telling Theo to tell the doctor to not cut off my hair.”

“Theo?”

“Groves.”

“Oh. I didn’t know you knew each other that long.”

“From our first crew, actually. I was twelve; he was eleven.”

“He’s one of Beckett’s, now, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” he said, rather gloomily. She squeezed his shoulder affectionately.

“Maybe he’ll defect too.  Though not for love of the Pirate King,” she laughed.  “It is an unusual man who wants to be a woman’s dog.”

“Now, now,” he said, “I did not defect for the sole purpose of being your dog. You give me far too much credit for that happy eventuality.”

“Oh yes,” she said, suddenly laughing enough she could barely speak. “You defected for moral reasons, I happily ignore.  Not for the sole purpose of lapping at my teats-”

“Elizabeth!”

It was too late; he was laughing too now, and so unable to look at her that he was leaning his forehead into his hand and covering his eyes.

“Well, you have done so, you know,” she whispered to him, biting her lip and sliding her hands up his chest as though to threaten to return the favor.

“Given the opportunity, madam, I will gladly do so again,” he said, in a lower voice reflecting the sudden change in mood.

“Beckett’s loss,” she said baitingly.

“Oh, Beckett wishes,” he said smugly.  

That forced her to start giggling.

“I’m certain he knows as well as anyone how difficult it is to come by a Navy man still in possession of his limbs and face and… other things,” James laughed, “the poor jealous little creature-”

“Oh my God, James-”

“I only heard the rumor a few days ago, but my God, it explains so much-”

“There’s a rumor about Lord Beckett’s-? Well, I’ve heard it all now.”

James leaned back, amused.

“They say Sparrow gelded him some fifteen years ago.”

“No-” Elizabeth blurted, eyes widening.  There was a short, stunned pause before she cracked up again.  “Come on, James, they also say I’ve been sodomizing you-”

“I know, I know-”

“Although I know it is tempting given Jack’s liberal use of the word ‘eunuch’, and Beckett’s general tendency to, shall we say, overcompensate-”

“And remove pendulous objects from the dècor,” James pointed out.

“He doesn’t!”

“Some, at least-“

Elizabeth half covered her mouth, then abruptly resumed laughing. James collected himself enough to put an arm around her and sighed, trying to regain his bearings; when her laughter subsided, she pressed her face against him and took a deep, contented inhale.  She laced her arms around his waist and squeezed. James laughed again, though much more gently, and finished unlacing his shirt for her benefit.

She hadn’t meant it like that, but she nuzzled his bare skin anyway.

“If it’s true,” he said finally, “it’s only really amusing for his assumption anyone else cares as he does. He surrounds himself with Navy men taking a break on commission and yet he seems to believe none of them have ever met a gelded man before, when God knows anything that sticks out or dangles is fair game to a broadside, and he’s been at sea for years. One learns to either hold one’s body very dear, or to abandon it to whichever injury may come and get back up with a knife in one’s teeth to go at it again.”

He added, looking more pensively at her, “I consider myself half-blessed to have made it so far with everything in one piece. I can’t imagine it will always be so.”

“I won’t care. I would never have, you know,” said Elizabeth, kissing his chest now.  “All the more justification for enjoying oneself in the present.”

“You might have when we scarcely knew one another,” he said, though his tone was teasing. “Suppose I came calling with one cheek caved in, as you suggested-“

“I’d have liked it,” she said, offendedly.  “I’d have found it interesting.  And I don’t suppose you could have refused me an account of how you got it, either.”

He laughed, startled. “Pardon my lack of morbid interest, then.”

“It’s pardoned.  I can’t keep holding it against you, after all, not when you did such lovely things with me in Tortuga-”

“How fortunate to know I may still please you, with all four limbs and all of my teeth. Would you care to see the rest by daylight, then?”

“How much of the rest?” asked Elizabeth, biting her lip and smiling at him.

“We’ll start-”

He began pulling off his shirt.

“-with this. How does that suit you? It ought to hold your rather specific interests.”

He pulled it over his head and leaned back again, his short hair mussed by the shirt and a constellation of scars exposed over his arms and torso. It was easier to tell now, as well, that the longer one on the side of his head, nearly but not quite covered by his hair, was part of a light chain down his neck. None of them were particularly gruesome- most were clean and straight, the result of being on the slashing end of a sword- but their number was telling about the life he had lead, and what a multitude of harm a uniform could cover on even a healthy and able man such as James Norrington.

That harm, however, was far from his thoughts at the moment, except at its most abstract. James was particularly proud of himself in that moment, in the face of Elizabeth’s blatant fascination with danger, and at this time in their lives it was finally no longer indecent to want her, and to want to be wanted.

Elizabeth’s breathing came in audibly enough that even she noticed it, but she made no effort to compose herself, gliding her hand from his throat down to his waist, then upward again.  

“This would have been a welcome sight to any young woman on her wedding night,” said Elizabeth, meeting his eyes, reluctant, excited, and embarrassed at once.  “Not that it would have looked the same at night. I mean…” She dropped her eyes at once, though she had other things to look at, after all.

“I might not have shown you so openly, on our wedding night,” he admitted. “I once thought you to be of more delicate constitution than I have found you to be, and I- well, I did not think I would disgust you, but startle you, certainly-”

She pulled a face.

“No offense, of course!” said James. “The more fool I for thinking so, now that I know my chances might have been improved had I come to ask for your hand had I been maimed-”

“Well, had it opened a pathway to your having a decent conversation with me,” said Elizabeth sourly, unappreciative now that she was on the receiving end of someone else’s teasing.

“Assuming I could still speak,” he laughed. “I’m sure you know the glamorous reputation shared by sailors on their wedding nights-”

She shook her head.

“Fortunately,” he said, sitting up a little, “the point is rather moot in our case, but it’s common knowledge that undressing a Navy man means taking off a limb or two, and perhaps taking out his teeth and unstrapping his nose-”

“A brave man deserves a brave wife,” said Elizabeth, undaunted.

“I’m beginning to feel entirely undistinguished,” James said dryly.

“There are so many, though,” she said encouragingly - enthusiastically.

James kissed her.

“It is, as always, an honor to please you.”

“Oh, would you like to?” she sighed against his lips, her smirk breaking their kiss.

“That’s why you’re here, is it not?”

“I thought,” she said, turning her head around to breathe her words enticingly against his ear, “that I might please you.”

James’s breath caught.

“Ah,” he said, when he had voice enough. “Noted.”

She slid her hand along his thigh while leaning in to kiss that ear. He closed his eyes and inhaled slowly.

“You would not rather I… serve you-”

“It was lovely to be served, but I admit I long to do the serving in turn-” she whispered, pulling back just enough to look on his face as she slid her hands between his legs.  Even with his eyes closed, she supposed she would be able to see all he felt reflected in his expression.  

“Are you certain that’s… proper, Your Majesty…?” James asked. “If you were seen-”

“I’m afraid that, however much it would distress you, the penalty for spying on the Pirate King would be quite severe, so let us not dwell on it.”

“Elizabeth,” he laughed. “May I kiss you again, Your Majesty, or does that interfere with your desires?”

“Not at all.  Come and do it,” she said, licking her lips and lifting her eyebrows at him, as though it were a game, and she were winning.

Instead of staying level with her on the desk, James pushed himself off of it and came to face her, giving her a glimpse in passing of the flogging scars on his back as he turned and stood before both her and the window, open to the impassive and unchanging sea beyond. He leaned down to meet her mouth and kissed her, open-mouthed from the start and clutching her against him with one arm as his other hand found its way to her hair.

She suspected he was doing this because of the previous placement of her hand, but to be held against him thusly was too pleasurable to complain of it.  She accepted his kisses again and again, and then she pulled him by the waist backwards to the bed.

James wondered, vaguely and without ceasing to kiss her, if the bed’s previous owner, left stranded on the Dutchman, had ever used it so excitingly. She may have been dragging him along, but he pushed her back, and caught her lips against his once more, sweeping her mouth with his tongue far more forcefully than before.

That was to Elizabeth’s considerable delight.  She returned the kiss with equal vigor, standing at the edge of the bed and holding him by the back of the neck and the shoulders so as to have the greatest possible amount of leverage as she stood on the toes of her boots - then after a moment she pulled back abruptly, laughing and swatting him open-handedly.  “Liar!” she cried out. “You have not got all your teeth!”

“I did in Port Royal,” he objected, holding his hands up defensively against the onslaught of swatting, “so as a technical matter-”

“So I have passed my judgment too soon?  And you have been wrongfully punished!” she cried, lacing their fingers.  “A grievous fault in a monarch - how do I reconcile myself to you, Captain Norrington?”

“It was a fight in Tortuga,” he said, pulling her closer again, “but for all you know, I’m still lying. Better to ascertain my honesty, wouldn’t you say?”

“Lay yourself bare for my judgment, then,” she said, releasing one hand of his to cup his chin and pull him to her for another kiss, murmuring against his lips, “I’ll make you honest…”

“Please do,” he said softly. “I am yours.”

She pulled back to look him in the eyes, suddenly feeling lost. James noticed immediately and took her by the arms to seat her gently on the bed, but Elizabeth stopped him before he could do so, shaking her head.

“I only - forget,” she said quietly. “Your - loyalty.  I hope you’ll forgive me -”

“Forgive you?” he repeated, frowning. “Elizabeth-”

“I don’t mean to use you,” she said uncomfortably.

“Are you?” he asked dubiously. “I was… not aware, if so. I do not feel used.”

“If you don’t feel used, then I won’t claim to use you,” she said swiftly, offering him a weak smile.  “But I don’t pretend - You deserve more than this.”

“What I deserve?” he asked. “What do you think I deserve- for you to have gone against your heart and submitted to marrying me when you did not desire to?”

“To have loved a different woman,” she said numbly.  “To be with her now, instead.”

“Had I loved, courted, married another woman, she would have swiftly found herself shackled by the law to a rum-pot deckhand, as Sparrow so eloquently put it,” James said, nearly scornfully, “followed by a toady in the service of the East India Trading Company, and now, evidently, a pirate-”

“You would have hanged Jack, if I had not intervened,” said Elizabeth with a tight smile. “I daresay I ruined your life, James.”

“On the contrary,” he said, “I daresay you gave me the very distant option of changing it.”

Now Elizabeth permitted them to sit, and sat heavily. He smiled, equally tightly, but some warmth broke through anyway.

“In retrospect, I might have drank myself into a gutter after some time regardless,” he admitted. “I’ve been inclined to excess for years, if I’m to be honest with myself- it began with the musket ball in my shoulder-” He put his hand on the wound and grimaced, wiping his other hand on his mouth.  She leaned her head on his shoulder.

“Being with you will never ease my conscience,” she said with a snort.  “Your devotion calls to mind all of my failings.”

“You did not ruin my life, Elizabeth,” he said, so firmly it was almost scolding, “and I must ask you to stop.”

She made up her mind to not recollect Will in this conversation, even though it was Will of whom she was thinking.  She had thought she felt that kind of devotion to Will, and here she was with another man.  Even another man she had known as long, a man of similar heart and character.

“It’s not unusual for a king to have a trusted friend and advisor who is their better in most ways,” she said with a little smile. “To make them better. I suppose that is what you are to me.  In that sense it is good that I am not your equal, for I have you to model decency and loyalty for me.”

“A rare quality in a traitor twice over,” James said flatly.

“Rarer still in pirates,” she retorted fondly, sliding her fingers through his hair again.

He laughed, a little exhaustedly, and leaned into her touch.

“You’ll have to pardon my vanity, but do you really like it so much?” he asked.

She loved how he kept making her laugh. “I really do,” she said, kissing him on the temple almost chastely to prove it.

“I- well. Good, then,” he said, somewhat awkwardly. “Thank you.”

She trailed a kiss down from his temple to his throat, but paused along his jawline.  “James, do you like mine?”

“I do,” he said, running a hand into it and clutching to illustrate his sincerity. “Truly.”

“I know it’s ragged now-”

“Elizabeth,” he said, “I don’t mind. I promise you that.”

He kissed her to punctuate this.

“If it bothers you, I can show you how I once preserved mine, but truly-“

“I don’t know if it does or not,” she admitted, holding the bright, ravaged ends of it in one hand ruefully.  “I just know that it should.”

“The same would likely have happened had we married and I brought you to sea,” he said gently, taking that hand in his own and covering the fragile ends of her hair.

She snorted.  “I suspect that I would have at least tried to take care of it, under those circumstances.  For the sake of propriety, as an officer’s wife.  For you, if not for myself.”

“Elizabeth,” he said, equal parts exasperated and sad on her account.

“Regardless of what you may have believed, I have never precisely been ignorant of the expectations on me,” she said, meeting his eyes with a reluctant smile, “and I have always made an effort to satisfy them.  I’ve only tried to find some balance between satisfying the wishes of others while seeing to my own.  Sometimes even that isn’t possible. Now I’m one of the pirates I’ve read about, and I’m still in this position.  It’s never going to end, is it?”

“It doesn’t,” James said, meeting her eyes. “It’s rather inescapable in the line of duty.”

“Lovely,” she said.

“And that, sweetheart,” he said, smiling but with no small amount of bitterness, “is why we drink.”

“I could drink to that.  That should have been our toast,” she said, shutting her eyes, but smiling nonetheless.

“I have a bottle,” he said, a little too quickly.

“Oh, but I want to do things you won’t let me do if I drink,” she purred, sliding her arms around his neck.

“I’ll drink as well-“

“And how will it look for me to leave your ship in a state of drunkenness?”

“You wouldn’t need to be d- never mind, I’m getting ahead of myself.”

He winced at his own fallibility and instead settled for gently arranging Elizabeth’s ravaged hair over her shoulders with a new tenderness. In his own teeth-gritting anxiety over being in Tortuga and fearing how he must come off, it had never occurred to him that Elizabeth might be mourning the loss of her own comparatively delicate, patrician qualities.

“I never thought you cared so much,” he admitted. “I’m sorry.”

“Of course I cared,” said Elizabeth, making a face.  “I spent long enough being told I was never going to look like much, it was a delight when people started telling me otherwise.”

“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “in addition to the rigors of authority, I might be able to assist you with… that.”

He felt exceedingly foolish, and his smile was half-hearted, but if it might make Elizabeth feel even a little better… well, it was worth the foolishness.

“Are you offering to do my hair or something,” she said flatly.

“More to preserve it,” he said, equally flatly.

“What do you mean?”

“If you run oil through it, plait it, and then bind the end of the plait to the top, it will endure better,” he said, speaking quickly to get it over with in embarrassment.

“When is anyone going to see it, then?” she argued.

“I would, presumably,” he said. “And your crew, on… festive occasions.”

“Festive occasions?  You won’t even come back to Tortuga!”

“Elizabeth,” he said awkwardly. “I hope you know that I find you beautiful regardless.”

That stunned Elizabeth into a reddish silence. James seized the moment and kissed her.  For a moment, she hardly knew how to react; she remembered quickly, head tilting back, hair spilling through his fingers.

“Surely you don’t think me that fickle?” he asked, still nearly mouth to mouth with her.

I seem to be.  She bit back that thought and swallowed it alongside a taste of his saliva, renewing her attentions with greater ardor to answer him wordlessly. James, unaware of her turmoil, turned her down toward the bed, pressed to his bare chest, and she pulled him the rest of the way on top of herself.

“May I-“

He reached for the ties of her shirt. Her breath caught in her throat.

“- yes-”

“Thank you,” he murmured. He went about it carefully, his mouth on her bare skin whenever possible, and went to work on her jumps next. With her waist exposed, he massaged it with his hands- he could only assume it felt confined in her jumps- and kissed her rather more firmly than he had previously.  

She moved underneath him, feeling the way a puppet probably felt to have its entire being wrenched around a stage all on account of the tugging of one single string.  This was very different by daytime, and the knowledge that he could fully see her made her more reluctant than she had been in Tortuga - she had remembered a fraction of the modesty she was supposed to have, and absolutely did not have as the Pirate King, especially flat on her back in the bed of a man to whom she was not married, even a man to whom she had almost been.  

She didn’t want to dissuade him, and yet she hesitated to encourage him, either; her hands hovered in the air for a moment as she contemplated putting them on his and pulling them off.  Instead she laid them over his eyes, only half-teasingly.

“Elizabeth,” he laughed, trying to turn his head away.

“Come up here again-” she urged.

“All right,” he laughed, “make way-“

She didn’t seem particularly small beside him when they stood together, but maneuvering himself on the bed was another matter. He felt huge and clumsy and likely to crush her, and had to angle himself carefully up beside her.

She caressed his face without reservation, leaning in to kiss his lips again, raising the question of why she had wanted him positioned elsewhere in the first place.

“Is this… better?” he asked doubtfully.

She hesitated, biting her lip, and then looked at him with an apologetic smile. “...what would you do to touch me?”

“...anything you like,” said James. “Within reason-“

“And I’ll let you do anything you like,” she said softly, “if you’ll… let me….”

It was easier to gently put her hands over his eyes. “...cover your eyes.”

He sat up beside her.

“Elizabeth- if you’re not comfortable-“

“I want you more than anything,” she said quickly, and leaned up to kiss him again, pulling his hand to her waist reassuringly.  She let the kiss continue longer than necessary, given the enormity of her request, then whispered, against his lips, “Do you know that old story... about Artemis and Actaeon?”

“-torn apart by dogs, wasn’t he-“ said James, faintly alarmed.

“For looking on the goddess,” she cooed, her mouth on his as she spoke, but not kissing him, although she seemed to suggest she might.

James looked uneasily back toward the locked cabin door, half-expecting to see it cracked open and some coarse-looking pirate pushing his face in whom he would now be expected to dispatch, according to the general agreement on whom around here could be called dog. There was no one, however, and he looked back at her with a frown of confusion.

“The virgin goddess,” she said, after a moment.  It had lost a little of its suggestiveness.

“I’m not certain I follow-“

Elizabeth sighed, sitting up in the bed and pulling off her jumps and her chemise.

“Yes?” he said expectantly.

She lay back down and settled into an inviting pose, beckoning him closer.  The evening sunlight was rich and bronze and flattering, which would have suited her purposes very well if not for her sudden fit of shyness.  But her hands found his bare shoulders anyway, moving him into place above her.

“...what would you like,” he asked gently. “If I’m going too fast, please tell me-“

“A hunter spied on the Greek goddess Artemis while she was bathing and he was punished,” she said, touching his lips with her fingertip.  “I’m thinking more like… You can have my body, but you can’t look at it,” she said, smirking.

“...ah,” he said. “I… well. I don’t see why not-“

In truth, he was a little baffled, but he wanted to please her enough to let her take the lead.

“An acceptable trade-off?”

“Do you wish for me to be blindfolded?” he asked, trying to be sure he understood.

“Yes,” she said unhesitatingly. “It’s… it’s harder to do this when we aren’t under a dinghy in the dark. Apparently.”

“And that will… help?”

Unable to meet his eyes and explain this, she embraced him, pulling him gently to bed with her, kissing him on the neck to ease the idea along while guiding his hand to her waist again.

“I’m embarrassed to be seen undressed,” she admitted in a whisper against his throat.  “But I still want you, if you still want me-”

“Of course I do- Elizabeth, you’re lovely, I assure you, but if that will help-“

“I’m lovely,” she snorted, “and I’ve never done this before-”

“All right,” he said, with a little gesture of surrender. “Noted.”

He kissed her to assure her that there were no hard feelings and then sat up.

“Let me go find something suitable, then.”

She was absently lifting a hand to cover herself, already flushing.The previous captain had been a man of expensive tastes, and James recalled a roll of thin silk tobacco rolls in the desk. He’d since claimed the tobacco for himself, but the idea of rolling it in silk rather than paper was an affectation that bordered on senseless as far as James was concerned- even paper, he had to concede, was rather unwarranted when it could be tamped down in a pipe.

This, he decided as he twisted a few lengths together to create sufficient opacity, was a far worthier use. More sustainable, too.

Satisfied with the blindfold in the making, he went to his trunk, which he had had smuggled onboard from the Dutchman, and started digging for another important item.

Said item was not there. James swore out loud, and then grit his teeth in embarrassment.

“James?” Elizabeth called.  She decided to bring in her big guns, pitched her voice at a delicate whine, and added, “James, I’m cold.”

“I forgot it on the Dutchman,” he said matter-of-factly, eyes shut as he considered whether or not he could ever live this down, and finding the outcome not terribly promising. “I forgot a quondam on the Dutchman.”

Elizabeth didn’t know what that was.

“...I’m cold,” she added feebly, sitting up and pouting.

“There’s been a change of plans, my dear,” he said as he came back toward the bed. “We shall have to get creative.”

The thought of Beckett finding an orphaned sheepskin prophylactic left behind in the cabin he’d been assigned on the Dutchman was almost too much to bear. James felt mildly sick at the prospect.

Elizabeth was frowning at him, urging him to join her.  “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t have a quondam,” he said flatly.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“An assurance cap.”

“A what?”

This was absurd. She wanted his attention back where it mattered - on her breasts.  She guided one of his hands there, the other to her face so that she could nip his fingertips.

“It’s a- well, it’s a sheath, of sorts, that slips over one’s… anatomy-“

Oh, God. This was mortifying.

Elizabeth laced their fingers instead, pulling her face away enough to see his better. Her frown deepened.

“...please tell me you know that part,” he said desperately.

Her eyes glanced dubiously downwards, then returned back to his. “A… sheath,” she repeated slowly.

“Right, and it fits over the… anatomy,” he continued, “so that when the wearer… has an emission- do they really not teach this-“

Elizabeth looked doubtful.

“So that when the wearer climaxes and emits his… seed,” he said quickly, without looking at her, “it is caught by the quondam rather than deposited in the woman’s womb, thereby preventing her from falling pregnant. Does that make sense? Please let that make sense-“

Her eyebrows had raised in understanding midway through this explanation, but by the time he was pleading that he may not have to explain any further, she had taken a turn towards looking crestfallen.

“....you mean that you can’t put yourself inside me. That’s what this means.”

“Not unless you’re willing to risk a child,” he said. “I suppose if you’re far enough from your last blood we might be safe-“

She fall back on the bed again petulantly.  “This is so unfair- it’s all I think about-”

“I mean, we could try to have a go with- wait, really?”

She looked at him desperately.  “Since we were in Tortuga - I already told you - oh, James-”

She broke off.

“I- listen, we do have a fair few options,” he said, moving closer to her again. “I could try to bring you to climax with my hand or- well, with my mouth, I suppose-“

“With your- oh,” she gasped, turning instantly red.  “Can you possibly enjoy-”

“You can,” said James.

“But I wanted to have my turn with you,” she said, still flushed, but now pouting in addition.  The sunlight outside was only just beginning to fade.  The room would be all rose-colored radiance before they were through with each other; in the earliest stage of that, she was catching glimmers of sunlight in his hair, his eyelashes - even the hair on his chest.  It was deeply distracting, but not distracting enough.  Now she could not help but feel empty.  She leaned in to kiss his bare skin, to taste it.

“...we’ll take turns, then,” he said. “How’s that?”

“Sounds like an accord, Captain Norrington,” she said, gliding her hand up his thigh to press her palm against him.

“Oh, thank God.”

“Hm?”

It took a bit to manoever herself so that she was kneeling on her knees on the bed and kissing the rest of his chest without having to remove her hand.  She had never touched any man here before, nor seen him, and as worldly as she liked to come across, she was beginning to grow overeager to explore him.

“Would you still like me blindfolded?” James asked uncertainly.

“I don’t know - may I do this-” she asked, rubbing him now.

“-let’s have you first,” he said quickly, moving her hand away.

Her mouth was open in shock and delight and her eyes were bright when they met his.

“...it really does get bigger, then-”

“Yes,” he said patiently, “and it will take some time to do so again if we rush into things-“

“I don’t want us to rush into things,” she chided him, settling her hands on his hips instead and pressing her chest to his when she went back in to kiss his neck again.  “I want to- make you earn it-”

“May I have you, then?” he asked, pushing her away just enough to look her in the eye.  

All in her expression revealed that she wanted to cry out her assent immediately, but she had to learn patience as well as he did.

“What can you offer to entice me, if I may not have…” She hesitated on the word to use. She had only a vague notion of what people said when they were being crude, and she did not know if it was said under these circumstances or not.  And if she were too academical she would not even have to blind him because he would never look her in the eye again.  “...the fullest benefit of your manhood, then, James?”

“...I would like to show you, if permitted,” he said.

He slid his hand from her knee to her hip to demonstrate.  Her breathing shortened.

“Tell me first-” she said quickly.

Before responding, James picked up the blindfold he had wound and pressed it into her hand.

“If you still desire it,” he said softly, “Your Majesty.”

She bit her lip and beamed at him.  “If you’ll still allow it,” she said, touching his cheek delicately; “my love.”

James opened his mouth, but he was overcome, and his voice stopped. He squeezed the hand that held the blindfold and nodded, and leaned in to kiss her before pausing with his eyes shut, waiting in expectation.

She pressed a gentle kiss onto each eyelid before applying the blindfold and tying it.  Fortunately, this was a stable of enough children’s games - and consequently games teen girls were encouraged to play instead of sitting around and gossipping about some half-assed understanding of the sex act or the male anatomy - that she understood how to do this better than the rest of what they’d done.  She didn’t want to fumble it and forfeit his sense of her authority - or the security of leaving himself in her hands thusly.

When it was secured, she cupped the back of his neck and gently guided him on top of her as she laid back on his bed again.

“I’m sorry to deprive you of one of your senses, my darling Actaeon, but as I am still a maid, I must protect what remains of my modesty somehow,” she said in a low, honeyed voice, moving her hands pettingly down his chest.  The thrill of control this gave her made her feel languorous and overheated and strangely, unexpectedly sweet; she wanted to cosset him as she never had before.  “I hope I can provide enough pleasure for the rest of you to justify it.  The pleasures of - oh - touch,” she said, idly focusing the attentions of one hand on a certain area of his chest, “and smell, and taste, and sound - what would sound most pleasant to your ears?  I can be your mistress, if you like.  Or a goddess.  Or- “

She leaned in and claimed his lips again, for a long time.  “...or I could be a maid, after all, if you’d rather not pretend any,” she whispered.

“May I begin by undressing you?” he asked against her lips. His hands- tentatively at first, and then at greater ease- found her waist, and from there moved to the top of her breeches.

“...please,” she said, her voice sounding much smaller than she intended.

He was clumsy enough to give himself pause- he would have been far faster with her leaning against him, but speed wasn’t the point right now.

His first instinct to lean in and kiss her was thwarted by her drawers, which made him pause and suppress a fond laugh. Of course she would have drawers; woman, or not, she was in trousers, wasn’t she? Those, therefore, needed easing down as well.

He found his way back to her breasts, and began making his way downward with a slowness that he found tender but rather hoped that she would find pleasantly agonizing. She arched underneath him, feeling vulnerable in a new way, and grateful for the silk around his eyes - she did not know if she could handle her self-consciousness to see him seeing her.  

“James-” she cried out. “Just a moment - will you stay up here a little longer-”

“Of course.”

He had to feel his way up to her, and stretched alongside her when he could. He felt more than a little ridiculous, reaching for her hand the way he did.  She guided him the whole way, not merely with her hands, but with her legs.  She didn’t want to push him onto his back - she thought that would disorient him too much - although the sudden image of straddling him as she had before, with his eyes closed, blindly caressing her breasts as he called her name, was enough to make her hold back a moan.  She just wanted to ease him into this better, and herself, too, as much as it had been her idea.

“Do you like the sound of my voice, James?” she asked, kissing him on the neck.

“Very much,” he said. His own had become rather strained, and he smiled to reassure her all was well.

“Listen to it, then.”  Elizabeth sought to dote on him, then - to appreciate every inch of him, or nearly every - but nonetheless guided his hand to her breast and commanded unwaveringly: “Touch me.  Tease me again.”

“Allow me to assume the position, then,” he said, pushing himself up with a brief noise of exertion that turned into a laugh. “Mm- all right-“

It started with his hands, but he soon found a way to bring his mouth back into the affair, all the while staying carefully above her waist.

Elizabeth was a good guide. She gave him a great deal to work with - murmuring, then moaning his name, tangling her fingers in his hair as much as its length would allow, and, without a shred of irony, calling out “good boy, James” every time he gave her a particularly wonderful sensation.

“Do you - do you feel what you do for me-” she gasped, out of breath.  “Even if you can’t see it - at present -”

“It is sweet- enough- just to hear you-“

It came out with some difficulty. His mouth was rather preoccupied, after all. She took his hand fiercely, lacing their fingers and squeezing.  After a while of this, warring with herself about what she wanted, what she felt ready for, she stopped holding it and guided it back down to her hip again.

“James,” she began haltingly.  Her voice trembled.

“Yes?” he said softly.

After a hesitant pause, he added:

“...my King?”

“....if… if you still want to…”

“...yes,” he said. “Would Your Majesty prefer my hand or my… mouth… for the honors?”

He had nearly said tongue, but it seemed impossibly vulgar at a time like this.

“I don’t know,” she said, with an awkward burst of laughter that was so graceless she could have flung herself overboard for it.  “What would Miss Bolger recommend-”

“The mouth,” he said dryly. “Navy men have rough hands and few teeth, or so the story goes.”

“Oh, I…”

She felt incapable of speech.  She know which part of him she wanted, and it was off limits. The thought of him using his mouth in such a fashion felt like an even more intimate undertaking than that, though - the mouth was otherwise such a decent and respectable feature.  

“...I love your rough hands,” she finished weakly.  “James, whatever you think is best, I… leave the matter with you.  I would not be a very good king if I could not accede to a superior understanding now and again.”  After a moment, she followed that up with her sultriest possible voice, given the circumstances: “I am sure whatever you do will make me scream.”

“I suppose that leaves the question of whether or not Your Majesty would have me speak,” he said, very formally- so much so, in fact, that he folded his free arm behind his back and bowed his head as much as he could in that position- “or serve in  silence.”

She was enough flustered by this that she considered pulling the blindfold off him and requesting they dial it back, but she was a little too far gone for that.  Nonetheless, she reached down to caress his cheek.

“James,” she said softly.  “It’s just me now.  Elizabeth.  I… I don’t know.  I’ve never done this.”

He dropped the posture at her touch. Reclining beside her, he pressed a hand to her chest to orient himself. From there, it was easy enough to determine the relative position of the rest of her, enough that he could both lean in to whisper in her ear and move his hand… downward.

“Tell me if you need me to stop,” he murmured against that ear. She parted her lips, then licked them nervously.  When his hand found her hip, she took a breath and braced herself as though she were waiting for something to hurt.

That might have almost been easier to bear.  She cried out, clenching her hand on his shoulder.

He withdrew his hand.

“Too much?”

“Please don’t - please don’t stop-”

It seemed for a moment he had the easier task - providing pleasure and not enduring it, and his eyes covered, so that nothing felt so immediate, so vivid.  She shut her own eyes tightly, and slid her trembling hand down his arm to his hand - urging him on.

James smiled, and kissed her as he began again.

“I love you.”

She opened her mouth to repeat it back to him, but all words were quickly lost.

***

Elizabeth was murmuring his name between kisses in raptures of gratitude when she slid her fingers beneath the back of the blindfold and removed it.  She no longer felt quite so timid at the prospect of his seeing her, not after... well, all of that.

James blinked a few times in the dimmer light and then found her face. He smiled slowly, warmly, and returned a few kisses of his own.

It was taking ages for her breathing to return to normal.  She slid onto her back, still shaky, pulling him by the arm so he could lean over her, her other hand pushing her thumb back and forth through his dark hair fondly.

“Are you all right?” he laughed gently.

She nodded, biting her lip and smiling up at him, then bursting into pleased, and still faintly shocked laughter.

“If Lettie’s commentary may be taken as gospel,” he said, “that’s actually quite a lot better than I could provide by going inside you-“

“Maybe, but - you didn’t enjoy it so much.”  She slid her other hand over his chest, pensive and playful, her fingers still in his hair.  “I hoped tonight might see you satisfied.”

“Mm- no, sweetheart, let me treasure you tonight,” he said. “I would hate to see your reputation suffer from that rumor.”

“What rumor?” she asked. She paused. “What now?”

“There isn’t one yet,” he said, as he pushed his fingers back through her hair. “But I can’t imagine it would be good for your standing if word got out that you stooped to please your dog.”

She glared at him, though she couldn’t quite stop herself from smiling through it, so she stuck out her tongue.  “I am the Pirate King. I may do whatever I’d like to my dog.”

“Your dog will need a moment to sort out how long he has,” James said cautiously.

“We have as long as we like,” she said, frowning. “Within some limits. God knows I’d love to spend the night asleep here again, but-”

“I’m rather far along,” he said carefully.

“....come again?”

“I think I will if given the opportunity.”

“What?”

Knowing fully well that he was flirting with danger, James brought her hand to the front flap of his breeches and gave her a meaningful look.  Elizabeth gasped, then grasped at him in visible delight.

“Oh-!”

“Elizabeth,” he said, moving back as quickly as he could (which wasn’t much).

She showed her palms in good faith, albeit some reluctance.  “We don’t have to - but I’d like to. If you would.  If you’d let me.”

“If you were to try it now,” he said flatly, “I think I should last all of twenty seconds.”

Elizabeth covered her mouth, but was already giggling with an open immaturity.

“-and beyond that, it will take at least another twenty minutes to regain momentum,” he said, even more seriously.

“Really? I don’t feel like that,” she asked, sidling closer and curling up opposite him.

“Not for you,” he said, “you can’t be spent the same way-”

“Is it… a male predicament, then?” she asked, resting her chin on her arms.

“Yes- my God, they really didn’t teach you any of this, did they?”

“Why would they have?”

“Presumably they expected you’d end up copulating at some point-”

“With my husband, only to bear children.”

“Even so,” said James. He turned to face her- gingerly, given the circumstances. “It takes quite some time to… get it up again, once it’s spent.”

“Don’t you think it’s… strange?” she asked, her mind worlds away, and her tongue struggling to keep up.  She did not know if she could put how she felt into words.  “I never imagined being here, like this, with you.”

“I thought of it, occasionally.”

He looked around them. The furnishings weren’t what James would have chosen, and there weren’t nearly enough books, but despite all that…

“I thought we might have lived like this, eventually,” he admitted. “In a cabin at sea.”

Elizabeth settled against him whether he liked it or not, resting her cheek on his chest.  She was beginning to grow self-conscious about her nakedness, but he wasn’t looking at her, at least.

“I keep having this…. Strange feeling,” she said, frustrated she could come up with no better explanation than that.  “Because when I look at you, all of my memories come to mind, and yet they are so different from this.”

“Because I’m not boring you?”

He scoffed.

“Because you’re different out here,” she said, softly, “and I am too.  But I keep getting…. Getting flashes of all of the old times.  And you’re the same person, and yet you aren’t.  Not to me, anyway.”

“Because I’m not boring you,” James repeated.

Elizabeth snorted, glancing down and then, somewhat shyly, up at him again.  “You didn’t always.”

“I know, I know. The wig, right?”

“Not exactly,” she said carefully, avoiding his gaze again, rubbing his chest with her fingertips as though it were a distraction.  “You went from being the only person who let me be a fool in front of them to being the last person allowed to see me as anything less than the perfect lady.”

“I never asked to be so,” he said a little woundedly.

“You may as well have. You were so stiff around me.  You reminded me of one of the characters in a cuckoo clock.”

“With the reputation the garrison held, I nearly had to,” he said. “And God help me, I was proud of it. It did me well to be seen that way in every regard except…”

His shoulders released.

“Except you.”

She pouted.

“Captain by twenty-three is a great deal to uphold,” he said, his aspect softening somewhat. “It was more than I ever dreamed of. I felt very little choice but to cast off the trappings of an adventurous youth if I were to continue my advancement. Other men have gone further, sooner, but that was at war-”

“Well.  That isn’t what it looked like.”

“I know that now-”

James made a frustrated sound.

“It was such a terrible lot of pressure…”

She didn’t know what more there was to say. Now she understood some of the pressure he was under- she was a captain at twenty-three now herself.  After a moment of watching his face, she offered him a smile and scruffled his hair affectionately. This caught him by surprise; he relaxed as he laughed and leaned toward her.

“At least I’ve made it this far with everything intact,” he said with a sigh as he lay beside her. His breeches weren’t quite so tight, but as he hadn’t climaxed either there was some hope for the rest of the night after all. “It does go to one’s head-”

He began to laugh, but the laugh was a little weary.

“God, but they were so gratifying, the whispers when I passed. I had everything I had ever wanted save you.”

She had rather felt like that recently - about Will. She couldn’t meet his eyes, but thankfully he didn’t seem to be looking at her.

“Did you really want me so much? We spoke less than ever after you were made Captain.”

“I did,” he said. “That was, in truth, part of why I gave you such space- I had heard of what happened between you and Lieutenant Carpenter at Penelope Gates’ debut, after all.”

“Nothing happened,” said Elizabeth crossly.

“I know, but your father was agitated about it for weeks after,” James pointed out. “He took me for an honorable enough man that he complained to me about other officers’ indiscretions, and I desired to feel I deserved that confidence.”

“He tried to take some… liberties,” she allowed.  “But it would have been different with you.  We already knew each other.  You didn’t have to avoid me.”

“Avoid you? I spent every moment I could with you!” he protested. “I was away so often, and had nothing but my house to return to-”

“It didn’t feel like that,” she said, more sullenly than she realized.  Perhaps this sentiment towards him had not been as new as she thought - the particulars it had acquired, perhaps, but there had to be something there for her to feel that he had betrayed it.

“With the war on, I was left behind to pick up the remainders,” he said. “I came to see you any chance I had. Please, Elizabeth, I know I have done you immeasurable wrongs but permit me this.”

“I felt abandoned.  And then you started courting me, which was infinitely worse.  After that I knew it would never be like it had been.”

“I know,” James sighed. “I know. I vacillated between hope that you might want me and certainty that you might at least accept me, after hearing your defenses.” He smiled sadly. “I was a fool.”

“You were - you were like my older brother, James,” she said, reluctant to hurt him, but, seeing as they were in bed together, and she as naked as the day she was born, she did not think that she could much. “And suddenly you were some stranger, who was, I suppose, thinking it was high time for an advantageous match, and here my father already liked you…”

“And I was certain you would accept,” he said. “I had convinced myself nothing had changed- or, at least, that it all might soon return to how it had been. I was arrogant, I know, but I was convinced that my record and my position and my closeness to you would recommend me well enough. And…”

He grimaced. “And I was not unaware of how you and your friends spoke of me,” he admitted.

Elizabeth flushed and pressed her face against him with a groan.

“Was I not meant to be flattered?” he asked, looking up at the canopy above them.

“That was Amelia, not me,” she said when she had recovered at least enough to speak.  Her cheeks were still pink.  “I knew you would propose - it was only a matter of time. I tried not to think on it. I didn’t even have a response planned.  I wasn’t ready for my life to change.”

The irony of that hit her all at once, staggeringly.  For the first time, she felt choked up with a highly specific nostalgia - not for the life she and Will had once wanted in Port Royal, nor for her father to be alive again in general - but for the girlhood she’d tried to postpone.  Had she even become someone she was proud to be?  She did not want to think of it.

“James, you know it wasn’t anything to do with you, in the end, don’t you?” she asked softly.

“I know. I’m in- I was in the Navy. Believe me, I know that it wasn’t a personal matter.”

“What’s the Navy got to do with it?”

“I’ve seen many personal refusals. They happen often in that line of work.”

“I’m not here with you just because it didn’t work out with him, either,” she mumbled.

There was a long pause. James looked at her, frowning.

“...aren’t you?”

She looked, for a moment, devastated.

“...I don’t think so,” she said in a small voice. “If anything, I - if anything… It didn’t work out with him because I wanted to be here with you.”

“...oh,” he said.

He had to take a minute to digest this.

“Do you think of him with me as you thought of me with him?”

“I think of him,” she admitted, “but it’s not the same.  It’s all guilt.  When I was with him, it was the same guilt, in the same direction.”

“...ah,” said James.

He reached for her hand.

“That my thoughts are with - that I’m with a man who isn’t my husband.  That I could have made him my husband first, and spared all of us this mess.”

“...I wish the same,” he admitted. “I still do, God help me.”

“That comforts me a little,” she said, kissing him.

“Does it? Oh, good- I felt monstrous for thinking it after all this time-”

He kissed right back, more urgently now.

She did not bother to explain that the comfort it gave her was in relieving her guilt only by balancing it with his own relief - which she knew she was too late to really provide him.  On the one hand, she could not have known any of this would happen, and she had loved Will so much - still did love him, in fact, may James never know how much.  On the other, if events had merely spun themselves differently - if Anamaria and Mr. Gibbs and the rest of them had just bloody waited for Jack to defeat Barbossa and Jack had not been returned to Port Royal, depriving Will of the opportunity to profess his love to her - she might have had a honeymoon by now, and have learned of the warmth and sensitivity James had successfully concealed throughout his courtship, and, perhaps nearly equally convincingly, have enjoyed the “truly memorable” first night with him he had confessed he’d hoped to show her, at which point pining for another man would have constituted disloyalty and she would have been forced to distract herself from Will’s memory.

Not even two months ago the thought of that would have seemed deplorable and confining, but it seemed for the time being she would accept even a steep limitation to her happiness and her freedom if she could take this thorn out of her heart as a result.

“I am glad, then,” he said, half-muffled against her throat, “to have earned your affection at last-”

She gasped sharply, yanked out of her thoughts.

“James, that’s --”

“Hm?”

“I’m still -“

“Is this too much?” he asked.

“James - “  She pulled herself gently back from him, pressing her legs together in extreme mortification, trying to catch her breath.  “Have you earned my affection?”

“You certainly seem fond,” he laughed.

“Yes, but you won’t let me show it,” she said petulantly - and something else beside.  She was rubbing his chest again now distractedly, but at the same time, clearly with a purpose.

“Patience, sweetheart,” he said, coming up for another kiss.  

“I don’t want to have patience, I want to have you.”

“You must promise me that you will not make an event of it if I last two minutes,” he said sternly.

“I’ll go easy on you,” she teased.

“We can have another go if I disappoint,” he added. He was beginning to smirk.

“I see the only obvious solution,” she said, gliding her hands down the impressive trunk of his torso to lightly rest on his waist; “...is to go… very… slowly.”

Her heart thumped in her ears, but she concealed the majority of her excitement as she rubbed the inside of his thigh, but did not directly touch him.

He swallowed.

“...good plan-“

“Is it good, James?” she whispered to him, now walking her fingers back and forth across the crotch of his trousers, smile widening.

“You’re a fast learner-“

“Let’s pray I am the only one fast tonight,” she said, pressing her forehead against his when she started to giggle.

“So say we all.”

She kissed him. He pushed himself up as he returned it.

“Here- let me bind back your hair first-“

“Why?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at him.

“I don’t wish to get anything in it.”

“I want it down.”

“May I hold it, then? Elizabeth, I don’t mean to be crude but if we have a particular mishap and it dries, that will be the death of your reputation-“

“I wanted it to fall over your face like a veil,” said Elizabeth, pouting at him.

“-ah,” said James. “Fair enough. But when you move- downward, shall we say-“

“James.”

“Yes?”

“Are you prepared to give me what I ask you for?” she asked, briefly moving her hand to his cheek, to turn his face towards her, to brush their lips without really kissing him.  “Or… aren’t you?”

“...I am-“

“Are you now?”

He blinked.

“...what do you ask of me?”

“Let me have you,” she said, kissing him.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he laughed.

“Please say my name tonight-”

“Yes, Elizabeth.”

Her hand slid between his thighs again, and she leaned back just enough to see his face - not a privilege she had permitted him earlier, but that hypocrisy did not seem to faze her.

He grit his teeth.

“Would you prefer me blind-”

“I want your eyes on mine,” she whispered, then broke into a smile.  “And…. James, I want you to show me what to do.”

“I… you’ll find the angle for that rather troublesome-”

“I just need you to show me how it’s done, and then you need only endure it,” she said, kissing him again.

James stared at her. For a brief, terrible moment, he wondered if she was teasing him.

“...you’ll take hold of it,” he said slowly, “and then you-“

He indicated it with his hands as much as possible, and explained what the climax would involve by necessity, and prayed that this would be enough to communicate it.

Elizabeth enjoyed herself rather a lot at his expense.  With the way he flushed at her remarks upon seeing him and the way he said her name when she touched him, it seemed that his heart, too, was laid bare.  She let her hair fall over him - all the better if he liked it as much as he said - and resumed teasing him.  She was, as he had noted, a fast learner - but the skill required of her now was restraint. She didn’t want to ruin the fun any more than he wanted to ruin her hair.  They would just have to see what James could take, as much as what she could dish out.

***

James pulled her up beside him, a little dazed.

“...are you-“

She was distracted, as a matter of fact.

“Is that what it looks like?”

He blinked.

“...generally-“

She met his eyes baitingly while lifting a fingertip to her mouth.  Then she pulled quite a face and started laughing.

“It’s… er. Well, it’s built for… function... not for beauty,” he said weakly, a little distracted watching her and a little mortified by what he saw. “Not like-“

He waved a hand vaguely at her hips.

“You think that’s built for beauty?”

“Looks a bit like a flower, head on.”

“Excuse me-” she said, laughing. “In whose gardens have you been promenading? I’ve never seen a flower that looks like that-”

“You know- irises-“

He tried to model it with his hands and gave up almost immediately.

She was still giggling, clasping his hands to stop him, then bringing them to her face to kiss his knuckles.

“Tell me - oh, James - tell me, was that good for you, darling?”

“Darling?” he repeated, a smile stealing across his face.

“Tell me-”

“It was,” he said. “It was-“

She kissed him lingeringly. “I… wanted you to know how you made me feel…”

“I’m sorry that we couldn’t do more,” he said, pulling her close and burying his hand in her beautiful, ravaged hair.

“We have all of the time in the world,” she said, nuzzling his throat.  “James, do you really think…”

“Hm?”

He closed his eyes. He could stay like this for hours if she let him.

“...do you really not mind my hair like this?”

James opened them again and gave her a curious frown. “No,” he said. “I’m rather fond of it. The color is striking.”

He gave it an affectionate tousle to show his sincerity, and then smoothed the shorter pieces that fell around her jaw in place.

“I’m sorry to hear that it causes you so much distress. Before you leave, I can show you what I described, if you’d like. Within a few months it will probably have grown enough that you may cut the ends off without much loss.”

As he settled back in beside her, he added, a little wryly, “You’ve a great deal more than I do, at any rate.”

“I think I can figure it out,” said Elizabeth, the thought of him seeing her with her hair in an unflattering state mortifying her.  It was worth noting, though, that she had been mortified at the prospect of his seeing her nude, and yet here they were.

“May I ask you a favor?” he asked.

“Anything,” she said instantly, then, laughing, added, “within reason-”

“May I have a lock of it? A small one, to be sure,” he added quickly. “I don’t want to cause you any further anxiety.”

“A lock of what, this bale of straw?  I don’t know why on Earth you’d want to, but if you want to…”

“I do want to,” he said. “I still regret not giving you that bit of mine- when I still had enough to give, that is.”

“I don’t know if there’s anything you could have done differently-” she said haltingly, not wanting to hurt him, but not wanting to give him false hope, either, that a lock of hair or a habit of better conversation would have prevented her from loving Will more than him.

“I would have felt less of a coward for it.”

He sat up beside her, pulling her up with him, and kissed her on the cheek from over her shoulder.

“At least allow me the pride of regret.”

“I permit it,” she said, loftily, after a moment of sincerely searching his eyes with hers, feeling helpless.

He wanted to kiss her, but this seemed too delicate a moment for that. Instead, he put his arm around her for a long moment and merely held her, content in her company.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so naked outside of a bath,” said Elizabeth, self-conscious and laughing to cover up her nerves.  She did an ineffectual job of it.

“I had a captain once who would bathe himself on the quarterdeck,” James said, “naked as the day he was born. It allegedly kept him from catching cold, so that he might dry immediately, but I don’t think any of us wanted to see that.”

“Do you know,” she said, nonchalantly, “I think I could probably get away with that-”

“Oh, absolutely,” said James, with a sage frown and a nod. “I can’t say I’d enjoy it, but you would acquit yourself splendidly in the process.”

“They do say one must be as a father to one’s men. I suppose some captains like to keep it all in the family-”

“I certainly never dropped trou in front of the men,” he interrupted, trying not to laugh.

“Oh, yes, but you are so famously reserved, James -”

James laughed and kissed her, as though to put the lie to that claim.

“Well,” he said, “may I have the honor of claiming my token before I forget?” He touched her hair with a hesitant frown- he wanted her to feel comfortable with this, after all, but it was a bit of a tall order all the same.

“Oh - certainly,” she said, looking doubtful.  She was more surprised that he wanted it than distressed at the prospect.  “Should I braid a piece?”

“That’s a good idea,” James agreed. “If I took too much by accident, I fear you might never speak to me again.”

He kissed her temple and rose from the bed with a stretch. The sun had nearly gone down, so he took a moment to light a few lanterns around the room before retrieving a straight razor from his dressing table, the irregular lamplight throwing his scarred back into high relief.

“Fancy me not speaking to you over a lock of hair,” she snorted while braiding it. “We can’t all be as vain as you are, James.”  She did not have to look at her hair to do this, so she looked at him instead.  He had done his trousers up again, but he still wore no shirt.  She had to catch her breath looking at him.

By the time he returned to the bed, her hair was braided, and she was leaning back on her hands, attempting to be suggestive.  Her posture betrayed some of her shyness, though.  Some stiffness around the shoulders, and the way she’d posed her legs - as though she were a girl pretending at being a mermaid. James kissed her again as he sat beside her.

“Is that how you think of me, then?” he teased. “I thought I had earned the right, lasting as long as I did without major incident.”

“Is it really so little a shock, seeing me like this? After I blindfolded you, no less-”

“A shock suggests something I would prefer to look away from,” he said, with a kiss to her shoulder.

“I thought I might at least fluster you-” she said, shutting her eyes at the kiss.

“You are beautiful,” he said. “That does not distress me.”

He kissed her collarbone this time. She bent her head back.

“I keep thinking that I ought to dress,” she murmured.

“Just a moment,” he said. “Let me claim my prize, and then I’ll help you, if you’d like.”

“I don’t want to leave,” she admitted, then she opened her eyes again, and sat up straighter, all the better to throw herself against his chest gloomily. James had to put the straight razor down quickly to return her affection.

“Your crew will be wondering if Beckett’s dog did away with their king,” he said, a little bitterly.

“They’ll be drinking and playing ngau,” she said dismissively. “They are not that ignorant of our actual relationship.”

“Thank God,” James said dryly. She was not a short woman by any means, but in this position, and naked as she was, she felt very small and vulnerable in his arms. He tightened his hold on her without quite noticing he had, as though to shield her from a storm.

After a pause, he cleared his throat.

“I hope I at least served you well,” he said, with the old formality coming back to his voice.

“Better than well,” she whispered, the sultry tone of her voice diametrically opposed to his famous stoicism, turning her head to move her lips against his throat when she spoke again.  “I may even request an encore…”

“I am, as always, at Your Majesty’s command.”

His tone was regal, and indeed he was lifting his head, but the expression on his face was anything but aloof.  He looked besotted with her, at least for the moment - it stopped her breathing for a time.  She couldn’t tell if she was flattered, or guilty, or falling in love with him.  It all seemed to be happening at the same time.

“I don’t want to take advantage of you,” she said with reluctance.  “You are at my disposal, I know, but I am not an unjust king.”

He looked down at her again.

“I would not be opposed.”

She took him at his word, and sat up the rest of the way, putting her arms around her knees uncomfortably. “Ah.”

“-if you aren’t,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry- it is sometimes hard to tell the Pirate King playing temptress from what Elizabeth wants.”

This was enough of a shift in mood that James retrieved his own coat and lay it around her shoulders before sitting beside her again.

“...I’m sorry that I still haven’t… completed the act,” he said. “I thought I brought the damned thing with me. God knows it wasn’t being used on the Dutchman. I…”

“...yes?” she asked, sliding her hand on top of his.

“...I would happily give you a child,” he said, with a smile so awkward and elated it was almost painful, and even moreso for how quickly it faded, “but I don’t think now’s the right moment for that. I can’t ask you to settle down for nine months as an exchange for one night en route to Cuba.”

“It would be longer than nine months,” said Elizabeth, mortified. “What do you think, that they raise themselves?”

“Presumably, I’d be part of that,” he countered. “I meant more the laying-in and all that. The King must be quick on her feet, I suppose.”

“I don’t want a baby,” she said crossly.

“Which brings us back to Square One as regards the absent quondam, unfortunately.”

“Well, it might not be so bad,” she said grudgingly. “Imagine if we needed a pure of heart virgin on the quest to rescue Jack and did not have one.”  

The prospect of herself being that virgin brought up another burst of laughter.  She had killed Jack herself, once, and killed many more people since then - and if lying on a bed teasing James Norrington with her hands and her hair all over him didn’t count for some kind of sullying she’d be very surprised.

He laughed, and brought her hand to his mouth to kiss it.

“Elizabeth-“

“Yes? James?”

“I just want to say it a few times,” he said, leaning in to push her hair aside and kiss her throat instead. “Elizabeth… Elizabeth…”

She gasped, so wantonly that she embarrassed herself.  She clung to his shoulders and the coat fell off her own.  “Don’t stop-”

He laughed low in his throat and gave what would be, with any luck, a bruising little kiss right where her lovely neck met her collarbone.

“Elizabeth…”

There were, at this point, other things about which to be embarrassed.  She was grateful for the sun having dipped to the horizon; what little light still streamed in through the windows of the cabin was rosy and orange and the lanterns James had lit, while enough to provide for greater visibility than they’d experienced on the beach in Tortuga, did not illuminate the way the afternoon sun had done.  She twisted in his embrace, seeking his lips with her own, opening her mouth against his in clumsy eagerness.

The next half an hour passed in a joyful haze and left them heaped upon one another, spent but delighted with each other. James was holding her against him under the sheets to better accommodate her nakedness- to say nothing of the access to her temple, hair and other important areas to be kissed this granted him.

“I hope,” he said, laughing with embarrassment- “I hope I never made a frivolous impression in front of you, at least-“

“Ohh, not in the least,” said Elizabeth, all her speech still languid with pleasure, one hand in his hair, the other pressed to his back as though he would otherwise get up and leave her.  “Not even when you were my beloved older brother - cocky, at worst -”

“Thank God. I was beginning to grow worried, no thanks to your teasing-“

“I knew you were brave, too-” She caught her breath, or she tried to. “James, I always thought well of you -”

“It was something of a popular joke in the garrison, that’s all,” he said, rubbing her hand.

“So brave, and so handsome,” she said fondly, disturbing a lock of her hair that had fallen in her face with her breath. “So heroic.”

“Hm. Well, that’s flattering,” he conceded. “I think if you asked the men they might have told you I never met a reflective surface I didn’t like.”

From the way his mouth twisted, it was hard to tell exactly how he felt about this assessment beyond “perturbed”.

“No wonder they laughed at you when you said you wanted to marry me,” said Elizabeth, in a fit of laughter herself.  She was much better at poking fun at her own perceived faults than he was.

“And why is that?”

“I don’t think there was another girl of my station in Port Royal who had as little in common with you.  Surely you remember.”

“I never saw it that way.”

“Oh? Enlighten me,” she said, nuzzling underneath his chin again.

“You were the only person I can recall typically enjoying my attempts at levity-“

“Oh yes, back when you made them!”

He was about to object, but he stopped with his mouth open and his index finger already extended as he reconsidered.

“All right, I may have deserved that-“

“To me, at least,” she conceded with another laugh. “Afraid of making another vulgar joke, I can only assume-”

“Of saying anything that might disappoint your father’s impressions of my character!”

“James,” she said, in sad exasperation. “He thought very highly of you.  I don’t think your sense of humor was going to change that.”

“I can brush off the Admiral’s disappointment with ease,” said James. “But I never could your father’s.”

They had come near to making love often for two weeks, had professed to love each other, had put their lips all over each other’s bare skin, and still Elizabeth could not provide him any greater comfort than to pat his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to commandeer your grief for my own purposes-“

“You haven’t done.  I wish I could persuade you how much he cared about you.”

“I know he did. That was why.”

She couldn’t push the matter any further. If she succeeded in convincing him he would only grieve that Weatherby Swann had not gotten to know him better before his death, and that would upset the both of them.  She pressed her mouth into a line and nestled against his chest again, which was the only thing she could think of doing to bring him any real sensation of comfort.

“They did find it amusing, when word got out that I planned to court you,” he admitted, after a long silence. “They’re probably quite gratified to hear of all the time you allegedly spend bending me over a chair.”

“Is that how it’s done?”

“With some kind of object, yes.”

He sounded very tired.

“I wouldn’t enjoy it,” she said dubiously.

“Judging by experience, neither would I,” he said dryly.

“Experience?” she asked, remembering too late some of his earlier grim allusions to the last time he had been in Tortuga, and his outraged sympathy on Giselle’s behalf that had seemed to stem from it.

“Tortuga is full of men who would pay decently for the right to say they buggered Commodore Norrington so he might stay drunk,” he said darkly. “Some of them are on this ship.”

“If we did it, I would treat you better than they did,” said Elizabeth indignantly, and rather protectively.

This was artless enough to shake his poor mood somewhat. He even laughed.

“No doubt of it,” he said.

“I wouldn’t make you do anything you didn’t want, but I would want you to enjoy anything that we did,” she said fiercely, tightly embracing him.

“Elizabeth-“

He sputtered in exasperation mixed with fondness.

“I know I’ve asked for your protection, sweetheart, but it need not be like this-“

“Well, it is an affront to me, the Pirate King, that anyone should be mocking my dog in such a fashion-” she said, with a stubborn set to her jaw that did not fully conceal the vulnerable, liquid look in her eyes when they met his.

“Is it mockery if it’s true?” he sighed.

“If the truth is cruel and scars where it cuts, then yes!”

Despite everything, despite her vengeful indignance on his own behalf, James felt such a surge of protectiveness right back at her that he found himself trying to enfold her in the coverlet while still holding her against his chest. She kissed it instead, over and over again, managing to convey both passion and grumpiness.

“I can assure you, at least, that I was spared the pox, thank God,” he said. “I suppose they must have had… poor aim…”

Now was a horrible time to start laughing, but that was unfortunately precisely what he did. Not a few hours before she wouldn’t even have understood that, but he shocked her into giggling, sliding gingerly into his lap and sitting up just enough to look down at him.

“Other women, myself once included, could promise you their hand, their heart and their faithfulness.  I’m sure you would be content with that, James.  You’re a good man,” she said, brushing her fingers lightly over his face.  “But I can make you a better promise.  It’s more difficult to keep, but I intend to keep it.  I promise… that under me, you will be great again.”

She leaned down as though to kiss him, her hair spilling down onto his face.  “I promise you their fear,” she whispered, and pressed her mouth sweetly to his.

He sank back beneath her, feeling as adrift as he ever had since the hurricane and yet minding it very little.  It felt more like ease than helplessness, more peace than abandonment. Surrender was the wrong word; surrender meant there had been something to fight against in the first place…

“And what do you ask in return?”

She smiled against his lips.  “Your hand, your heart, and your faithfulness,” she said softly.  “And your sword.”

“My hand…?”

He frowned just a little to cover the way his heart had leapt into his throat.

“Should I require it,” she said delicately.

“What- what does that mean-“

“Save yourself for me,” she said, tenderly touching his cheek.

“I’m not exactly otherwise popular,” he said, frowning more deeply.

“You will be,” she laughed, kissing him.

“That’s not a difficult request-“

“It may be one day. You don’t know, do you?  You might meet a beautiful mermaid who begs you to abscond with her to some underground kingdom-”

“To devour me, more like,” he scoffed.

“Who’s to say I won’t? You just have to trust me…”

He sat up a little.

“...so that’s all, then? My fidelity? Elizabeth, you already had that.”

“Out of apathy,” she said. “I want a more structured devotion.  If a woman pleads for your attention, formerly perhaps you might have asked her what she wanted with a man only fit to be the King’s dog.  I am... allowing you to tell her that you are Miss Swann’s lover, James.”

James’s eyes widened, and for a moment he averted his eyes, smiling. Then something seemed to cloud his face again, and by the time he looked back at her his brows had furrowed once more.

“I can hardly call you Miss Swann. The dedication of a dog is wiser in the current climate, I should think.”

“Elizabeth, then,” she said, with another kiss.

“In front of your… subjects?” he asked dubiously.

“You’ll have unique Elizabeth privileges,” she said - with still another.

“Are you sure that’s-”

Kiss, kiss.

“-wise?”

“James, I am going to treat you very badly as my dog.”

James rolled his eyes.

“I knew there was a catch-“

“I shall have it known only I may do so, you know.  My dog, their nightmare.  And so it will be with me - your Elizabeth. Their King.”  She dipped down to kiss his chest.

James stared into the middle distance.

“Their nightmare,” he repeated distantly.

“Have you ever met a guard dog?” she murmured through kisses, pushing her fingers through the thatch of hair at the center of his chest.

“I know, but- good God, Elizabeth, what are you planning?”

He pushed himself up to look at her again, a little out of breath.

“Well… Upholding the Code, we can do that,” she said, having given it only a little thought and been hesitant to bring it up to him in case he felt like he was being used the way he’d been by Beckett, with her making decisions without him. “I know you don’t want to exercise much violence in the way of actually pirating - and neither do I.  But… Well…” A smile stole over her face. “I think we should go and put the fear of us into rule-breakers.  Get the moral high ground and raze the rest of them.”

He considered this for a long moment, eyes averted. His breath was a little uneven, and he pushed his hand back though his hair- unnecessarily, at that.

“...I think I understand. It’s not… a great difference from my prior role-”

“I won’t do it without you, and I won’t commit you to something that isn’t your own choosing-”  

She took and kissed his hand. There was a brief flash of a smile over his face, gone just as quickly and replaced with pensive uncertainty.

“Do I give off the proper aspect for a guard dog?” he asked, clearly deep in thought now.

“Think… all the old stoicism and grandeur, and every ounce of bad humor and dirty jokes you had to smother all at once, in that big red cloak you have, with the best Giselle can make you look.  Every story they ever told about you going after the rum-runners, the way you caught Captain Bailey, everything, but now your leash is mine, and sometimes… sometimes, oh, sometimes I take it off.”

He turned to look at her. “You sound like Sparrow.”

“How?” she asked, making a face.

“Trying to entice me with an appeal to my reputation,” he said. “He’s rubbed off on you-”

“I’m telling you how to give off the proper aspect for a guard dog,” she said, pinching him.

James gasped in pain and grit his teeth.

“And you suppose that’s fearsome enough?”

“I think you’re terrifyingly competent,” she said, soothing the pinched skin with her mouth.  “I think you will make them want to comply.  And,” she said, rubbing the scar under his hair, “I think a man of your history - all of it - willing to make heads roll in service of a cause he wants to serve, either justice or myself, I don’t pretend to believe it will always be for me, is going to come off...simultaneously unpredictable and unyielding.  You can use that.”

“Without the uniform and a ship of the line at my back,” he said flatly.

“You must have no idea how much I am counting on you losing the uniform,” she said.

He considered this a moment longer. He looked, for a moment, startlingly young and lost.

“...very well,” he said. “What have I to lose, anyway-“

He reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze.

“What do you say, James?” she said, kissing him on the jawline and moving downwards. “Be my dog, darling?”

“I already was,” he said, with an exhausted laugh.

“But now it’s an accord,” she said, kissing down to his chest and pausing. “Am I tiring you?”

“No,” he said. “It has merely been a very eventful night.”

“I thought we might wring a little more pleasure from the evening,” she said, between kisses. “Twenty minutes, you said?”

“Oh, God-” He let himself relax among the pillows again.

“And how ought the king’s dog present himself to Your Majesty’s public,” he asked, looking up at the canopy, “while we’re still thinking of fearsome aspects and all that.”

“Gold fangs?” she murmured in sweet-sounding facetiousness, busy undoing the front of his trousers again.

“I hope not!”

She had to admit, she pet him a bit like one might cosset a domesticated animal.

“I think this is Giselle’s area of expertise,” she said softly.  That was something of a double entendre.

“Giselle prefers frippery,” he said, though his voice was a bit strained. “I am asking what my king prefers.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Leather goods; your bare chest.  Could you stand a bit of jewelry?  Too much for you?  Next time you can board me and see if there’s anything of Sao Feng’s you want to make off with.  I think a bit of Chinese cloth will remind everyone who you belong to-”

Under the circumstances, that also had a double meaning.

“Depends- on the jewelry-”

Will had gotten an earring, so that thought she pushed painfully out of her mind.  “You can aspire to that, when you’ve found your bearings, then -”  She wanted to make him grit his teeth, but talking with him while they did this gave her the added enjoyment of watching him try to form sentences while surrendering to her touch.  He was very good at it, which was little surprise given how well he could function while drunk, but surely he had to have a limit.

“Boots, of course. We’re going to have to - make port somewhere, commission you dog’s head buckles for everything, aren’t we?  Wouldn’t that be cute-”

“Ha.” It was as much a sharp exhale as a comment.

“Open-mouthed, snarling.  A big oval shape, the snarl in the middle the opening- snarl for me now, darling?”

“What-”

He grit his teeth and made an attempt, which was probably the best he could do at the moment. It didn’t last long.

She laughed softly in sincere delight.

“Oh, you belong to me, don’t you, James?”

“You know I do,” he said, sounding exhausted.

“What did you say? That I’m my own, and you are mine?”

“Yes-”

“Repeat it.”

“I’m yours-”

“Like you like it, James.”

“Elizabeth-”

“Convince me, dog,” she said smoothly - while at the same time endeavoring to make all speech on his end close to impossible.  She was hardly unaffected, but she doubted, at the same time, that he was in any state to notice her own uneven breathing.

“I’m yours-”

She wanted to keep looking at his face.  She could not believe there had ever been a time she could have been so indifferent to his physical beauty. It was certainly long past now, and seeing his pretty features twist, almost as if in pain, but in reality in pleasure and desire and need for her and her alone, felt like seeing a meteorological wonder.

“Yes,” she gasped, “you are, you belong to me,” and what was it she had said, then?  She strived to remember it.  She wanted him to remember it, to take it to heart - to repeat it to himself when she wasn’t there, when he was despairing or resentful - when he wanted to drink and forget, she wanted him to remember this instead.  “In my fleet, in my lap, in my life - in my arms. In my heart.  My dog - my darling-”

“Kiss me-” His voice was ragged now. His jaw was beginning to ache.

“Kiss me- before you do anything else-”

She had to lean down carefully, to rearrange herself so she didn’t have to take her hand from him when she did so, but she gave him her mouth joyously, moaning his name as she did.

“Thank you,” he said, smiling at her through the tension. “You may- nnn- continue, I suppose-”

“Just say it one more time for me, James-” she pleaded, kissing him again.

“I’m yours- I’ve always been yours-”

What a way to make a few minutes seem like a lifetime of bliss.  His hand in her hair, his breath on her lips, his breath quickening - she whispered that she loved him and it was lost in a sigh.  Love, for the two of them, was ephemeral and slippery and constantly out of reach, unaligned; now, when he had given up on the hope of it and she had given her hand to somebody else, was a strange time for it to make itself known, but she was starting to understand her heart, and his place within it.  

She nestled against him and collapsed, gingerly, into the bed again, a smile moving to her lips and remaining there.  She looked over at his dear face, then glanced down at her hand for a long while, rubbing her fingers together in clinical curiosity.

“...so we have an arrangement, have we?” she said, only when he seemed capable of speech again.  “This is very like a signature.”

James wordlessly threw her a handkerchief.

“Don’t want to take responsibility for your handiwork, James?” she teased him good-naturedly as she cleaned up the pair of them.

“I’m still processing what has happened.”

He folded his hands over his chest and stared up at the canopy, a little dazed. He tried to think of whatever they had been talking about before. It felt like digging through a pile of discarded clothing.

“...jewelry?” he repeated. It was the only thing that came to mind.

“I dunno, it seemed pirate-y to me at the time. You’ll notice I don’t wear any, and I actually used to.”  She throw the handkerchief over her shoulder and snuggled down with him in a burst of sleepy enthusiasm.  It was now entirely dark in the cabin, which she knew meant she had stayed longer than they’d planned, but she never wanted to leave his side, or, presently, this bed.  “Oh, James, you’re so dear when you climax.”

“Well, thank Heaven for that, with how often it’s happening around here,” he observed, all business-as-usual drawl and knit brows.

“That inconvenient twenty minutes, I could do it more often if I were allowed,” she laughed deliriously, wrapping her arms around his chest and hugging him.  “For one perfect moment you are so - helpless. And I want to take care of you.”

“I’m sure you have better to do than coddle some twice-traitorous tar-”

“Not when you’re in my arms, James,” she said, sincere and happy.

Despite his best efforts to the contrary, James smiled and swiftly tilted his head back to avoid meeting her eyes more than necessary. He was finding himself doing more and more of that lately, it seemed.

“I have a great deal of work to do,” he said quietly.

“No more than I have got,” she conceded, kissing his chest again, though now sort of absent-mindedly. “Oh, James, I wish I never had to leave your bed.”

“You’re going to have to instruct me on this dog business,” he murmured. “Despite what they may say, it’s an arrangement with which I do not, in fact, have prior experience.”

“I seem to enjoy instructing you, so no harm there.”

James pushed himself up on his elbows to get a better look at her. His breathing was still somewhat heavy, but his eyes were clear and focused.

“Chinese cloth, you said-”

“Yeah, if you want.”  She was laying on his chest and gazing at him tenderly, smiling.

“I don’t- I’m not accustomed to this,” he said. “This- determining one’s own image business-”

“Then you don’t have to.  We’ll ease you into it.”

“All right,” he said, with a nod to assure her that yes, he was still with her, and that he hadn’t slipped under or into himself as he often had in Tortuga. “And I-“

He tried to think if there were any other little details to address, anything to anchor his rushing thoughts, and finally added, after a pause, “I shall have no trouble wearing my hair shorn, if you continue to find it suitable.”

He gave her an encouraging and increasingly steady look. “I enjoy pleasing you, after all.”

“And how you do please me,” she said, touching his lips affectionately with her thumb.  “I’m going to take good care of you, though, I promise.  I won’t make you do anything.  Like I said, we’ll… grease you up and ease you into it.”  She tried to smirk at him, but she started laughing gracelessly and smothered it by burying her face in his neck and hugging him again, which kept her from seeing how wide James’s eyes had gone.

“How do you know that part?” he protested, with such indignance that his voice went up about half an octave.

“Woman’s intuition,” said Elizabeth smugly.  He did not need to know about the one piece of dirty talk she had overheard in the kitchen at the governor’s mansion, the exhilarated exclaim of ‘what’s that mean’ and the subsequently being hurried out of the vicinity, only for the other shoe to drop now, seven years later.

“Elizabeth-“

“It is a rather prudent observation, isn’t it?” she asked, snuggling.  Her sense of bliss was starting to fade with the reminder she could not stay here, dream beside him, and do it all again in the morning.

“Be that as it may-“

“Men aren’t the only ones that hear things,” she said, with a note of warning finality.

“Now, you see, that’s what I was trying to figure out- you could have told me you’d overheard it, you know-“

“I wanted to retain an air of mystery,” she said, a little petulantly. “It’s a strange in-between place to be with a man.  I don’t have the distinction of boasting I am not a virgin any longer, but in every other way my virginity is effectively voided.  I suppose it is not that strange for two people who were nearly married to have been intimate, although generally one expects the intimacy would have taken place during the engagement.”

“You don’t suppose the witch will have a supply of prophylactics, do you?”

“She’s got nearly everything else,” said Elizabeth, a wicked smile spreading over her face when she realized she was going to see James, seeing Tia Dalma’s shack.  The smile vanished the moment she realized she was going to see James seeing Tia Dalma, too.  “She will flirt with you, you know.”

“She already has.”

“I mean in person,” said Elizabeth helplessly. “She’s more off-putting on her blog-”

“Elizabeth,” he said, cupping her face in his hands to steady her.

“What?”

“I’m not going to leave you.”

She didn’t realize that was on her mind as much as it was until the relief she felt at him saying so started to make her smile.  “I don’t think you’re going to leave me, just… stray-”

“The only straying I’ve done was in my cups in Tortuga.”

“When did you stray in Tortuga?” Elizabeth cried, feeling like he’d just wrenched her heart in a vice.  She was too much in shock to picture it. He’d even said he hadn’t slept with Giselle, good Lord -

“The first time-“

“Oh my God, James!” she said, in sudden tears from frustration, burying her face in his throat.  “Don’t ever say something like that again!”

“I’m sorry- I rather assumed my drunkenness would clarify the timing-“

“For all I knew you hid out and got drunk and made love to someone else right under my nose-”

“Elizabeth,” he said, appalled.

“I mean you said you were drunk, and a drunk man will do anything-”

“Indeed,” he muttered. “But this was well over a year ago.”

“I get that now,” she said, her heartbeat finally going back to normal.  She was presently cuddling him with a pathetic domesticity.  “Really, you should have phrased it better.”

“You’re jealous?” he asked in surprise. “Elizabeth, I’m…”

He blinked a few times.

“I’m… honored, actually-“

“ I thought we had an understanding in Tortuga,” she said peevishly.  “Will left me because of us. I thought there was an us.”

“Of course there’s an us,” he said. “Elizabeth, I’ve wanted an us for nearly six years now.”

She kissed him on the cheek, and he in turn cupped her face in his palm as she did so.

“They’re probably expecting you back on the Empress,” he said softly. “Am I still allowed that lock of hair?”

She hesitated, trying to think of some new excuse to stay, but thinking of nothing.  She nodded.

James found the straight razor where he’d left it. It made such quick work of the little braid that it took hardly any effort to slice it at all, and the cut end blended in with the shorter pieces that already fell around her jaw.  

He leaned in and kissed her through that little fall. She smiled into the kiss, but it was bittersweet.

“I don’t want to go,” she whispered.  “I think I want an us too much.”

“We’ll be in Cuba in another four days’ time,” he reminded her, “and then…”

“Then God knows where, saving Jack Sparrow…” She laughed weakly, pressing her forehead to his.  “I wish I could enjoy this without the guilt it gives me…”

“It would just figure if I finally found you again and then this was the voyage on which I lose my bloody nose or something,” he said with a grim laugh.

“I’d love you as much without it,” she said, kissing the tip of it in case he was right.

“Mm. We’re in agreement, then.”

“Do you remember that very charming little incident when we fired at each other with no intention of having a real battle?  When you were commanding the Dutchman?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “We are not playing at that again-”

“I wasn’t asking you to.  I am trying to say that I must have been a very willing fool to not see, at that hour, that I had come to love you.”

He froze.

“...oh,” he said.

Then, rather hopefully, though still doubtful enough to squint: “Really?”

“Enough that I should have known what we were doing was an affront to Will, certainly, whatever I pretended afterward to ease his mind,” she said ruefully.  “I cannot say when it happened.  I don’t know that we were even speaking at the time.”

“I told myself that because I did not set out to steal you away, there was nothing dishonorable in my behavior,” James admitted. “I have as much blame to carry as you do, if not more. I certainly made no move to remove myself from the situation.”

“Does it not bring you any comfort that I’m telling you I already loved you by then?” she demanded with a barely-concealed smile.

“It brings me tremendous joy,” he said, “and yet a certain amount of regret. I imagine I have well and truly destroyed the admiration your former husband expressed toward me just before his departure.”

“I’ve destroyed something dearer,” she said softly, her smile extinguished.

“I didn’t mean to dwell on myself-”

“I didn’t mean to bring up your rival,” she said, in a wispy attempt at making a joke, jostling him with her elbow.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I think of him often.”

“Do you?” she asked, perhaps a little too eager to speak of him, but her relief hopefully made the motive behind that less difficult to bear.

“The last words we exchanged were nothing short of mutual admiration. This feels a very poor recompense.”

“The fault is mine, not yours!”  She had flushed, upset and surprised at herself.  “How were you supposed to react, when I set the pace? And all the rumors he will hear now, they will flatter you better than they do me.  They will reek of coercion, and he will deduce that you have loved me long enough to put up with being my dog since I would not make you my husband.  I am going to look poorly, not you.”

“I could have refused-”

She laughed lightly.  “Could you have?”

“I could have tried!”

“Didn’t you? You said yourself: you’ve loved me for years.”

There was an unnecessary unkindness to the way she reminded him of that, injury added to it by her choosing this moment to move away to begin dressing to leave.

“For your sake as well as mine,” James said, watching her. “I cannot say for sure that I would have been successful, of course, but-”

He stopped himself.

“I don’t regret any of this, Elizabeth, and I don’t wish to indicate otherwise. I love you. It’s only a matter of the…”

He inhaled.

“Collateral damage. He spoke to me with such admiration, even after the whole fiasco at Isla Cruces, even after knowing the tenderness with which you and I had begun speaking, that I can’t help but feel ashamed where he is concerned.”

James pushed himself up from the bed and pulled his shirt back over himself, refastening it into his trousers.

Elizabeth looked over from lacing her jumps over her chemise, then looked away again.   After her shirt was over her head, however, she found him and embraced him tightly, shutting her eyes. James was stopped with his waistcoat only partially on, and ended up nearly enfolding her into it when he put his arms around her as well.

“Only a few days-”

“I know.  I know.”

“And then…”

“Then, this embrace again.”

“Among other pastimes.”

“I don’t see us having the privacy for other pastimes, James,” she said, pulling back to look at him, eyes disconcertingly wet.

“How far upriver are we going?”

She made the ‘eh’ gesture he was fond of back at him.

“Are we just leaving the ships in port!?”

“James, I wasn’t a captain the last time I saw Tia Dalma.  And the Pearl had been lost to the depths.”

“All right,” he said. “I’m getting ahead of myself, I know-”

“Little bit.”  Elizabeth started to do up his waistcoat with a smirk.  “Would I have been dressing you on the Dauntless, do you think, James?”

“It would depend, I imagine, how much you could stomach the uniform,” he said, with a light smirk of his own.

“So that’s an unconfirmed on dressing you, but undressing you is a certainty,” said Elizabeth, leaning in to kiss his uncovered throat.  

“And a no on the cravat, I see.”

“A thousand nos on the cravat, former Commodore.”

“Captain,” he reminded her.

“Former fiancé, then.”

“Current lover-”

“I wish a bit more currently. Is that greedy?” she asked, leaning back again to lift her eyes to his.

“If we can’t bring the fleet, I’ll sail with you,” he said, smoothing her hair back behind one ear.  

She lit up at that, slowly at first, then suddenly.  

“Really?”

“Assuming we don’t the lot of us end up shoved on one,” he said, “in which case we’ll have to be creative.”

“Oh, that’s not impossible.  The Pearl, probably.”  She looked disappointed, but only for a moment.  The room was by now fully dark but for the lanterns, gleaming gold.  James looked drawn and almost unapproachable, mostly in shadow.  She brushed her thumb over his lip, watching his face.  Now nearly entirely dressed but for her coat and hat, she had little excuse to linger, but that did not matter.  “You know I wish we were in Tortuga still,” she said, her eyes on his mouth, not on his eyes.

“For my part, I’m glad to think clearly again.”

“I wish you weren’t,” she said softly. “I liked you distracted, feeling certain I was somewhat the source of that distraction.”

“I’m not ready for Tortuga yet, Elizabeth. Maybe when I’m more used to this… phase in my life, but not yet.”

“I know, I know - I only miss dancing with you.”

“We’ll find time,” he said. He released her to pull on his coat.

“James. Wait.”

He turned from the barely-lit mirror, where he had just begun to try to push the short locks of hair before his ears forward, and looked at her.

“...do you have your phone with you?” she asked, shrugging her coat on sheepishly.

“I… yes, it’s here somewhere. Do you mind call- no, never mind, it’s here.”

He pulled it from his coat and she took it from him instantly.

“What songs do you have on here?”

“I- I don’t- I haven’t, in some time. I haven’t thought of it. You’re welcome to look-”

She pouted at him, but her gaze quickly returned to the Spotify app and started scrolling.  

“‘Zounds, James, do you listen to anything but Fleetwood Mac?”

“I had something of a phase on the Dutchman, that’s all-“

“You’re such a fifteen year old girl,” she said dismissively.

“Thank you,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Do a search, then, if you don’t like that-“ “I do like it,” she said primly, turning the volume up and setting his phone down on the table.  “You ready for this, captain?”  She smiled over at him, sincere and shy at once.

“Anything,” he said, reaching across for her hand.

She took it, pressing play with her other hand, which she slid through his hair afterward on her way to wrapping her arm over his shoulders.

“Ah-“

He smiled with the realization and pulled her close, kissing the top of her head.

They had danced like this in Tortuga, only once.  Much better, they’d agreed, than the minuet.  She tilted her head back against him, letting her eyes drift shut.  Letting her focus go to how it felt to be held, to make four minutes feel like a lifetime.

“What happens after Sparrow,” he asked, his voice low in his throat. “Or is that- never mind.”

He laughed a little defeatedly.

“I’m not making any more long-term plans.”

“James?” she asked dreamily.

“Yes, Elizabeth?”

“Shut up and dance with me.”

“I- yes, Elizabeth.”

She tilted her head back to open her eyes and smile at him. He returned it, just barely visible in the candlelight, and met it with a kiss.

“I love you,” he said, lips against hers.

It was difficult to sway and simultaneously push herself up onto her toes to kiss him back deeply, but it was worth it to return the sentiment - even if she could not return the words, not in person, not with that depth of feeling.

“Elizabeth-“

He was laughing again. James bent enough to heft her up and into his arms for a steadier kiss.

“James, I wanted us to be dancing again!” she whispered through laughter, while kissing him as soon as she’d finished regardless. He gave a perfunctory turn and a wry laugh, agreeably set her down again, and made a deep leg before her with his hands extended for her to take. She took them gleefully, her posture exaggeratedly dainty - as though she was making a visual joke about her presently unladylike state, or perhaps highlighting that all her attempts at daintiness had been a joke in the past.

“Elizabeth-“

Dainty or not, he pulled her against him and held tight.  The rest of the dance was just barely shuffling, but for some reason or other it felt like they would never get another moment together, and it elevated their small joy in what could barely be called dancing to a state of pure bliss.

The song ended in a fade-out that felt abrupt, as one expected the music to continue - forever and ever, in their case. As the music faded, James leaned back from her with a lost look in his eyes. It felt like receiving a notice of summons in the middle of a holiday..  Elizabeth touched his cheek and brushed it with her thumb, attempting to smile and only succeeding in scrunching up one cheek.  

“...promise me you’ll think of me?”

“Every day. I always have.”

Elizabeth suddenly understood the meaning of the phrase ‘her heart stopped’.  

“You always have?”

“Not a day goes by when I don’t think of you,” he said softly.  

She yanked him down to kiss her.

“I think I could do this forever-“

“So could I -” she gasped. “Look - what if - what if we made some excuse-”

“I’m listening-“

“I- I can’t think of one, but - oh, bugger, what if I just insisted -”

“I don’t know if you can afford to be that lovestruck,” he said, shaking his head.

“I need my dog-” she said, fiercely, as though somehow by behaving authoritative and belligerent she might persuade the crew of the Gloriana that it was in fact fully necessary to sleep in James Norrington’s arms for some reason other than heartsick infatuation.

“Elizabeth,” he said, more firmly. “I know what you want- believe me, I share that desire- but it was you who told me the importance of the imperviousness of the Pirate King. I’m not worth that- not at this stage, at any rate.”

She pressed kisses all over his face and his neck and finished by taking his hand and kissing that repeatedly also, finally ceasing by throwing her trembling arms around him and burying her face against him before she could show another sign of disappointment, or worse.

“A few days,” he repeated. “That’s all.”

“Anything could happen in a few days,” said Elizabeth miserably, turning her head so that her voice would be less muffled.

“I know, but we haven’t any choice. Please be brave for me, sweetheart…”

“Mmph.  Say that again.”

“Be brave for me, sweetheart,” he repeated, in a slower, melodramatically drawling tone this time and a smile beginning to cross his face.

Elizabeth blinked slowly, deliberately, and then lifted her eyes to look at him, feeling shy, and feeling that shyness start to change into something else.  After a moment, she parted her lips, and then, raising her eyebrows, she said:

“... Fetch my coat for me, will you, dog?”

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

James retrieved the coat and helped her put it on, like a valet or a favorite attendant, and then took a moment to replace his own cloak and hat. In the dim light, he was reduced to a looming silhouette.

“Until we meet again, Your Majesty?” His tone was formal, but when he reached for her hand, he gave it a gentle squeeze.

[daniellebest90]

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How Long Does It Take To Get My Ex Back

[recentanimenews]

THE GREAT CRUNCHYROLL NARUTO REWATCH Sees Four BIG Returns In Episodes 120-126!

Welcome back to the Great Crunchyroll Naruto Rewatch! I'm Jared Clemons, and I'll be your host this week as we make our way through all 220 episodes of the original Naruto. Last week, we covered Episodes 113-119, where Shikamaru’s newly assembled team faced off against the Sound Four and we saw Choji and Neji fight for their lives against two very tough opponents.

  This week we keep the rewatch moving with Episodes 120-126 which saw FOUR big returns from Rock Lee and the Sand Siblings of Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro who are now on the side of Leaf Village. Naruto’s very angry and sends a bunch of shadow clones to fight against some body horror while Kiba and Shikamaru have their own fights against the rest of the Sound Four. How will these big returns help out the remaining members of Shikamaru’s squad and are they able to break free to find a way to get to Sasuke while he continues to be carried in his box?

    It’s been nice that both times I’ve hosted the rewatch, we’ve got to see Rock Lee come in and do something cool, even if this time his return might have been a tad rushed. Plus, seeing the Sand Siblings return was perhaps the biggest shock I’ve gotten from this show so far. So, what did the other members of the Crunchyroll Features team think of Shikamaru, Kiba, and Naruto’s fights or the four big returns? How about what they think about what will happen with next week’s big main event showdown between Naruto and Sasuke?

  Let's check in with the Crunchyroll Features team and see what they thought about this week's batch of episodes.

    We start off these episodes with Kiba taking on Sakon & Ukon while Shikamaru has his hands full with Tayuya and her flute solos. How did you feel about these two fights after the ones we just saw with Choji and Neji? Were they too similar in nature or did they do enough to be different?

  Paul: While I appreciate that Kiba was willing to straight up shank himself in order to stab his enemy, I could have done with less strategic ninja peeing on the part of Akamaru. Likewise, while I enjoyed Shikamaru's intense planning, once again his strategy ultimately proves inadequate in the face of raw power and he has to rely on someone else saving his bacon at the last minute. For me, Choji and Neji's fights were more engaging, even if all of these fights are treading similar ground.

  Kevin: Choji’s fight is in a different category for me, since it is the culmination of his characterization to that point. None of the other fights have been treated with the same weight as Choji finally giving it his all. For the other fights, they’re narratively similar to each other, but all manage to stand apart by having different mechanics and narratives. Kiba’s constantly on the run, Shikamaru’s hiding and plotting while Neji was being attacked from all angles constantly.

  Carolyn: I agree. I did like seeing Shikamaru at a loss for what to do for a hot minute. But it seemed like overall, last week’s fights were a lot more intense and were intercut with character growth and Choji and Neji’s friends learning their strengths. That was definitely more compelling for me.

  Danni: It felt a lot less compelling watching these fights, honestly. A lot less actually happened. Seeing Shikamaru plot fifteen steps ahead is always cool in action, but the lead up to it was a lot of him running around. Kiba’s fight was mostly canned footage reminiscing about how much he loves his dog. It’s sweet, but come on. Who doesn’t love dogs.

  Joseph: The constant back and forth between these fights was fun but made each episode feel the same. Out of the main showdowns I dug the first half of Shikamaru’s the most, but it lost me a little when it became a long-form shadow hug-out.

  David: I think this is the start of where the huge power imbalances in this show start to get in the way of the fights being satisfying. Like Paul mentioned, it really doesn’t matter how well-planned a strategy is when the enemy’s power is so overwhelmingly strong you need someone like Temari to bail you out with a single swing of her fan.

  Noelle: Definitely agree with the rest here, Shikamaru at a loss of what to do when being brute-forced by an enemy is pretty interesting to see. Wits can absolutely help you in a pinch, but sometimes it just isn’t enough. I think the fights all do cover different things—they have similarities, but they’re different enough to not feel like complete repeats. I did think that last week’s was much more action-heavy though.

  Kara: I really like both Kiba and Shikamaru, so I was ready for some epic action with these two in the vein of last week. I didn’t mind the Akamaru reminiscing all that much because Dogs Are Just That Good, but I do feel like they kind of got the short end of the stick. I do, however, appreciate Shikamaru memorizing Tayuya’s hand movements to account for his lack of musical knowledge.

    Naruto slightly gives into the Nine Tails side and we see that side of him pop out again. However, it doesn’t really seem to bother Kimimaro as he just plays his own version of Dynasty Warriors with Naruto’s clones. Should Naruto have implemented a different strategy here or was he too blinded by rage to come up with anything different?

  Paul: Perhaps it's my penchant for all things lycanthropic, but I keep hoping they'll do more with Naruto and his partial fox transformations. Instead we got four or five episodes of Naruto tossing Shadow Clones at a guy who made short work of them with a bone-sword (ewwwwww!), and that is not terribly dramatic staging for a duel to the death. I didn't gather that Naruto was supposed to be blinded by rage; it just felt like they were stalling for time.

  Kevin: He was probably too blind to think clearly, but he also isn’t the kind of character to come up with much of a plan. Outside of the Shadow Clone Shuriken jutsu from the Zabuza fight, his strategies pretty much all come down to “make clones, punch the enemy a lot,” with the new addition of “make clones, use Rasengan.”

  Carolyn: I honestly just could not get over the little “pew” sound every time a clone was taken out.

  Danni: The first time we saw Beast mode Naruto was against Haku, and in that fight he actually fought like a feral beast. It was rad, and the fact that nothing of the sort has happened since has been an utter disappointment.

  Joseph: Naruto has proven in the past that he can have one or two really clever ideas so his reliance on Shadow Clones is kind of disappointing. I could give it a pass as a way to test an enemy before facing them, but he doesn’t seem to come up with much beyond it when facing these stronger characters.

  David: He probably could have come up with a more interesting plan, but honestly I’m not even sure what he could have done in that situation 1-on-1, especially once we see what Kimimaro can do against Lee and Gaara later.

  Noelle: He’s blinded by rage, but I didn’t think that it was too jarring. Naruto can be creative, but strategy definitely isn’t one of his stronger points. It’s hard to think clearly when you’re running on mostly instinct.

  Kara: I really like the Shadow Clones when they’re used as a basis for something else—like I’ve said before, I think it’s such a good metaphor for more mundane differences in learning styles in the real world. I hesitate to say he “should have done more” or “could have done better” because I sure as heck can’t think of what he should have done.

    Rock Lee makes his return to help Naruto out in his fight with Kimimaro and debuts a new fighting style by accidentally getting hammered. What did you think of his new drunken style? Do you think the speed of his recovery back into fighting shape matches up with him being able to fight at all given the last time we saw him he wanted to just climb stairs?

  Paul: Drunken Boxing is probably my favorite cinematic kung fu style, and I liked that the animation got a little loosey-goosey to go along with Lee's inebriated state, but it's really hard to pull off that martial arts style within the constraints of TV anime production. What we got was a little bit Jackie Chan, a little bit Bruce Lee, and a little bit of “The Sleeping Wizard” from John Woo's Last Hurrah for Chivalry. As for Lee's recovery, it was a lot of build-up for very little pay-off. After all of that business about having a nearly 50/50 chance to live or die, Lee has the surgery off-screen, and he's mostly fine afterwards!

  Kevin: I would find Drunken Fist way more entertaining if it was in basically any other part of the narrative. Seeing Lee not being allowed to climb stairs earlier the same day really doesn’t work well with how fluidly he fights, especially before becoming drunk. If he can still do a modified Leaf Hurricane, I’m not sure why Tsunade was holding him back. That being said, Guy’s cutaways to the restaurant when Lee went out of control still got me to laugh a little, so clearly something is working correctly.

  Carolyn: Rock Lee! It is weird that he’s OK already. But I don’t care. Give me more Rock Lee. Rock Lee all day every day. Honestly, not sure I care for drunk Rock Lee. It’s a new version of him, that’s for sure. But I like goofy, socially awkward, good boy Rock Lee.

  Danni: It REALLY bothered me when he showed up out of nowhere, but then we got an awesomely animated taijutsu battle. Then we got to see freaking Drunken Fist Rock Lee and I forgave any and all plot contrivances that had led up to that moment. It was stupid and cool in all the best ways. Now I really wanna watch Drunken Master.

  Joseph: I thought the whole point was that he wasn’t okay but was there anyway. Getting drunk was a good way to mitigate any potential issues with fighting stiffly and injuring himself further. I would have rather they planted the seed for this earlier, though. It would have been more satisfying if we had seen his restaurant destruction as a goof in a previous episode rather than Guy shoehorning the whole alcohol issue in right before this went down.

  With that said, I still love Rock Lee and enjoyed his fight! The animation wasn’t quite capable of handling drunken style fighting, and I wish he didn’t sober up so quickly, but it did the trick.

  David: I really don’t mind how quick the turnover was from when we last saw him and now, because the journey from his fight with Gaara to his recovery took way too long in the first place; we’re just making up for lost time, really. Also, taijutsu is the coolest stuff in Naruto, so I’ll take any excuse to see two ninja really duking it out.

  Noelle: Drunken fist is such a classic martial arts cinema thing, and I am always here for that. It’s a great and fun battle! As for his turnover time, it is pretty fast all things considering, but it doesn’t matter to me- we get more Lee. Enough said.

  Kara: As soon as I saw we were getting Drunken Fist action, I could not have been happier. That was freaking awesome. My thought going into this week was that I wouldn’t mind his ridiculously speedy recovery provided it was in aid of getting to see something really cool. That’s kind of how it worked out, so I’m happy.

    This set of episodes is return-palooza as we also get the return of the Sand trio of Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro. They’re also now babyfaces having transitioned from being heels by aligning with the Leaf village. This return was perhaps the biggest shock I’ve had so far in watching Naruto, but what did you think of how their return was handled? Should we consider them true allies or more in the vein of mercenaries who will go help anyone for the right price?

  Paul: This was another big reveal that was spoiled for me because I had to scroll through the list of episodes to find where I'd left off last week, and the episode titles and thumbnails give away that the Sand Siblings are back and antagonistic to the Sound Five. I wish I hadn't known that going in. As for their loyalties, they seem fine so far, and Gaara especially seems to have absorbed the lessons that Naruto lovingly walloped into him. Do I spot the first sparks of romance between Shikamaru and Temari?

  Kevin: I have no idea how to answer, and that’s probably my biggest problem with these episodes. We never got a scene with Tsunade debating whether to send help, or a cutaway to what the Sand Ninja were doing, or anything else that would’ve hinted at them returning in any way, then they just show up as full on allies. If they were mercenaries, that would actually make MORE sense and would be an interesting plot point, since whether to tell their village how weak the Leaf is at the moment would serve as a character moment for them, testing whether they were truly just in it for the money or if they were truly becoming allies.

  Carolyn: It was very strange to me to see Gaara and Rock Lee fighting together like everything is hunky dory after Gaara broke Rock Lee and then returned to try to kill him while he was stuck in the HOSPITAL.

  Danni: I definitely spoiled myself on this by scrolling ahead to see what episode to stop on, but their appearance was still one of the coolest things in this batch. It also just makes sense to me. They’re soldiers acting on orders. Yesterday’s enemy can be today’s ally. Interestingly, Gaara of all people seems to feel the most sympathy for the Hidden Village shinobi now. I can’t wait to see how this plays out.

  Joseph: I loved it. I knew it was coming but they each had such cool entrances I didn’t care!

  David: They are some of my favorite characters, so I was happy they showed up—I’d completely forgotten they were in this arc, actually. However, they also represent the power disparity I mentioned in an earlier question, so it’s a double-edged sword. Lee shows up and kicks butt, but when whatever he can do is basically immediately rendered moot by Gaara’s powers, it’s kind of disheartening.

  Noelle: What can I say but the power of friendship. I like the sand siblings a lot, so I was just really happy when they reappeared. They do appear at extremely convenient times, which can feel a little anticlimactic, but I’m glad they’re around. Gaara! I missed you, Gaara.

  Kara: I’m divided. On the one hand, I’m not a big fan of badasses being saved from certain doom by badasses who arrived slightly later. On the other, I’m all about getting to see these sand kiddos as allies. Also, Gaara’s got a sort of Season 3 Zuko vibe going on (or maybe Season 3 Zuko had a Sasuke Recovery Mission Arc Gaara vibe going on).

    We are building toward Naruto vs. Sasuke happening for real next week. For you first time watchers, what are you expecting from this fight and for those who have watched, has the build matched what you remember?

  Paul: If I were writing the show, I would have Naruto suffer his first serious defeat by having him be unable to convince or conquer Sasuke. This would force Naruto into a deep moment of introspection and require him to examine what it truly means for him to follow his own “Ninja Way” in his efforts to become the next Hokage. I have no idea how it will actually play out, though.

  Kevin: Having watched before, I actually thought that the Sound Ninja Four stuff went by more quickly. I seriously thought that we were going to end this week at the climax of Naruto vs. Sasuke. Instead, I hope you like Kiba bleeding to death, Shikamaru sitting in a tree, and Naruto running through trees, because you’re going to keep cutting from one of those options to one of the others for the majority of the runtime, with the occasional reminder that Lee’s somehow not killing himself by fighting.

  Carolyn: I thought the hospital roof fight came about inorganically. “You must fight me!” This time it does feel like there’s much more of a reason for a showdown. Sasuke’s gone rogue!

  Danni: I’m expecting some real cool-looking animation from this fight, some flashbacks, and a whole lot of “SAAAAASUKEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!”

  Joseph: I know what to expect from reading the manga but it’s been just long enough for me to not be totally sure I remember it correctly, so I’m excited! I do know how it shakes out, but that’s fine. This is going to be another good batch.

  David: It feels like it’s happening sooner than I remember, but in a good way?

  Kara: I’ll be shocked if Naruto bests Sasuke right away. There’s just too much going on here for it to be one and done. Plus, so much of his motivation has been about how he stacks up against Sasuke, I feel like beating him in this state would settle the score way too easily. I could be wrong, obviously. I’ve been wrong before.

    Finally, what were your high points and low points for these episodes?

  Paul: My high point is Gaara using his sand to gently cradle Lee and protect him from harm, which was a very satisfying reversal of what happened when last they met and also a welcome evolution of Gaara's character. My low point is the sheer incredulity I felt when I realized that Sakon and Ukon were slain by a glorified game of Pop-Up Pirate(TM). Talk about going out like a complete chump!

  Kevin: High: The Sand Ninja assisting the Leaf. Why they’re there is a complete mystery, but I loved seeing them absolutely dominate the Sound Four/Five. Most people already know that the Naruto franchise pretty much drops its ninja credibility over time in favor of insane power scaling and everyone basically being a wizard, and we’re starting to see the power creep get to the point of changing the landscape. The kid in me loves the sheer wanton destruction, so I have fun with this kind of escalation. Low: Lee fighting. As a Lee fan, I love seeing him back in action flying all over the place with crazy Taijutsu. Narratively though, he’s what, a day out of major surgery? The simpler motivation of just wanting to climb stairs would’ve been a great story to progress over time. There are 100 episodes left, every 10 episodes just give a scene with Lee to show noticeable progress from the last time we’ve seen him.

  Carolyn: I actually loved Kiba promising to protect his perfect doggie in the future. That’s my high point. Good boy doggo saving the day and good boy Kiba wanting to do right by his pupper. Low point, sadly, probably drunk Rock Lee. Just because I love him as he is and there is no reason for him to change and I completely agree that his struggle is more compelling than this goofy arc.

  Danni: High point is easily Drunken Fist-style Rock Lee. It’s the dumbest plot contrivance used for the best purpose: turning Rock Lee into a drunk badass. It’s so transparent that it’s laudable, and the resulting fight just looked real good. Low point was the complete drag watching Kiba and Shikamaru fight was. I watched every episode hoping the Sand shinobi would just show up already.

  Joseph: I, too, love drunk Lee, no matter how stupid it may be. That’s my high point along with the story about his restaurant destruction. For my low point, it would have to be Naruto basically gawking as Kimimaro musou-style thrashes his clones. Such a dull way to kill time and a little too on brand for our tactics-adverse ninja boy.

  David: My high point is also drunk Lee, with the best part being when he ‘wakes up’ and realizes he was drunk because he has a headache and an injury he doesn’t recall having before. Low point is, also, the Naruto fight, simply for being the only downright boring segment this week.

  Noelle: Gaara and Rock Lee teamup still makes me so hyped, even after all this time. Some things don’t let you down! The Naruto clone musou segment felt a little dull- I don’t recall feeling that when reading the manga, but I definitely felt it here.

  Kara: High point was the Black Ant. Oh my God. Kankuro’s puppet skills have always been super creepy to me, but dang. It was quick, efficient, and absolutely horrifying. Low point was Akamaru’s aerial pee ballets. He’s a good boy and I love him but you’re gonna put someone’s eye out.

    COUNTERS:

Nothing new this week!

  Total so far:

Bowls of Ramen: 42 bowls, 3 cups

“I'm Gonna be Hokage!”: 52

Shadow Clones Created: 352

  And that's everything for this week! Remember that you're always welcome to join us for this rewatch, especially if you haven't watched the original Naruto! Watch Naruto today!

  CATCH UP ON THE REWATCH!

Episodes 113-119: Operation Rescue Sasuke

Episodes 106-112: Sasuke Goes Rogue

Episodes 99-105: Trouble in the Land of Tea

Episodes 92-98: Clash of the Sannin

Episodes 85-91: A Life-Changing Decision

Episodes 78-84: The Fall of a Legend

Episodes 71-77: Sands of Sorrow

Episodes 64-70: Crashing the Chunin Exam

Episodes 57-63: Family Feud

Episodes 50-56: Rock Lee Rally

Episodes 43-49: The Gate

Episodes 36-42: Through the Woods

Episodes 29-35: Sakura Unleashed

Episodes 22-28: Chunin Exams Kickoff

Episodes 15-21: Leaving the Land of Waves

Episodes 8-14: Beginners' Battle

Episodes 1-7: I'm Gonna Be the Hokage!

  Here's our upcoming schedule:

- May 24th, NICOLE MEJIAS plays referee for Naruto vs. Sasuke, Round 2!

- May 31st, NOELLE OGAWA will start us off on a journey back into the land of filler.

- June 7th, DAVID LYNN keeps us going as we get even deeper into filler.

  Thank you for joining us for the Great Crunchyroll Naruto Rewatch! Have a great weekend, and we'll see you all next time!

  Have anything to say about our thoughts on Episodes 120-126? Let us know in the comments! Don't forget, we're also accepting questions and comments for next week, so don't be shy and feel free to ask away!

    ---

Jared Clemons is a writer and podcaster for Seasonal Anime Checkup. He can be found on Twitter @ragbag.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[jerrytackettca]

Is the Chickenpox Vaccine Creating a Shingles Epidemic?

Many of you reading this probably remember having chickenpox as a child. You were likely tired, feverish and had an itchy rash, which subsequently cleared up, leaving you with lifelong natural immunity. Getting chickenpox was so common it was a rite of passage of sorts, which virtually all school-age children experienced.

Today chickenpox has become much less common due to the routine administration of the chickenpox (varicella) vaccination. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends two doses of chickenpox vaccine — the first dose at 12 to 15 months of age and a second dose at age 4 to 6 years.1

They claim it is 90 percent effective at preventing chickenpox (while noting that some people who are vaccinated may still get the disease), which may sound like a success story. But there is much that remains unknown about vaccination and the way it affects human health and disease. Case in point: shingles (herpes zoster).

Shingles Is Caused by the Chicken Pox Virus

Shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus (VZV), the same virus that causes chickenpox. When initially infected, the virus leads to chickenpox, which then lies dormant in your body. Usually, it causes no other problems but in some people the virus reactivates later in life, leading to shingles.

Shingles isn’t typically life-threatening, but it causes a painful rash and sometimes fatigue, headache and fever. In some cases, it leads to postherpetic neuralgia, which is ongoing pain due to nerve damage that can last for months or even years, or neurological problems caused by inflammation of the brain.

While shingles isn’t contagious, an adult who’s never had chickenpox can get the disease after being exposed to someone with shingles. Adults with chickenpox actually experience this disease with more intensified symptoms and have a higher risk of complications, which is why it’s better to have this illness during childhood (and gain the lifelong natural immunity).

Shingles rates are increasing in the U.S., but according to the CDC, "We do not know the reason for this increase." They then note, "Some experts suggest that exposure to varicella boosts a person’s immunity to VZV and reduces the risk for VZV reactivation. Thus, they are concerned that routine childhood varicella vaccination, recommended in the United States in 1996, could lead to an increase in herpes zoster in adults due to reduced opportunities for being exposed to varicella."2

In other words, being exposed to chicken pox in the community (or in your household, via your children) may have the protective effect of boosting your immunity against the virus, thereby lowering your risk of shingles as an adult.

Shingles can be prevented by ordinary contact, such as receiving a hug from a grandchild who is getting or recovering from chickenpox. It acts as a natural immunity booster. But with the advent of the chickenpox vaccine, there is less chickenpox around to provide that natural immune boost for children and adults.

The CDC downplays this theory, noting that shingles rates started increasing before the introduction of the chickenpox vaccine and did not accelerate after the chickenpox vaccination program started. However, some research suggests that the chickenpox vaccine may be playing a role in accelerating cases of shingles.

As noted by the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), "Today, after chickenpox vaccine has been widely used by children … and has interrupted natural circulation of the varicella zoster virus in the U.S. population, experts believe that half of Americans reaching 85 years of age will experience shingles at some point in their lifetime."3

Studies Suggest Link Between Chickenpox Vaccine and Increasing Shingles Rates

In 2016, research published in the American Journal of Epidemiology used mathematical modeling to look into the epidemiology of shingles after chickenpox vaccination. Researchers explained:4

"Given the sparse empirical evidence, mathematical models designed to evaluate the impact of varicella immunization strategies are forced to rely on theoretical, rather than data driven, assumptions to incorporate exogenous boosting assumptions while balancing parsimony in model structure with biological plausibility.

To date, the available formulations of the exogenous boosting hypothesis can be classified into 3 main groups: Despite these structural differences, modeling studies have consistently confirmed the likelihood of a detrimental effect of varicella vaccination on HZ incidence."

The study analyzed the impact of chickenpox vaccination on shingles epidemiology, as predicted by three models, which revealed that all of the models predicted that chickenpox vaccination lead to an increase in shingles incidence. "Our results reinforce the idea that a better understanding of HZ pathogenesis is required before further mass varicella immunization programs are set out," the researchers stated.5

In 2005, research by Gary Goldman, Ph.D. also revealed that the chickenpox vaccine could cause a shingles epidemic by limiting wild-type chickenpox virus. He noted, "It may be difficult to design booster interventions that are cost-effective and meet or exceed the level of protection provided by immunologic boosting that existed naturally in the community in the prelicensure era."6

In other words, you can’t beat Mother Nature, which already had a system in place to keep shingles at bay. In fact, in 2002, research writing in the journal Vaccine presented data confirming that exposure to chickenpox boosts immunity to shingles.

"We show that exposure to varicella is greater in adults living with children and that this exposure is highly protective against zoster [singles]," they wrote, adding that this had serious implications for mass vaccination against chickenpox: "Mass varicella vaccination is expected to cause a major epidemic of herpes-zoster, affecting more than 50% of those aged 10-44 years at the introduction of vaccination."7

Chickenpox ‘Outbreaks’ Blamed on Unvaccinated

North Carolina recently had an "outbreak" of chickenpox, which was blamed on a school with a number of families claiming religious exemption from vaccines.8 There were at least 36 students affected, with health officials sensationalizing the event with claims that it could spread to the surrounding community.

Remember, while highly contagious, chickenpox typically produces only a mild disease and recovery leaves a child with long-lasting immunity. It’s hardly a newsworthy "outbreak." Meanwhile, a review of the U.S. chickenpox vaccination program concluded that the vaccine has:

Not proven to be cost-effective

Increased the incidence of shingles

Failed to provide long-term protection from the disease it targets ― chickenpox ― as vaccine efficacy was found to have declined well below 80 percent by 2002

Is less effective than the natural immunity that existed in the general population before the vaccine was used on a widespread basis in the U.S.

In fact, in 2002, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study of an outbreak of chickenpox that occurred at a day care center despite most of the children having been vaccinated.9 The disease first occurred in a child who had received the chickenpox vaccine three years earlier, and who then infected half of his classmates.

The effectiveness of the vaccine was just 44 percent, and those who had been vaccinated three years or more before the outbreak were at greater risk of contracting chickenpox. According to the study:10

"In this outbreak, vaccination provided poor protection against varicella … A longer interval since vaccination was associated with an increased risk of vaccine failure. Breakthrough infections in vaccinated, healthy persons can be as infectious as varicella in unvaccinated persons."

It’s also worth noting that the chickenpox vaccine is made from live, attenuated (weakened) varicella virus. When you or your child get a live virus attenuated vaccine, you can shed vaccine-strain live virus in your body fluids, and the vaccine-strain virus could potentially be transmitted to others, in whom it might cause serious complications. One type of shingles vaccine being administered in the U.S. is also a live-virus vaccine.

Shingles Vaccine Touted as the Solution

The pharmaceutical industry has responded to rising rates of shingles that have possibly been triggered by chickenpox vaccination by creating another shot: a shingles vaccine for seniors. There are two types available in the U.S. Zostavax, a live attenuated vaccine manufactured by Merck, has a dismal effectiveness rate of only 51 percent in adults 60 years and older.11

Merck, by the way, is the same pharmaceutical company that manufactures the chickenpox vaccine. Further, according to NVIC, "[E]fficacy studies showed a significant decrease in vaccine effectiveness one-year post-vaccination and by nine years, Zostavax was determined to be no longer effective at preventing shingles."12

Shingrix, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, is a newer two-dose shingles vaccine, licensed in 2017. Although it is said to be over 90 percent effective in adults 50 years and older, it’s a genetically engineered vaccine and, according to NVIC, "no test is available to determine immunity to shingles and long-term vaccine effectiveness is unknown."

Solving a potentially vaccine-caused shingles epidemic with another vaccine may be creating more problems than it solves. For instance, the CDC notes that, rarely, "live shingles vaccine can cause rash or shingles."13 Shoulder pain, fainting and severe allergic reactions have also been noted.

Are There Risks to the Chickenpox Vaccine?

All vaccinations come with risks, and the chickenpox vaccine is no exception. "Reported complications from chickenpox vaccine," according to NVIC, "include shock, seizures, brain inflammation (encephalitis), thrombocytopenia (blood disorder), Guillian Barre syndrome, death and infection with vaccine strain chickenpox or transmission of vaccine strain chickenpox to others."14

There are two live virus vaccine for chickenpox in the U.S. (both made by Merck). Varivax contains only chickenpox while ProQuad contains chickenox along with measles, mumps and rubella vaccines. NVIC reported, "A CDC vaccine safety study found that children aged 12-23 months were twice as likely to experience febrile seizures with ProQuad compared to administering MMR and Varivax separately."15

Perhaps the greatest risk of all of the chickenpox vaccine is that it removes the chance for a person to acquire life-long immunity against chickenpox via natural infection and recovery. Ultimately, the temporary immunity offered via chickenpox vaccination may leave those vaccinated at a heightened risk of more serious disease.

This was a major reason why NVIC did not support the addition of chickenpox vaccine to the mandatory childhood vaccination schedule:16

"The vast majority of children recover from chickenpox disease and do not suffer complications. They are left with a qualitatively superior immunity to the disease. The chickenpox vaccine only gives temporary immunity and leaves older children and adults vulnerable to chickenpox later in life when complications can be much more serious.

Mass use of the chickenpox vaccine by children has eliminated the opportunity for natural asymptomatic boosting of immunity in adults and left adults vulnerable to shingles later in life."

from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/12/04/can-chickenpox-vaccine-cause-shingles.aspx

source http://niapurenaturecom.weebly.com/blog/is-the-chickenpox-vaccine-creating-a-shingles-epidemic

[jakehglover]

Is the Chickenpox Vaccine Creating a Shingles Epidemic?

Many of you reading this probably remember having chickenpox as a child. You were likely tired, feverish and had an itchy rash, which subsequently cleared up, leaving you with lifelong natural immunity. Getting chickenpox was so common it was a rite of passage of sorts, which virtually all school-age children experienced.

Today chickenpox has become much less common due to the routine administration of the chickenpox (varicella) vaccination. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends two doses of chickenpox vaccine — the first dose at 12 to 15 months of age and a second dose at age 4 to 6 years.1

They claim it is 90 percent effective at preventing chickenpox (while noting that some people who are vaccinated may still get the disease), which may sound like a success story. But there is much that remains unknown about vaccination and the way it affects human health and disease. Case in point: shingles (herpes zoster).

Shingles Is Caused by the Chicken Pox Virus

Shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus (VZV), the same virus that causes chickenpox. When initially infected, the virus leads to chickenpox, which then lies dormant in your body. Usually, it causes no other problems but in some people the virus reactivates later in life, leading to shingles.

Shingles isn’t typically life-threatening, but it causes a painful rash and sometimes fatigue, headache and fever. In some cases, it leads to postherpetic neuralgia, which is ongoing pain due to nerve damage that can last for months or even years, or neurological problems caused by inflammation of the brain.

While shingles isn’t contagious, an adult who’s never had chickenpox can get the disease after being exposed to someone with shingles. Adults with chickenpox actually experience this disease with more intensified symptoms and have a higher risk of complications, which is why it’s better to have this illness during childhood (and gain the lifelong natural immunity).

Shingles rates are increasing in the U.S., but according to the CDC, "We do not know the reason for this increase." They then note, "Some experts suggest that exposure to varicella boosts a person’s immunity to VZV and reduces the risk for VZV reactivation. Thus, they are concerned that routine childhood varicella vaccination, recommended in the United States in 1996, could lead to an increase in herpes zoster in adults due to reduced opportunities for being exposed to varicella."2

In other words, being exposed to chicken pox in the community (or in your household, via your children) may have the protective effect of boosting your immunity against the virus, thereby lowering your risk of shingles as an adult.

Shingles can be prevented by ordinary contact, such as receiving a hug from a grandchild who is getting or recovering from chickenpox. It acts as a natural immunity booster. But with the advent of the chickenpox vaccine, there is less chickenpox around to provide that natural immune boost for children and adults.

The CDC downplays this theory, noting that shingles rates started increasing before the introduction of the chickenpox vaccine and did not accelerate after the chickenpox vaccination program started. However, some research suggests that the chickenpox vaccine may be playing a role in accelerating cases of shingles.

As noted by the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), "Today, after chickenpox vaccine has been widely used by children … and has interrupted natural circulation of the varicella zoster virus in the U.S. population, experts believe that half of Americans reaching 85 years of age will experience shingles at some point in their lifetime."3

Studies Suggest Link Between Chickenpox Vaccine and Increasing Shingles Rates

In 2016, research published in the American Journal of Epidemiology used mathematical modeling to look into the epidemiology of shingles after chickenpox vaccination. Researchers explained:4

"Given the sparse empirical evidence, mathematical models designed to evaluate the impact of varicella immunization strategies are forced to rely on theoretical, rather than data driven, assumptions to incorporate exogenous boosting assumptions while balancing parsimony in model structure with biological plausibility.

To date, the available formulations of the exogenous boosting hypothesis can be classified into 3 main groups: Despite these structural differences, modeling studies have consistently confirmed the likelihood of a detrimental effect of varicella vaccination on HZ incidence."

The study analyzed the impact of chickenpox vaccination on shingles epidemiology, as predicted by three models, which revealed that all of the models predicted that chickenpox vaccination lead to an increase in shingles incidence. "Our results reinforce the idea that a better understanding of HZ pathogenesis is required before further mass varicella immunization programs are set out," the researchers stated.5

In 2005, research by Gary Goldman, Ph.D. also revealed that the chickenpox vaccine could cause a shingles epidemic by limiting wild-type chickenpox virus. He noted, "It may be difficult to design booster interventions that are cost-effective and meet or exceed the level of protection provided by immunologic boosting that existed naturally in the community in the prelicensure era."6

In other words, you can’t beat Mother Nature, which already had a system in place to keep shingles at bay. In fact, in 2002, research writing in the journal Vaccine presented data confirming that exposure to chickenpox boosts immunity to shingles.

"We show that exposure to varicella is greater in adults living with children and that this exposure is highly protective against zoster [singles]," they wrote, adding that this had serious implications for mass vaccination against chickenpox: "Mass varicella vaccination is expected to cause a major epidemic of herpes-zoster, affecting more than 50% of those aged 10-44 years at the introduction of vaccination."7

Chickenpox ‘Outbreaks’ Blamed on Unvaccinated

North Carolina recently had an "outbreak" of chickenpox, which was blamed on a school with a number of families claiming religious exemption from vaccines.8 There were at least 36 students affected, with health officials sensationalizing the event with claims that it could spread to the surrounding community.

Remember, while highly contagious, chickenpox typically produces only a mild disease and recovery leaves a child with long-lasting immunity. It’s hardly a newsworthy "outbreak." Meanwhile, a review of the U.S. chickenpox vaccination program concluded that the vaccine has:

Not proven to be cost-effective

Increased the incidence of shingles

Failed to provide long-term protection from the disease it targets ― chickenpox ― as vaccine efficacy was found to have declined well below 80 percent by 2002

Is less effective than the natural immunity that existed in the general population before the vaccine was used on a widespread basis in the U.S.

In fact, in 2002, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study of an outbreak of chickenpox that occurred at a day care center despite most of the children having been vaccinated.9 The disease first occurred in a child who had received the chickenpox vaccine three years earlier, and who then infected half of his classmates.

The effectiveness of the vaccine was just 44 percent, and those who had been vaccinated three years or more before the outbreak were at greater risk of contracting chickenpox. According to the study:10

"In this outbreak, vaccination provided poor protection against varicella … A longer interval since vaccination was associated with an increased risk of vaccine failure. Breakthrough infections in vaccinated, healthy persons can be as infectious as varicella in unvaccinated persons."

It’s also worth noting that the chickenpox vaccine is made from live, attenuated (weakened) varicella virus. When you or your child get a live virus attenuated vaccine, you can shed vaccine-strain live virus in your body fluids, and the vaccine-strain virus could potentially be transmitted to others, in whom it might cause serious complications. One type of shingles vaccine being administered in the U.S. is also a live-virus vaccine.

Shingles Vaccine Touted as the Solution

The pharmaceutical industry has responded to rising rates of shingles that have possibly been triggered by chickenpox vaccination by creating another shot: a shingles vaccine for seniors. There are two types available in the U.S. Zostavax, a live attenuated vaccine manufactured by Merck, has a dismal effectiveness rate of only 51 percent in adults 60 years and older.11

Merck, by the way, is the same pharmaceutical company that manufactures the chickenpox vaccine. Further, according to NVIC, "[E]fficacy studies showed a significant decrease in vaccine effectiveness one-year post-vaccination and by nine years, Zostavax was determined to be no longer effective at preventing shingles."12

Shingrix, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, is a newer two-dose shingles vaccine, licensed in 2017. Although it is said to be over 90 percent effective in adults 50 years and older, it’s a genetically engineered vaccine and, according to NVIC, "no test is available to determine immunity to shingles and long-term vaccine effectiveness is unknown."

Solving a potentially vaccine-caused shingles epidemic with another vaccine may be creating more problems than it solves. For instance, the CDC notes that, rarely, "live shingles vaccine can cause rash or shingles."13Shoulder pain, fainting and severe allergic reactions have also been noted.

Are There Risks to the Chickenpox Vaccine?

All vaccinations come with risks, and the chickenpox vaccine is no exception. "Reported complications from chickenpox vaccine," according to NVIC, "include shock, seizures, brain inflammation (encephalitis), thrombocytopenia (blood disorder), Guillian Barre syndrome, death and infection with vaccine strain chickenpox or transmission of vaccine strain chickenpox to others."14

There are two live virus vaccine for chickenpox in the U.S. (both made by Merck). Varivax contains only chickenpox while ProQuad contains chickenox along with measles, mumps and rubella vaccines. NVIC reported, "A CDC vaccine safety study found that children aged 12-23 months were twice as likely to experience febrile seizures with ProQuad compared to administering MMR and Varivax separately."15

Perhaps the greatest risk of all of the chickenpox vaccine is that it removes the chance for a person to acquire life-long immunity against chickenpox via natural infection and recovery. Ultimately, the temporary immunity offered via chickenpox vaccination may leave those vaccinated at a heightened risk of more serious disease.

This was a major reason why NVIC did not support the addition of chickenpox vaccine to the mandatory childhood vaccination schedule:16

"The vast majority of children recover from chickenpox disease and do not suffer complications. They are left with a qualitatively superior immunity to the disease. The chickenpox vaccine only gives temporary immunity and leaves older children and adults vulnerable to chickenpox later in life when complications can be much more serious.

Mass use of the chickenpox vaccine by children has eliminated the opportunity for natural asymptomatic boosting of immunity in adults and left adults vulnerable to shingles later in life."

from HealthyLife via Jake Glover on Inoreader http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/12/04/can-chickenpox-vaccine-cause-shingles.aspx

[mingi-multifandom-blog1]

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuY4qeciB3Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMpl9HDFR9E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzIC2SENUYQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iam3Ss9M8KM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuHe95adiHU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raDVjenUX0I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VB97xjNkaM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoANO88lp0o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbzhv-IuMes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO194P9kKnM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pUALWNGGRw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpp0mXH4VrA

Fungus Key Professional Review – Is It For You? Fungus Key Pro may be a method of eliminated focus from your fingernails, that promotes a healthier life. This is our review. What is the Fungus Key Pro? The Fungus Key Professional is a program that is designed to assist you heal from damages caused by fungus. The entire remedy relies on the techniques used by the Vietnamese, that is a combination of numerous natural ingredients you'll be able to realize around your home. The program puts all of these techniques into one easy-to-use guide that walks you thru each sort of methodology. To form the program appear more appealing to shoppers, the creator of Fungus Key Professional puts a ton of specialise in the hazards that customers face by leaving fungus problems unattended, which will end in the affected area spreading up your extremities and into your immune system.  The creator also places emphasis on the risks of using prescription medications to treat fungus, stating that the potential aspect effects of some medications will typically outweigh the benefits of taking it. For these 2 reasons, Fungus Key Professional could be a safer technique, since all ingredients used are natural and safe. Another manner that the creator entices shoppers is with the novelty of this new technique. They state that this can be the primary time the Vietnamese ways are obtainable in one specific resource. Your age doesn’t matter with this program, as a result of it’s safe enough for all ages. The Fungus Key Pro program makes many guarantees regarding what you may get out of following the regimen:     “Strength Strategy” could be a technique that supercharges your immune system and boosts healing and recovery therefore all the damage done by the fungus is removed in a very heartbeat. The corporate states that you may “literally” feel the healing as it happens.     You will discover how to urge back your beautiful feet fast, by utterly disobeying what your doctor says. You will conjointly grasp the true facts of why creams, polish, gels or pens never eliminate your fungal infections.     You'll discover the “Green Magic”, a very powerful ingredient that stops the infection from spreading the moment it makes contact with the infected space. When you order the book, your fees cowl three alternative product in your package. These bonuses embody:     Smart Cooking – The Simple Recipes for a Glowing Skin.         This book focuses on the issues in your body that are higher than and beyond the problems that occur in your immune system. The program claims that there's something in your diet that's triggering your body to have a fungal infection. This book discusses a way to eliminate fungus by eating the right foods.     Natural Body Care Created Simple – fifty Natural Recipes for a Beautiful Body         The booklet is intended to indicate you the way to make your own beauty products with natural and easy-to-realize ingredients. The book has recipes for face masks, creams, ointments, shampoo, etc. All of the recipes within are naturally fragrant, but conjointly have antioxidant and anti-aging properties.     Atlas of Home Remedies for the most common diseases         This book is by Dr. Chang, who describes the means to treat some of “the most frustrating and common diseases, using natural treatments only. This atlas is employed to act as your very own doctor and addresses bones, muscles and joint problems, respiratory conditions, inflammation, infections and other common conditions you didn’t recognize you'll treat safely and cheaply, at home, with 0 facet effects!” How Will the Fungus Key Pro Work? Initial of all, there's nowhere in the advertisement regarding this product that the corporate states exactly what method is being employed to fight fungus. Some companies describe a topical treatment, some firms describe a capsule, but all you actually grasp regarding Fungus Key Pro is that it is all natural. The creator describes the program as a step-by-step system that is designed to fight fungal infections “from the root.” While the company neglects to say how, the steps you wish to take solely use regarding ten minutes out of your day, that is majorly appealing for shoppers that have busy lives and a heap of obligations. While the company is terribly quiet about the lack of FDA approval, they state that the Fungus Key Professional system is “100% safe.” The program is intended to figure whether or not you’re pregnant or if you're laid low with any serious disease, like diabetes, heart disease or Alzheimer’s. Additionally, the company states that the system is “proven to extend your quality of life in general, as a result of it’s based mostly on natural components. It will scale back your stress level and produce a positive view on life.” This program’s guide is specifically geared towards healing, which may be a purpose that the company comes back to almost every single section. However, there’s no info about how the program works, forcing customers to form a purchase if they need to know anything in the least about the way it works. All you'll be able to really find out from reading the description is that the results can depend on the number of problems you have got with the affected space. According to the claims created regarding the Fungus Key Pro, most patients experience “significant changes when one week,” but the corporate recommends you try the program for an entire month before you create any choices. Applying the Fungus Key Pro Program The creator is noticeably quiet concerning the way to eliminate toenail fungus. The website has brief info concerning the general changes you'll expect, but no additional details. This lack of information is probably a means to keep the key of the program quiet, unless customers purchase the method themselves. Pricing for Fungus Key Pro Before the creator even gets to the value of the program, he discusses the money worth of the program, stating that he might simply sell this technique for $two hundred, or maybe $five hundred. However, they state that the program is accessible for a “restricted” time at $forty nine, which still includes all the bonus materials. The corporate states there's a 60-day refund policy in place. To induce a refund, you have to send it to a selected address: Software Projects 4610 Prime Parkway McHenry, IL 60050 If you cross-reference this address, there are 3 firms listed, however none of them listed is even remotely connected to “Software Projects.” Contacting the Fungus Key Pro Program To talk with a representative concerning any questions, you can either fill within the electronic kind, or call directly. If you fill out the shape, you ought to not have to wait any longer than one business day to receive a response. If you want to speak with someone over the phone, you'll be able to decision 1-800-218-1525. Conclusion Fungus Key Professional sounds like a smart method on the surface, however the secrecy of the corporate and misinformation provided should create you think that twice before considering the purchase.

[oh-dirtymaggiemae]

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuY4qeciB3Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMpl9HDFR9E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzIC2SENUYQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iam3Ss9M8KM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuHe95adiHU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raDVjenUX0I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VB97xjNkaM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoANO88lp0o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbzhv-IuMes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO194P9kKnM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pUALWNGGRw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpp0mXH4VrA

Fungus Key Pro Review – Is It For You? Fungus Key Professional is a methodology of eliminated focus from your fingernails, that promotes a healthier life. This can be our review. What is that the Fungus Key Professional? The Fungus Key Pro is a program that's designed to assist you heal from damages caused by fungus. The entire remedy relies on the techniques utilized by the Vietnamese, that is a combination of varied natural ingredients you can notice around your home. The program puts all of those techniques into one straightforward-to-use guide that walks you thru every kind of method. To make the program appear a lot of appealing to shoppers, the creator of Fungus Key Professional puts a heap of specialize in the hazards that consumers face by leaving fungus problems unattended, that can end in the affected space spreading up your extremities and into your immune system.  The creator conjointly places emphasis on the risks of using prescription medications to treat fungus, stating that the potential facet effects of some medications can often outweigh the advantages of taking it. For these 2 reasons, Fungus Key Pro may be a safer method, since all ingredients used are natural and safe. Another means that the creator entices consumers is with the novelty of this new technique. They state that this is often the first time the Vietnamese methods are available in one specific resource. Your age doesn’t matter with this program, because it’s safe enough for all ages. The Fungus Key Pro program makes many guarantees regarding what you will get out of following the regimen:     “Strength Strategy” could be a method that supercharges your immune system and boosts healing and recovery so all the injury done by the fungus is removed in a very heartbeat. The corporate states that you will “literally” feel the healing because it happens.     You'll discover how to get back your beautiful feet fast, by utterly disobeying what your doctor says. You may conjointly know the true facts of why creams, polish, gels or pens never eliminate your fungal infections.     You'll discover the “Green Magic”, a terribly powerful ingredient that stops the infection from spreading the instant it makes contact with the infected space. When you order the book, your fees cowl three other products in your package. These bonuses include:     Sensible Cooking – The Simple Recipes for a Glowing Skin.         This book focuses on the issues in your body that are above and beyond the issues that occur in your immune system. The program claims that there is something in your diet that is triggering your body to have a fungal infection. This book discusses how to eliminate fungus by eating the proper foods.     Natural Body Care Made Simple – 50 Natural Recipes for a Stunning Body         The booklet is designed to indicate you ways to make your own beauty products with natural and straightforward-to-realize ingredients. The book has recipes for face masks, creams, ointments, shampoo, etc. All of the recipes inside are naturally fragrant, however conjointly have antioxidant and anti-aging properties.     Atlas of Home Remedies for the foremost common diseases         This book is by Dr. Chang, who describes the approach to treat a number of “the most frustrating and customary diseases, using natural treatments only. This atlas is employed to act as your very own doctor and addresses bones, muscles and joint issues, respiratory conditions, inflammation, infections and alternative common conditions you didn’t recognize you'll treat safely and cheaply, at home, with zero aspect effects!” How Will the Fungus Key Pro Work? 1st of all, there's nowhere within the advertisement concerning this product that the company states exactly what method is being used to fight fungus. Some firms describe a topical treatment, some companies describe a capsule, however all you actually understand concerning Fungus Key Pro is that it is all natural. The creator describes the program as a step-by-step system that's designed to fight fungal infections “from the foundation.” While the company neglects to say how, the steps you would like to require solely use regarding 10 minutes out of your day, that is majorly appealing for shoppers that have busy lives and a heap of obligations. While the corporate is very quiet about the dearth of FDA approval, they state that the Fungus Key Professional system is “100percent safe.” The program is intended to work even if you’re pregnant or if you're full of any serious disease, like diabetes, heart disease or Alzheimer’s. Additionally, the corporate states that the system is “proven to increase your quality of life in general, as a result of it’s based on natural components. It will reduce your stress level and produce a positive read on life.” This program’s guide is specifically geared towards healing, that is a point that the company comes back to virtually each single section. However, there’s no data concerning how the program works, forcing customers to make an acquisition if they want to grasp something the least bit regarding the manner it works. All you can very notice out from reading the description is that the results can rely on the amount of problems you have with the affected area. According to the claims created regarding the Fungus Key Professional, most patients expertise “significant changes once one week,” however the corporate recommends you are attempting the program for a complete month before you create any decisions. Applying the Fungus Key Professional Program The creator is noticeably quiet regarding the way to eliminate toenail fungus. The website has brief data regarding the general changes you can expect, but no further details. This lack of information is probably a way to stay the key of the program quiet, unless customers purchase the strategy themselves. Pricing for Fungus Key Pro Before the creator even gets to the cost of the program, he discusses the money value of the program, stating that he might simply sell this methodology for $200, or maybe $five hundred. However, they state that the program is out there for a “limited” time at $forty nine, that still includes all the bonus materials. The corporate states there is a sixty-day refund policy in place. To induce a refund, you've got to send it to a particular address: Software Projects 4610 Prime Parkway McHenry, IL 60050 If you cross-reference this address, there are 3 companies listed, however none of them listed is even remotely related to “Software Projects.” Contacting the Fungus Key Pro Program To talk with a representative concerning any queries, you'll be able to either fill in the electronic kind, or decision directly. If you fill out the shape, you must not have to attend any longer than one business day to receive a response. If you want to talk with someone over the phone, you can call one-80zero-218-1525. Conclusion Fungus Key Pro sounds sort of a good method on the surface, however the secrecy of the corporate and misinformation provided ought to create you think twice before considering the purchase.

[timecrawl-blog1]

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuY4qeciB3Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMpl9HDFR9E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzIC2SENUYQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iam3Ss9M8KM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuHe95adiHU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raDVjenUX0I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VB97xjNkaM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoANO88lp0o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbzhv-IuMes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO194P9kKnM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pUALWNGGRw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpp0mXH4VrA

Fungus Key Pro Review – Is It For You? Fungus Key Pro is a methodology of eliminated focus from your fingernails, that promotes a healthier life. This can be our review. What is the Fungus Key Pro? The Fungus Key Pro could be a program that is designed to help you heal from damages caused by fungus. The entire remedy relies on the techniques used by the Vietnamese, that could be a combination of varied natural ingredients you'll notice around your home. The program puts all of those techniques into one easy-to-use guide that walks you thru every sort of methodology. To create the program seem additional appealing to shoppers, the creator of Fungus Key Pro puts a heap of target the risks that consumers face by leaving fungus problems unattended, which will lead to the affected area spreading up your extremities and into your immune system.  The creator additionally places emphasis on the risks of using prescription medications to treat fungus, stating that the potential facet effects of some medications can typically outweigh the advantages of taking it. For these two reasons, Fungus Key Professional could be a safer method, since all ingredients used are natural and safe. Another manner that the creator entices customers is with the novelty of this new technique. They state that this is often the first time the Vietnamese strategies are obtainable in one specific resource. Your age doesn’t matter with this program, as a result of it’s safe enough for all ages. The Fungus Key Professional program makes several guarantees regarding what you will get out of following the regimen:     “Strength Strategy” may be a method that supercharges your immune system and boosts healing and recovery thus all the injury done by the fungus is removed during a heartbeat. The corporate states that you will “literally” feel the healing as it happens.     You'll discover how to urge back your stunning feet fast, by fully disobeying what your doctor says. You'll also grasp the true facts of why creams, polish, gels or pens never eliminate your fungal infections.     You may discover the “Green Magic”, a terribly powerful ingredient that stops the infection from spreading the instant it makes contact with the infected area. When you order the book, your fees cover 3 other merchandise in your package. These bonuses embrace:     Good Cooking – The Simple Recipes for a Glowing Skin.         This book focuses on the problems in your body that are on top of and beyond the problems that occur in your immune system. The program claims that there is one thing in your diet that is triggering your body to have a fungal infection. This book discusses a way to eliminate fungus by eating the right foods.     Natural Body Care Created Straightforward – fifty Natural Recipes for a Beautiful Body         The booklet is intended to show you how to form your own beauty product with natural and easy-to-find ingredients. The book has recipes for face masks, creams, ointments, shampoo, etc. All of the recipes inside are naturally fragrant, but conjointly have antioxidant and anti-aging properties.     Atlas of Home Remedies for the foremost common diseases         This book is by Dr. Chang, who describes the method to treat a number of “the most frustrating and customary diseases, using natural treatments only. This atlas is employed to act as your very own doctor and addresses bones, muscles and joint problems, respiratory conditions, inflammation, infections and different common conditions you didn’t understand you could treat safely and cheaply, at home, with zero facet effects!” How Will the Fungus Key Professional Work? 1st of all, there is nowhere in the advertisement concerning this product that the company states precisely what method is being employed to fight fungus. Some companies describe a topical treatment, some firms describe a capsule, however all you actually apprehend regarding Fungus Key Professional is that it's all natural. The creator describes the program as a step-by-step system that's designed to fight fungal infections “from the foundation.” While the company neglects to say how, the steps you wish to take solely use about 10 minutes out of your day, that is majorly appealing for customers that have busy lives and a lot of obligations. While the corporate is very quiet concerning the shortage of FDA approval, they state that the Fungus Key Professional system is “a hundredpercent safe.” The program is intended to figure even if you’re pregnant or if you are littered with any serious disease, like diabetes, heart disease or Alzheimer’s. Additionally, the company states that the system is “proven to increase your quality of life generally, because it’s based on natural components. It can reduce your stress level and produce a positive read on life.” This program’s guide is specifically geared towards healing, which could be a purpose that the corporate comes back to virtually every single section. However, there’s no info regarding how the program works, forcing customers to form a buying deal if they wish to know something at all regarding the manner it works. All you'll be able to extremely realize out from reading the description is that the results can depend on the number of problems you have with the affected area. According to the claims made concerning the Fungus Key Professional, most patients expertise “vital changes when one week,” but the corporate recommends you are trying the program for an entire month before you make any selections. Applying the Fungus Key Pro Program The creator is noticeably quiet concerning the manner to eliminate toenail fungus. The website has transient data regarding the general changes you'll expect, but no extra details. This lack of data is possible a way to stay the key of the program quiet, unless customers purchase the strategy themselves. Pricing for Fungus Key Professional Before the creator even gets to the value of the program, he discusses the financial worth of the program, stating that he may simply sell this methodology for $two hundred, or maybe $500. However, they state that the program is obtainable for a “limited” time at $forty nine, which still includes all the bonus materials. The company states there is a 60-day refund policy in place. To urge a refund, you have got to send it to a selected address: Software Projects 4610 Prime Parkway McHenry, IL 60050 If you cross-reference this address, there are three companies listed, but none of them listed is even remotely connected to “Software Projects.” Contacting the Fungus Key Pro Program To talk with a representative regarding any questions, you'll either fill within the electronic type, or call directly. If you fill out the shape, you ought to not have to attend any longer than a single business day to receive a response. If you wish to speak with someone over the phone, you can call one-800-218-1525. Conclusion Fungus Key Professional sounds like a smart method on the surface, but the secrecy of the company and misinformation provided ought to create you're thinking that twice before considering the purchase.

[exactlydeliciousdragon]

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

Fungus Key Pro Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuY4qeciB3Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMpl9HDFR9E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzIC2SENUYQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iam3Ss9M8KM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuHe95adiHU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raDVjenUX0I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VB97xjNkaM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoANO88lp0o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbzhv-IuMes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO194P9kKnM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pUALWNGGRw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpp0mXH4VrA

Fungus Key Professional Review – Is It For You? Fungus Key Pro may be a method of eliminated focus from your fingernails, which promotes a healthier life. This is our review. What is the Fungus Key Professional? The Fungus Key Professional is a program that's designed to help you heal from damages caused by fungus. The entire remedy is predicated on the techniques used by the Vietnamese, that may be a combination of various natural ingredients you'll be able to notice around your home. The program puts all of those techniques into one straightforward-to-use guide that walks you through each type of technique. To make the program seem a lot of appealing to customers, the creator of Fungus Key Professional puts a lot of focus on the hazards that customers face by leaving fungus issues unattended, that will lead to the affected space spreading up your extremities and into your immune system.  The creator additionally places stress on the risks of using prescription medications to treat fungus, stating that the potential facet effects of some medications can typically outweigh the benefits of taking it. For these two reasons, Fungus Key Professional may be a safer method, since all ingredients used are natural and safe. Another approach that the creator entices customers is with the novelty of this new method. They state that this can be the first time the Vietnamese ways are available in one specific resource. Your age doesn’t matter with this program, because it’s safe enough for all ages. The Fungus Key Pro program makes many promises about what you will get out of following the regimen:     “Strength Strategy” may be a technique that supercharges your immune system and boosts healing and recovery thus all the harm done by the fungus is removed in a heartbeat. The corporate states that you'll “literally” feel the healing because it happens.     You will discover how to get back your beautiful feet fast, by completely disobeying what your doctor says. You'll also understand the true facts of why creams, polish, gels or pens never eliminate your fungal infections.     You may discover the “Green Magic”, a terribly powerful ingredient that stops the infection from spreading the instant it makes contact with the infected area. When you order the book, your fees cover 3 different products in your package. These bonuses embody:     Sensible Cooking – The Simple Recipes for a Glowing Skin.         This book focuses on the issues in your body that are on top of and beyond the issues that occur in your immune system. The program claims that there's something in your diet that is triggering your body to possess a fungal infection. This book discusses a way to eliminate fungus by eating the proper foods.     Natural Body Care Created Easy – 50 Natural Recipes for a Lovely Body         The booklet is intended to indicate you how to create your own beauty products with natural and easy-to-find ingredients. The book has recipes for face masks, creams, ointments, shampoo, etc. All of the recipes inside are naturally fragrant, however additionally have antioxidant and anti-aging properties.     Atlas of Home Remedies for the foremost common diseases         This book is by Dr. Chang, who describes the approach to treat a number of “the foremost frustrating and common diseases, using natural treatments only. This atlas is used to act as your terribly own doctor and addresses bones, muscles and joint problems, respiratory conditions, inflammation, infections and alternative common conditions you didn’t recognize you may treat safely and cheaply, at home, with 0 facet effects!” How Will the Fungus Key Pro Work? 1st of all, there is nowhere within the advertisement concerning this product that the company states precisely what methodology is being employed to fight fungus. Some firms describe a topical treatment, some firms describe a capsule, however all you actually understand about Fungus Key Pro is that it is all natural. The creator describes the program as a step-by-step system that's designed to fight fungal infections “from the foundation.” While the company neglects to say how, the steps you would like to take solely use about 10 minutes out of your day, that is majorly appealing for consumers that have busy lives and a heap of obligations. While the corporate is terribly quiet regarding the dearth of FDA approval, they state that the Fungus Key Pro system is “one hundred% safe.” The program is meant to figure whether or not you’re pregnant or if you are laid low with any serious disease, like diabetes, heart disease or Alzheimer’s. Additionally, the corporate states that the system is “proven to extend your quality of life in general, because it’s primarily based on natural parts. It can cut back your stress level and create a positive view on life.” This program’s guide is specifically geared towards healing, which could be a point that the company comes back to nearly every single section. However, there’s no data concerning how the program works, forcing customers to form a buying deal if they want to know anything in the least concerning the manner it works. All you'll really realize out from reading the outline is that the results can rely on the amount of issues you have got with the affected space. According to the claims created concerning the Fungus Key Pro, most patients expertise “significant changes when one week,” however the corporate recommends you are trying the program for a whole month before you make any decisions. Applying the Fungus Key Pro Program The creator is noticeably quiet about the means to eliminate toenail fungus. The website has transient info concerning the general changes you'll expect, however no further details. This lack of knowledge is seemingly a method to stay the secret of the program quiet, unless customers purchase the method themselves. Pricing for Fungus Key Pro Before the creator even gets to the price of the program, he discusses the financial value of the program, stating that he could easily sell this technique for $200, or perhaps $500. However, they state that the program is available for a “limited” time at $forty nine, that still includes all the bonus materials. The corporate states there's a sixty-day refund policy in place. To urge a refund, you've got to send it to a selected address: Software Projects 4610 Prime Parkway McHenry, IL 60050 If you cross-reference this address, there are three corporations listed, but none of them listed is even remotely connected to “Software Projects.” Contacting the Fungus Key Pro Program To speak with a representative concerning any questions, you'll be able to either fill in the electronic form, or call directly. If you fill out the shape, you must not have to wait any further than a single business day to receive a response. If you wish to talk with somebody over the phone, you'll decision one-800-218-1525. Conclusion Fungus Key Professional sounds sort of a good method on the surface, however the secrecy of the corporate and misinformation provided ought to build you think that twice before considering the purchase.

[getseriouser]

20 THOUGHTS: Predict the Unpredictable

WHO knows what’s going on?

As Jimmy Bartel put it after Mitch McGovern slotted the tying goal last Sunday, “is this season for real?”

There’s little point trying to anticipate or guess what’s coming up because each and every week we are further proven wrong by stuff you just would not have seen coming.

The perfect way to sum it up is for years now, by this time of the season, we’re having that conversation that the season is too long, there are too many meaningless games, we’re all suffering home and away lag craving for the finalists/contenders to sort out a premier because we knew the two or three best teams months ago.

This year, not at all, every round feels fresh and exciting and as for those laying claim to being serious Grand Finalists, um, we could provide some teams this week but the list might look totally different as early as next.

It’s fantastic.

 1.    Let’s get the Patrick Dangerfield stuff out of the way up top. Yesterday he accepted the sanction, and he had to, it is a team sport after all and because of the way the rules are set up, the concussion that was suffered, he had no grounds to appeal. And because of the Cam McCarthy suspension which was the most alike, he was always in trouble. Now should either player have sat out a week, no, that tackle should not warrant a suspension, but that’s a question on the rule, not the ruling applied here.

 2.    Jimmy Bartel made a good point Sunday afternoon on television, suggesting that from a Brownlow eligibility perspective there should be greater emphasis on penalising non-football acts (strikes, trips, behind play incidents) than things like tackles gone wrong or accidents in the act of playing. That would then mean incidents like Dangerfield’s tackle might be ok, but Toby Greene-style sniping would definitely still matter. Further interesting given that Bartel is a MRP sitting member too.

 3.    So we now face a potentially mega awkward scenario Brownlow night. At least when poor Chris Grant missed out, he wasn’t in the room. Not only will Dangerfield be in the room but as last year’s winner he will present the medal to Dustin Martin after a vote count he probably finishes first. To make matters worse, what if Richmond bundle out of the finals prior the big dance leaving Martin officially on the market with a decision to make when he wins? Or worst still, Martin, having already had two fines this year, does something so minor he gets fined again in the next month and thus misses a week, meaning both first and second are ineligible. How bizarre?

 4.    Been a while since we whacked Damien Barrett but it feels good to do so again and reasonably up front in this week’s column. Barrett on his regular Monday Triple M slot when asked if Geelong and Dangerfield should appeal he responded with “I think he should”. Firstly, who made you an important voice, or the Geelong Footy Manager, and secondly why should he, whether you think that deserves a week or not, he had no grounds to amend the ruling unfortunately. Give us something Damo.

 5.    Lastly on the media, and we’ve potted Barrett, now let’s pot the Media Worst on Ground for 2017, Mark Robinson. Wrote a column for yesterday’s paper suggesting that “when Patrick Dangerfield polls the most votes on Brownlow Medal night, the AFL will be embarrassed”. Why? Because of the unfortunate event they made the winner ineligible because of a rule they’ve had all year, again rightly or wrongly? Or because it feels bad that the winner misses out? What if it was Nakia Cockatoo who made that tackle, would you care as much then Robbo? Or are you letting emotion cloud sound judgement again? Or perhaps pushing double standards? Either way you need to take your hand off it please.

 6.    But on-field, how great’s the season? Hawks-Swans Friday was fantastic, everything on Saturday afternoon was stellar, especially the ending to the Power-Saints game, then we had two mega Sunday fixtures, the shootout at Etihad and then the game of two halves at the MCG. This is happening weekly and the statistics on the season’s closeness and randomness go on and on. No complaints here.

 7.    Nick Riewoldt, what a champion. The most games as captain for St Kilda, second most games played, the third most goals. Six time Best and Fairest, five time All-Australian. Probably the best centre-half forward after Wayne Carey of recent times, sure, Jonathon Brown, Lance Franklin, it’s an elite bunch, but for everything ‘Roo’ is and what he has done, he is my pick. Walk up Hall of Famer for sure.

 8.    Bloody hell the GWS are on the skids. Aside from their biggish win over Brisbane a few weeks back, since their victory over Sydney in Round 5 they’ve actually been rather poor by their lofty standards and ambitions. In the twelve games since (again, Lions match aside) they have six wins and two draws with a 98.55% percentage. That’s fledgling mid table stuff. And sure, they’ve had injuries, they’ll get some back, but they better hurry up – this team was two and a half kicks down to Freo, at home, at the start of the last term.

 9.    Got to hand it to Alistair Clarkson. Where other coaches of perhaps other, underachieving Melbourne clubs won’t, he has reinvented his side on the run from the poorest of poor starts into amongst the most in-form sides of the competition, if not the most in-form after perhaps the Crows or Swans. To see James Sicily go from being in-and-out of the side as a key forward to a midfield, behind the ball success story, seeing Jack Gunston go from number one inside 50 target to onball accumulator, he even has found success with a backline of essentially a crèche plus Luke Hodge. Brilliant coaching, brilliant agility of utilising personnel in different roles, making proactive changes, and the proof is in the pudding. Two months ago the Mitchell and Lewis decisions were awful, now they are genius.

 10.  So who gets eighth spot? Dead set going to be musical chairs? Right now West Coast hold serve but you still think Essendon or the Bulldogs will grab it, primarily because who can rely on favourites holding out the rest of the season in forecasting a final ladder? What we do know is that if a team, be it the Eagles or Bombers as an example, are able to put together a really nice August and claim a finals spot, the form that got them in might be the sort of form to do damage once September kicks off, a 2016-Bulldogs ‘lite’, if you will.

 11.  Daniel Wells will get the three votes on Sunday you’d think (Mitch McGovern was indeed huge, and we’ll touch on him next), and his record this year will frustrate Nathan Buckley no end. Wells has played exactly half the season thus far, and when he has played the Pies are six wins and a draw from nine games, with 114%. Without, one win from nine games, with 81%. It’s once again a year of excuses for the Pies, but a fitter Wells is worth another win or two, they’re probably a game out of the eight and fighting for finals and not languishing in 13th.

 12.  Mitch McGovern is jacking his price up big time. Four great goals, but more importantly was his workrate and hands on Sunday, and to be fair this season. Gets back to be part of the team defence but works really hard to be that option deep on a fast break. But also, a great size to be an aerial target, a great leap with a strong grip. Out of contract, the lure of going home to play with his brother will be there, plus there’s cash for him from Melbourne clubs too. The Crows will have a battle to keep him. Mind you, he is benefiting from the best two opposition defenders going to Taylor Walker and Josh Jenkins, keep that in mind.

 13.  The other battle the Crows will have in terms of a signature is Jake Lever. When Dustin Martin is getting offers, we believe, around the 1.2, 1.3m per year, to hear offers not too much inferior for a 49-game intercept defender, it is amazing. But his talent looks well validated aside and where should he want to stay you think the money will be there for him, it wouldn’t shock to see one or two Melbourne clubs press so hard he chooses to return home. If not, he will be turning down millions.

 14.  Really thinking the North Melbourne offers to Josh Kelly and Dustin Martin should be taken seriously. They have definitely, definitely committed verbal offers to both with almost unmatchable, unbeatable term and dollars. And you look at what they’ve done, sure, they’re not the lure of a big, brash Melbourne club like an Essendon or Collingwood, but you can see the makings of a side this year, despite sitting near the bottom, that gets back into the eight soon and with one or both additions, wowee, you got to concede some enthusiasm about the club’s outlook.

 15.  Two schools of thought going around for Collingwood’s coaching fiasco – one, they go and poach a rival club’s coach or go all out for Paul Roos and just make something happen, or, and this is getting more and more traction sadly, they do a 2016 Richmond, keep the coach but re-do the entire footy department around him and reset for a fresh tilt with the same main man at the helm.

 16.  Do we rate the Bulldogs chances should they make the finals? Unsure. Maybe get Tom Campbell, Matty Boyd, Tom Boyd, Jake Stringer back into that side, get some continuity into the group with as few changes week to week, and this is a team that knows how to win finals. But is that largely on blind hope, blissful optimism all because of what we’ve seen last year and little to what we’ve seen this year?

 17.  All-Australian Ruckman watch, and queue some potential bias, but stick with. Three main contenders at this stage, Sam Jacobs, Paddy Ryder and Brodie Grundy. Jacobs is averaging 40 hitouts, 15 touches and three tackles a game, Ryder is going at 36, 13 and two. For Grundy, he is doing 37, 18 and four and interestingly, is in the top ten in the league for stoppage clearances, the same as Josh Kennedy and Olli Wines, no other ruckman comes close. For what it’s worth, for those Blues’ supporters, Kreuzer is averaging 31, 15 and five.

 18.  Three big games this weekend, and we start with the Dangerfield-less Geelong hosting Sydney down at Sleepy Hollow. Sydney have not lost two in a row since Rounds Five and Six, and will be hell bent on taking a big scalp before September. This column has remained unconvinced on the Cats all season, and without their best player they are as vulnerable as a dopey sea lion during Shark Week on Foxtel.

 19.  Sunday is stellar for those looking to put a good innings together on the couch, and it starts with Richmond and Hawthorn at the ‘G. Should be a big crowd and there’s a lot on the line, especially for the Tigers. This is the first time in a long time where they are going to be the big dog in this matchup, and whilst they have had success over the Hawks in recent years, it has been as the plucky underdog, not as the heavily favoured. So how do they go when the tables are turned, and with Hawthorn now the pluckiest of underdogs all of a sudden, winning games, looking good, they’ve won four of the last six.

 20.  The Showdown ends a monster Sunday, and it’s a super interesting rendition of the rivalry this one. The Crows played a half last weekend against the Pies, and to their opponents credit it didn’t look like they were off the first half, they were just outplayed, which could show the way for those facing the ladder-leaders going forward. It was at this time last year these Crows went from top two into fifth and that was their 2016 fate sealed. For Port, they got out of jail last week, and given the loss to Melbourne the week prior, they need to find something quickly – this team has top four credentials if they switch on, and to finish fourth when their cross-town rivals finish first would be monumental for the Power, and that starts this weekend.

 (originally published August 2)