#not exactly points for him in the 'responsible parent' tally but he's far from a single parent

[whatudottu]

I have a question what were Annie's og parents like(i mean she was willing to run away with five aliens to be her fathers instead so I don't think they might have been the best😬) or maybe they're dead and were good people idk

A lot of the lore is actually written by @sweetpeaches666, who may be tagged under sugarbutterfly432, thanks to Annie technically being a 3 way OC lmao. There has been nothing solidly concrete about Annie's OG parents beyond the fact that she doesn't know her ancestry and she's had many foster homes AND orphanages to live in (plus it'd also be easier legal wise for the Andromeda 5 to adopt her if she isn't officially someone else's kid at the time)

It's actually why she does ballet, one of her foster mothers wanted to recreate her failed dream, turns out it breeds resentment and a lot of running away :P

What can be said is that Annie's been many different homes and in a constant state of transitioning between them, a prime example of being a refunded kid and all that, something something No Roots by Alice Merton yada yada 'oh no that's relatable'. Her birth parents one way or another have never been in her life, though regardless of what actually happened Annie will always believe that they left her behind like like everyone else did :P

[shepherds-of-haven]

In an alternate Blest where the Endarkened never returned thus there was never a need for the shepherds to form, what would the main cast be doing?🧐 Would any of their paths have crossed otherwise? For those who are not from Haven would they have any other reason to travel there?

Holy shit anon, this is such a great question that I've literally sat on it for six weeks thinking about it... Let's give this a try! 🤔💭

Beware! Heavy alpha build and overall spoilers below! Read at your own risk, or do not read if you haven't played the alpha fully!

Blade: well, if things had gone exactly the way they had, just without the need for the Shepherds in the mix, he'd be dead! But if we ignore that particular detail, he'd still be working as an assassin for the Ket Rebellion, and he'd probably be a colder, crueler person as a result of it. He would still be a frequent visitor to Haven, plotting you-know-what and taking on various jobs and assignments in the meantime; and he and Trouble were friends before the Shepherds were formed, so they'd still be merc buddies and occasional partners on bigger jobs where they'd need someone to watch their back! But they probably wouldn't be as close. He'd probably spend the rest of his life working as the tip of the spear for the Ket rebellion, the left hand and living weapon of his brother. It'd be an okay life, but he'd never truly be independent!

Trouble: he'd likely still be a mercenary or soldier-for-hire, sort of wandering around the Continent with Haven as his home base. For some reason, I could see him being talked into joining the Army of the Sun and becoming a military man once he was older and tired of the merc life; he'd probably like the order and structure and camaraderie of it for a time, but he'd clash with his superiors and the culture so much that he'd probably eventually wind up discharged! At that point, he'd probably leave it all behind and go West to start a new life... maybe he'd become the sheriff of some small town out there, or a farmer, or an airship mechanic in Lindell!

Tallys: she'd probably work as a hunter for hire, usually working for the farms out in the Sun's Embrace or guarding their livestock from wolves and predators, or possibly as a 'van guard for Elvish caravans. She volunteered at poorhouses and Elvish clinics in Ashtown before joining the Shepherds, so she'd probably still be doing that. I think her life would be a sort of haze of just... existing, looking for a purpose or some way to help people but feeling like it's all a bit futile. She'd probably do some self-destructive things to make her forget the emptiness inside of her, and if things reached a boiling point, perhaps she'd simply disappear into the wind one day...

Shery: hmmmm, this is an interesting question! Shery met up with the Shepherds because her parents sold her into an apprenticeship that she didn't want and she ran away, and by coincidence she happened to come across the group and Blade offered her a job as quartermaster because she was good at book-keeping. If that didn't happen, I don't know what would have happened to her?! She alludes in the game that she saw how prostitutes by the docks were living and was scared that that was the only option open to her if no one would hire her, but I like to think she would have found a job as like, a librarian or a bookshop clerk or a merchant's assistant. I almost feel like she could have somehow run into Riel and joined Merchants Guild as one of his assistants alongside Aerin! So I feel like she would have been okay, though her life would have been very quiet and domestic and humble, and unless she worked for Riel, she likely would have never earned enough to have more than a little dingy apartment all to herself (and some cats).

If things hadn't worked out so well, she likely would have returned home and faced her terrible parents, and probably would have lived under their thumbs for the rest of her life as atonement! :(

Riel: he'd still be master of Merchants Guild, and doing just fine! I think he'd just continue to garner wealth, power, and influence, and likely would have been made a minister or some sort of politician within the Consortium when he was older! Not sure yet if he would have taken that offer, though! If the Endarkened didn't exist, I wonder if Merchants Guild and Thieves Guild would have had any particular bone to pick with each other, as they largely ignored each other's existence... Chase's thieves typically targeted the aristocracy and the obscenely wealthy before the whole Black Sun thing, so they might never have crossed paths!

Chase: he'd still be master of Thieves Guild, also doing just fine! I can't really imagine anything about his life changing that much; he would have continued to steal, nettle, and harangue the denizens and criminal underworld of Haven until the ecosystem could no longer sustain it and the Thieves Guild would have to pack up and move elsewhere to elude capture (probably to Conte); or he would have developed such a monopoly on crime in Haven that he would have gotten bored of the power, handed control off to Ari and Kato, and peaced out to parts unknown... realistically, in that scenario, his luck would have to run out at some point, and he'd probably sleep with or double-cross the wrong person (probably both) and get himself into a corner he couldn't back out of alone...

Red: he'd still be Archmage of the Veiled Circle, and they probably would have remained at Capra for longer, since there wouldn't have been the Endarkened to draw attention to their activities as pointedly as Quiial did. Still, they would have had to leave to evade the Inquisitors eventually, and probably would have settled somewhere else; and Red probably would have passed off leadership of the Circle to someone else, maybe a promising instructor who joined later or Pan or someone. Basically when he'd felt he'd put in the time and wasn't abandoning the Circle to its fate, he'd leave and go off and do his Traveler stuff he'd always wanted to. But it'd be a lonelier, more solitary life, and his letters home or his jaunts back to the Circle would drop off as he became more and more engrossed in his research, and people would worry about him or his health, not having anyone to watch his back on the road. He has a 50/50 chance of marrying someone nice that his family set him up with after like a concerned intervention on their part, or he'd probably drop off the face of the earth and no one would know where he went!

Ayla: she'd still be working as a wilderness guide, taking rich people around on tours and guiding parties and caravans through dangerous stretches of wilderness. She would have gone to Haven to visit as a tourist, but probably wouldn't have stayed long; a handful of weeks, at the most. She'd spend her life scrapping, fighting to stay alive, and watching her own back, but it would be an empty life, pretty much devoid of meaningful connection or meaning. At some point she'd probably get fed up, return to Jalis, and launch a single-woman campaign against the warlords there, just because she could!

Briony: hmmm... okay, she'd still be in that shipwreck, but would slavers have found her if there was no gladiator arena, since there would be no Endarkened to have created it?? I feel like she would have woken up, still an amnesiac, and staggered to the nearest town eventually (which I think would have been Courtshore or one of its outlying, smaller towns/villages). After recovering a little, she probably would have put herself to work as a mercenary or as a street-fighter working for bets (so like a gladiator... but on the street!). She probably would have been taken in by a kind innkeeper or family and allowed to rent a small room with her bizarre story of not having a memory. Or she could have taken up something simpler, like working as a barmaid in the inn or something like that! She probably would have had a relatively happy, peaceful life once she got used to things and it all settled down... but given her proximity to the shipwreck, her past would have caught up to her way faster, and the fallout would have been... intense...

Lavinet: she'd still be in Lockwood, and the Elementals would still be an issue, since that wasn't tied to demonwork! What probably would have happened: things would have deteriorated, and the families of the besieged nobles in Lockwood would have grown impatient and would sent in their personal armies to deal with the situation, most likely without Lavinet's consent. The ensuing conflict would have been devastating, with the Elementals most likely winning. In response, the Autarchy would have mobilized the Army of the Sun and absolutely annihilated the Elementals--but Lockwood would have likely burned, caught in the crossfire. Lavinet would have to spend the rest of her life with that shadow looming over her, and while she'd still harbor ambitions to attend the Sun Court and rise in the ranks as a Sun Courtier, there would always be that stain on her reputation, or she wouldn't have been able to leave Lockwood, having to help it rebuild after its destruction. Or she would have gotten kidnapped by the Elementals far earlier and might have been killed then!

Halek: he would have stayed sol of the Reach, and I have no idea what would have happened... he probably would have married Moonsilk and just have been absolutely miserable... probably would have popped out a few kids and just... existed! Or maybe he might have run away and left Naolin holding the bag and become like a guilty drunkard in some random town, though it's hard to believe they wouldn't have tracked him down eventually...

[fantasmalresplendent]

Dean died at the ripe old age of 85.

In his lucid moments during the days leading up to his passing, in which Dean was just as sharp and as bright as he was fifty years ago, he remarked that people must think he’d robbed the cradle with a “hot piece” such as Castiel hanging around him. 

“You don’t mind that I’m a wrinkly, senile, crotchety old bastard?” Dean had asked, more than once, but he had always said it with a smile. And Castiel would smile back, replying with the same answer the answer many times, in many ways:

“You’re not senile.”

“Old, but not a bastard.”

“I thought I was the crotchety one.”

“I don’t mind.”

Then Dean would smile, and it would light up the room, and Castiel would wonder again how he came to deserve the focus, let alone the affection, of such a man.

“It’s not about deserving, Cas,” Dean had said, half-whispered in the middle of the night a few short months after they had begun to share the bed they laid in. “It’s… fuck, well I don’t know what it’s about. But people don’t get what they deserve, not most of the time.”

Castiel frowned, furrowing his brows. “They should,” he grumbled.

“Well if people got what they deserved, they’d… I don’t know, Sam would’ve actually become a lawyer, stayed in school. Jo, Ellen, Bobby, they’d all still be here. I’d get mauled by a werewolf or something, go out with a bang, and Baby,” Dean said sternly, as though chastising the universe itself for such an injustice, “Would never get so much as a scratch on her.”

“You think that’s what you deserve?” Castiel’s voice was soft, not wanting to disturb the still of the night, but steely as he considered even the possibility of Dean’s violent end. 

Dean registered that, swallowing, “I don’t know. I guess I just never thought I’d even make it this far. Hunters have the shortest lifespans of any human subspecies,” Dean cracked a smile, but his heart wasn’t in the joke. Castiel knew Dean was doing the math in his head. He knew Dean was mentally recalling how long it had been since Bobby left for heaven. Tallying up the number of people who were gone because of self-sacrifice, mistakes, pure dumb luck. Counting exactly how many years he had outlived his own mother. 

Castiel had wrapped his arms around Dean then, embracing him, surrounding him, and they curled into each other completely. Burying himself in Castiel’s neck, Dean had never felt so close to him, and yet so far away. “You don’t have to follow the same patterns if you don’t want to, Dean,” Castiel stated, as if it were that easy. “Do you want to?”

“Want to what?”

“Get mauled by a werewolf?”

Dean sniffed in laughter, and that was answer enough.

Castiel found himself stroking Dean’s hair, an action he felt suited him. He thought for a moment in the stillness and in the space between their breaths. “Maybe it’s idealistic of me, but I still think people should get what they deserve. Even- no, especially you.”

Dean took his time answering, opening his mouth several times before actually saying, “Sometimes I don’t think I know what I deserve.”

“I guess we’ll just have to figure that out together then. We have time,” Castiel kissed Dean’s forehead and he sighed at the touch. “We have plenty of time. Heaven will wait for you, no matter how long.”

Dean looked up at him then with a pout, “You sound pretty confident in that statement for a dude who hasn’t shown up to heavenly chorus practice in a few years.” 

Castiel smiled, “I’d rather be here with you. Always have.”

The man blushed. “Well, if I go… I mean, wherever I go… Where will you end up?”

“I could go with you.”

“Where?”

Castiel closed the distance between them fully, thumbing across Dean’s cheek as they kissed. “Anywhere. If you want me there, I will be there, whether it’s here or heaven. I’ll be there.”

“For how long?”

“For however long you want me to be.”

Dean kissed back, his fingers tangling in Castiel’s hair. “Yeah. Okay.”

  Sam went not long after Dean. It wasn’t a surprise; it was his time as well. His children were grown, his grandchildren almost grown, Castiel knew they’d miss him but that they’d be all right. And they knew to call on “Uncle Cas” if they weren’t, even the little ones who didn’t understand exactly how they were related, or why Great Uncle Dean's husband was only about as old as their parents.

“I mean I love the little gremlins,” Dean had said, cracking open a beer after a long few days of babysitting Sam and Eileen's girls while the expecting parents were in the hospital. He was exhausted, they both were, but beaming from meeting the newest member of the Winchester clan: a healthy baby boy named Robert. “But have you seen Sam’s house? Goddamn mess in there.”

“You… don’t want to have some of your own?” Castiel had asked carefully, taking the beer Dean held out for him.

“You’re making them sound like trading cards. I don’t know, I- I guess I never thought too hard about it.” Castiel could tell this was a lie by the way Dean didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Wouldn’t know what to do with a kid if I had one.”

“Do you think you’d be a good father?”

Castiel had met John Winchester, in Hell. Well, he hadn’t exactly met him. He had really only passed by John’s cell, stole a glance at the infamous hunter on his way to retrieve Dean’s soul. He’d never told Dean what he saw, they were not close enough at the time. He wasn’t sure if Dean would even want to know. Castiel had almost spoken about it many times, but whenever Dean talked about John, “Dad,” a look crossed over his face, sometimes for only a second. A furrowing of brows, a tight smile, a quick transition to happier subjects.

The same look crossed over Dean’s face as soon as Castiel had asked the question.

“Wow. Um, loaded question there, Cas.”

He waited for Dean to meet his eyes before continuing, “I think you would be.”

“Do- wait,” Dean shook his head, trying to understand where Castiel was going with all of this, “Do you want kids?”

“I want you to live a normal life, Dean. I want to be able to give you what you want.”

“Okay, lots of stuff to unpack here. First of all, a normal life isn’t and never was an option,” Dean leaned back against the counter, “I think we can agree on that. Second of all, you didn’t answer my question.”

“...And third of all?” Castiel prompted.

“No, second of all first. Do you want kids?”

Castiel sighed, taking a swig of his beer, considering his words. “I’m an angel, Dean-”

“Is that so!” Dean raised his eyebrows, then squinted as if in deep thought, “Weird, somehow I never noticed.”

That deserved a well-placed eyeroll, but Castiel still had a point to make. “We don’t- I’m just trying to…” he set his beer down. “I don’t know. But that doesn’t matter, what matters is that I would love and care for a child, if it were ours. If we decided that was something we wanted, I would be so happy to raise them, with you. I’d be terrified,” Castiel admitted, “At the enormous and important responsibility, but I would love doing it, if… if it was with you. I just want you to know that, I guess,” Castiel shrugged, “I don’t want you to think it’s not an option for us, if you want it to be.”

“Okay…” Dean was thinking, swirling the beer around his glass. He pointed the mouth at Castiel, “You’re still avoiding my question,” Castiel really rolled his eyes this time, “But I don’t really think it’s for me, all that white picket fence stuff. If you really wanted a kid, I would definitely hit the library and read all those, I don’t know, fucking parenting guides, and take the Mommy and Me classes, whatever. And I think you’d be a good father, better than me, I’d just let them eat gummy worms and shoot slingshots.”

“Children love gummy worms. They listen and will behave better when offered gummy worms,” Castiel knew this for a fact from very recent personal experience, “I don’t see how gummy worms could pose an issue. Slingshots, however-”

“Okay so maybe I’m overestimating your abilities a little,” Dean held up a hand, “But still, I… I like this,” he gestured to the space between them and around them, “I like us. I like waking up to a clean kitchen and sleeping in on weekends. I like not having to ask more than one person whether or not I can take a drive by myself or crank my music really loud at midnight. And I fucking hate Paw Patrol.”

Castiel smiled.

“Sam and Eileen always need babysitters. That’s good enough for me right now.”

“You’ll tell me though, if this is something you really want,” Castiel insisted, “If you think about it and decide something else.”

“Sure.”

“Promise.”

“Okay, fine, I promise,” Dean took a step forward and leaned in for a kiss then. Castiel could taste the beer on Dean’s tongue and sighed. Dean smiled against Castiel’s lips, lowering his voice to a comical level, “We could, uh, you know, try and make some babies,” Dean waggled his eyebrows and Castiel pushed Dean’s laughing face away, but grabbed his hand, turning towards their room.

They hadn’t spoken about it again, not seriously anyway. They got a dog. Dean opened a vintage car garage. Castiel learned how to bake. They took long road trips to the beaches in California, wandered through roadside attractions like Carhenge in Nebraska and Cadillac Ranch in Texas. They bought decidedly way too much merchandise at Oklahoma’s National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. And maybe they killed the occasional vampire, the wayward poltergeist, but the occasions became less and less. There were younger, more spry hunters on the road now, always welcome at the bunker to look through their library or ask advice on a particularly troublesome spirit. Sam even coerced Dean into holding what became a yearly “conference,” “What are we, a tech startup?” for the next generation of hunters to learn from the legendary brothers.

So maybe they spent more time at home than on the road, but home suited them. Routine suited them like Castiel never could have predicted it would. It wasn’t a white picket fence, but it wasn’t a lonely highway either. Dean would joke about how “boring” they’d become, but Castiel reveled in the repetition. The three hundredth time Dean brought Castiel coffee in bed was just as lovely as the third. The five hundredth time Castiel cooked dinner passed without fanfare, though Dean hugging him from behind, chin hooked over Castiel’s shoulder as he whisked, felt like fanfare enough. The one thousandth kiss they shared was in their bed, lazily breathing each other in as the first beams of sunlight shone through the window after a week of straight rain. Home, a thing he and Dean had never known in their youth, held the majority of their most precious, most banal memories. But still, Castiel always looked forward to those moments speeding down a desert highway when Dean would reach for his hand, turn his head to meet Castiel’s eyes, and smile.

Time took its time with them.

It seemed the opposite with Sam’s children, who grew up faster than Castiel could keep track of. And as they grew from waddling toddlers to full-fledged human beings, Castiel was fascinated, enamored, but Dean was simply proud. He attended their tournaments, their decathlons. He went to their graduations, weddings, barbecues, and Castiel went with him. They took the kids to concerts and movies, parks and shooting ranges, and Castiel never got tired of the smile on Dean’s face when they threw their small arms around Dean’s neck and called him their “Cool Uncle.” “Hear that, Cas? That means you’re the No Fun Uncle. The No-Funcle.”

And as the crowned Cool Uncle, he teased Sam mercilessly about his minivan and his “#1 Dad” mugs, but Castiel knew how proud Dean was of him too. How glad he was that Sam got the future he wanted, and how grateful he was that that future included him.

The brothers still fought. They still bickered, pranked, and glowered. Sam complained that Dean let his kids use power tools too young when they visited, and Dean complained that Sam’s kids were too old to have never heard “Stairway to Heaven.” The usual, the routine, many times over. But they never lied to each other, at least not about the important things, not anymore. And Castiel was welcome in Sam and Eileen’s house and lives, an honor he felt he didn’t deserve, but as Dean said, maybe it wasn’t about deserving.

It was Eileen who noticed Castiel first as he entered the hospital room the day he'd been informed that Sam Winchester was finally coming home. He didn't have to tell Eileen; she saw it on Castiel's face. They’d already spoken, he’d prepared her for the eventuality a few days prior. Eileen smiled, looking back at her husband, teasing him lightly, but Castiel knew she was holding back on her usual snark because Sam looked, well, tired. Turning away from Sam, Eileen signed, “Are you here for him?”

Castiel shook his head. “No, but someone will be here soon.” 

“You mean they haven’t given you reaper duty yet?” Sam joked from his horizontal position, speaking and signing with his usual quick wit, but not with his usual articulation. Castiel had seen him argue with Dean for fifty years like it was his job, he was accustomed to the precision with which Sam had always wielded his words. Not today.

“I don’t think I’d be very good at it,” Castiel stepped closer so that Sam wouldn’t have to crane his head, “I’m not very persuasive.”

“No kidding,” Sam shakily clasped Castiel’s hand and grinned. “I’m surprised Dean even went with you.”

“It took less persuading than you’d think.”

“How is he?” Eileen asked, but she was smiling, so she knew the answer.

“He’s good,” Castiel smiled back, “Getting what he deserves.”

Sam smirked, but his head sunk back into his pillow as if relieved. “And I bet he’s complaining about it non-stop. Asshole never knew how to take a vacation.”

“Neither do you,” Eileen levelled her husband with a fond look.

“We’ve taken vacations!”

“You always wanted to go somewhere exotic and then you’d just end up in the library. Remember Berlin?”

“They had… well I wasn’t going to find those editions in America, and-”

Sam and Eileen bickered for a bit, and Castiel did end up backing Eileen’s points more often than not, so eventually Sam recognized that he was outnumbered on this particular case.

Castiel bid his goodbyes just in time as the nurse entered the room to check Sam’s vitals. Her tone was cheerful, but Castiel could tell that she too knew what was coming. 

“Well… I’ll see you soon, buddy, huh?” Sam smiled at Castiel as confidently as he could muster for Eileen’s sake, but Castiel knew behind those laugh lines Sam wasn’t so sure of himself. Castiel supposed that worry wasn’t to be unexpected from a chosen one of Hell, Lucifer's vessel, the boy Castiel had once called an “abomination.”

But Castiel smiled, giving Sam’s shoulder one last firm squeeze. “You will.”

  When Dean died, at the ripe old age of 85, he knew what to expect.

He’d visited heaven before. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Not an exciting place, but exciting wasn’t necessarily good. Hell had been exciting, and he was in no hurry to return there. Purgatory had been exciting in a different way, years later he swore the stench still lingered on his skin. Sometimes, when he would lose himself in his “senior moments,” he thought he was back in that bloody in between. Or back in hell. Or had gone to heaven. “Times and places are difficult to navigate when your brain’s turning into gummy worms,” he told Cas once. He didn’t remember saying this a few hours later, but that didn’t make it any less true.

His brain was sure full of them gummy worms now as he clung to his body and to his life. He wasn’t completely sure where he was. Bobby’s? The bunker? His childhood home? Sammy had come to see him earlier, at least the kid had looked like Sammy… No, fuck, that was his grand-nephew, Cas had reminded him of that. Sam, his brother Sam, was in the next room. That's right, he’d told the asshole to give him some space, stop smothering him. He sort of wished he was here now though. And Cas, Cas was here, he knew that, but only because the angel was right in front of him. Cas, his friend, was holding Dean’s hand, talking about what their grand-nieces and nephews were doing in school. Dean could swear he already knew these things, but they still sounded new when Cas said them.

Dean looked over at him, and Cas was smiling.

He tried to speak, but the words stuck in his throat. Cas helped him swallow some cool water. Dean cleared his throat, “Bet you’ve been waiting for this for a while.”

Castiel cocked his head, the smile fading. Fifty some odd years and he still had that same confused look. “Waiting for what?”

“Me to beef it, finally. I know this hasn’t been easy, watching me… seeing me like…” Dean took a shallow breath. “No matter where I go next, at least I won’t be a senile senior citizen.”

“Dean,” Cas said, rubbing the back of Dean’s liver spot-covered hand, “Please listen to me very carefully.”

“Got my hearing aids in, go ahead,” Dean joked.

Cas smiled softly again. “It has been the greatest privilege of my life, my existence, to watch you grow old. I feel honored that you allowed me to experience that. Time’s different for me too,” Cas kissed Dean’s hand, “Space and time were never precious to me, not in the stretch of infinity. Not until you. Not until I was able to see you live your life and live it well.”

Tears welled in the corners of Dean’s eyes. He furiously tried to blink them away, but Cas was already there, dabbing carefully with a handkerchief. “I’m… I’m scared, Cas. I know I shouldn’t be, I’ve seen it all. I’ve beefed it a few times already. But maybe that’s why I’m scared? Because… I know what comes next. What could come next. And this is it, right? No more resets?”

Cas nodded.

Dean took a deep, shuddering breath. “If I don’t end up in heaven-”

“You will.”

“If I don’t, that’s fine, maybe it’s what I deserve, and that’s fair. But… will I see you again?”

“Dean,” Cas said sadly, but with his trademarked firmness, “You are going to paradise. And if for some reason, a completely incorrect and insane reason, you don’t? I dragged your soul out of the flames once, I will do it again. I would do it as many times as I needed to.”

Dean shook his head slightly, “Not fair.”

“It’s not about fair. It’s about the truth. Whether you believe it or not, ET goes home.”

Dean chuckled weakly. He was tired. He didn’t want to let go. He wanted to let go so badly.

He felt the bed move as Cas climbed under the covers with him. The angel curled around him, enveloping him. Dean could swear he felt the brush of feathers cradling him and pulling him closer, but he couldn’t muster the ability to reach for them, stroke them like he used to. “Sleep, Dean. I’ll be here when you wake up. Wherever, whenever here is. That’s where I’ll be. Wherever you go, I’ll go with you.”

“Swear?”

Castiel kissed his forehead. “I swear.”

  Dean opened his eyes.

The phrase, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” popped into his head, but he suspected, greatly, that he was, in fact, in Kansas. The blowing fields of wheat tipped him off to that.

No, wait. That wasn’t a field, it was a… sandy beach. It looked kind of like that beach he and Cas had stumbled upon driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, what was it called? The one where they’d had to hike down from the lookout point? The one where after they’d trudged back up the trail, they’d sat in the car and looked out over the sea as the sun set? The one where Castiel had smiled at him and the light glinted in his blue eyes and Dean had kissed Cas for the first time ever because he just couldn’t stop himself?

Muir Beach, Dean remembered, blushing at the memory. 

But just as soon as he’d reached the end of that thought, it wasn’t the ocean anymore. It was a lake. On the lake was a pier. He’d seen that pier before, couldn’t remember exactly where though.

Then without warning, but without alarm, Dean saw someone standing on the end of the dock. A young man with light brown hair and a sweet smile Dean would recognize anywhere.

Jack waved, walking up casually, “Hey, Dean.”

Dean grinned and pulled him into a solid hug. “Jack. I missed you buddy, how have you been? Where, uh… are we in…”

Jack chucked, “I think you know where we are.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know know, this could… I could be dreaming or some shit, and I guess even in a dream you could say whatever I wanted you to say, so-”

“Dean,” Jack stopped him, “This is heaven. You are in heaven.”

A relieved but small smile spread over Dean’s face. “Cool…” 

“I’m not usually here to meet people who pass on, but we weren’t going to miss your arrival.”

“We?”

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean turned around. There was Cas, beaming at him.

“Cas…” Dean reached to embrace him too, only now noticing that the hands that reached out were not as wrinkled as they’d been when he last saw them. He hugged Cas tightly, relieved more than he wanted to admit. “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Cas’s hand went to Dean’s cheek, holding him in a kiss. They separated, foreheads resting against each other. Cas’s eyes twinkled, “We had an appointment.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean took a step back, seeing Jack grinning out of the corner of his eye. “Is, uh… is anyone else coming? Or is this the welcoming party?”

“They’re all waiting for you,” Cas put his hand down, and as he did, it was stopped mid-air, as if resting on something solid. Dean blinked, and there was Baby, new as the day she was made, parked on a long, long road that stretched far out of sight. “Any time you’re ready,” Cas tossed something in Dean’s direction, “we can go.”

Dean caught the keys on instinct, they jingled on the simple ring. 

Any time you’re ready, we can go.

He twirled them around the end of his finger a couple times, a thought itching at his brain. Or a couple dozen thoughts.

Cas gave him a look, then turned to Jack, “Could you give us a moment?”

“Yeah, I’ll go get everything ready,” Jack blipped out. 

“Get what ready?” Dean asked.

“Dean,” he turned around to face Cas whose brows were knit in worry, bright blue eyes narrowed, “Are you okay?” Dean realized he hadn’t seen Cas clearly for a few years, not since before the cataracts. He’d never gotten completely used to that piercing gaze. 

Dean blinked. “Yeah, I… I just… I’m here. Really here.”

“Yes, Dean.”

“And… you’re here.”

Cas gave him that look like he was being patient on purpose, “Yes, Dean.”

“And… fuck,” Dean stood at sudden attention, “I left Sam down there, is he okay?”

Catching Dean's hands in his own, Cas rubbed comforting circles into Dean's skin. "Sam is fine. He was there when you left. That's why I was a little late, Eileen had only just gotten home and I didn't want to leave before she could be there beside him.

"Okay," Dean took a deep breath, concentrating on the physical contact, grounding himself in Cas’s movements, "Okay. I mean I know he's gonna be fine, he was always fine without me," Dean said, almost to himself.

"And you'll see him soon."

The abrupt return of Dean’s panicked look made Cas smile a little, shake his head, "Not that soon, Dean. Don't worry." 

"Right. Of course, yeah,” Dean looked around, down the road, the back to his car, out past the waving grain that had returned inexplicably. “Well,” Dean flashed what he thought was a very convincing smile, letting Cas’s hands go as he tossed the keys once and caught them, heading towards the car, “Time to hit the road, huh?”

"Wait,” the suspicious squint was back as Cas caught Dean’s arm, “Something else is bothering you."

Dean turned around, and the ocean was back. The ocean he’d taken a trip to see, had selfishly insisted Cas come along for the ride for.

He sighed. "I just…” Dean ran a hand through his hair, “I don't know, I guess it just don't sit right that I’m… I'm gonna see Mom and Bobby and Jo and Charlie and… everyone. How am I going to look them in the face and not feel guilty that I got decades that they’ll never have? And what did I do with that time, sit on my ass? Judge local car shows? Go to freaking baseball games?"

Cas nodded slowly, simply listening. He then hopped up and sat on the hood of the Impala, shoes and all. Dean shot him an offended look.

“She’s a memory of a car, Dean,” Cas rolled his eyes, “She isn’t going to dent.” He patted the spot next to him.

Dean hesitated, but under Cas’s stare, relented. When he was settled, Castiel laced their fingers together.

“I’ve been trying to convince you for all the time I’ve known you that you’re worthy. That you deserved to be saved. That you deserved to rest.” Cas looked down at their entwined hands, “I don’t think I ever really succeeded.”

“Sorry,” Dean muttered.

“You don’t have to apologize. I know you’ve been doing a thankless job ever since you carried Sam out of your burning home. Shit, even before that,” Dean cocked his head, Cas hardly ever cursed, “you were always trying to be the hero for your mother. Some people are at fault for that,” Cas’s eyebrows furrowed briefly, “but it’s human nature to be hard on ourselves and praiseworthy of others. You, in your limited experience, could not possibly know all of the things that you’ve done that have made a difference. But we’re-”

Jack suddenly blipped into existence, giving Castiel two big thumbs up, then blipped out again.

Dean turned, looking from the space Jack had stood back to Cas then back again, “What-”

Cas shook his head with a smile, “I could never tell you exactly what you’ve meant to the world. But we had a, uh, few volunteers that wanted to show you.”

“Cas, could you quit monologuing for a second and-”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw movement. The endless sea became endless plains which became endless trees, the landscape changing at a rapid rate.

Dean looked back to Cas in confusion, but he didn’t look alarmed. He gave Dean a timid smile, kissed him behind his ear, and whispered, “Just watch.”

Dean watched. For a moment, the scenery couldn’t seem to decide what it wanted to be. Then, it decided not to decide. Grains of sand took the form of towering trees, a picnic table, a bench. Green lake water formed the shape of a small boy, hunched over and scribbling on the table. Lastly the wheat twirled and spun and became an all-too-familiar-looking young man wearing a jacket too big for his frame, walking over to the bench and sitting down across from the kid.

Lucas. The name came to Dean from deep in his memory, he was that quiet kid who drew Dean pictures of the ghost in the lake. The grain animated Dean’s smile as he talked, the figure of Lucas showed Dean his sketches. Their forms dissolved as the scene changed and Dean's form was pulling Lucas out of the water, the sheriff having paid his due.

The figure of Dean left, but Lucas stayed and was joined by his mother, Dean remembered her too. They embraced, and the figure of Lucas grew, changed into a young man, a husband, a father. Soon a half dozen figures were standing there, waving to Dean, and then they disappeared, melting back into water. Lucas was the last to go as he was the first to arrive. He signed a phrase to Dean, and Dean knew the words: Thank you, Dean Winchester.

Then the sand reformed into a schoolgirl, the shapes in the green water plaguing her with images of mirrors and Bloody Marys until Dean stepped in front of her, holding a mirror of grain in front of the cruel, refracted specter. It dissolved, and Dean’s form bade goodbye, but the girl remained. She grew too just like the boy did, becoming a professor, graduating with honors, writing dozens of books, and changing dozens of lives. She smiled, and waved, and dissolved as well.

The shapeshifters appeared next, the sand in the form of Sam’s friend Zach, his sister Becky, and even Dean’s false shifter form, but the true form in the too-large jacket blew them all away, leaving Becky waving goodbye. She too welcomed a family that appeared by her side, and they all looked so happy and grateful to have each other.

Again and again the scenes changed. Green waters showed the cities he had passed through, the homes that were kept from destruction, entire communities that were healed. The water formed and reformed into smiling faces and waving hands. Some of the people, Dean had known on Earth. Many of the places, Dean had remembered driving through. Most of the people and places, however, were foreign to Dean. He lost count of the number of strangers who appeared, the cities he’d never been to. He struggled to keep track as they cycled faster and faster, as numerous as the grains of sand and droplets of water they were made of. It seemed that a whole generation of people, all over the world, would-be victims of an apocalypse they never even knew was happening, knew him. Through words and cheers and song, they retold the tales of Dean and Sam Winchester, the tales they had only learned once they had passed on. 

Throughout all of this, Cas pressed his shoulder to Dean’s, his presence grounding but not distracting. Dean’s grip on Cas’s hand grew tighter and tighter. Cas did not let go. 

Eventually, the images and figures departed. The sand blew away, the waters swirled and dispersed, and the landscape made its final decision. Only a simple field of golden wheat remained, waving and rippling in the wind.

Only in that newfound silence did Dean notice he was crying. He shook his head, wiping the tears away furiously.

“Dean,” Cas whispered, and Dean turned to face him, vision blurred, Cas looking at him pleadingly. “You sacrificed so much for so many for so long. You don’t have to be strong right now. You don’t have to be strong ever again if you don’t want to. You have done enough.”

Castiel wiped an errant tear from Dean’s cheek, holding his face between his hands firmly, tenderly.

“You are, and always were, enough. Your job is done. Let. Go.”

Dean did.

Cas silently pulled Dean into his shoulder as he sobbed. Dean didn’t even know why he was crying, didn’t know what for. Maybe he was happy. Maybe he was grieving. Maybe he just felt… relief. He wasn’t sure the last time he felt such relief. He wasn’t sure he ever had truly felt it.

After some time, longer than he’d like to admit, Dean sniffed, wiped one hand over his face, and raised his head. Cas was waiting for him, looking at him with care. With love.

“I, uh… I don’t gotta sign any autographs, do I?”

Cas smiled, and pulled Dean in for a kiss. They stayed like that for a bit on the hood of the car, feeling the breeze, breathing in the fresh air. Dean thought he could hear music coming from somewhere, realizing that it was the car’s radio playing softly from the cab. He knew that any time he wanted, he could hop down from the hood of his car, slide into the driver’s seat with the love of his life on the passenger’s side, and carry on his wayward way. Down the road, through the endless fields, towards the ones he had loved and lost. But not yet, not quite yet, because he had time. Maybe in the end, time was all he had ever really wanted, even if he could never allow himself to ask for it. 

Infinity stretched out in front of him like the fields of grain. It wasn’t an exciting infinity, but it was his. It was a long road, a family that waited for him, a shoulder to lean on. It was, at long last, a place to lay his weary head to rest.

[the-hopeless-haze]

Someone to Need You Too Much (Being Alive Chapter 4)

(not my gif)

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CONTENT WARNING: This chapter mentions past sexual abuse. It is par for the course in what you’d expect in an SVU episode but I am mentioning it here because it concerns the reader.

This is when Rafael usually starts checking out.

But you weren't how women normally acted at this stage, hell, the two of you hadn't even made it official yet or told the squad.

You needed him, though, in ways he wasn't used to being needed, having been single for so long. You'd call him if you hadn’t seen him over at the precinct, ask him how his day went and talk about yours, and you'd get him out of the office to go to dinner at least once a week.

But you never said this, you never verbalized that you needed him there, you never nagged, never made him feel bad if his work got in the way and he had to reschedule. Maybe it's because you were busy too, or maybe you were just that understanding. Either way, he’s surprised the two of you haven’t gotten into a fight more serious than work-related spats.

Rafael had been right, as this was fun at least for now, and maybe if all you needed him for was weekend dinners and the occasional Broadway show, that’d be fine. Your sense of humor matches his, you drink scotch, you smell lovely... but you had been pulling away recently; in fact, you hadn’t called him since you went out to dinner last weekend. He tries to chalk it up to you being busy with work, but he can’t fight the anxiety that the end is already here. Why the hell did he even give this a half-assed shot? Of course you weren’t genuinely interested. Of course you’d be another tally mark, another notch in his belt- and it’s not like he was truly upset, because he had figured it would end at some point the second he agreed to take you to dinner, and thankfully, the squad didn’t know yet. Still, though, this soon? It’d barely been two months.

Or maybe your withdrawal was due to that time you were making out with him on the couch - and you’d suddenly pushed him off, went to the bathroom, and didn’t kiss him the rest of the night. He broke out an expensive bottle of wine, then, and tried his best to genuinely apologize, because he did feel awful - but you’d told him he’d done nothing wrong, and that you just needed time. But maybe you’d lied to make him feel better; maybe he had pushed you too far, which truly wasn’t his intention. Rafael may be a dick, but working sex crimes gave him a much better respect for the responsibility of a man to make sure his partner was comfortable with what was happening in the bedroom (or on the couch, or wherever). But Jesus, he’d barely touched you, and he made a point to be more careful with you than anyone he’d ever been with, not just because of your age, but because he figured that your irreparable damage had been of a sexual nature, whether it was a bad boyfriend who didn’t take your needs into consideration or something more serious due to your conversation with Olivia months prior.

With that in mind, Rafael decides it’s more probable that it is work that was causing you to distance yourself rather than anything he may have done. The cases with children were always difficult, for anyone, really, but especially you. And this man? He targeted disabled children specifically, and you weren't doing well. He wonders how he could go about asking to take you off it without you finding out and without Olivia interrogating him as to why he cared so much. It's not like you're not putting in the work; in fact, it's the opposite, if anything, you're drowning yourself in it. Every time he stops by the precinct, you barely say a hello to him, and you're buried in a case file or researching something on your laptop, biting your nails down to the quick. You were always invested in your work, but not like this, and Rafael was a workaholic if there ever was one, but even you were stressing him out right now. He has half a mind to search your purse for a new pack of cigarettes, but he doesn't think you'd take too kindly to that.

When he gets to the precinct later this morning, you’re not there, though, and he asks Carisi why reluctantly. He frowns, looking genuinely upset. “She’s not taking this too well, Barba. I know she wants to be here, but it hits home for whatever reason, and Searge made her take the rest of the day off and probably tomorrow. She was crying when she left, but she wouldn’t talk to me. I mean, whatever it is, I don’t think she should be questioning the suspect, but she’s good with the kids, you know?”

Rafael would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little worried, but he figured you’d turn up of your own accord if you needed to talk.

And later on, early in the afternoon, you do.

"Are you busy?" you ask, standing in his office doorway awkwardly.

"Always,” he says, but he takes his feet off the desk and puts down his legal pad. “What brings you out here? Carisi told me Liv sent you home.”

"I...I need to talk. I don’t want to be alone right now,” you say anxiously.

"Okay. Sit down," he says.

You oblige, sitting in the seat across from his desk, but you’re still trembling. "My brother is disabled."

It all makes sense now, why this case, in particular, was hurting you so much. God, if this case turned his stomach, what did it do to you?

“He... he was raped, too. It was my dad’s best friend... basically his brother. We used to call him uncle. He was a teacher, and he’d pick us up after school a lot and bring us back home to watch us. I...I’m older than my brother by two years, and I joined the soccer team in middle school and that man would be alone with him. I just... I... my brother couldn’t voice it, not the way you and I can. Most nine-year-olds can’t anyway, you know, but because of the disability... he had no idea. He didn’t know the words to explain what happened to him, but he would start saying he didn’t want to go home with this man. My parents both worked long hours, and they were on the outs anyway, so they just thought he missed them and didn’t look into it. They trusted that man... and I did too. Until... one day a game was canceled because of rain, and I walked in, and...”

You stop talking, silent tears falling from your eyes. Rafael gets up, coming round to the edge of the desk to stand closer to you.

“Hey. Take your time,” he whispers, leaning over and putting a hand on your shoulder. “I know this is hard.”

You nod, looking up at him. “I barely knew what sex was at that time. I didn’t really know what to call it, but I knew my brother was getting hurt, that the man was taking advantage of him, and maybe I should’ve called my mother or my father or the police, but I didn’t. I froze for a few moments and then I did the only thing that came to me and I tried to pull him off my brother. It worked, I scared him enough to make him stop but he grabbed me and...he did the same to me. I just remember it hurt so bad... like he was tearing me in half.”

Rafael shudders, but even still he’s in awe of your brazenness even at 11 years old. Just going right in and apprehending the perpetrator. You were born a detective, in a way.

You’re sobbing, now, and really, he can’t blame you. Suddenly, you get up, throwing your arms around him, and if you were ever in need of a hug, he supposes after recounting this story would be the prime time.

“Hey, hey, shhh. No one’s gonna hurt you now, (y/n),” he murmurs, running his hand over your hair. “Lo siento. Shhh. Shh.”

He calms you down a little bit, whispering condolences in Spanish and kissing the top of your head. Rafael doesn’t know exactly what to do as he’s never been good at comforting anyone. It’s something his exes would yell at him for time and time again, assuming his awkwardness meant that he didn’t care they were upset. It’s just something he wishes he could avoid, that everyone could sort out their issues alone as he did. But that was a joke, wasn’t it? Like he’d sorted anything out in these four decades of being alive. He repressed them, sure, but healed from them? No. And maybe it wasn’t fair to expect everyone to live that way.

And again, he can’t really blame you for needing someone right now, even though he sort of wished it wasn’t him (and he does feel guilty for thinking that, but it’s still true). What you’d gone through, well, it was unthinkable, and he imagines you relive it through the eyes of your brother every time you talk to one of these victims. What solace could Rafael give you right now besides, “Oh, honey, it gets better”?

Fuck that. Maybe it did get better, or you got better yourself, but none of that was going to come from Rafael trying to manifest it with his meaningless words. Rafael presumes another reason you came here besides your (ongoing?) fling was because he wasn’t an SVU detective and wasn’t going to revictimize you. So, instead, he asks what a lawyer would ask. “Did he get convicted?”

“Yeah. He did get put away,” you continue, as you pull away from him a little, still holding onto his arms. “It took me a while to come to terms with it, but I couldn’t let him continue to do that to my brother. I told my parents within the week.”

“Did your father believe you?” he asks, unsure if that was insensitive to ask.

“My father definitely didn’t want to believe it at first, but he always believed me for everything. We were always close, still are. My mother... I think she felt she failed as a mom for not noticing it, so she was in denial for a while. The detectives that dealt with it... they didn’t even look into the school, they just tried him for our case. And I always hated them for that, when I was old enough to realize.”

“Is this why you became a detective?” he asks quietly.

“Well, sort of. I wouldn’t have if I didn’t know about SVU; that’s why I have all those psychology credits too. I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do. I always wanted to come to New York, though, and you know, I thought I’d be able to help children who went through the same thing my brother and I did. I just didn’t think it’d be this hard,” you say, looking up at him.

“Of course it’s hard. SVU is hard for me, too, and I haven’t experienced anything like that,” he says, swallowing thickly. But that was a lie, in a sense, as he'd been beaten before by the hands of his own father and watched his mother suffer as well. There was a reason he was distant during domestic violence cases. He hopes you don't notice this omission, and he looks at you sympathetically instead.

“I thought I could handle it, though, and not act like a basket case,” you say, turning away from his gaze. “How am I supposed to help anyone if I get sent home?”

“Why did Liv send you home?” he asks, again wondering if he was asking the questions you needed to answer. A good part of his job was figuring out the right questions to ask, but this was overwhelming. “Not that I don’t agree, but I’m just wondering what she said."

You roll your eyes, sniffle a little. “She said it wasn’t good for my mental health to be around the suspect and that I was going to stress out the parents. No one on that squad knows what it’s like to live with and love someone with a disability, Rafael, and I just... I want to be there. I could help, if she’d let me.”

“Now isn’t the time to beat yourself up. I think the time off will be helpful to you," he says, squeezing your shoulder again. Wasn't that the catch-22? You join these professions to help people like yourself, but you hurt yourself in the process and become of no use. He thinks back to the first domestic violence case he was put on, a family not unlike his own, and it nearly broke him down, nearly made him quit and throw away those seven years of education. But he didn't. And you wouldn't walk away either.

“How is your brother doing now?”

“Ben - his name is Ben - he’s doing better. He's very shy, and he can get anxious and have panic attacks. He has fragile X syndrome, and that’s what caused his autism... I used to try and take him out everywhere with me once I got a car, to help him get used to talking to people. It doesn’t help, you know, the way people are when they see someone disabled, and sometimes it’d be hard, but... I just want him to live as normal a life as possible. He still lives with my mom, now. I just think the assault made him so much worse. I mean, I don’t know if he’ll ever get a job, now, or... it’s just hard to think about sometimes.”

“I can only imagine,” he says softly, because he really has no idea.

“Well, I’m just gonna...I’m just gonna go home,” you say. “Thank you for listening. I needed someone to. I know it’s a lot. But I don’t want to take you away from this case either. We’re already one person down since Liv kicked me out, and if I needed you to win the last case... I absolutely need you to win this one, Rafael. I didn’t get to question that man but I was on this case before and I know he raped them, that fucking bastard—“

“Hey, hey, calm down,” he says gently. “Okay. I know. I watched Liv interrogate him earlier. I believe you, and you know I’m going to do everything I can. I'm going to charge him, and we're going to get him.” Jesus, he needs to stop promising you guilty verdicts. But how the hell could he say no when this clearly meant the world to you? This was all too much. What the hell did you need?

“Okay. I know I’m asking for a lot but I need... I need this. And I can help you however you need. Liv can’t stop me from helping you prep witnesses or—“

“Slow down, (y/n). You still need the time off. You know that, right? You’re going to keep getting kicked off cases if you keep trying to push it. I know how Olivia is when it comes to this.”

“But, Rafael—“

“No. We’re done talking about the case, now, okay? You need to think about something else and get your mind off it for a while. Did you want to go get coffee?”

Fucking coffee. Why did Rafael think that equaled comfort? Maybe because the harsh acidity of stale coffee was his only friend some days, and he’d learned that a good cup could be a great mood improvement. Fuck, that was sad, wasn’t it?

“No, it’s fine,” you say, your face falling. “You need to work. I’m just going to go back home, then.”

You turn to leave, grabbing your purse with shaky hands, but he stops you.

“Are you sure you should be alone right now?”

“You’re working, Rafael—“

“Yes, I know, but you’re welcome to stay here.”

You force a smile, shaking your head. “No. It’s okay. I appreciate it. Are you free later though? I know we haven’t gone out in a while, and I could use the company.”

So you didn’t want to end things. Rafael is simultaneously relieved that you wanted to stick around and terrified for the very same reason.

“You know what?” he says, feeling a brazenness he’s unsure of the origin of. “Do you want just a night in? I can give you my apartment key. If you want to go there now, you can. I’ll meet you there later. I’ll try to get out around 7.”

“You want me to just hang out in your apartment?

“Yes,” he says, kissing the top of your head and giving you the key. “I have good scotch, and I guarantee I have a better shower head installed than your apartment. Just go. Make yourself comfortable.”

“Yeah, just say my apartment's a piece of shit, Rafael," you scoff.

He smirks. "That's not what I said. It's not bad for a single woman on a detective's salary. I can tell you saved for it. But it's nowhere near the lap of luxury."

"Oh, but your place is?" you counter, hands on your hips. You're still stressed, he can tell, but maybe you needed the banter. He hopes he's not pushing it too far.

"No, I wouldn't go that far. But tell me, where would you rather spend the night?"

You roll your eyes at him, and he knows you've conceded.

"Do you have anything in your fridge?" you ask. "I could at least cook."

“Probably not. But don’t worry about it. I can pick something up on my way home.”

“No, you don’t get it, I like to cook. Sonny gave me new recipes. You have a bigger kitchen than I do..."

“Is that what would make you happy?”

“Yeah. I need to put my mind on something else right now; like you said.”

“Then... have at it. Don’t burn my place down, though.”

You roll your eyes, kiss his cheek, and leave.

He’s not used to having to take care of anyone. It's been so long since he let anyone get this close, that they felt he would take care of them. Maybe that wasn’t what you were looking for. He wasn’t your father; maybe you just wanted support from an equal. Maybe he wanted to give it. It’s foreign, the feeling of walls he’d spent so long trying to build cracking at the foundations. But hell, if anyone could... couldn’t it be you?

It’s not like Rafael was opposed to long-term, except, well, he was. He’d say there was never an opportunity, he’d tell his mother there was just no one out there. But it’s not like he tried, either.

With you, it’s not much like trying. It all just happened effortlessly, on his part, at least. You made the first move, and most of the successive ones after that. And you’d said you didn’t know what you wanted - yet it’s becoming clearer to Rafael that what you were the kind of person who needed a partner, a lover, possibly a husband. That makes him beyond uneasy. He’d grown to care about you more than he would have liked these past couple of months, but that didn’t mean he was ready for that kind of commitment, if he ever would be.

And this, now, this requires more effort on his part; it requires more of himself to be used to try and help you feel better.

When he comes home that night, the kitchen is a complete mess, with flour in every crevice, dirty pans in the sink, and grocery bags left on the table. It damn near gives him a heart attack, and maybe he would’ve yelled at you, but he swallows his anger down bitterly. You need gentleness, kindness, softness right now, and that’s a tall order for Rafael, especially when you destroy his apartment... but he couldn’t forgive himself if he hurt you when you were already down. Kitchens could be cleaned. Trust couldn’t be repaired.

It might all be worth it, though. And, as it turns out, maybe Carisi was good for something, or you were an amazing chef (perhaps both) because it might have been the best pasta he’d ever had in his life.

“So you made this? These little things?” He stabs into a couple more pillows of pasta, enjoying the fresh, springy taste.

You laugh, clear and bright. You’re a little tipsy; you’d taken full advantage of his scotch collection, but you needed to take the edge off. “They’re called gnocchi, Rafael. And yes. I made them from scratch.”

“I just might have to keep you around,” he says, smiling at you, and you giggle, kissing his open mouth.

“You better,” you say, moving to sit on his lap. He wraps his arms around your waist. “Anyone else I’ve tried to get close to... it scares them. Or they don’t comprehend how big of a deal it was. It broke me, Rafael. It broke my whole family. You might be the only man I’ve been with who’s understood the consequences that has on a person and still not look at me like it’s all that I am.”

“I know. It’s not who you are. It’s something that happened to you,” he murmurs in your ear, kissing your cheek chastely. “I would never change my opinion on you based on that.”

If anything, all your story does is cause him to have greater respect for you, not because you survived, because what other option did you have? No, it’s how selfless you are, putting your brother before yourself, choosing this career path over a million others that would have been much easier on you. Judging people based on what they had gone through is ridiculous. That tells you nothing about a person. It’s what they do in the aftermath of the things that happen to them that shows you who they are.

What was Rafael then, in the aftermath of the pain he had been caused?

He doesn’t want to think about that. Ugly things like that were better left unsaid. But eventually, he knows, you’d go there. You’d unravel the real reason why he was single, why he never asked anyone to marry him, why he was so scared to get close... but not yet. Tonight was about you.

“I need to get back out there, Rafael. I need to help those kids,” you say, your voice shaking.

“You will. You’re going to. But you need to know when to step back, (y/n). You’re going to burn out if you don’t,” he says softly.

Rafael still doesn’t feel like he’s doing enough; he feels like you need more than he’ll ever be able to give. And you’ve had to have been hurt in relationships in the past, Rafael knows how teenage boys are having been one himself. God, if he could smack his younger self in the face, he would, one thousand times over.

“I...I do agree that it wouldn’t be good for me to talk with the suspect. I’ll gladly leave that to the rest of the squad. But those kids? The parents? You know that no one is better suited for prepping them for court than me. Let me help you, then.”

“Okay,” he concedes. “But... I have conditions.”

“Naturally.”

He smirks a little, pecking your lips softly. “You’re right. No contact with the defendant. And you need to talk to Olivia first.”

“Rafael—“

“Don’t you want to get paid for this?” he says, smiling wryly. “It is work, you know.”

“You just want to make sure I’m cleared so it doesn’t come to bite you in the ass somehow.”

“Well, yes, of course. Olivia would find out that you helped. Also... you need to back away if it gets too much. I’ll send you home, too, if necessary.”

You sigh, nodding. “Fine. Agreed.”

“Okay. Now we’re done talking about it for the rest of the night.”

“Thank you, Rafael,” you say, looping your arms around his neck. “You’re a hard ass most of the time, but you really helped me today. You just see things so clearly.”

He helped you? He hoped so, that something he did got through, but he didn’t really believe anything could. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t emotionally drained, though, as he definitely wasn’t used his emotional support being needed this much.

“Listen...I’m not trying to rush anything either, but I just want you to know I’m glad I have you around,” you say softly.

“Me too,” he says, honestly, and it all feels so strange, letting someone use him to feel better. It felt good, though, to see you in a better mood, even though he doesn’t feel like he’s entirely the cause of that. Scotch certainly helps. Good food does, too. Solitary comforts, which Rafael knows too well. “Thank you for cooking.”

“You’re welcome. I should cook more often, really. Your blood pressure must be through the roof with all the takeout you eat.”

He squeezes your waist tighter, ignoring your comment, ignoring the fact that he might possibly need you too. You run your fingers through his hair, your nails scratching his scalp lightly, and you kiss him gently.

“Well, I got to clean the kitchen I destroyed,” you say.

“I’ll help,” he says, and you kiss him again. It’s gentle, too soft yet too much, and there’s something in your eyes when you pull away, something real, there, something he doesn’t quite recognize or understand at first. It aches, it pulls at heartstrings that maybe have never been touched before. It scares him, a little. What happened to you saying you didn't want to rush things?

For once, words fail him. All he can do is lean up, place his hand on the back of your neck, and kiss you again. He’s careful not to push too far, not to scare you off. You need someone willing to take his time; someone willing to give you his all. Was Rafael really that man? Was he really up for the job?

Maybe, he concedes, that was for you to decide, not himself.

You get off his lap and smile at him before starting to work on the floury mess caking his counter island.

Maybe it wasn’t so bad being needed, even if he hated the aching feeling in his chest he got when he saw you cry, hated how you still seemed like you were too much, too good for him. Part of him still hates you, what with your constantly flickering emotions and your snippy remarks that remind all too much of...himself.

But you needed him there. Who was he to refuse to oblige, even if it scared the shit out of him?

———

Rafael wins the case again. Maybe he should keep promising you guilty verdicts if every time he does it turns out that way. Or, more likely, promising you causes him to work ten times harder just so he doesn’t disappoint you. You did help him a lot this time, per Olivia’s gracious acceptance of your proposal to work more closely with Rafael on this case. She’d said it would be good for you, and it was. You’re not as elated as he hoped you’d be, but you’re probably sick to your stomach thinking about how those kids were going to live their lives now or if they’d get the support your own brother got. But it's certainly better than the alternative. At least that man won't see the light of day for a long while, if ever.

It’s just all very bittersweet.

The squad goes out for drinks, but they’re not rowdy like they can be. Instead, the atmosphere is sullen. This case hurt everyone differently, and everyone is wearing their pain to the bar in an attempt to drink it away. Everyone is especially generous to you - Nick and Sonny fight over covering your drinks and Olivia buys you dinner. Normally, he thinks, you would protest, but you need this right now, and you don't argue with them.

Eventually, though, being around them seems too much, and you head to sit at the bar by yourself. Amanda looks at Rafael pointedly after fifteen minutes of your absence passes. "Are you going to check on her, Barba?
"

"What?"

"You heard me. Can you, please?"

The atmosphere is too tense to banter, so he just nods and makes his way over to you. "How are you doing?"

"Amanda's still trying to play matchmaker?" you say, smiling, but it doesn't quite meet your eyes.

"Evidently. But, I really do want to know how you're feeling."

You shrug your shoulders, turning to face him better. "I've been better. I'm just glad it's over. I’m actually going home for a bit,” you tell him. “I have a couple of vacation days to use, so I won’t be around.”

“Okay,” he says. “I hope your brother is doing well.”

“Yeah. Me too. And you know... I’ll make it up to you. I’m sorry for the distance I put between us, you know, earlier this week? I didn’t mean to, but this case—“

“You don’t need to apologize, (y/n),” he says, giving you a tight-lipped smile.

“Oh. I mean, I did feel bad, leaving you hanging like that. I just know when I get stressed like that I’m not good company.”

“You’re always good company, cariño,” he says quietly, and you reach under the table to squeeze his hand. Rafael doesn’t quite know what you need, and this may be too much, it may draw the attention of the squad - but they aren’t paying attention. Or, fuck it, if they were. He intertwines his fingers wtih yours, squeezing back gingerly.

“Charmer,” you tease, smiling sweetly, sneaking a glance at your hands. “But... Rafi, we are dating, right?”

“Is that what you need from me?”

“I mean, I’d like that. It’s been a couple of months, and we don’t hate each other... why not? We don’t have to tell the squad yet, but I think I might mention to my parents I’m seeing someone when I go up there. Is that okay?”

“That’s...fine, (y/n),” he says cautiously, feeling slightly guilty he never broached the subject with his mother. And god, he wasn’t ready to. Wasn’t this all too much too soon? What was he going to tell you, though? No?

“You might not think so, and I know you try to hide it by being an asshole sometimes, but you are a good man, Rafael.”

“I’m just doing my job.”

“Yeah, you say that, but I saw you up there, saw you fight for these kids... there’s a way to be a lawyer and not care about the people you represent. But you do care. And it's admirable."

"I wouldn't be able to do my job as well if I didn't care, (y/n). I'm not a saint. Don't make me out that way. This is how I make a living. I want to succeed at it."

"Oh, honey, won't you let me just give you a compliment?" you say, and you loosen your grip on his hand to rub his shoulder gently. "Nothing good ever comes from trying to deny your humanity. And there are far easier career paths you could've chosen if that's what you wanted to do. But you're not like that."

"How would you know?" Rafael says, harsher than he meant to.

"Okay," you murmur, wincing a little. "Why are you so intent on proving me wrong? You know what? Either...stop talking or leave."

"I'm sorry," he says, and he genuinely is. The last thing he wanted to do this week was kick you when you were already down - and here he is, doing exactly that. You deserve so much better.

You smile humorlessly, shaking your head. "I thought I made myself clear. Be quiet, Rafael."

Rafael nods awkwardly and takes a long sip from his scotch. And you surprise him after a few moments, by leaning against his shoulder. "I thought you were mad--"

"Shh, Rafi. Can you please just hold me?"

"Okay," he murmurs, and he presses a chaste kiss to your temple before putting his arm around your shoulders. Under normal circumstances, he never would have agreed, but he did just snap at you and the rest of the squad was stewing in their own feelings, hopefully too busy to notice what was happening between the two of you. And even if it did draw attention - it was easily explained away as nothing more than a friend leaning on a friend. He knows eventually you'll need to tell the squad, but for now, this was already too much.

But it was what you needed. So even though Rafael is beyond unsure - he's willing to oblige for now and see where this leads.

NEXT CHAPTER

Want to be tagged in future chapters? Let me know!

[tinyshe]

California’s Forced Vaccinations a Violation of Nuremberg Code        

       Published on November 12, 2018

Written by  Roger Landry

Concerns are mounting among scientists that the recent implementation of SB277 making vaccinations mandatory law in California for men, women and children is a chilling step towards universal compulsory vaccination.

Coupled with the fact governments and multi-national pharmaceutical companies are being prosecuted and convicted over poorly-tested and administered vaccines, suggests a crisis is coming.

Vaccine activists are citing the notorious post Second World War Nuremberg Trials in which Nazi doctors were convicted of forced experiments on humans. Fears are that seemingly once benign governments are now resorting to forcing medication into the bodies of the unwilling masses and their children without their consent.

A little recent history …

Here is a short video discussing the ethical questions raised by many concerned parents during the debates leading up to the implementation of SB277 in California. The focus here is the concerns of these educated parents who were very aware of the possibilities of vaccine damage, wanting to know who gets to decide if the (possible) gains outweigh the (known) risks …

Vaccines are scientifically proven to have side-effects ranging from mild to catastrophic. These may include anything from a mild rash, a compromised immune system, sterility, cognitive dysfunction (brain damage), paralysis, cancer, to … death and many more “proven” issues not mentioned here.

We are constantly being told by the healthcare personnel we trust that the chance of vaccine damage is “Less than one in a million”, yet statistics prove over and over again that this is a totally erroneous and massively understated number, with the actual occurrences of harm caused by vaccines being massively higher, and in fact … very common.

Even with the cases reported being well in excess of the laughable quote stated above, we must also consider that the CDC itself states that as few as 1 – 10{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of vaccine damage incidents are ever reported as such, making the possible total ‘Magnitudes Higher’ than what we are made aware of via the CDC or the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is stating Proposed Changes Restrict Vaccine Reaction Reporting, making these incidences of vaccine damage even more difficult to track or tally (intentionally).

Now lets consider that the vaccine court (VICP) in this country has already paid out well over $3 BILLION in damages, and this is to only a very small percentage of possible claimants who actually get their cases heard, and can prove damage to a (known) biased system of supposed justice.

So how rare can vaccine damage actually be … ???

Approximately thirty thousand (30,000) VAERS reports are filed annually, and again the CDC states that only 10{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} (on the high side) of actual cases are ever reported … Yea do the math (300,000)! Now not all of these are life threatening, but how many are life wrecking? If even 10-20{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} are life threatening, wrecking, or stealing (30,000 – 60,000 a year), that is still a huge number, and magnitudes above “one in a million.” That would actually equate to less than 320 adverse reactions nation wide if EVERYONE in the country (about 320 million people) is vaccinated in a calendar year … But the fact is only about 25{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the public is vaccinated each year (all vaccinations combined) making the actual number about 80 cases of vaccine damage … if these doctors are correct (BULL SH#T)!

Now take the above numbers and plot probable vaccine damage with 10{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} reported over just the last decade … 300,000 x 10 = 3,000,000, and if we use 1{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} reported … 30,000,000! Now try to imagine the damage to the American society, or the entire vaccinated global community over the last century of ever increasing vaccine proliferation, and you will come to understand that vaccines may very well be responsible for more death and human suffering than ANY or maybe ALL wars in human history.

We can easily see, with even the most rudimentary research, the possible incidence of vaccine damage is mind bending and so far above the lies and platitudes fed to us by those we are conditioned to trust, that it is almost inconceivable. Please understand that if the above statement (less than one in a million) were true … Vaccines would be among the safest mechanisms on this planet, but all data points Blatantly to Exactly the Opposite.

When all is said and done We The People (more every day) are becoming painfully aware of the frequency and magnitude of Vaccine damage and we are horrified and angry!

How is this Medical Experimentation?

With the many proven side-effects, and NO long term Proven Efficacy or Harm Study on vaccines (or multiple dose vaccinations) ever accomplished or even commissioned by the CDC, that we are made aware of in a century of use in the USA (try to find one), they can have no scientific or factual claim to being an effective or safe mechanism. Thus by default, HOW can this be considered or categorized as anything more than Medical Experimentation?

Please watch as Dr. Russell Blaylock connects the vaccine industry today to violations of the Nuremberg Code …

The Nuremberg trials where 23 defendants, all medical doctors, were accused of having been involved in the horrors of Nazi human experimentation, procedures and exposures without the consent of those experimented on. The trial lasted eight months, from December 9, 1946, to August 20, 1947. Of the 23 defendants, five were acquitted, seven received death sentences, and the remaining received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment. Those sentenced to death were hanged on June 2, 1948, in Landsberg Prison, Bavaria.

What resulted from this was the ten points of the Nuremberg Code. Of these ten points the following are most germane to this discussion, those being:

Nuremberg Code: Point #1

The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him/her to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonable to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment. The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs or engages in the experiment. It is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity.

Nuremberg Code: Point #5

No experiment should be conducted where there is a prior reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.

Nuremberg Code: Point #7

Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.

Nuremberg Code: Point #9

During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.

Nuremberg Code: Point #10

During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.

GUILTY AS CHARGED

With forced or mandated vaccinations, the known side-effects of vaccines, the total lack of consideration (research) of either efficacy or harm, the lack of full (true) disclosure of any of the information stated above prior to application, the total immunity from prosecution of the entire chain from production to administration, and the denial or cover-up of known causality … ALL … of these above (Nuremberg Code) points are Grossly Violated.

If one stops to consider the testimony of individuals such as Dr. Thompson and other learned CDC whistle-blowers, the ethics question is a total and disastrous failure. If one also stops to consider the untold number of high level research scientists globally who have dedicated their lives and staked their professional reputations on proving the harm and danger of vaccines … proof gone unnoticed, ignored, or intentionally buried, by governments and health agencies, the morals question is also a catastrophic failure.

Read more at www.thelibertybeacon.com

https://principia-scientific.com/californias-forced-vaccinations-a-violation-of-nuremberg-code/

go to this link to see videos

[tothedarkdarkseas]

What do you think is the REAL difference between Stu and Murdoc? Is it upbringing, age, personality, or cocktail of things?

I’ve gotta tell you, of all the kind asks you sent (and what a nice thing that was of you to do, thank you, they were fun to ponder!) this is the one I’m like… jittery to answer because there’s just so much to be said. Put under a cut because it ended up kinda stupid-long.

I mean, what has to be determined first is– are Murdoc and Stu that different? I tend to think they’re not, not as much as they are alike. That’s actually what I like best about them and something I usually play to when I can, how much they both resemble a certain stereotype but with their own twist. Many of their differences are a little superficial, like Stu being a bit more geezery with his football and all, and Murdoc being less uptight with his hobbies (be it involving cheeky GTA or a gimp mask.) I joked the other day that the biggest difference between the two is just that Murdoc does uppers and Stu does downers, and that’s pretty much it. I do think on a “deeper” level, like a more innate behavioral level, they’re a lot more similar than they actually realize.

But with all that being said, of course they’re not identical, and there’s a lot that contributes to where exactly they differ. I think that everything you said is absolutely relevant to that!

Let’s start with age and upbringing. The age difference between Murdoc and Stu is actually fairly stark when you just look at the years, but it never feels quite that bad to me because Murdoc and Stu are both so emotionally stunted and immature. There’s a line in Bojack Horseman than I think is incredibly on-point here, about how “the age you are when you get famous is the age you stop growing.” I think for Stu, it absolutely damned him to become famous at around 20, it locked him mentally into an age where he should’ve been learning everything wouldn’t be given to him, and instead it was just… given to him. In excess. If you follow that reasoning Murdoc’s sort of odd though, in that he never actually achieved fame on any major scale until he was in his 30′s. It seems more like Murdoc’s exaggerated sense of self-importance (probably a response to knowing, very much knowing, that he was not in fact something towering and impressive at all, and there’s like… something absurdist in really choosing to think he is. That’s almost the ultimate form of his Humor As A Shield– what could be a bigger joke than not hating himself?! Ha! It’s funny because it’s sad!) set in way before he actually became famous. It’s more like his maturity is stalled at the time he started trying to be famous. Stu didn’t actually try to pursue music at all before, while Murdoc spent a decade absolutely convinced that it had to work and doggedly not accepting when it wasn’t. It feels like these two approaches enabled (or damaged) them in different ways, but both end up with the result of men who don’t act their age for many years and have hedonistic, stereotypically rockstarish ways of living far beyond that of their bandmates. Stu can barely claim he knows better though and is perhaps more… people are gonna yell at me for being so hard on him haha, but more spoiled and therefore more ignorant because he never actually lived a responsible adult life. (Does that mean Stu hasn’t had difficulty in that life? Absolutely not. The man has at least three counts of massive head trauma and was in a coma for an undetermined period of time, he has a permanent physical impairment that likely impacts his vision, I think he’s earned a few perks.) Murdoc on the other hand is very aware of what it was like to be a failure, to be conventionally unemployable, and to have so little to lose that he’d make incredibly stupid decisions that could’ve ended his free life. His indulgence now is frankly more extreme, but Murdoc has an even greater sense of believing he earned that and he owes nothing (whether that’s completely true or not.) 

And that’s just touching on the ends of their “upbringing,” not the actual 18+ years that went into it. It goes without saying that Stu and Murdoc had very different home lives– Rachel and David Pot are suggested to be rather precious with Stu out of some probable guilt for his first head trauma, in complete contrast to Sebastian’s humiliation and neglect– but on top of that, what seems to be glossed over at times is how they grew up in very different regions at very different time periods. I’m far from an authority on this or on anything (as always I really suggest asking @elapsed-spiral if you want better information, don’t let the hiatus thing fool you, Danni’ll still talk about British Shit Innit) but I’m told the British school system Murdoc would’ve endured in the 60s and 70s was unremittingly bleak and damaging to a child’s development. Despite his immaturity and my feelings that their age difference isn’t really so pronounced, Murdoc is older than Stu and unfortunately he experienced a much colder and rougher school environment, and it’s tough to argue that didn’t have an effect. (Though on the flipside, Stu was in school during Section 28, a thing I’m also not an authority on. Go figure a working class and very closeted bisexual man in the 80s might internalize some homophobia! The go-go 80s aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.) It’s not exactly surprising that Murdoc, who grew up on the lowest end of working class, in council housing, in an unglamorous Northern town like Stoke with a neo-fascist brother and a neglectfully-abusive alcoholic father, would come away an emotionally repressed and embittered person. It’s almost a bit bold that Murdoc is as “flamboyant” as he is (even if it comes with a hefty side of toxic masculinity)– he could’ve become hateful in a more stony way, but instead he’s like a giddy-cruel showman out of spite. You can argue that Murdoc’s lack of support system results in him feeling much more unfettered. He has no one to thank for getting him out of that and no one he credits for getting him where is. He very much has the mentality of “I take what I can and do what I want, because the world owes me everything.” And in a way, I can see where that’d come from.

He’s wrong though. Because Stu’s there. And Stu owes Murdoc nothing.

I know I’m really running on here, and I think you probably already have a picture of what I see Stu’s upbringing and childhood as. Rachel Pot is the unsung best character in Gorillaz, Stu was quite coddled by his parents, and Stu admits to being largely unmotivated and rudderless. It’s notable that Stu is in fact also working class but he’s presented like he’s not, I think just as a result of looking a lot better in comparison to Murdoc and us Americans not fully knowing the details of the British class system as compared to ours. (I don’t want to condescend to you anon, you may be British and know all this a lot better than I do. But because I am American, what would be more American than assuming everyone’s American?) I would say Stu’s family places on the higher end of that though (again, council housing for Murdoc, Stu had a garden with what must’ve been a decently big tree for him to fall out of) and isn’t portrayed as struggling in the same way. His job at Norm’s seems more like something he does because he’s not allowed to sit in the house all day, and he likes messing with the keyboards and he likes having spending money because he’s too old for allowance, and girls he’s fooled around with occasionally pop in to his work and bring him a pastry from the Tesco Express she works at and they make out in her car. Stu comes away from Crawley with quite a few “tethers” that disallow him from feeling as “loose” as Murdoc– he has a good relationship with his parents, a handful of mates, probably a handful of girls he wasn’t on bad terms with, at least one who’d end up becoming his girlfriend. So why does he have some of the same “cruel showman” qualities as Murdoc? Why does his entitlement end up looking much the same? That’s all personal interpretation of course, but I’d say it’s because Murdoc drove a car into his face and stole an unspecified amount of time from his life. I’d say because he’s out of his parent’s house for the first time in his life, and he’s going full throttle into being this person now. I’d say that in one night, and many unconscious nights following it, Murdoc smashed that same embittered attitude into the front of Stu’s skull. To be clear, that isn’t writing off Stu’s faults on Murdoc; it isn’t to say Murdoc made him egotistical or promiscuous or immature. But the attitude that you are fucking owed something is really only an attitude they share because Murdoc gave Stu someone to spite where he didn’t have that before.

(I recognize this whole dynamic isn’t for everyone and I do get it, and for what it’s worth I think it’s totally correct to say Murdoc gave Stu all the best things in his life. He just also gave him the worst bits too. The reality is neither would be here without each other, for all the good and bad that implies. It’s true that Stu’s famous because of Murdoc, but it’s also true that Murdoc’s famous because of Stu. What a tangled web!)

I’m sorry, I’m so off the question now, I just love this stuff. So, personality! That’s unquestionably a factor, the answer to the nature vs nurture debate will always be a little bit of both. I think if you tallied up all of Stu and Murdoc’s traits, desires, and behaviors after they’ve been living together a few years, you’d find a longer list in the similarities column than the differences. The environmental influence doesn’t just stop at where you’re raised, I think the environment you live in and the people who inhabit it continue to have an impact on you pretty much throughout life; even if moving to a richer city doesn’t “change” you, it changes the way you look at things, understand things, respond to things. It just inherently does. Still, I recognize that’s my own characterization of them and if you just look at the characters in canon, you’d be hard pressed to say they seem like the same guy. There are things about them that are just innately different, some of it learned through their upbringing and some of it dictated by… the way they’re wired.

Which is a point I’m really hesitant to comment on too much, but– mental health. It probably doesn’t look the same between Stu and Murdoc. There are other blogs who will discuss in more depth their neurodivergent headcanons and I see nothing wrong with that, I don’t really think there is any case that can’t be made, but I’m not especially confident making those cases myself. What I’ll say is that I don’t necessarily read Stu as having any specific learning disorder, because I fear it’s a little… iffy to have so many jokes in canon about him being thick or being slow. I think it really is just that, even prior to the injuries I reckon Stu was “a bit thick.” Head trauma doesn’t help that, though. Lifelong migraines and impaired motor function came about from the brain damage, absolutely, and I do imagine he must’ve suffered some neural response slowing, but his “lower intelligence” I feel a little less comfortable casually ascribing to anything and more to just Stu being Stu. Murdoc is also a case to be careful with, but within phase 3 it seems fair to say Murdoc suffers a psychotic break and is dealing with some delusions. Dangerously, I kind of lean into thinking this isn’t something that “just happened” because of the events of El Mañana and Plastic Beach, and that Murdoc had perhaps needed to be on an anti-psychotic like lithium well before that point. Again, I don’t want to insensitively represent this so I try not to really put such a fine point on things, but… I’m a little inclined to think Murdoc went undiagnosed in his young life and still may be demonstrating some effects of that. So, y’know, make what you will of it, but there’s that.

Sorry I nattered on about this, I do really enjoy examining both characters. Jokes about the drugs and stuff aside, I’ve always felt that the biggest difference between Murdoc and Stu is that Murdoc is adaptable, and Stu is malleable. Where that stems from is probably a combination of all these things. Murdoc knows what he wants and has no loyalties, he’s been without a future, he does what he can to succeed because he’s already done what he can to survive; Stu doesn’t know what he wants and he does have “loyalties,” but he has no sense of purpose, and he’s easily nudged in the direction you need him to go. While he can be stubborn, just like Murdoc, he’s also more sincerely shaped by his experiences even later in life into multiple, sometimes disparate versions of himself– I might even wager that’s why Stu becomes such a contradictory character without any of the contradictions feeling inauthentic. The two of them “being what they need to be” is part of the reason they accomplished as much as they did. But it’s also hard to say that they really “held on” to each other through the years, or if they just melded together in parts.

[dylanobrienisbatman]

Rewatch: Episode 1x08, Day Trip

Some of our best commentary from our rewatch 

Why does Clarke mention never having ‘floated in the water’ in her little monologue? it seems weird. Like not, felt the breeze in her hair, or seen plants, or felt the grass on her feet? Bri got us thinking about this. 

Bellarke was a perfect ship and then Clarke went bonkers and ruined it all. 

We got strangely into the minutia this week. 

Bellamy sitting there staring at Lincoln, the GUILT in his face. god, we love our sad son. 

Why does Miller get that job, telling parents their kids died?

Bri just reminded us to mention how pretty s1 Bellamy is. Very important

Miller getting head butted is so fucking funny. 

Where did they get a camera, for that video chat?? 

Bri said probably the art supply store lol

Always all up in the Jonty feels during s1. 

We’re all so pumped for High Jonty

Shumway is the fucking worst. 

Octavia is such a petulant child, we love it. S1 Octavia gets to be a part of Pettykru. 

Her little “why do you even care, if i ruined your life”... man, siblings. 

Bellamy is such a grumpy boy. He needs to find a book and chill out. 

Elyse said he’s grumpy because there are no books. 

We love our Grumpy Boy™

Bellamy Blake, at it again with the iconic lines

Seeing Monty just makes us sad

EW RAVEN FINN SEX IS THIS EPISODE. 

Raven bby leave him you deserve so much better. 

Finn needs to stop being stressed about Clarke when his peRFECT GIRLFRIEND RAVEN REYES IS RIGHT THERE. 

Octavia asks Lincoln “its good right” when she giving him a drink. Babe.. Honey.. its WATER. he has definitely had it before. 

Elyse reminded us that she was never properly socialised. We will give her a pass. 

The line about Bellamy being a dick always makes me laugh, its so true. I love my dickhead son. 

A Necessary™ shot of Ricky Whittles Abs. 

Octavia taking responsibility for something? are we hallucinating? did WE ingest jobi nuts? 

Octavia being Petty again, but Raven is such an adult. 

Why are Raven and O always best friends in fics? like obviously no shade on any fic writer your stuff is always amazing everyone, but the show never really digs into that friendship, far as we can remember. They actually kind of actively dislike each other for a while.

I said i wanted to Vom about finn, and Elyse told me to drown him with it. So thats gross.

RAVEN GET AWAY FROM HIM YOU DESERVE BETTER. 

Clarke talking about the dirty bunker, such a princess

Bellamy is so grumpy about the blankets? like dude. Chill. 

He DOES chill, almost immediately, upon finding guns. the nerd. He’s like a kid on christmas. that smile is blinding. 

High Jonty is the best Jonty tbh. 

Monty is such a calm stoner. Just wants to hug the Earth. 

The camera angles used in this to show us that they’re all high is so cool. 

this is such an awesome episode all around. 

THE ANTI GROUNDER STICK. 

Octavia definitely only knows slang because her entire socialisation is a bunch of teenage criminals. 

Miller definitely doesn’t have siblings because if he did he would have never ever trusted those nuts Octavia gave him. His lack of suspicion is entirely because he doesn’t have a sister. 

INTENSE keysmashing over the bellarke gun shoulder touch. THROWN BY THE INTIMACY OR SOMETHING RIGHT?!?! 

They banter like an old married couple “we NEED to do this” “No we NEED to do that” lol. 

WHy couldn’t bellamy have a nice happy trip like Monty. poor sad boy. 

The difference in everyone’s trip was really awesome as a narrative choice

How is Clarke not MORE messed up after a year in solitary. 

okay we all love the ‘i can’t change the tide’ line, but i never noticed that when he comes into Finn and Raven’s tent, he starts with “Is the moon in here?” lmfao monty is an angel 

Raven making finn come out because everyone is so high is so funny. 

Clarke is so YOUNG. Like sometimes we all forget how young she was in the first season. Shes literally 17, season 1 doesn’t even go a whole month and in episode 1 she says she doesn’t turn 18 for another month. 

She just misses her dad, its so sad. 

They’re all just kids! Even Bellamy is only like 22/23 which is just about our age. 

Clarke being such a Teenger™ to her halucinated!Dad is so funny 

Okay but actually how old is Lincoln supposed to be? 

I have made Bri reevaluate the entirety of Linctavia. 

“The most beautiful broom, in a broom closet, of brooms” and then the kid just sort of hums at her. What a great Raven line. @the-most-beautiful-broom we miss you <3 

On first watch we were definitely all nervous that Lincoln wouldn’t get away. This is one of Finn’s few good moments. 

Elyse pointed out that Finn is like two separate characters, and Bails (no surprise) mentioned how they talk about that a lot in the @metastation podcast, about how they just sort of attribute random traits to Finn to fit his plot line. Go listen to the podcast, especially for s1. 

Jaha’s line “You want the peace of death” is so intense and well delivered. 

Bell saves Clarke, Clarke saves Bell, they save each other, they forgive each other, god s1 Bellarke is so alsdhfinsakldmjsdkjfh

Bullet to the neck Bell? *Jake Peralta Voice* Smort

Augh the forgiveness scene

Forgiveness... can you imagine. Hamilton references are always necesary. 

Bellamy is SO SAD AUGH. 

He just wants to be the man his mom raised him to be (our thoughts on aurora blake are... not so positive but its still super sad.) 

We all just wanted to cry because Bell is so so sad. 

Can they please ACTUALLY parallel the forgiveness moment in s6, and not this half assed shit they did at the end of s5? because thats not forgiveness. 

God these babies need a nap. 

Monty the Pine Cone Eater

“They’ll kill us” “Or Worse!” Okay, random kid... whats Worse? exactly? 

That synchronised Power Couple Strut™ and dropping of the guns, the epic power couple speech. Iconic.

Bellamy definitely made them practice this before they went in. “No clarke, you gotta say it like this”. He’s a Drama Hoe. We love our Drama Hoe. 

For real though, even with all the problems they have later, the way they actually write the Blake Siblings is so good. They feel like real siblings. There are a lot of shows that write siblings that you can just tell the writer doesn’t have siblings and didn’t ask anyone’s advice. But the Blakes have that dynamic of like “I’ll definitely kill you, but if anyone else says a bad word about you, I’ll kill THEM.” They have this petulant back and forth, but its always sort of underlined with this deep love. The writers know how to write a sibling relationship. Even when it becomes abusive and terrible later, that sort of weird dynamic is still there. Problematic, but the dynamic is well done. 

Finn is so high up on his own pedastal. Bellamy tortured Lincoln to SAVE YOU. How are you gonna shit all over him for it. How are you gonna question him like that. 

Clarke saying she trusts Bellamy is so lakdhjflsjhafkd;sa

Finn is such a fucking tool. 

The whole scene where Bellamy and Clarke talk to Jaha is so amazing

The scene where Diana kills shumway is intense. 

Kills: Bellamy: 1 Diana Sydnee: 1  Attempts:  Dax: 1 

“How many times did we talk about hating Finn” Tally: 6

Countdown till Raven meets Zeke: 6 years 6 months and 15 days, 56 episodes.

Times Bailey mentions the @metastation podcast (because she has a problem):  2

Times Octavia takes actual responsibility: 1 

How many times we called Octavia Sneaky: 5

Times Clarke’s Canon love interest is jealous of her relationship with Bellamy: 1

Countdown to Finn’s Death: 26 days, 13 Episodes  

 @granger--danger @raven-reyes-of-sunshine

[ghostmartyr]

SnK 99 Thoughts

This post brought to you by liberal stealing from The Mincing Mockingbird: Guide to Troubled Birds. Because why not.

If you don’t think the ending tagline couldn’t be greatly improved by the addition of Gurren Lagann’s narrator, you are wrong.

So if this month was meant to make me think that everyone in that audience doesn’t have a gigantic destruction flag planted squarely in their midst, well, I’m clearly getting all the wrong signals.

We’ve got significant people from a bunch of major governments come to call. The higher up Marley soldiers that the people who actually run Marley don’t like are chilling. The Warrior kidlets have great seats. The parents of former Warrior kidlets have great seats. There are reporters. There’s a grand reclassification of a lie to an audience ever ready to redirect their Eldian fears and hatred. The current Warriors have been awayed from the premises. People from the East Sea Clan exit before the production even gets started. Willy is manning the stage.

All I’m saying is that if something were to go horribly wrong and a collection of mangled bodies appeared in the place of the crowd, it could be done without causing severe problems for either side of the conflict that we’ve come to know. The most significant losses would be the successor kidlets, and when it comes to the timeframe likely to be covered by the immediate plot, that’s close to irrelevant.

Except as meaningful emotional trauma for the current Warriors (plus Falco), who have ever so conveniently been removed from the audience.

The tension in this chapter points to something exploding, and I... really don’t feel comfortable pointing to any one side as the cause.

In one corner, you have Willy going to pieces over exposing a truth that his family has kept secret for a hundred years. Arguably, that’s a great reason to feel nervous. In the presence of Suspicious Happenings, it becomes one more tally.

In the adjacent corner, you’ve got a prominent member of the East Sea Clan coming to say hello to Willy before his performance. Despite the nation having the most noted interest in not being friends with Marley in the past, Miss Kiyomi is a quality of guest who is free to enter the green room at will, and implies knowing exactly what Willy is up to, and considers some combination of his behavior brave.

Then immediately leaves before his show starts.

In yet another corner, which is actually the nosebleed section of the show, Magath is expecting reports on anything unusual, and absolutely no one is calling the sudden departure of every single present Warrior unusual. Or one of the East Sea Clan peeps leaving early. Or Reiner straight-up vanishing with a Warrior candidate.

In a corner that is actually another basement, Eren is destroying what’s left of Reiner’s stability. By far the easiest corner to make sense of, but sense making is not for the early portions of this post.

Meanwhile you’ve got one faction definitely up to some immediate shady business, because you can’t really say dropping people down a hole is the act of a friend. Unless you subscribe to the Itachi Uchiha school of friendship, in which case, A+.

All that combined leaves us with a terrified circus master, and every prominent piece of plot significance being rushed away from the stage. With three of the available four Marleyan Warriors being collected in holes. The only one not in a hole is closest to Magath, as well as the brother of public enemy number one.

If something were to go wrong, the only Titans not in holes and known to be in Marley are the War Hammer and the Beast.

What gets interesting is that Eren is undeniably the party responsible for Reiner being in a hole, yet the obvious Marley counters to Eren and everything he stands for do absolutely nothing about preventing more Titans from finding themselves in holes. The page where Magath asks for reports on anything unusual, even the smallest detail, is accompanied by Willy stress drinking, and followed directly by the isolation of their Warriors.

Not a single person from Marley finds the departure of their Titans from the production worth commenting on. Pieck and Zeke both have marks of hesitance at complying with their instructions, but absolutely no one on the side they’re supposed to be signed to expresses any concern.

Even though they’re expressly looking out for anything unusual.

I like the idea of Paradis folks continuing their love affair with basements, and I think it would be neat if they’re responsible for Galliard and Pieck’s situation just because we’d get to see Our Heroes in action for the first time in ages, but... no one in the Marley chain of command finds this weird?

Their most powerful weapons get carted off on the night of a declaration of war, and it’s not worth a comment?

Blaming Marley for everything is really easy most of the time, because they’re generally up to no good. In this case, the only thing that’s stopping me is Eren’s involvement. Yeah, no one raises any alarms when Pieck, Galliard, and Zeke make their exit, but there’s also been no one casting suspicious looks at Reiner’s absent seat.

It seems like a really easy thing to claim that whatever happens next, Marley wants their A-listers carefully out of the way, but that would include Reiner. If they are involved, not knowing where Reiner is would be a major concern; you don’t drop people down holes unless the next move is going to be dramatic, and as wonderful as improv is, a lot of great drama works best if you know where your cast is.

Which introduces another fun question: Do the powers that be know where Reiner is?

The baseball mitt from last chapter at least planted the seeds of possibility for communication between Eren and Zeke. If (and the strength of that if is still in question) they have been in contact, and Zeke knows what Eren’s plans are for Reiner, in theory, Marley knows where all the major players are.

Zeke is Magath’s golden boy. He’s also Eren’s brother. He’s in the unique position of having ties that could make him privy to both sides’ tactics here.

He is also, as previously mentioned, the only one not in a hole.

I have no idea whose plan is winning out here, but the sense I get is that there is some kind of “I know you know I know you know” hustling going on, and someone is planning to take advantage of the openings that the other side’s plan leaves.

Basically, the one thing that can be said for certain is that someone is plotting a thing. Too many pieces have been moved too deliberately.

You’d think pinning the blame for a war that hasn’t started yet on a person you’ve never met would be enough for one night, but where’s the fun in that.

...I guess I’m already close enough to that to dive right in, so yeah, in the non-conspiracy theory section, Marley still continues to be horrible!

Like. Let me see if I have this right.

Diet Reiss’ production is all about revealing the true story of the island’s origins. It did not come about purely through the strengths of the Tybur family and Helos, but by the grand design of Karl Fritz.

Karl moves a whole bunch of Eldians off to Paradis and quarantines them, leaving behind a threat that is a total lie, because he’s actually sworn to peace.

He’s the true hero of Marley’s liberation, and so deeply ashamed of what his people have done that he offers up complete surrender to any of Marley’s decisions involving his people. Because his people have no inherent right to life, and he has the right to offer their lives up as part of his personal atonement--though in the meantime, if Marley could hold off a bit on killing them until he’s dead, that would be super rad.

Essentially, continuing the theme of bad parenting, we enter the names of the fathers of modern society, because wow were you all about grand gestures that don’t mean a damn thing and screwing over lots of people because it was easier than fixing the base problems.

Following that, though Willy leaves that part of the story out, Marley proceeds to tarnish the good name of the one Eldian King who helped them for the next century. While reminding all the good little Eldian children that the island is pure evil, and they should do their very best to not be like that.

Yeah, the shocked looks on the kidlets’ faces are depressing.

And of course, the reason Willy is explaining that they’ve spent a hundred years lying about the island is because, hey, the island may have started out a totally chill utopia, but in recent years, the ~*evil*~ Eren Yeager has stolen the power keeping it that way, and now the island’s back to being a real threat that we’ve absolutely gotta do something about!

So enters the latest chapter in Marley being terrible.

This makes my head hurt.

“Surprise, King Fritz was the good guy all along, and we were lying about how dangerous the island was!

Except now we’re not lying and it’s back to being dangerous.

Burn the witch.”

It’s like the boy who cried wolf, only the boy is also a wolf, so are the poor sheep, and really, however it plays out, any peasants unfortunate enough to listen to the boy wolf’s warning are going to get eaten alive. As are the wolves standing on the wrong side of the property line.

The point is, I hope this story ends with Willy being disemboweled.

In other news, Annie’s dad qualifies as one of the better parents we’ve seen solely because he actually cares about his daughter being alive.

Seriously, Reiner’s mother is terrible. She’s so pleased for Bertolt’s father, dying with all of the comforts Marley has to offer because his son dies a noble death as a teenager, and tries to extend that compliment to Annie.

Lady, as far as you know, you’re talking about dead children that your own selfishness condemned. Your son is a basket case thanks to trying to make your life better while you were too much of a coward to do something about it yourself.

(It is more complicated than that. I am not in the mood to care.)

Just... what the heck. A parent caring about their child living should not be noteworthy. The fact that Mr. Leonhart’s honorary status means less to him than his child should be a normal thing, and it isn’t.

If it wouldn’t permanently break Reiner (save that for the things that actually are his fault), I’d be in favor of Karina being disemboweled as well. She’s the only one who’s gained anything out of Reiner’s mission, and she’s happy to take advantage of the spoils even though it’s ruined her kid.

Though to be fair, it’s entirely possible that she hasn’t paid Reiner enough attention to notice that.

Speaking of Reiner!

I do like the opening flashback, bringing the old man up again.

Annie and Bertolt can’t help but dwell on some of the unpleasantness they’ve seen and caused, but Reiner avoids thinking too deeply about it until it slams into him like the Armored Titan slams into walls.

Today, playing the role of the Armored Titan, we have Eren!

Playing the role of walls, the much acclaimed, ever loved, sanity of Reiner!

Yeah, that’ll go well.

Eren’s done his homework. He’s already injured, so restraints won’t stop him from transforming if he needs to, and the massive destruction that a transformation from either one will cause means that he can get his point across without violence getting in the way. If they fight properly, people will die, so play nice.

(For the record, unless he’s fallen off the deep end worse than anticipated, I don’t think he ever intends to harm the people he’s effectively taken hostage. Eren’s always cared about life. Removing that during a timeskip is cheating of the highest magnitude. More to the point, though, Eren’s chosen a threat that requires absolutely no follow through to be effective. Reiner cares about life, too. It’s pure psychological torment, but the only one hurt by it did sort of kill his mother and thousands of other people.)

Reiner’s expressions this chapter are a gift. He’s terrified out of his wits, confronted by a ghost whose memory put a gun in his mouth, and no part of that strain gets kid gloves.

My favorite part, though--well, if I’m honest, there are several favorite parts to this show.

The first one is Reiner’s response when Eren tells him that he’s here to do the same thing that Reiner did.

There’s a lot to be said about how Reiner deals with being a fundamentally moral person who has done a long string of terrible things.

The summary is, “Not well,” but this whole sequence is such a dang microcosm of why Reiner’s head ends up snapping.

He serves Marley. He does his best for them. He protects his home, his family, his comrades. It’s his duty, and everything outside of that isn’t something he needs to think about. He puts it best when he transforms on top of the wall. He doesn’t know what’s wrong or right, but he’s going to see his mission through to the end.

Except Reiner likes to hide his own moral complexities from himself.

He’ll go along with whatever Marley’s plan is. With distinction, even.

But the second Eren says that he’s going to do what Reiner did, there’s only one response. He’s shaky, scared, and horrified. Because what he did to Eren’s people is an abomination. Reiner can’t even grasp why someone would want to do something like what he did.

Eren understands Reiner’s choices better than he does.

He is not gentle about it, and he’s not kind, but Eren gets what Reiner’s lost in the storm of his own conscience.

“You guys were trying to save the world.”

I think somewhere in the last four years, Reiner forgot that he meant that justification. The things he’s done have practically destroyed him. There isn’t any apology or action that can make up for it. He’ll stick to his mission, because he’s a Warrior, but outside of that frame of reference, there is no escaping the horrors or guilt.

(So work really hard at sticking to that mindset.)

But when he first joins the military on Paradis, he states his intentions clearly.

He’s here to save humanity.

Whatever he’s done, and whatever will come after, he means that.

It just so happens that what comes after is so horrible that I don’t think he can bear to connect what he’s done with anything like good intentions.

Eren still can.

He spends the whole chapter sending Reiner to a place that he would very much kill himself to get out of, and he’s still the one who looks at Reiner, and the awful, horrible things Reiner has done to his life, and say that it was born of good intentions.

Reiner hasn’t had the luxury of that kind of understanding. Ever. He can’t get it from himself, because his heart or mind would break at even having the conversation. He’s not going to get it from his friends, because one’s dead and the other mostly hated him before he left her behind. All that he has is memories he can’t share, and guilt that no one around him could even begin to understand.

And Eren might not be okay with any of it, but he sees the one kernel of good that is torturing Reiner, and he acknowledges it. They’re both between a rock and a hard place, and they’re trying to save the world.

It’s a more generous description of what Reiner’s done than he would ever be able to offer himself, even believing it, and for a second, I think the fact that Eren sees that gives him a sliver of hope.

He can’t keep it, because Reiner is damaged beyond belief, but for those few moments, he has someone who understands the best of him.

Best ship or best ship?

Naturally, they’re both still on opposing sides, Eren has just been announced as the world’s Worst, and Falco is watching this all quietly screaming, but hey, something went sort of okay and people aren’t yet dead.

Tune in next month to see that changing.

Oh, wait, I don’t think I did proper justice to Falco’s experience.

There we go.

[hii-raeth]

A Warm Impression, a Naruto One-Shot

Summary:

Minato is only seventeen years old, and in no way prepared to face Konoha's legendary White Fang. Particularly not if it involves explaining that his five-year-old son got hurt during an innocent training exercise. Or, the one where Minato meet Sakumo and finds something unexpected. Unadulterated fluff and family feelings. Background MinaKushi.

Links: A03 | FF.net

Story under the cut:

For the first time in ages, Namikaze Minato was feeling nervous.

According to Jiraiya-sensei, visiting a student's parents wasn't that big of a deal. It was a formal visit at best, a sort of "hey, I'm sorry if I get your kid killed, but I'll do my best to stop that from happening," thing. That seemed plenty terrifying to Minato, and if he remembered correctly his own mother hadn't particularly appreciated that particular visit from Jiraiya, but Jiraiya's nonchalance had helped him calm his nerves a little.

Because the thing was, if Hatake Sakumo was anywhere near as terrifying as his five-year-old son (magnified by thirty odd years of fighting experience), Minato would rather be swallowed up by the sun than have to explain getting the kid injured.

Just one week of acquaintance was enough to inform him that little Hatake Kakashi was many things, but normal wasn't one of them. The adjectives evil, brilliant, and brat had first come to mind, but the evil part Minato had buried after watching the boy stop mid-training to pet a nearby dog.

The brat part was still firmly present.

Minato swallowed past the lump in his throat. At his side, Kakashi was looking perfectly harmless. He was small for his age, with large dark eyes and a frankly rather adorable face (though Minato had learned early on that commenting on said face was a bad idea). There was also the hair, which… Well, Minato could empathize.

As for the boy's character, well… That's where the problems began. Right now, as they strode through Konoha's streets, at a remarkable speed given that one half of their party barely reached past Minato's hips, Kakashi was pouting. The reason for his upset was also the reason Minato was upset: the little sling that kept his freshly injured arm tucked against his chest.

The boy had gotten over the shock of the fall pretty quickly, and had also decided that the brand-new experience of feeling pain was "pointless, really", after which he had come to the conclusion that the only thing left to do was to be disappointed in his body's tendency to break when strained.

Trying to explain to him that this was a natural thing that happened to everyone, and he really couldn't blame himself, had just resulted in a deeper frown.

Which, for just a moment, had made Minato wonder whether the boy had other reasons to be angry. A disappointed parent, perhaps?

Hatake Sakumo, Jiraiya-sensei had said, was a little bit mad. Only in the good sense, of course; he was the kind of mad you'd want at your back. It was supposed to be reassuring, but it didn't really help.

Neither did Kushina's refusal to explain how Sakumo had once tested her and her genin team (in a way that involved dogs,  an inexplicable amount of yarn, and some kind of romance novel belonging to Sakumo's wife; how exactly that constituted a good genin test, Minato wasn't sure, but the horrified look on Kushina's face lingered). She'd laughed at him this morning, when he'd asked, and given him one of those affectionate looks she liked to give him when she thought he was being particularly stupid.

"Sakumo-sensei is a good egg. He won't eat you alive, so long as you behave," she'd said.

They hadn't exactly covered what the man might do in case of child-related emergency, though.

"Is it much further?" He asked Kakashi.

The boy looked up from where he'd been staring at the street to kick at every nearby pebble. "It's near the wall, next to the Koi Park. Why, are you getting tired?" The last he said in a particularly challenging tone, as though Minato was the injured five-year-old who'd just gone through chakra surgery.

Minato gave him an awkward smile and decided the best step forward was to just ignore any and all aggravating remarks. "Are you sure your dad will be home yet?"

Kakashi nodded. His fringe had a habit of slipping in front of his eyes whenever he did, and he wiped at it impatiently with his good hand. "He came back last night, from his mission. It was a big mission," he added, peering up at Minato with calculating eyes to see if his response was appropriately impressed.

"I bet he aced it," Minato said obligingly.

The frown finally cleared up a little. "Of course. He always does," the boy said, with the kind of surety only a child who has never been disappointed by their parent could possess.

Another tally for the 'Hatake Sakumo is probably, most likely, indubitably, a Doting Father' camp. Which, under any other circumstances, would have pleased Minato greatly. As far as he could tell, Kakashi didn't have a lot of friends his own age, but at least he had his father in his corner.

For beating up inexperienced seventeen-year-old jonin sensei's, for example. There were times when being the youngest jonin sensei in the village was fun, and then there were times when it just made him feel very, very small. Such as when he had to tell a living legend that his only child had been injured while under Minato's supervision.

Not that it had actually been Minato's fault, but he couldn't be sure Kakashi wouldn't openly blame him. The boy was already sneakier than most shinobi ever managed to become.

A small hand grabbed his own, and he looked down startled. Kakashi was pointing at a lane that disappeared into the park. "I know a shortcut," the boy said, and dragged him along.

At some point during this day, Minato would surely have to accept his certain doom, but this wasn't it. He swallowed again, and wondered why his mouth felt so dry. For all he knew, Sakumo was a perfectly reasonable human being who would understand it hadn't been anyone's fault at all. Except of course, but Sakumo was an experienced Konoha jonin, and all experienced Konoha jonin were certifiably insane. Particularly those of Jiraiya-sensei's generation, which Sakumo more or less was, give or take a few years.

Kakashi led him to a quieter section of the park, and then past a series of huge oak trees which likely dated back to Shodaime's time. Behind it, just past the tree line, sat a middling sized house built in the traditional style, with a porch out front and a small stone garden. There was a large dog on the porch, which gave away its owner's identity.

"Hime!" Kakashi sighed, and smiled for the first time since his accident. He stretched out his healthy arm and the dog came running. She was a large mutt of some sort, with the fluffy muscular body of an Akita, and the broad, intelligent face of a shepherd. Her coat was thick and white, with creamy yellow and slight gray mixed through in pale patterns.

Judging by the clear intelligence in her eyes, she was a summons, but for Kakashi she was perfectly willing to play the big, fluffy pet who tried to lick his face and bowl him over. The boy was practically sitting on her back before she suddenly whined and sniffed at his injured arm. Worse still, she followed it up with an accusing look aimed at Minato.

Kakashi made an exasperated groaning sound that made him sound more like an annoyed teenager than someone barely out of toddlerhood, and pushed away from the dog to go to the porch. "I'm fine!"

Inside the house, a large chakra signature stirred. It felt a lot like Kakashi's, but where Kakashi's was adorably small and prickly (if one ignored the fact that he had a developed signature at all, which was unheard of at his age), Hatake Sakumo's was huge and looming.

Minato pulled his shoulder blades together and tried not to let his own chakra fire up in instinctive defense. Sakumo's chakra was big, yes, but it had the calm, slow feeling of someone who was still waking up.

He came home last night, huh? This had probably been the only moment in the day Sakumo had to catch up on some sleep. Minato's vaguely guilty feeling grew stronger.

Kakashi led him up the porch and into the hallway, where Minato helped him take off his boots. By then, Sakumo's chakra was neatly pushed down and back into shape, as most top-level shinobi did while in company.

"Is that my son? Are you home already?" A deep voice said, and then the man Minato had been dreading for the last two hours appeared around the corner wearing only sweatpants and an old tank top. His hair was still down, but as he spoke he pulled it up into a loose tail.

"Dad. I broke my arm," Kakashi said promptly.

Sakumo froze mid-movement, one hand still up and in his hair, the other hanging awkwardly next to his head. "Broke it?" Sakumo repeated, and glanced from his son to the dog and back.

"He didn't tell me it could do that," Kakashi said, and pointed directly at Minato.

If there was ever a time Minato had wished he could use earth style to dig himself a neat little hole, this was it. He stood frozen on the spot as both dog and man turned to look at him. If Kakashi had been Tsunade's or Kushina's child, they'd probably have beaten him until he cried. If he'd been Sandaime's, Minato would probably have been subjected to the most disappointed look known to man.

"Oh, is that so? I seem to remember telling you bones can break, myself," Hatake Sakumo said, putting his hands in his side and looking down at his boy. After a moment he smiled, and then bent through his knees to inspect the offending arm. "Did it hurt very much?" At his side, the dog pawed at Sakumo's thigh and made a keening sound.

Minato held his breath. That... Was not the response he had expected.

As he watched, Sakumo touched his son's shoulders with big, reassuring hands, and brushed a thumb across the boy's cheek. "Did you try that double corkscrew with the doton jutsu again?" He asked calmly.

Kakashi turned his head to avoid his father's case abruptly. "No," he said defensively.

Sakumo raised his eyebrows lightly. "Kakashi..."

There was the disappointed look Minato had have been expecting, aimed full-force at the little boy.

Kakashi fidgeted. His lower lip wobbled a little, and then he suddenly nodded.

Sakumo sighed with what Minato suspected was just a bit of theatricality, and shook his head in mock disappointment. "I told you to wait until you were bigger. What am I to do with you?"

Kakashi bent his head far enough that his chin nearly touched his chest. "I'm sorry," he said, in the smallest voice Minato had ever heard him use.

Sakumo sighed again. "Thank you. I'm glad you're okay. Now, go inside and greet your mother."

Kakashi nodded frantically and ran past his father, his bare feet padding quickly across the wooden floor.

Sakumo righted himself and offered Minato a tired little smile. Minato could suddenly see the clear exhaustion in the line of his shoulders, and the heaviness of his eyes. "Quite the handful, isn't he?" Sakumo said.

Minato's spine went rigid. He felt his seventeen years of age very keenly all of a sudden. Things had been perfectly all right when Sakumo's attention has been focused on the boy, but now it was focused on him. Here Minato was, in the White Fang's own home, speaking to the living legend himself. "Yes sir, definitely sir," he blurted out.

Sakumo laughed. "Namikaze Minato-kun, isn't it? Don't worry, I know my son. He's very good at getting himself into trouble. I take it you took him to see a medic?"

Minato slowly unfroze. Sakumo… Didn't blame him? "The hospital. The medics said there was a small fraction into his ulna bone, but she healed it on the spot… Young bones fuse easily, she said," he trailed off.

Sakumo nodded knowingly. "A week's rest, I take it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Please, call me Sakumo. Or Sakumo-san, if you insist on being so formal," Sakumo said, smiling, and beckoned him into the living room.

It was a rather nice room, as traditional as the outside of the house, but cozy and well cared for. It was the kind of house that was obviously filled with love. And, as it turned out, a surprising amount of books, scattered across the room in piles and stacks and unsorted bookcases.

Kakashi was sitting on his knees in front of a small shrine to the left, a butsudan, head bowed reverently. Aside from the usual objects found on a shrine of that kind, it held a framed photograph of a dark-haired woman. Before Minato could see it properly, Kakashi had already gotten off his knees and was running towards the kitchen, probably to get something to eat.

Minato's eyes automatically returned to the picture, as though drawn by magnets. The woman was beautiful, with familiar sleepy gray eyes and a birthmark on her cheek, although her nose looked like it had been broken at some point. More than anything, she looked happy, and far too young to be on top of a shrine.

When Minato looked away, he caught Sakumo giving him a sad smile. Renewed guilt shot through him. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to –"

"it's okay, I don't mind. I wasn't sure whether you'd been told, but..." One corner of Sakumo's mouth tilted up, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. He walked over to the shrine and brushed the back of his knuckles across the frame. "Four years ago, now. I try to keep the memory of her alive for him, but sometimes I think Kakashi doesn't quite understand."

"I'm sorry," Minato said again, more genuinely this time.

Sakumo shrugged. "I'll tell him more when he gets older. For now, she'll just be a warm impression in the house to him. Maybe that's enough." He smiled tightly and straightened up. "Speaking of warm impressions, I didn't mean to be so gloomy. Would you like to stay for dinner tonight? I would like to get to know you myself, after my son and Kushina have talked about you so much."

Minato went bright red. He stumbled over the words. "I – I'd be honored, thank you. Wait, they did?"

Some of the sadness left Sakumo's eyes as he laughed. "Neither of them will admit it to you, but you've left quite the impression. I've already caught Kakashi pretending to use that Rasengan of yours once. I'd quite like to see it myself."

The White Fang of Konoha wanted to see his brand-new jutsu. Minato felt a bit faint. "I could show you after dinner," he suggested weakly.

Sakumo laughed again and padded Minato's shoulder with enough force to make him wobble. In the kitchen, something crashed, and the distinct scent of things burning drifted in. Sakumo's face turned almost comically. "Kakashi – what did I tell you about playing with the stove?!?" He shouted, and legged towards the kitchen.

Minato smiled faintly as he watched him go. Kakashi was a little weird, yes, but also adorable and promising and all kinds of interesting. His father, despite his fierce reputation, no longer felt like a cold and terrifying stranger.

Perhaps the dinner would be a little bit awkward, and maybe showing off his new jutsu afterwards was a bit much, but as Minato watched Sakumo pluck his son off of the countertop as the dog nipped around his knees, he had a feeling he wouldn't mind much.

His gaze drifted back towards the woman on the shrine, and it seemed to him her eyes suddenly held an amused sparkle. A warm impression? Yes. I understand.

  AN:

So this is completely cheesy and self-indulgent, but it was terribly fun to write these three being happy for once. If you like this, please let me know with a comment!

Notes:

This is loosely set in the Uneasy Lies the Head/Fool's Gold 'verse, check out my profile to find it!

I aged up Minato by two years for the sake of realism. Well, relative realism anyway.

The idea that Kushina was Sakumo student comes from Silvershine's brilliant The Girl From Whirlpool. Go check that story out if you haven't already! Sakumo's characterization was partially inspired by Blackkat's, whose Sakumo is wonderful and warm and good.

A butsudan is part of Japanese buddhist culture. I'm not sure Kakashi would be actively religious, but I wanted to add a cultural element here. Try looking it up!

[deehollowaywrites]

run for the Roses

The horse nerds descend on Louisville.

Fillies & Lilies Ball, Equine Foundation. Friday, May 7, 9:06PM.

“You’re smirking,” Adair said, and raised her glass to me, a half-joking salute. The pinot noir inside just about matched her burgundy gown, both shades of red working a marvel on her deep brown skin. She glanced around the airy, open space of the Equine Foundation’s first floor, gaze traveling over all of her colleagues and a fair chunk of mine. “That’s the stabbing smirk, so who’s about to get murdered? Let me guess. Connelly?”

“Marty Connelly done got murdered,” I said. “If you’ll recall race four this afternoon.” I sipped my own cocktail, some overdone themed concoction with way too much pineapple juice and not enough Myers, and slipped my arm through hers. “Just perusing the competition.”

“Do you have competition?” another voice interjected, and part of that competition materialized, Tallis Ansah packing a gin and tonic and a huge grin. She was even shorter than me, all freckled brown skin and drastic biceps, but her afro and platform creepers added a couple of inches. “Like, come on, Felix. This far in, you don’t have to be modest.”

“At any rate,” Adair observed, “the competition or otherwise only matters on the track, right, babe?”

“You know that’s not right.” I nodded to where a couple of jocks imported from California for the big country doin’s were making mistakes at the bar. “McClintock’s on his third beer. Think he’ll be fit to ride tomorrow? I wouldn’t bet on him.”

“You should try to relax,” Adair told the top of my head, her lips teasing loose strands of hair. I leaned into her arm, the warmth of her beneath the silky fabric of her dress. It was tempting, the idea of booking it out of here early with her--stealing my mother’s limo and convincing the driver to take us all the way home to Lexington. “You can’t ride a race ‘til you’re on the horse. Have another drink.”

“Not in the slightest.” That was more responsible than I felt like being, but my head--not to mention my uncle--would thank me tomorrow. “Tallis, what do you think?”

“About?” she piped. The gin in her glass didn’t seem to have budged. Now that I thought about it, she didn’t drink much at all, and maybe she was toting the highball around for show. The younger generation was turning out so low-key it grated. “I don’t think about Kelly McClintock if I don’t have to, you know, he’s not really on my radar. California’s whatever. How many jocks even ride Santa Anita? You know? Like you hear the Pacific Classic just got run and it’s like, who’s the jock, but then you remember there’s McClintock and, like--”

The soft curve of Adair’s side quivered beneath my hand. Tallis was a hoot once you got her going, and that was easy to do. This was her second time going under the Spires on the first Saturday in May and she seemed as excited as she had the year before, just as excited and even more shredded than the last time I’d seen her--a month ago in Miami, flexing all the big-name runners like her livelihood depended on it, which it did. I was glad to have her in Louisville; her penchant for zoot-suit formalwear and unapologetic lady-killing game took some of the heat off me.

“Your odds,” I said, and snickered when McClintock swerved away from the bar, his arm around one of the Louisville bug girls’ shoulders. We weren’t even at the edgy shindig--Fillies and Lilies was strictly for the fascinator crowd, all class and upper-crust at the Equine Foundation’s annual Derby fundraiser--but California jocks could always be counted on to find the party. “How you like ‘em?”

“Odds,” Tallis repeated, her attention on something across the room. I squinted past my parents with a couple of Ohio breeders and Adair’s boss talking to a Lexington news anchor. There was the Hills’ New York trainer, Gwen Taylor… and her daughter. Adair pinched my hip, so I knew we’d had the same thought. Tallis laughed suddenly and stared into her gin. “I like them. I don’t even think about them. If anybody should be thinking about their odds, like, it’s my chill-free homeboy, you know?”

She had a point. No one had expected the second of my uncle’s two Derby runners to turn up with eight-to-five, not a piece of pace-setting speed like Suitcase City. The other of Jimmy’s options--my mount--had followed the more usual trajectory of wow in the autumn, act up in the winter, return to form in the spring. I wasn’t worried… except Joel Canseco knew how to work speed, maybe even better than I did, and Suitcase City’s Arkansas Derby win had rewritten the leaderboard barely two weeks before the main event.

Canseco and Ben Goldfarb were draped across a couple of barstools, nothing between them but tuxes and Miami tans. I was pretty sure they hadn’t looked at anyone but each other since walking in.

“You run with those beach babies,” I said to Tallis, and choked down the rest of my drink. It tasted like a dental bill. “Tell Goldfarb to keep his boyfriend in line.”

Tallis cackled, laughing so hard curls bounced from beneath her porkpie hat and tumbled across her forehead. “Man, I can’t tell Benny shit. Not since he won his Eclipse last year, I mean, talk about high-and-mighty, you’d think nobody ever won one before.” She paused, grinning, her eyes on Jessa Taylor again. “And nobody tells Joelito shit.”

I considered that. Adair’s hand on my hip was getting distracting, and the air in the museum was getting stuffy, and I kind of wanted to be out of there. To be smoking on the patio, maybe, or jammed against a cab’s backseat with Adair’s fingers on my thigh. Somewhere I could mull over the next day and chill, get away from my family, reassure Adair that yes, this was the last one, after this year it was training and none of the hairy stuff, more reliable money, less bodily damage.

“Tallis, where’s your agent?”

Her expression went sideways. “What?”

“Where’s Eddy? If anyone’s gonna remind Canseco not to get ahead of himself--”

“I’m not sure,” she said, totally shifty. “I feel like he went to the bathroom? But that was a while ago. I think he said maybe--like, it’s his job to keep an eye on me, you know, not the other way around. I am not my agent’s keeper.”

“I don’t see Phil either,” Adair said serenely. She smiled at Tallis and then at me, the dimple beneath her mouth deepening. “Don’t look for divine intervention tonight, Felix.”

“You know,” Tallis said, “it’s like, they never go out by themselves. They always got Maribel with them, so I mean…”

“Those two and bathrooms.” I snorted. Parenthood hadn’t cramped Eddy’s style in any meaningful way. “Well, whatever. You don’t need to hang out with the boring olds, Tallis. Go talk to your girl.”

Tallis looked at me, and then at Adair, and her mouth opened like she was going to deny that the only thing she’d noticed all night was Gwen Taylor’s daughter in that outrageous V-neck mini-dress, and then she was gone so fast there might as well have been a cloud of cartoon dust behind her.

Adair’s chuckle pressed her rack more firmly into my shoulder, not that I had any complaints. She gazed down at me, her head angled against the overhead lights so that it looked like she wore a halo atop her buzz cut. “I can’t blame her. Or Eddy and Phil. Tallis is right--Mari’s such a handful now, they have to grab it while they can.” The hand on my hip slid sideways, light and teasing across the low back of my dress, and I shivered despite the overheated room. “Maybe I should grab you while I can.”

Maybe she should. Maybe her brand of Derby luck was exactly what the night called for, and maybe I didn’t give a shit if my mother wanted me to stick around and make nice a little longer. Maybe twenty-nine was too old to hook up in bathrooms or cars, and maybe our bed was calling my name more loudly than any of the press or trainers or track stewards in the museum tonight.

I turned into her arms, my voice coming out muffled against her throat. “You can always grab me.” She made a little questioning noise, and I nodded. “Here or there or everywhere. Long Island. Saratoga. Lexington.”

“Lexington,” she murmured, and I felt her smile, her lips on my forehead. She knew what I meant--she believed me when I said it was time--and right now I believed it too. Whether or not there were roses waiting for me tomorrow, Adair was waiting and had been, and soon it would be time to go home.

Jockeys’ room, Churchill Downs. Saturday, May 8, 3:15PM.

James Hamilton, Junior was the kind of southern white boy who thought he had swagger but was actually a barrel of nerve endings when you got down to brass tacks. He’d come and talked to me about Sacredheart about four times since we’d jogged the colt yesterday morning, even though there were still three hours ‘til the Derby ran. Around the third grilling, I decided it wasn’t the colt he was worried about. It was me.

“It’s like he doesn’t like me, but how could he not? Everyone likes me.” Joel blinked as though my logic was unconvincing. “If he didn’t, shit, he’s got the entire eastern seaboard’s worth of jockeys to choose from.”

“If it makes you feel better, I know his dad doesn’t like me,” Joel said, which was flat-out the stupidest thing I’d heard all week, and you heard a lot of dumb shit in Kentucky during Derby season. “I don’t know why you care whether trainers like you. What matters is that they ride you.”

His logic, like always, was impeccable.

He patted my knee carefully--I’d strained something or other last weekend at Keeneland--and nodded past me. “Guess it runs in the family. If I didn’t know better I’d think Hamilton was eyefucking me.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see Felix Hamilton staring at both of us from beneath her tangle of blond hair. She and I were vying for moptop supreme today, her bangs like straw and my curls frizzing in the heat. When I blew her a kiss, she grinned and flipped me off. I looked at Joel again, sticking my tongue out. “How do you know she isn’t?”

“Sure.” His dark eyes got the extra-serious squint they made when he was about to laugh. “She’s too old for me.”

“May-December never killed anyone.” I bumped my good knee against his. “Or is there another issue?”

“I have to go,” he said, his voice quiet beneath the rumble of the jocks’ room. Somewhere someone was singing the University of Kentucky fight song, and someone else had just dropped a rack of weights. He sat there for another minute, his hand on my leg and his gaze somewhere around my mouth, and I wished we had time--to go make out in the hall between the lockers and the clerk of scales, to go over our books together, to just sit. I was always wishing for time lately.

“I know you do,” I said. “Every fuckin’ race, child. Aren’t you perfect?”

“Yep,” Joel said, smiling a little, and then he was gone, leaving me with a view of his legs in pristine white breeches and the stretch of muscle in his shoulders as he pulled on a set of Long Hills silks. Before I could get comfortable watching him, someone grabbed the chair he’d vacated.

“Benny. How’s your boy?”

I batted my eyes at Eddy Ramón, more out of habit than anything else, but Joel and I had agreed that fatherhood suited him spectacularly. We were waiting with bated breath for the day he finally turned into a silver fox. “How is he? He’s fine. He’s great. Look at him, he’s never been happier.”

We looked at Joel, now talking to his agent and one of Gwen Taylor’s assistants. Bits of fast Spanish floated in and out of my ears. Eddy propped his feet on the bench across from us and switched his glance to me. “Claro. How are you?”

“I was made for this,” I said. “What, are you my guru? Go hype up your own jock.”

“Tallis has been here before,” he said, scratching at his beard. “You two ain’t.”

I wanted to keep sassing him, but he wasn’t wrong. Sure, between the two of us Joel and I had won over a thousand races, but none of them was this race. The Kentucky Derby was a race in function only. Everything else about it was singular, a horse-headed hydra wearing the finest millinery and drunk off its ass. I had never encountered this many fans in one place, or the amount of money being wagered, or the fervency with which people online promised to tear me a new asshole if I didn’t ride their preferred horse the way they wanted.

“Fine. You want to soothe my poor nerves, tell me what the hell’s up with your cousin.”

“My cousin,” Eddy repeated, and then chuckled when I pointed to the simulcast screens, where James Hamilton was talking with his assistant. “Jamie’s not blood.”

“You’re all basically related,” I said, restraining a mean crack about bluegrass breeding. “This week’s been fine and now he’s jumpy? He keeps telling me the track’s playing fast. Everyone on the planet knows the track is playing fast. The only thing Bob Costas knows is the track is playing fast.”

Eddy watched me calmly, arms folded across his chest. Every time I saw him he seemed to have another tattoo, the brown skin of his arms disappearing under colorful ink. I looked at Joel again, sudden homesickness wrenching my stomach. He’d kept mentioning tattoos lately, that he wanted one but didn’t know what, and all I wanted right then was to be home in Miami with him, figuring it out. Maybe we’d go see my friend Dario’s new boyfriend at the ink shop in Wynwood. Maybe I’d tease Joel into getting my name in a heart on his bicep.

“It might be that,” Eddy said, and inclined his head when I glared at him. “I don’t mean that, chico. I mean the two of you riding against each other--I never had to deal with that and Felix hated it, but you two.” He studied me for a minute, and when he spoke again his voice was lower, serious. “Sometimes people get ideas, ya sabes, they wonder about your edge.”

“It’s the Kentucky Derby,” I said. “My granny could be out there riding to beat me, blessed be her memory, and I’d pull every trick in the book to win.”

“Jamie don’t need a reason to be jumpy. I’m just providing one you might’ve encountered before.”

“You’re lucky you’re pretty.” It struck me funny sometimes, that I could talk to him like that--him, still one of the most talented riders in US history. But the past couple of years Joel and I had been traveling, and travel was the great equalizer, as far as racing went. You met everyone, every one of your heroes still alive, and sometimes they turned into friends. “Man, how many more times do we have to prove we’re all in?”

Eddy smiled. “It’s racing, Ben. You never stop proving it.”

He wasn’t wrong about that, either. Him and Joel, the two people other than my dad most likely to be on-point at all times. I got up and rummaged in my locker for deodorant. It was almost time to suit up for my next ride. “You sure are getting wise in your old age.”

“Good to hear someone thinks so,” he said. His smile went to the door, where Tallis was leaving with her gear for the scales. “All the women in my life like to remind me of my foolishness on the regular.”

I thought about that, about him and his wife at the Equine Foundation’s party the night before, about how Iona Hamilton still fawned over him, how Felix talked about him like he’d been the first person to ever win a horse race and the text Tallis had sent me when she’d landed Eddy’s book-hustling skills. “Please. You could walk up to Gwen Taylor right now and tell her you wanted a mount and she’d roll out a red carpet.” I kicked his ankle. “You’d probably even weigh in ok.”

He patted his stomach, which still looked plenty flat to me. “I’ll stick to handing out fortune cookies, thanks.”

“Better for all of us,” I said, my voice muffled through fabric as I pulled on my Three Creeks silks. “A Derby without you in it’s a Derby the rest of us have a shot at winning.”

“Go ride,” Eddy said, face straight. “Don’t take any lip off James. Also, in case you didn’t notice, the track’s playing fast.”

I heard him laugh as I went to grab my saddle, but I was grinning too. It was Derby Day and it was the Downs and Joel was out there winning a race right now according to the TV screens, and in three hours either of us might be winning, but the important thing was that we were doing it together. This, all of it, everything we’d ever wanted, and the rest of the industry--the Hamiltons or anyone else--could do with that whatever they wanted.

Main track, Churchill Downs. Saturday, May 8, 6:40PM.

This was definitely the queerest post parade I’d ever been in.

I had a theory about racing where non-straight jockeys were concerned, namely, we were way better at it. This year’s Derby field was beyond stacked, like, to the point where I felt kinda honored just to be included. Eight Eclipse-winning riders, a couple of us repeats, and half of us so gay we should’ve been wearing rainbow silks. One of us was going to murder it. The odds were in our favor.

I wondered when somebody would, in fact, design me some rainbow silks. Whoever that owner turned out to be, I’d be knocking their door down for a mount. I supposed the only thing was to wait for Felix to switch over from riding and inherit the farm, but it was weird to imagine Honeycomb Hills silks as anything other than green and gold. Iona would have a coronary and die before that ever happened, regardless of whose name was on the Jockey Club paperwork.

“Benny,” I called to Ben, a few feet behind me and gossiping with his lead pony’s rider. “Hey, you ever see those pictures of beehives where, like, you know, the ones where the bees got into an M&Ms factory or whatever?”

“The fuck you on about, Tally Ho?”

“Never mind.” I giggled and brushed a hand over my silks, the green and gold that was almost Hills official but not quite, Long Hills diamonds instead of honeycomb. “Tell you later.”

“You better concentrate,” he hollered at my back. “Get your head on the dirt instead of the clouds, babe.”

“Uh-huh,” I muttered, and twisted my reins into a cross as my colt pranced a little beneath me. It wasn’t trash talk, not really, not the way some of the other guys threw it around. Ben and I had been trading off all weekend, second in the Eight Belles for him and third in the Oaks for me, first in the Pat Day for him and second in the Distaff Turf for me, third in the Humana Distaff for him and first in the Woodford Reserve for me. I wondered how pissed Joel was--but then, he’d destroyed the Oaks and the Alysheba on Friday, and won the Churchill Downs today by thirteen lengths, the motherfucker, he really had no reason to be anything but proud, of himself or his boy.

It was sweet, the way his face would look if Ben won the whole shebang about ten minutes from now. He might even smile.

Ben had a fair chance of doing it, I was generously willing to admit, even if Jessa had refused to countenance anything but me glorious and triumphant the night before. She could be real convincing when she wanted to be. By the time she’d slipped out of my hotel room I half-believed I’d already won the Roses. Seeing her was almost as good, whether we were in Louisville or on Long Island. It was always funny to hear her hold forth on horse racing. She started off haughty and holier-than-thou, reminding me of things I already knew, and then she’d end up practically handicapping, betraying that she was always listening when Gwen or I talked, that she knew more about our side of the sport than she probably wanted, that she had opinions about the likely turn-out despite herself.

Sacredheart, she’d said last night, her head propped on her hand and the rest of her spread out beneath my sheets, warm and bare, one leg wound through mine. He never breaks well.

Sacredheart, Ben’s colt, didn’t like the gate--but Ben was good with horses like that, it was sort of his thing, finessing little weirdos who’d managed to make it to three years old without getting used to the big snap-jawed steel monster. I’d been full-on goggling the first time I saw him ride, because I’d known him before that, when he was still stuck in high school and doing grunt work at Gulfstream, scrawny and big-haired--kinda the Jewish-boy version of me, actually--and his personality made me think he’d turn out sort of flashy. Speed freaks, colts with attitude and diva fillies, that kind of thing. Instead he kept turning up with really smart turf rides and patience for horses who needed it, and his grumpy boyfriend was the show-off.

“Quit thinking about it, Tallis!” someone yelled, and I glanced toward the fence. My agent was standing there, forearms propped on the rail and his daughter perched on his shoulders. Phil was next to them, one hand braced on her giant hat and the other waving at me. She looked pretty damn fine, not that I was looking. Felix’s girlfriend was with them, a full head taller than either of them, her beautiful smile aimed right at me. Eddy grinned and called again, “No more time for thinking, mija.”

It was what he always told me, and even though he clearly knew what he was talking about--I mean, hombre was a living legend, and my over-eager ass was lucky to have him--the advice never worked. I couldn’t shut my brain off until the gate opened. I had to run over the odds, the likelies and the longshots, everything I knew about every jock, until the point where thinking became dangerous.

We weren’t there yet. There was plenty of time left for my brain to do what it did best.

The lead ponies peeled off and we picked up into a jog. Sacredheart looked good when he and Ben loped past; Suitcase City, Joel’s baby girl, looked even better. If I was worried about anyone in the field it was them, because Joel had that irritating habit of winning when he wasn’t supposed to, when there should’ve been no way. Canseco and Suitcase City, I counted, Goldfarb and Sacredheart, Hamilton and Fly Pelican, Mensah and Elfshot, Rodowsky and Bluegrass Baby, on and on, twenty of the best runners in the country. Bays and grays and chestnuts, guys I’d never ridden with before and one woman whose style I knew better than my own, all lining up to try and beat the hide off my colt.

“We’ll see,” I told Cain Distilled, and patted his dappled neck as we lined up for the post.

Main track, Churchill Downs. Saturday, May 8. 6:52PM.

Sometimes speed didn’t show up.

The five-sixteenths pole popped up on my periphery and it was like someone had punched a panic button. My brain was a mess, flashing through what Jimmy Hamilton and I had talked about, and then what I’d privately pieced together in case what the trainer wanted didn’t materialize. None of it fit; my first Kentucky Derby, and I was about to embarrass myself, the filly, one of the best trainers in the world, the richest woman in Kentucky, and probably my entire family tree.

Maybe this would be the thing to finally put shame on Ben’s face.

People were going to laugh, I could tell. The comments sections were writing themselves. Pacesetter forgot to leave the gate. Keep fillies where they belong… the breeding shed. So on and so forth. What had any of us been thinking? I shoved that away and focused on Suitcase City. I might not have been Jimmy Hamilton’s favorite person, but he was rarely wrong about horses. If he wanted another Derby filly and thought Suitcase City was the golden ticket, I wasn’t going to the one to prove him wrong.

The rest of the field wanted me to, though.

While I’d been freaking, squeezing a lemon that didn’t have any juice, Felix had crept up on me. She knew what she was doing, and my filly would’ve been better off with her as a rider. Let her have her third Derby win, second distaff duo, by now we were all used to Hills horses and Hills people populating the winners’ circle. It felt like she’d been glaring at me since the Fountain of Youth in February, when Suitcase City had wired the field on a very sloppy day at Gulfstream. Today wasn’t sloppy--but Arkansas Derby Day had been as dry as Jimmy’s sense of humor. His niece was tucked in outside, rock-steady, no sign of doing anything but flanking us like a police escort. She didn’t even glance at me, and Fly Pelican was an automaton, forelegs churning. He wasn’t too impressive-looking, short and a little compact for a Thoroughbred, but he knew what he was for.

I let my mind coast over the rest of the field. Ben and Sacredheart were laying fourth, stalking the pace like I knew James Hamilton had told him to. James had told him everything but the winning lotto numbers, apparently. Tallis was up front, which was weird--which, now that I thought about it, might have thrown everything off. Cain Distilled was a closer from a long line of closers, and nobody had expected early speed from him. His sire had pounded through the Preakness and Belmont in classic deep-from-behind style, and his dam had once won a dirt mile coming up from fourteen lengths back. He himself had knocked out the Florida Derby last-to-first on a track very similar to how the Downs dirt felt today. I couldn’t imagine Gwen Taylor having told Tallis to go, which meant either Tallis had finally gone around the bend--unlikely--or she knew something the rest of us didn’t.

There was Felix, my next-door neighbor, determined to make her uncle happy. All she wanted was what we all wanted. Horse racing was the fairest sport in the world when you got right down to it.

And there was Suitcase City--or actually, there she wasn’t, and that was my problem. I’d ridden her three times since the previous summer, and she was snappy. She liked to run and especially liked a straightaway like the backstretch. She usually knew just what to do with it, even if it was going to burn off once she did. She was so lazy today I might as well have been running the race myself. As we hit the second turn I shut my eyes briefly and forced myself to loosen up. If there was one thing riding with Ben--being with Ben--had done for me, it was that. He had more genuine horse sense than I ever would, didn’t need to get technical with a mount the way I did, was generally more content to let a horse run its race than I was.

It was a vice, I supposed. The best jockeys were the ones the horse didn’t notice. But Suitcase City was going to notice me today.

The field shifted. Mark Mensah and Elfshot started to lag, having set the pace instead of us, and Rodowsky made his move on the rail with Bluegrass Baby. Van Alden was whipping too early, like always. I could practically hear Felix scoff above hoofbeats and lathered breath. I snuggled down into Suitcase City’s withers and kissed to her, drawing the reins a little tighter. We still weren’t where we should have been--Felix was, Fly Pelican being more versatile--but if I could get her into gear, at least we wouldn’t be last.

Van Alden and East Meets West were going to be last. I was pretty sure we were all agreed on that point, at least.

If I couldn’t do it I wanted Ben to, and that was exactly the wrong thought. Horse races weren’t about who deserved to win; most of the time they weren’t even about which horse was fastest. The combination of factors was out of any human’s control after a certain point, and that was what drove me: the idea that maybe, someday, if I did everything exactly right, if I was knowledgeable enough and flexible enough and good enough, that race would run. The race. Ben knew better. Tallis did too--the two of them were some of the best riders I’d known for just… not giving up, but giving in. Felix usually won through sheer force of will. Ben won because he knew how to talk to horses. Tallis won because there was nothing she wanted to be doing besides racing, nothing in her mind but that horse for those two minutes.

When I won, it felt like an accident more often than not.

My whip moved, left-handed, an instinct the source of which I couldn’t pinpoint. It was still too early, really. But Suitcase City’s neck snapped forward, a sudden tension in the reins that I liked. Her stride changed from the dogged gallop I’d chivvied out of her since the gate to something recognizable, something with promise in it. It didn’t matter whether we passed enough horses in the stretch, or if the maneuver Connelly was about to try with Stripesforever succeeded in boxing us in. The filly had been running, and now she was racing.

The important thing, at the end, was that the horse had run its race.

[reiderandwriter-blog]

Alliances- Bellarke AU (Editing later) Chapter 1

“Do you see him over there?” Abby points out a particularly broody looking man across the way, ordering people around as he works on the fence with them. Clarke looks at her mother questioningly. 

 "That’s Bellamy Blake, and you’re going to marry him.“

Clarke Griffin doesn’t think much about her future. Not with all of the prevalent responsibilities she holds due to her fate of being the Chancellors daughter. She’s basically stuck being the second-in-command ruler, which leaves her working with the people while her mother and the rest of the council handles ‘politics’. In other words, they do whatever they want and leave Clarke to deal with all of the consequences, only intervening when their power or ability is questioned. 

People are always deciding to riot over things the council changes (mostly they make changes which only favor them, so she can’t say she blames the people) and the council just leave her to deal with it. So no, she doesn’t really have time to think about herself. 

The ark had only been down here on earth maybe two weeks, and the council had already wreaked havoc. Up in space, it was still pretty bad, but it wasn’t like this. Here, even though they have plenty of air- which was their main deciding factor with rules and regulations in space- they’ve kept many rules the same, and people aren’t happy about it. No more than one child per family is the worst when it comes to protesting, and it’s hard to explain why the rule was kept to protesters when she doesn’t really understand it herself. Her mother said something about overpopulation and supply inconsistencies, but it still confuses Clarke. And without a valid explanation on her part, due to there being no valid explanation, she takes a lot of the blame and argues through a lot of battles she doesn’t even want to fight.

Thanks to that, she gets the blame from her mom whenever citizens run to live with the 100 delinquents sent down to test whether earth was survivable about a year before the ark came down. That village, which Clarke simply calls ‘The Settlement’ since she doesn’t know of a name for it, is a few miles west of the Ark’s landing site.

Some people from the settlement are there at the ark working on walls with Clarke’s people, and she finds they make it increasingly difficult to tally her people when she doesn’t have the settlers on the list and she can’t even tell them apart really. She groans and decides to walk back and start on her med checks instead. Clarke’s mother normally works in the clinic enough that Clarke doesn’t really need to, but now she’s in a meeting with the grounder princess, leader of the settlement and the rest of the council so there’s only two people manning the med tent. That leaves her with another responsibility.

Clarke would rather be in the med tent than the meeting, though, so she’s somewhat content. At least there’s no settlers in here. Just Arkadians.

Clarke can’t help but let her mind wander though as she ghosts around the med tent. The meeting has already lasted over two hours, and normally they only last about that. She knows her mother is working on an alliance between the three of them, but that’s all she knows. That’s all she wants to know, really.

The last thing Clarke wants to find out is what her mother is willing to give up for their protection. Her mother would probably give up her own hand- well, not her own. Clarke’s, maybe, if it secured an alliance. Her mother is selfish, but she claims everything she does is for the people, and not at all in her bias.

Clarke Griffin hates her life more often than not.

Bellamy Blake doesn’t have much time to think about anything. Due to his job as a makeshift leader, he faces decision after decision after riot after decision. He has to make quick, and always difficult, choices to keep him and his people alive against the tree crew and whatever the hell all the other clans are called.

He has a sort-of council to help out, but when it gets tough, they normally just look to him for help. If Bellamy wants to look to someone for help, he knows he’d better go find a mirror. He loves his council, and the rest of the people (even the adults who think they run the world just because they ran the ark) but sometimes their helplessness really gets on his nerves. He’s known to have a bit of a temper anyways.

So he’s massacred a few innocent villages (and a chancellor as far as he knows) and whatnot, but in his defense he thought they were hostile. He regrets it, but he regrets a lot of things. Still, the last thing he expected to come out of this meeting is peace.

He’s a delinquent to one condescending group of bitches and their kids, and a murderer to another. That’s more like a mine field than ground for peaceful terms to ensue. Still, it’s worth a shot. He’d rather at least try than automatically be killed by some damn tree-dwelling monkeys with ninja stars and weird looking swords.

He agreed to come to the meeting, but he absolutely did NOT agree for his hand to be offered into a marriage by some chick he doesn’t know. Representative of the Arkadians- Abby, he thinks- offering up his hand in marriage! She practically sent him down here, and she doesn’t even know him. She doesn’t have as much room as she thinks she does, because he could rain hell down on her people and she wouldn’t even know what had hit her.

He remembers faintly hearing Lexa speak of marriages being commonly used to prove alliances. So Abby offered for (her daughter, he thinks she mentioned) some Clarke to marry Bellamy, and Wells- he knows who this one is- to marry Lexa. Lexa agrees and evidentially so does Diana- whom Bellamy had brought with him not only because she begged but because he thought maybe with a female touch he could get somewhere- and then some form is signed before he can protest and he’s roped into a marriage by alliance, which he can’t escape without all of his people being murdered.

Yeah. This is exactly how he planned his Saturday would go.

"Hey, I'm gonna switch with Octavia for awhile, she's probably killing the men on wall duty now." He says during a very rare silent moment where everyone is comprehending what was said in the past few minutes of nonstop talking. Before anyone even has half a chance to protest, he gets up and he leaves.

He feels people state as he walks past- mostly girls he knows, and he smirks. Well, he smirked- until he remembered he was going to like two decades sooner than he ever thought he would. 

He looks down at the ground, intensely avoiding the eyes of every female in his proximity in case it’s her he may have to marry. He’s afraid if he meets her eyes now she’ll hate him forever and he’ll be stuck in a miserable marriage for the rest of his life. 

Finally he hears his name being called and looks up, eyes locking onto his sister’s. He knows he isn’t marrying her. “Go.” he nods towards the meeting, and Octavia knows it’s her turn to take over in the meeting. It’s not the first time he’s heard something he didn’t like or couldn’t handle and sent her in there to take over. She doesn’t mind, in fact she loves the opportunity to jump into politics like this. She loves to give her input on subjects that impact her people. Happily, she ditches her post and jogs to the meeting hall. 

Bellamy immediately has to shout for one of his men, Atom, to stop flirting with the Ark girls and get back to work. 

Bellamy blake hates his life, for the first time in a long time. 

“Clarke!” Abby calls. Clarke sighs as she turns to look at her mother. She already knows what’s coming up, but that doesn’t mean she wants to waste her time on it. Abby only talks to Clarke when she wants something, and anytime she comes up to her daughter after a meeting, Clarke knows its time for her to break some bad news to someone. To make it worse, the news gets harder to  break every time shes got to do it. The first time she had to break any news to the people it was on the ark, to tell everyone they were going to earth. People were scared, but excited. 

The last time she’s done it, two days ago, was to tell everyone that winter was coming and rations had to be split. Clarke knew, though, that they had plenty of food for the winter. She knew the council just wanted to binge for a bit because they were a little bit hungry, but the thing is so was everyone else. Clarke refused to take the extra rations, instead giving them to orphaned children and poor parents who give whats left of their rations to their children. She wanted to stop it but if she retaliates in any way she and everyone who helps will either be severely injured or die. 

“Yes mom?” She does her best to sound like she actually cares, though she wants to sound sarcastic and annoyed so that maybe her mom would understand that she wants nothing to do with her or this situation.

Abby grins proudly, as if she’s going to tell her the greatest bit of information she’ll ever be told. “I have a surprise for you!” 

Clarke looks on worriedly. There’s no way this’ll be good.

“You’re going to be so excited.” Her mother grabs her hand and pulls her into a tight hug. “We had to make some sort of compromise for an alliance between the three of our peoples, and i know you’re just going to be so happy to provide for your people again.” Clarke winces. This is definitely not going to be good. How bad- she can’t estimate yet. 

“Okay.” Her mom pauses, moving to hold her daughter by the elbow, their forearms pressing together as she looks at the younger girl.

Clarke glances between her mother’s and her own arms confusedly. “Yeah?”

Abby wastes no time in speaking. 

“Do you see him over there?” She points out a particularly broody looking man across the way, ordering people around as he works on the fence with them. Clarke looks at her mother questioningly.

"That’s Bellamy Blake, and you’re going to marry him.” 

[rolandfontana]

Coping With Unsolved Murders: ‘My Son Speaks from the Grave’

On a Friday night in late June, Glenn Lamont Travers Jr., 21, was in a car leaving an apartment complex in midtown Newport News, Va., when someone opened fire.

Travers, the car’s front-seat passenger, was struck with a bullet that tore into his neck artery. He died at the hospital three hours later.

It was the second slaying in the neighborhood in two days. The day before, Eimaja Jada Harri, 24, was found just inside her front doorway, shot to death.

The killings mark two of the 18 slayings in Newport News, a harbor city of 183,000 in a region that has long been home to the U.S.Navy.

Hampton, Va., police officers investigate the scene of a homicide in 2018. Photo by Jonathon Gruenke/Daily Press

Of the 43 homicides in Newport News and nearby Hampton in 2018, 28 of them — or 65 percent (including the Travers and Harri killings— so far remain unsolved.

That frustrates Travers’ mother, Pamela Travers, who claims her son named the man he believed set him up for the killing in a recording taped on a police officer’s body camera before he died

“My son is speaking from the grave,” she said. “What more do they need?

Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said he can’t talk in detail about open cases, but he’s met twice with Pamela Travers. He said the lead detective went over the case with her to tell her how things stand, and what’s still needed to close it.

“I get it — she’s hurting,” Drew said. “In her mind, she didn’t feel like we were doing enough. We had a good conversation. I would be frustrated, too.”

But it’s a killing, he said, that the chief is determined to solve.

“I’m not stopping until they’re all cleared,” Drew said.

A Daily Press tally found that 137 people were killed by homicide in the region in 2018. That exactly matched 2017’s total, though it was 16 percent lower than the 163 killings recorded in 2016.

Tragic Roll Call

 The homicide victims died in domestic arguments, robberies, retaliations, drug deals gone bad, and all manner of random arguments between strangers, acquaintances and friends. They were shot in their homes or on the street from passing vehicles. They were killed in child abuse and in murder-suicides.

Five of the 50 people killed in the Peninsula area were under 18 — two-month-old and one-year-old boys killed in what police say were child abuse, a 12-year-old boy killed by his mother in a murder-suicide, and two 17-year-olds shot outside.

It’s a roll call of tragedy.

The cases include Rodney Livingston, 37, who Newport News police say was stabbed to death by his then-15-year-old son after an argument that began over the boy’s failure to clean his bedroom.

A 20-year-old pregnant woman, Tiara Jefferson, was killed — and her unborn child also lost — when someone opened fire on her car in May. Jefferson’s two-year-old daughter has now lost both her parents to gunfire, with the child’s father killed in 2016, also in a car that came under fire.

Table courtesy of Daily Press

In Hampton, 32-year-old Joshua David Williams was slain in January 2018 for being $3 short on a drug debt, prosecutors say.

Of the 50 slayings in the Peninsula area in 2018, 30 of the dead — or 60 percent — were black males, while 11 were white males, six were black females and three were white females. The overwhelming number of accused killers were of the same race as their victims.

Guns were the weapon of choice.

Of the 50 area killings, 43 of them — or 86 percent — were a result of gunfire. Another four people died in stabbings, one person was strangled to death, and two children were killed in suspected child abuse.

A National Problem

 Unsolved homicides are a national problem. An FBI report last fall found nearly 40 percent of the murders around the U.S. in 2017 were still “open cases”—a little over 6,000.

See also: Cities Under Pressure to Improve Homicide Clearance Rates 

The record in the Newport News area, however, tracks far higher. Some 71 percent of the killings—numbering 17—remain unsolved.

Of Hampton’s 18 homicides, eight of them — just 44 percent — are deemed cleared

Hampton Police Chief Terry Sult cautioned against reading too much into the numbers, saying several factors can drive homicide arrest rates up or down.

“When you talk about gang involvement, drug involvement, those tended to be down a little bit, while domestics were up a little bit,” he said of 2018, saying domestics are often easier to clear.

“But looking at statistics year to year are merely a barometer. You can’t really make definitive determinations.”

Drew, the Newport News chief, said there’s a lot of work to do — but he vows that his investigators are up to the task.

“Twenty-four homicides is 24 too many,” Drew said. “And make no mistake. Every one of these numbers that we talk about are people. It’s an individual. It’s not about numbers and statistics.

“Am I satisfied that there are only seven cleared? Absolutely not. I don’t think anybody should be happy with seven.”

Drew noted that 16 of the 24 killings investigated by his department were in the first half of 2018, meaning that “we’re moving in the right direction.”

Last fall, Drew moved three more detectives to the homicide unit, bringing the team to 10 investigators. He also moved a time-consuming task — investigating nonfatal shootings — to other detectives. In 2018, for example, there were 90 total shootings in the city, with most being nonfatal.

“I needed to lighten that load off my homicide detectives so they focus on the homicides — the witnesses, the forensics evidence, working with the commonwealth’s attorney and all that,” he said.

Drew also pointed out that the Newport News police in 2018 cleared a significant number of homicides — eight of them — that happened in prior years.

Arrests from prior years, Drew said, indicate that unsolved slayings aren’t ever put into the dustbin, and that every case is still looked at. Two of the new homicide detectives, he added, will focus exclusively on cold cases.

“We’re not stopping,” he said.

Where Are the Witnesses?

 But aside from staffing issues, a number of other factors drive the low clearance rate.

A recurring challenge for detectives is getting witnesses to the crime to provide information to police. Investigators say they often know who committed a slaying — or have a very good idea — but that the “no snitch” culture sometimes stymies the cooperation police need to make the arrest.

Drew said he routinely hears at community meetings about witness fears.

“It’s easy to say people don’t give us information and they know (what happened), but I balance that with, ‘We’re leaving, but those individuals still live in this neighborhood, and there’s still a concern there,’ ” he said.

“I understand that, and this department understands that … We have to decrease that fear.”

Since he took the department’s helm in June, Drew said he’s trying to encourage more trust, with police and community groups knocking on more doors after killings.

People don’t need to give their names or “hang outside with a banner,” he said. “But what I do want is for people to not feel afraid in the neighborhoods they live in. I want them to take that back.”

Sult, Hampton’s police chief, said another problem is that fears of retribution for witnesses — real or imagined — can spread quickly on social media.

All it takes, he said, is “one person that’s mad at you because you looked at him wrong” or “dating so and so,” resulting in lies being put out. That spreads quickly, he said, transforming into “so and so is a snitch about John Smith being killed on the sidewalk.”

“It doesn’t have to be true, that so and so is a snitch, but that can be life threatening on the street,” Sult said.

“So the issue is more than trusting the police. There’s a fear of reprisal through social media … All of a sudden it becomes a life threatening environment for that individual.”

The polarization in the country, he added, “helps underscore the distrust on the ground level and the boots level” regarding law enforcement. Families, churches and community groups, he said, are part of the solution.

“It’s about public trust,” Sult said. “The building of trust in the community starts with the police department, but it doesn’t stop there.”

Drew, for his part, said he’s encouraging citizens to give tips. He’s also telling his officers that “we’ve got to be more proactive” in jumping on leads and knocking on doors.

“If a tip comes in about something unusual that a resident ‘found in the bushes,’ and the police response isn’t immediate, he said, “People think, ‘Why should I call?’”

“Maybe there’s nothing to it at all,” Drew said. “But I want to make sure we’re investigating stuff right away.”

Additional reading: Fixing America’s Cold Case Crisis (James Adcock)

FBI Data Crime in the United States, 2017

This is a condensed and slightly edited version of a story that appeared in the Daily Press in Newport News, Va., reprinted with permission. Read the full story here.

Coping With Unsolved Murders: ‘My Son Speaks from the Grave’ syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[nyxtales]

Metamorphosis

This is a collection of events from an idea I had a while ago.  The story is called Akran Saga, after the Arabic word for “scorpion.”  It’s a bit long, so bear with me.  I hope it’s a satisfactory after a very long hiatus.  I’m trying to get my life together, and it’s taking a good bit of effort. 

He knew that something was different when he woke up with the sides of his face sore as all hell.  But that wasn’t his main concern—a concert was today, and it was going to be his death if he didn’t show up and play.

And yet, the feeling of having acid running through his veins should have counted as a good reason to stay home.

“Dammit,” he mutters, sliding on his clothes and keeping the following string of curses very muted.  If his parents hear, they’ll tan his hide.

Of course, something had to go wrong the one day, the one day he was hoping the cosmos would actually have a heart.  

Then again, it probably has a very cold heart. He thinks he should be a bit more specific the next time he asks for a miracle after getting reamed by his parents for not playing perfectly.  

“Seriously, I got scouted—shouldn’t they be happy with that?” he growls into a pillow.  The pillow is currently taking heavy punishment—his limbs hurt like hell, but it’s the pain in his face that he wants to stop.  

But, as always, the cosmos have a lot of fun torturing him.  Or so he thinks.  Anything to make light of this increasingly painful situation.  It’s only when the pain comes to a head, and he can’t help but scream into the pillow as it does, that it finally ceases.  And after suffering so long in agony, he can finally fade into a blissful oblivion.  

When he’s at school the next day, however, he realizes that the fact he hadn’t had any nightmares should have warned him that the cosmos weren’t finished screwing with him quite yet.

“What the…eyes?” he squeaks, and yes, it’s a squeak.  He’s surprised he can talk, because he really wants to just crawl in a hole and die, his throat hurts so bad.  Carefully, hopefully, warily he looks into his reflection in the boy’s bathroom, going pale as a sheet when his fears are confirmed.

He really has eyes.  One, two, three…there are eight of them, each in sets of two.  The newly grown three sets cascade down the side of his face, the bottom-most set somewhere in the middle of his cheekbones.

That isn’t the best part either.  

All of them, all of them, are cat-like, the ovoid pupils dilating in time with his rising panic.  Being able to see so well hurt, and he just curled in one of the stalls with his eyes closed, hoping to whoever heard that no one else would find out about that.  

Then again, if someone did, maybe they could help, starting with something to numb his gums.

This time, the new changes appear during the middle of class.  Thankfully, no one really noticed, but then again, it’s Halloween—of course people are wearing flamboyant costumes.  So what, he’s a teenaged vampire.  It’s nothing new.

Still, the fangs in his mouth are.  And they hurt like hell.  For the rest of the day, and a few more afterward, he avoided speaking when at all possible.  It wasn’t till the pain in his mouth went away that he realized he had claws.

And that time, someone did take notice.  

His best friend, Gabriel, happened to comment that his nails were really long on a sudden impulse on their way to orchestra.  Out of instinct, he came up with a lie, saying that it was an experiment.

Gabriel agreed, dropping the subject and continuing on about a really cute girl he saw at the bookstore—he’s a bookworm.  He laughs along with him, secretly panicking as he takes a mental tally of everything about him that’s just plain wrong.

Then his mind gives him an image of what his parents will do if they notice anything.  

He shudders, saying that it’s suddenly really chilly.

Gabriel doesn’t say anything, but it’s hot outside.

When the changes come this time, he’s prepared and not prepared.

He’s prepared, because he’s figured out that there are signs when his body is changing—now, what’s changing, he’s not got a clue.  Namely, he’s extremely tired, and everything that is him aches.

He isn’t prepared, however, for exactly how badly everything hurts or the feeling of having something scraping his insides as it writhes within him.  Actually, he realizes, it’s more than one thing.  

If he wasn’t trying so hard not to scream, he’d probably be laughing hysterically.

Yet he stays silent, holding his sides and pressing his back against the wall as best he can, trying to apply counter-pressure to that space on his lower back that is agony.  His hands are wrapped around him, pressing against whatever is cutting him from inside.  A very rational part of his mind that’s high off pain notes he shouldn’t push what’s cutting him from the inside back inside, but its instinct that dictates his actions now.

Then skin breaks, and he screams with voice of a dying creature, because that’s honestly what it feels like.

“…What the hell--?” Gabriel exclaims as he bursts through the door, stopping as he sees him curled on the ground.  His blood is pooling under him, and he’s pretty sure everything else he’s tried to hide up till now is visible.

But that doesn’t matter.

All that matters is that he’s somewhere safe, and wherever that is, it’s not here.  He (somehow) gets to his feet, desperate to flee when Gabriel intercepts his frankly pathetic attempt to escape, wrapping his strong arms around the struggling boy.

Whatever he is, he’s not a boy.  He knows that much.  But that is all he knows.

“Shh, darkling,” Gabriel murmurs, sitting him down.  He doesn’t move; the logical and rational part of his brain shut down.  Instead its instinct that drives him.  “I wondered if you’d started…looks like I should have paid attention.”

He tries to say something, but all that comes out is a garbled sound that leans more towards a growl.  Gabriel turns around, musing interrupted.  

“You can still understand me, right?” Gabriel asks him, watching as he slowly nods.  “That’s good,” he says with a grin.  “Have you slept any?”

At the shake of his head, Gabriel grabs his hand (claw) and leads him to one of the empty bedrooms.  It takes a few moments to pull out blankets and comforters, but once they’re out, he makes a bee-line for them.  But Gabriel grabs him and yanks him backwards.

“Not like that you’re not—go take a bath,” Gabriel instructs him, glaring when he growls.  Then friendly hazel eyes become wild yellow-gold, and its then that he does as he’s told.  

There’s another shriek when he gets to the bathroom.  Gabriel sighs, already aware of why, and carefully pries the door open.  He’s backed into a corner as far as he can, hyper-ventilating and reeking of being feral.  

“Hey, it’s okay,” Gabriel says softly, slowly approaching the terrified boy.  He shakes his head, refusing to move.  The newly grown appendages lash out at him in response, sharp claws flexing dangerously.  For a newly awakened Dark One, he’s pretty deadly.

“Ciaran.”

It’s that one word, those few syllables that snap him out of it.  He, Ciaran, looks at him, his eyes revealing his panic.

And it’s at that moment that Gabriel feels sorrow for the boy, the one so obviously not what he tries to be.  Because he knows once the boy realizes what he actually is, it’s going to take a miracle to bring him around.

“You’re covered in blood,” Gabriel points out, squelching the almost spoken comment to look in a mirror.  He’s pretty sure that’s what’s got him like this.

“I…I know, it’s…it’s mine,” Ciaran manages, his voice much deeper and darker than before.  Gabriel indicates the bathtub, to which Ciaran manages a weak grin.  “Y-yeah, good idea.”

“I’ll get you a change of clothes,” Gabriel tells him, disappearing downstairs and out the door.  It’s then, and only then, that Ciaran allows himself the tears he’s tried so hard to hide for so very long.  

Because now, now there is no doubt.  There is no other explanation.  

“What am I..?” he whimpers brokenly, letting the water wash away the blood and hide the tears.  After an hour or so of letting water soothe his aching muscles, he finally cleans off, stepping out of the shower tentatively.  

There’s a change of clothes, like promised, and a brief note.

Once dressed, he follows the instructions there, and is surprised to find Gabriel waiting for him on the roof, perched there with a somber expression as he stares at the starry sky.  It’s almost as if he lamenting something.

“What happening to you is supposed to,” Gabriel says suddenly, looking at him.  Ciaran doesn’t say anything, though the way his eyes look away while he struggles with the things under his shirt.

“How long…how long have you known?” Ciaran finally asks, meeting his gaze.  His own is a mix of trepidation and the yearning to know.

“Since Halloween, when you suddenly ‘decided’ to be a teen vampire,” Gabriel answered wryly.  Ciaran couldn’t help but grin weakly, sinking to his feet.  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Who’d believe me?” he said bitterly, pushing himself back up to standing—now it was his legs.  Was there no relief?  “I’m growing extra arms, claws, fangs, eyes, and a tail.  My parents will murder me.”

“That’s not an excuse now,” Gabriel says simply, walking over to him.  Ciaran looks over his shoulder, making a sound of surprise when his legs give way.  “Go to sleep—you’ll feel better in the morning.”

“When will it end?” Ciaran queries suddenly, turning to face him.  Gabriel shakes his head, expression sympathetic.  

“I don’t know,” he tells him, helping him up. “Whenever you’ve grown up.”

Somehow, that one phrase comforts Ciaran more than anything else.

With Gabriel as an ally, it got a bit better.

However, the day his wings finally revealed themselves is also the day he learned that he had a dark streak that made even Gabriel wary.

It started with his parents actually being familial and wanting him to stay over that weekend.  He was happy—they were actually in a good mood, so maybe they could actually do stuff as a family.

That was a very big mistake.

The moment the weekend hit, he was barraged with verbal assaults like they were air.  While it didn’t really affect him (that he was going to actually admit), it was the physical assaults that caused him trouble.

Ciaran honestly wanted to crawl in the bed and stay there.  And he would have, too, had not his father came in and threatened to beat him blue if he didn’t get out of the bed.  While it wasn’t much of a threat—he was currently getting cut and burnt from the inside out—he wasn’t that much of a masochist.

What gave him up was when they did a ritual of drinking from an old chalice the family had as an heirloom, something they’d done as a “rite of purification and unity.”  

He didn’t really care about the reasoning behind it; he was just happy for the one time they could be together and not trying to tear him apart.

All hell broke loose, however, when he started gagging after it was his turn to sip. The cup hadn’t even left his hands before he dropped it, hands going to his throat as it burned in agony.

“Have you lost your mind?” his mother hissed as he gagged, shaking his head in response.  It hurt, it hurt like nothing had before, but he couldn’t give the pain a voice.  

“No, he has finally admitted to what he really is,” his father answered for her, getting up and walking over to the bookshelf.  The sword that rests there is the other heirloom, one well-kept and tended to.  

Ciaran knows it’s sharp, mainly from having to clean it so often.

“N-no…what…are you…talking about?” Ciaran rasped, trying to speak past the burning agony of his throat.  “What do you..?”

“Ciaran, you are not human, and you never will be,” his father said simply.  “What you are is a demon, born from the darkest depths of hell.  Not only are you a demon, you are the one your kind has prophesied to end all life.  And for that, you shall die.”

“But..!  I haven’t even..!” Ciaran exclaimed, spitting up blood as his throat rebelled against use.  His father still approached, holding the blade at the ready the entire while.  

Neither of them had any mercy for him.

The moment his father raises his blade is when Ciaran finally realizes that he means to kill him.  

He doesn’t want to die.  He doesn’t want to kill them, either—they’re his parents, the ones that gave him a home five years ago. But he doesn’t want to die, and that takes priority.

Ciaran moves, his instincts taking over as his mind is overwhelmed by conflicting emotions.  His father frowns, only for his face to become placid as he’s hit in the back with what could only be a whip.  

“Die, demon,” she hisses, eyes blazing with righteous fury.  Ciaran makes a sound akin to a yelp of terror, backing away from both of them before taking off downstairs.

They give chase, but he knows the house better than they.  He waits till they’ve run around a corner before ducking into one of the laundry chutes, groaning as his back complains about being slammed into the wall who knows how many times.  It’s joined by whatever is scraping—and burning—the insides of his back.  Weakly, he stumbles out, only to hiss as he’s almost hit dead-on by the burst of light that shoots by his face.

“Stop fighting us,” his father tells him, sounding as if he’s pleading. “Do you really wish to destroy the world?”

“I’m not going to do that!” Ciaran cries in return, ignoring the blood in his mouth.  His fangs have slid, too, as well as his tail.  

“Look at yourself—you are no human.  You do not deserve to live,” his mother points out, nose scrunched up and eyes narrowed.  “No human has fangs or a tail.”

“Let me kill you, Ciaran,” his father begs, eyes focused onto him.  “You will save the world by doing this final deed.”

“I don’t want to die!” Ciaran screams, narrowly missing the blade.  It does, however, leave a considerable gash on his chest.  He hisses as eyes open—it begins to dawn on him that he’ll have to fight his parents if he wants to get out alive.

“You will die, whether you wish to or not,” his mother countered.  “You have the option to choose if it means something or no.”

He let loose a wild cry, baring his fangs.  He’s a lot of things, but willing to die like is not one of them.  His father shakes his head, something in his eyes dying behind that light there.

“Once a demon, always a demon,” he mutters, attacking the boy.  Ciaran hisses, his claws defending him from most of the damage as he seeks an opening.  It isn’t working—if anything, he’s the one with openings—but it doesn’t stop him from trying.  

The wounds covering his body are leaking blood, his blood.  He knows this, but can do nothing about them.  He doesn’t know how to fight—

“Ciaran!”

“…Gabriel?” Ciaran murmurs in surprise, hissing when they begin to circle him quickly.  Gabriel dives into the fray, unleashing a spinning attack with his blades that makes them back away.

“The boy is under my care,” Gabriel says calmly, looking at his father.  “Do you really want to force my hand?”

“So you’ve taken him under your wings, O Fallen One?” his father asks, shaking his head in disappointment as Gabriel replies, “I have.”  “Why can you not see the Light?  He will destroy this world, and all that lives in it.”

“That only can happen because of treating him as you have,” Gabriel said shortly, causing his father to narrow his eyes.  “He is not evil.  He needs not die.”

“Any born of Shadow must die, Gabriel,” his father says firmly.  “This is the same reason why you have been banished from your place as the throne holder!”

“A false angel banished from the false throne of a false god,” Gabriel replies.  “Everything is false.  We are not angels—we are men and women, gifted with our strengths to help others, not play Creator!”

“We are not creating, we are purifying the world as intended—“

“By who, Michael?” Gabriel hissed.  Ciaran listened to their arguments, but couldn’t understand what was happening.  All he knew was that everything hurt, and it wouldn’t be long before something changed.

“Do not waste words on a Fallen Angel,” his mother hissed, drawing their attention in her direction.  “Take action.”

Gabriel’s eyes widened at the gaping hole that was in Ciaran’s chest, and Ciaran did, too.  There was a hole in his chest, a hole.  It was easily the size of both his fists.  Ciaran looked at his mother in shocked horror before collapsing.

“See?  It is done,” she purrs in victory, clicking her tongue when she has to wrap Gabriel in her whip.  “Did you really think we would let him live, Gabriel?  Why do you, an Angel, care so much for the demons?”

“He isn’t a demon.  You are,” Gabriel intoned coldly, breaking free of the whip and launching his assault.  The couple worked in sync to hold off the enraged Gabriel, whose twin blades sang as they cut through the air.  

All the while, Ciaran lie there, eyes staring into nothing, dying.

I’m…going to die.

That’s right.

But I don’t want to, not like this.

Of course not.  But you’re too weak to live, anyway.  

I’m not weak!

Sure you aren’t—that’s why you couldn’t keep yourself alive, much less your parents.

My parents?  I don’t even—

Remember them, I know.  How do you think those memories got sealed?  Poor little Ciaran couldn’t handle his parents dying, so he forgot about it.

I don’t want to die.

And?  You’re dying now.  Well, if you use me, you won’t.  But I get to have you if you aren’t strong enough to.

Go to hell.

After you.

Neither of the fighters were expecting his corpse to sit up and glare at them.  When the wounds closed before their eyes, they started to get worried.  The moment his eyes opened, and they were all ovoid as well as amber, it was time to panic.

“What in Heaven’s name..?” Gabriel murmured, watching in shock.  

“This is why we must kill him,” his father said simply, knocking the fallen Angel back as he swooped to deal the finishing blow—pure white, feathery wings gently scooped the air before propelling him forward.

Those white, feathery wings were met with black, leathery wings.

“Who says I’m going to let you?” Ciaran asked, smirking.  His eyes were looking in different directions—a two pair on his father, a pair on his mother, and a pair on Gabriel.  “Aw, what’s with the face?  You wanted to kill me, didn’t you?  Come on.”

“What..? Who are you?” his father asked, features actually revealing deep confusion and…pain?  “You are not Ciaran.”

“Really, now?” he continued on, laughing when he got wrapped by his mother’s whip.  “Did you ever know me?  Nice trick with the whip, by the way.  My turn!”

The smile on Ciaran’s face became absolutely disturbing as he looked at his mother.  Whatever passed in that gaze when her eyes met his had to have terrified her, because she dropped the whip.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Ciaran hissed, grabbing her—How the hell did he move that fast? Gabriel thought—with his claws and wrapping his arms around her.  “Do you have any idea how much I loved you guys?  Still do, but that’s nothing compared to how much I want you two to hurt.”

“What are you—you’re a demon!  Demons can’t love!” his mother shrieked, squirming in his grasp.  He chuckled, hiding his face in her hair.

“Of course not,” Ciaran agreed quietly.  “Goodbye, Mama.”

She gasped in pain, falling completely still as he let her go.  The moment he did, she fell to the ground, twitching slightly before going still as only those dead can.

“What did you do to her?” his father exclaimed, wings flapping softly in irritation.  Ciaran looked at him, that disturbing smile on his face.

“She’s out of the way for a while,” Ciaran answered, shrugging when the man spluttered in rage.  “That whip is annoying.”

“How dare you, you—“ his father roared, charging at the boy once more.  His blade met Ciaran’s claws, which had folded over him to protect him from that blow.

“Demon?” Ciaran finished, raising an eyebrow.  “What else did you think I was?  Your son?  Could have fooled me.”

“Die!” the man exclaimed, surprised when he was thrown backward.  Ciaran flapped his wings, hovering above ground for a few moments.

“I won’t let you kill me,” Ciaran told him, grinning.  Gabriel started, realizing that he was escaping.  “Thanks for the save, Gabriel.”

“Ciaran!  Wait!“ Gabriel exclaimed, running after him.  He stopped when the boy disappeared out of sight, turning to face the broken angel.  “What have you done, Michael?”

“He will die,” Michael said softly, finally looking up at him with black eyes.  “As will you, for aiding him.”

Gabriel didn’t bother replying, instead running after the boy.  He didn’t have to go far—Ciaran had the strongest scent of concentrated darkness he’d ever felt.

He did however, question his choice of hiding—on top of the highest building—and voiced that.

“Why not?” Ciaran replied, glancing at him over his shoulder.  “You might want to check your wounds—there’s one that’ll kill you on your throat.”

“No, it—huh, you are right,” Gabriel muttered in agreement, healing it with a soft light.  He came up to Ciaran—well, he tried to.  There wasn’t much he could do when face with claws dripping…something.

“Poison,” Ciaran explained, withdrawing them.  “What do you want, Gabriel?”

“How are you alive?” Gabriel asked, going straight to the point.  “I saw her tear a hole through you.  And who are you?  Ciaran never speaks like this.”

“…I really like how everyone thinks they know him,” Ciaran, rather, the not-Ciaran commented, getting to his feet.  “You’re not wrong, though.  You’re not right, either.”

“What do you mean?” Gabriel asked, making sure he didn’t come off as threatening—the ground was melting where his Ciaran’s poison hit it.  Ciaran looked at him.

“Exactly that.  Pry it out of the boy,” he replied, looking away.  “But you’re not like the usual Angel crew.  Why is that?”

“…Touche,” Gabriel admitted, grinning sheepishly as Ciaran gave him a pointed look.  “But still…is he really a darkling, or is it your influence?”

“Can’t you tell, Angel boy?” he asked, smirking when Gabriel gave him a blasé look.  “Both.  He is a darkling, but I’ve…enhanced him a bit.”

“Enhanced?” Gabriel exclaimed, falling silent when one of Ciaran’s claws rose up threateningly.  

“Let me make one thing very clear to you,” the not-Ciaran said, grinning in that disturbing way. It was like he was leering.  “I don’t really care for any of you.  The only one I care about is him, and that’s because he’s mine by a binding contract.”

“You realize that if I die, he’s going to be that much worse, right?” Gabriel countered. That leer widened.

“Works just fine for me,” he replied.  “Either way, I win.”

“Why did you bond with him?  You know that he doesn’t have the heart to do anything your kind is infamous for,” Gabriel prodded.

“What we are infamous for is not our doing,” the being replied, golden eyes flashing red.  “And it would behoove you to watch your tongue.  You may not have it for long.”

“Why him, then?” Gabriel asked.  The creature’s eyes gave him a hard look before looking away.  A grin lit his face, but it wasn’t one that reached his eyes.

“Are you sure you want that answer?”

Gabriel fell quiet, not entirely sure he wanted to know that.  The not-Ciaran turned back to face him, sighing.

“I’ll admit I’m not really interested in killing—too much trouble,” it told him, gaze trailing the clouds.  “But I do want this one to survive.  So, I’ll cut you a deal: help him, and let him join your cause—in return, I won’t destroy this place.”

“You were never going to,” Gabriel said matter-of-factly.  “Otherwise, you would have actually killed his mother.”

“With what I’ve seen of your kind, I don’t think you want that risk.”

“True.  I’ll take your deal,” Gabriel answered.  “With one condition—you have to help him. I know nothing of his type of darkling.”

“Of course. I won’t let him share that fate.”

“What fate?”

“The fate of his family.”

“What—“

“Ask him.  Don’t expect an answer, though.”

“Is there—“

“Yes, there’s a reason, and no, I’m not telling you now,” Ciaran told him, golden eyes focused on him.  “So, you’ve met.”

“How do you know…him?” Gabriel asked.  Ciaran gave him a cold smile.

“Are you sure you want that answer?”

Gabriel could have sworn one of the boy’s eyes were red.

The alternate personality of Ciaran has a name.

Ciaran says it’s Adrian, which Gabriel finds highly ironic—both of their names mean “dark one.”

But now that he knows something else lives within Ciaran, it explains a lot of his friend’s strange behavior.  For example, Ciaran usually spaces out. A lot.  Or his absolute obsession with music—there’s a reason the boy plays violin so well.  There’s also his strange habit of keeping wherever he stays utterly dark.

Gabriel knows these strange quirks of Ciaran because Ciaran now lives with him. It’s been a month, and he’s learned that the boy has a lot more secrets than he knew about.  Several of them, Ciaran is aware of, but many he doesn’t.  Adrian won’t tell either of them those.

One of the one’s Ciaran didn’t know about was that he was a darkling.  That’s still a lesson Gabriel has yet to teach him, mainly because he doesn’t know how Ciaran will respond.  The boy reminds him of a famous lake—the surface was always calm, but a monster lurked underneath.

There are moments he sees that monster.

And that monster is not Adrian.

Gabriel worries, because he thinks that his parents worry was a valid one—he wouldn’t put it past Ciaran to destroy the world.  

Sometimes, he talks with Adrian.  He’s explained that there are days where Ciaran is completely inaccessible, even to him.  It’s on those days that Adrian takes over, but he won’t leave the house.  

Whenever Adrian takes over, Ciaran’s darkling traits are visible, and impossible to hide.  

Gabriel wonders about that, too.

Adrian is actually a pretty decent person, although his sense of humor is, for lack of a better word, screwy.  Gabriel has been at the receiving end of it on many occasions, and the only thing he can say is worse is Ciaran’s sense of humor.  Thankfully, the quiet boy typically doesn’t prank.

When he does, though, Gabriel meditates after getting out of it—but not before scaring Ciaran silly.

Ciaran still isn’t comfortable with being a darkling, and that’s only worsened by the fact that his body is rapidly changing.  One day he woke up to having a second set of fangs in his mouth; another, spikes going down his back; there was an incident with the bed being melted; but the kicker was the exoskeleton.

Neither Adrian nor Gabriel were prepared for the utter breakdown that happened.  Gabriel was forced to tie Ciaran down.

The fact that he didn’t calm down till he was tied down was worrying.

When Gabriel kept prodding Adrian for answers—because Ciaran was impossible to get answers out of—the answer he got chilled him to the bone.

“Do you have any idea what his life had to be like for a demon to contract him out of pity?”

Later, when they’d switched again and Ciaran was currently playing a game—he’d bought if after working for a month—Gabriel merely watched him, trying to imagine what that could have been like.

Because, really, if his life had been so horrible, how could he keep smiling like that?

Apparently, the wings came up because of Adrian—Ciaran didn’t have his own yet.

“Yet,” is the key word.  Gabriel was currently driving as fast as he could get away with while making sure Ciaran didn’t destroy anything important (like the door).  In the back seat, Ciaran is curled tightly, his claws buried in his arms.

For some strange reason, Ciaran didn’t want to mess up Gabriel’s car, although the man has made it clear he’s not worried about the damn car of all things.  

Gabriel wonders, not for the first time, what his life has been like.

He is glad, though, that Ciaran managed to keep his other “claws” retracted.  Gabriel doesn’t know what to call the things, and Adrian never bothered to think about it.  They’re long, and a lot like spider’s legs—without the hair—with how long they are.  What makes it really scary is that each ends in a pointed tip, almost like spears, that can ooze a poison so potent even Gabriel kept clear of them.  When he wants, he can walk on them, but Ciaran prefers to let them hang behind him—it looks like he has wings, but Gabriel has learned better.

They make the boy dangerous when sparring, because he’s learning how to use them.  Gabriel has no doubt that the boy will be his equal in a few weeks’ time.  Each of them are equivalent to the sword his adopted father had used on him, and can double as a shield.

“Gabriel..!”

The hissed warning speeds him on, but Ciaran makes a strange sound that prompts Gabriel to turn around.

He’s never actually been one to curse, but at that moment, it seems fitting.

“Unless…you’d like to deal with a rabid darkling in a car,” Adrian warns him, his—their?—voices taking on that double tone, as if someone was echoing his words.  “You should…hurry.”

“Rabid?  Why the hell is he rabid?  Scratch that, why is he changing now, of all times?”

“If I knew this would happen, I wouldn’t have let him walk out the damn door.”

“Why, Adrian?”

“He shouldn’t have…wait…Son of a lich.”

Gabriel had to wonder if things could get any worse than they were.  Darklings were creatures born of darkness—most of their abilities were as such.  One of Ciaran’s strength evolving was like having a fission reactor go off.

“What’s wrong now?”

“It’s the anniversary of their deaths…”

“Will you explain instead of giving me cryptic sentences?”

“He’s already crazy, Gabriel.  You know as well as I he should have demonstrated these traits a while back,” Adrian started, gasping.  “Dammit, kid, hold on..!  He won’t start getting his true strength until ten years after his parents have died—that’s just how his kind works.  It’s been ten years.”

“Are you…what’s that mean for us?”

“I hope our place is sturdy, because he’s actually pretty damn strong for a brat.”

Hearing that from Adrian was both a compliment and death sentence.  

“…Something tells me I’m going to be needing that hidden fortune…”

“Maybe, maybe not.  That girl he knows—what’s her name? Kiara?—yeah, tell her to come over.”

“Adrian, you know we can’t let her get hurt because of him.”

“What, just because she’s a human?  She’s the one thing that keeps the boy as functioning as he is!  He’ll focus on protecting her rather than destroying everything in sight!”

“Why would he want to destroy everything?”

“…He’s been through too much, and it made him snap.  And by snap, I mean he’s psycho.  She was there through all of it.  You’ll have to ask her, because asking him is easily the stupidest idea you will ever have.  And likely the last one.”

“The last…you mean he’ll kill me?”

“If he’s nice about it, yes.”

“That’s not comforting, Adrian.”

“Well, what did you expect?”

“A miracle.  We’re here. Can you get him to the house?”

“Angel boy, you have five minutes to pull a lockdown.”

They moved quickly.

“Why five?”

“That’s how long you have till he breaks my hold.”

“Oh, hell.”

“Scratch that.  The monster is out.”

“What—“

“Get away!  Now!”

Gabriel took off, eyes wide when he glances over his shoulder.  Ciaran’s eyes are gold, but the pupils are ovoid, and barely even visible.  It doesn’t take too long for Gabriel to start moving.  Who wants to die by poison?

He pulls out his phone, dialing Kiara’s number at high speed while leading the berserk child around.  

“Hey, Gabriel.  What’s up?”

“A lot.  Can you come over—crap!—now?”

“Uh, yeah, I’ve got nothing to do.  Do I need to bring anything?”

“No, not at all. Wear your running shoes, though.”

“That sounds bad.  What’s happening?”

“The monster has come out.”

“Be there in five.”

“Thank you.”

Gabriel quickly shoved the phone into his pocket, running to the other side of the room while Ciaran yanked claws out of the wall.  His eyes were pitch-black now, and his fangs were fully extended.  Strange veins pulsed along his skin, even underneath the exoskeleton.  In fact, the exoskeleton was covering his entire body.  He looked a lot like a giant scorpion, except his head, which reminded him of dragons.

“Ciaran!  Stop it!  Stop attacking!”

Gabriel was very glad Kiara was fearless, because only she could stand face-to-face with Ciaran when he was like that and live.

Ciaran turned to face her, claws falling limp behind him.  She grinned, completely unfazed by how creepy his smile looked when he copied her.  Gabriel didn’t get what was going on, but he wasn’t about to open his mouth and get targeted again.

“Why are you acting like that?  You know Gabriel isn’t going to hurt you.”

Ciaran hissed as his claws raised threateningly.

“That’s no excuse.  He only wants to help.  He can’t do that if you keep trying to kill him.”

Ciaran growled this time, clutching his head.  She caressed his face, drawing his attention back to her.

“You’re growing up again, aren’t you?  It’s not going to be like last time, Ciaran, promise.  Gabriel wants to make sure you’re okay, just like me.”

Ciaran shook his head, claws wrapping around him.  She pulled one away, and then the others when she was sure he wasn’t hurt by the motion.  He stood there, looking at her and then at Gabriel in confusion.

“No one is going to hurt you.  Remember your promise?  If no one attacks you, you can’t attack them.”

Ciaran tried speaking, except that what came out was a growl instead of speech.  He kept on anyway, gesticulating as he spoke.  Kiara understood him, though.  She waited till he was done before wrapping him in a hug, and letting him go.

“Yes, I know—you’ve told me, remember?  But you can’t destroy the world, okay?  What about people like Ms. Lena or that kind old man?  They’d die, too.  How about this—any time you want to destroy the world, I’ll sing for you, all right?  That way, you can think about something else.”

Ciaran was quiet for a moment, but then spoke furiously for a few moments.

“Ciaran, you are not killing anyone on my watch.  Have the dreams really gotten that bad?”

He growled helplessly, nodding his head.

“Well, then, we’ll be doing a lot of duets, won’t we?  I know you’re evil.  You don’t have to be, you know.  And if you really were evil, then why haven’t you done any of those bad things?”

Ciaran growled softly, wrapping his claws around her for a few moments.

“…I’m honored, Ciaran…the choice is yours—follow up on what you were born to do, or protect what you were born to destroy.  Just because you’re born to be the ultimate evil doesn’t mean you have to be.”

He shook his head, smiling weakly.  Then he looked to Gabriel, and smiled.  His claws spread open, only to close and fold behind him.

“Gabriel, he says he’s sorry for trying to kill you,” Kiara told him, grinning when Ciaran nodded emphatically.  “I’m supposed to explain real fast.  So, here goes: Ciaran was born so he’d be the next ultimate evil.  Since his father died, and he was the ultimate evil at the time, it’s passed down to him.  He doesn’t act on it…usually.  But when he sheds his skin, it overwhelms him, because that’s when his power grows.  It’s evil by nature—that’s why he doesn’t like using his abilities.  After a certain point, he will become evil.  He wants you to kill him when that happens.”

“Are you out of your mind, you little fool?” Gabriel exclaimed, startling Ciaran.  “I will not kill you.  I will not.  Your power is evil, yes?  Then master it.  Do not let it control you—control it.”

Ciaran blinked, then nodded as tears streaming down his face.  He wiped them away quickly, expression reddening in embarrassment.  Then he gasps, growling as he gets away from them.  Gabriel moves to stop him, but Kiara holds him back, shaking her head.

“He’s shedding. Watch.”

The exoskeleton covers his body entirely, but it’s fragile-looking, brittle.  Ciaran makes a strangled growling sound as he hunches his back, as if spreading wings that do not exist.  His shirt falls to the floor, torn by the spikes that have ripped through it and the tail that cuts him repeatedly.  His claws have retracted, and his hands—which are claws in the sense of the word—are unbelievably stiff.  He hunches his back again, falling onto all fours, as something actually begins to push against his skin, raising it as it does so.  Ciaran is breathing heavily as that happens, the sound of him panting giving way to a loud cry as the thing in his back actually tears through the exoskeleton.  That’s not all that tears through, either.  An entirely different body tears its way free of the now former form of Ciaran.  

This form looks more streamlined, more…deadly. It’s a lot like watching a wolf suddenly tear its way free of a cub’s body.

It burns the brittle shell with some sort of black fire before turning to face Gabriel and Kiara.  She moves first, running up to it and giving it a warm hug.

“Ciaran, you made it!” she cheers.  He nods, claws wrapping around her in a form of greeting.  “What do you mean, I’m short?”

“Because you are,” Gabriel quipped, grinning when she glared at him. He gave Ciaran a congratulatory pat on the back.  “Welcome, Ciaran.  Glad you made it.”

“Thank you.”

“I have to ask, what is it like?”

“What do you mean?”

Gabriel was still adjusting to how Ciaran had changed.  With his shedding, the boy had become more confident and out-spoken, though he still preferred not speaking unless necessary.

He had, however, discovered that Ciaran really did have an evil side to him that he kept under control.  Adrian admitted that of the two, Ciaran was really the stronger—he got away with most of what he did by experience.

There were physical changes as well—his hair had gone from dark brown to a bright black.  While Ciaran had been a skinny boy, he was now actually built, though that was more likely due to how much he’d been training over the months.  He was also taller.

“I understand that you are a child of evil, but how do you ignore that?” Gabriel clarified.

Ciaran gave him a strange smile.

“I don’t,” he explained.  “It’s more…I acknowledge it, but I don’t act on it.  Like right now.  You’re my best friend, but I want nothing more than to see how red your blood is.  It’d be very pretty, I think.  Or Kiara—she’s gorgeous, and I can’t tell you how often I’ve thought of thoroughly enjoying her.  But I choose not to, because you’re my friend, and because she’s very dear to me.  Doing those things is wrong.  So I don’t.”

“Are there not times you cannot not do that?” Gabriel queried.  

“There have been,” Ciaran admitted.  “But my mother always told me that if I did something wrong, there would come a time someone I cared for would be severely hurt, even die, because of doing the wrong thing.  So…I do what my real mother would have done at times like that.  Incidents like when I attacked you are more because I’m scared of you more than anything else—Angels killed my parents.  There’s rage, too.”

“You truly have my respect,” Gabriel said softly, processing what he’d said.  “But I will admit, even when you are overwhelmed by your darkness, I do not sense evil.  Yes, you are cruel at times, but not evil.  Maybe you are not the evil you think you are.”

“Ha ha, I hope so, Gabriel,” Ciaran commented with a wry smile.  “Maybe I can find a different outlet.  I can’t kill anything, but surely there’s a use for that ability?”

“You know what a darkling is, yes?” Gabriel asked, grinning when Ciaran gave him a blasé look.  “There are rogues, and those rogues plague human society.  I typically hunt them, but it would be very welcome to have a partner.  You could work alongside me—it’d be a good venue for you to train outside of sparring.”

“Now that,” and here Ciaran’s smile became twisted, “is a fun idea.”

“But there are rules, Ciaran,” Gabriel warned him, already aware of what he’d unleashed.  “There will be no blood play.  Torture is not allowed.  And if you get out of hand during the fight, I’ll ban you from the next week’s hunts.  You can kill, but be merciful about it.”

“Fine, fine,” Ciaran agreed, refusing to have his parade dampened.  “But…what of the evil targets?”

“As in..?”

“Rapists, abusers, child molesters…their ilk. Do I have to be merciful to them as well?” Ciaran asked, his eyes hard.  “Just because I am evil does not mean I do not have rules.  Children are off limits.  Women can be killed, but no more.  Torture is a means to an end, an art form.”

“Strange…care to explain?” Gabriel prodded, inwardly shuddering at the smile on Ciaran’s face.

“A child is a gem,” Ciaran said simply.  “Their innocence is a thing to be respected and cherished—the same for women.  I was a child once.  I wish no child to suffer what I have, and will not inflict it upon them.  Women…it was a woman that protected me.  It is a woman that has refused and defeated me, time and time again, with nothing more than a smile.  It was a woman that saved me.  They can be evil—moreso than I ever could—but they are to be respected.”

“It sounds to me, Ciaran, that you are not as evil as you think you are,” Gabriel told him. “True evil does not care for such things as rules—they do what they want how they want, regardless of the consequences.  I believe you are the epitome of pure darkness, Ciaran.”

“Be that as that may,” Ciaran continued, that disturbing smile on his face, “I warn you now: any that are evil—and I know because that is what I was raised with—will suffer for what they have done.”

“…So be it,” Gabriel agreed. “Maybe then people will realize that there is most definitely a consequence for their actions.”