#not to mention she lost her husband sometime in the three years after they were both freed from wanda’s hex

[sapphicgaygremlin]

it bothered sharon so much that everyone was constantly calling her mrs hart but she just smiled and brushed it off, we heard what the brainwashing was like from ralph (randall) bohner and holy hell she is good at repressing her trauma

[fioiswriting]

Reunion | oneshot

Summary : After the Battle Above the Gods Eye, Daemon returned victorious. Aemond was presumed dead, though his body was never found. Three years later, you've mourned your former husband and are ready to move on. But it seems that some ghosts from your past have come back to haunt you, and that the dead aren't really dead after all...

[Part 2]

Rating : Explicit 18+, MDNI

Pairing : Aemond x Velaryon/Strong!niece!Reader, implied Cregan Stark x Reader (you can interpret them as lovers or not). Reader is Rhaenyra and Harwin’s daughter so I imagined her with dark hair like Jace, Luke and Joffrey but feel free to imagine her as you want of course <3

TW : unprotected sex, breeding kink, mention of characters death, angst, possessiveness, p in v sex, oral m receiving, praising kink, dom/sub undertones, mention of war, AU where the Blacks won the war, Alys Rivers (but no cheating), Reader has a child, grief, light choking, not proofread.

Words count : 7600

Author's notes : Hi everyone !! Sooo I’m posting my first ever fanfic on here, my first x reader and my first fanfic for Aemond. I’m very anxious haha But well, this fanfic is heavily inspired by a RP that has been going on for months with my wonderful gf <3 She writes Aemond so well I swear and now she’s making me fall in love with Cregan too haha oops whatever. Some of Aemond’s lines in this fanfic are hers so of course the credits go to her 💕 Long story short the reader’s backstory is inspired by my OC! The plot doesn't make any sense but whatever

Also English is not my first language, so sorry for the grammar mistakes !!

Enjoy 🖤

I don't know what I'm supposed to do Haunted by the ghost of you Oh, take me back to the night we met The night we met - Lord Huron

The snow had covered the landscape of Winterfell in a thin white layer so similar to ash, and the image tugged at your heart for a moment. Ashes. Fire. War. It was strange, the stillness that had followed the fury of screams and blood, of fire and ash, the constant anguish and pain of loss. It was like a long howl and then sudden silence. Life had resumed its course, the earth and the grass nurtured in red, as if nothing had happened, and that still irritated you sometimes, three years later.

For this peacefulness was a constant reminder of your life before. Before the war, before your own family ripped itself apart from within, before you lost him. There was something bitter in the thought that, in an alternate reality, you would have been happy with him by your side. The night brought its share of sweet dreams, lulled by the embrace of his arms, and you closed your eyes with ease, hoping to see his face again, which was fading day by day, desperately clinging to the details that made him.

It had been the best solution, you knew. 

For there was no reality in which he could live as much as you wished for. And you had accepted your duty by straightening your shoulders, silencing your heart, digging your thumbnail into the inside of your wrist. Your stepfather had said he was dead; he had seen Vhaegar fall from the sky, wounded.  He had seen the huge dragon crash into the water with all its weight. He had waited, and no silver hair had returned to the surface. He had searched and no body had been found.

So, he had returned, triumphant, with the conclusion that Aemond Targaryen was dead.

The room had swayed around you, but your fingers on the hard, rough wood of the table had kept you grounded. You had nodded, unsure, your ears ringing, your teeth sinking into the flesh of your tongue to hold back the tears that were beading at the edges of your eyes.

You knew it was inevitable, perhaps even fair. But it still hurt.  It sill fucking hurt.

Daemon had reassured you by pointing out that you were now released from your marital obligation.  A marriage to him that you had hoped for, waited for, dreamed of in your younger years. A marriage you had despised, once forced into, once made captive, a prisoner to be used against your own mother. And then a marriage that you had loved, cherished even, when he had opened up to you, when he had changed, when he had revealed that soft side despite his rough edges.  And you loved him, truly. The childhood love, the shy love that had blossomed between laughter muffled behind the curtains, hand-in-hand runs through the Red Keep and reading session hidden under the library table, had been rekindled.  Raw, devouring, bruised by war, but more powerful than ever.

Out of the corner of your eye you had caught a glimpse of the comforting gaze of your mother, the Queen, her gentle eyes searching for clues that would betray what you were feeling. It was she who had stroked your hair that evening, her presence welcome and soothing.

During the war, events had made you more uncertain than ever; blood and cheese had broken something in you. Suddenly shaken by the horrific actions of someone you hardly recognised, by the actions of your own family and the father figure who had raised you as his own daughter. You questioned your loyalties more than ever. Of course, you'd been devastated by Luke's death, your beloved little brother, so innocent, so sweet, and the despair you'd felt, the sadness, had gradually turned to anger. 

Your desire for revenge had fed on your rage, on your anger.

And in your quest for revenge, you had grabbed the dagger hidden in your bodice when you had kissed him, when you had poisoned him with your lips and your body pressed against his. Perhaps it was cowardice to do it on your wedding night, right after the pitiful ceremony in which you had been forced to exchange your vows of fidelity, the humiliation of the white, blue, red and green cloak around your shoulders.  Perhaps it was cowardice to wait for him to surrender to your touch, hard with desire, before plunging the blade straight into his heart.

But you didn't do it, in the end, the humiliation of your failure burning in your cheeks, and you had seen the horrible reality in the icy eye fixed on you: he was expecting it.  He knew. He had anticipated you, as usual, one step ahead of you, ahead of your plans. And the humiliation was all the more bitter.

First he had defied you, knowing full well that you couldn't do it, despite your momentary hesitation. Then he had wiped away your tears, the sound of metal echoing off the floor as he captured your lips with his own. 

And both you and he had sought to release the accumulated tension in the comfort of your naked bodies, in the rough, demanding thrusts.

You weren't quite sure when your relationship had changed. When he had become more forgiving. When he had trusted you. When he had become gentle. When you had felt him slipping away, subtly, almost imperceptibly. When you had begun to seek comfort in his arms, to seek the warmth of his body, to seek his love on his lips.

You loved him.

So you spent the nights lying awake in fear. Fearing the moment when you would have to make a choice. Fearing the moment when you would have to betray.

Which side would you choose when both armies were coming towards you, carrying the same flags, the same weapons, both calling your name?

Anxiety had spread its roots in the pit of your stomach, crescent moons in the palms of your hands. You felt as if you were losing your mind.

But the choice had been forced upon you without you having to make it. You had accepted it, as your duty demanded, as your loyalty to your family demanded.

Life at Winterfell wasn't so bad, quite the opposite in fact, despite the cold and snow you weren't used to. Cregan Stark was a good man. He had given you time and space to grieve, and had opened the castle gates to you with kindness. You had decided that you could get used to the cold and the snow, to the stone and the rustic wood, so different from the refineries of the capital, but infinitely warmer.

It was your choice, your departure for Winterfell.  Dragonstone was still haunted by the ghost of Luke, by the ghosts of Joffrey and little Aegon and Viserys and Rhaenys and all the family members you had lost.  King's Landing was haunted, too. By your sweet aunt and her cries of despair, by Aegon's descent into madness, by the humiliations you had so gracefully endured, by the recurring announcements of deaths, by the smell of the innocents’ blood, by the pitiful looks of Alicent, who had seen in you the image of herself a few years earlier, powerless and manipulated.

But above all, it was haunted by him.

The weight of the memories had become unbearable and you needed to leave.

You chose Winterfell, hoping the cold would help you forget. And Jace had come with you, his thumb caressing the back of your hand with affection, always the protective, reassuring big brother he was to you.  Probably glad to see his friend again, too. Your friend, to both of you.

But forgetting was something you'd never really been able to do, even less with the last memory he'd left you.

Now, just over three years later, you felt ready to return to King's Landing to visit your parents, to face the demons of your past and to mourn once and for all. It was inexplicable, perhaps a little strange, but you felt the need to go back.

On his first dragon ride, Rhaegar clapped his hands along the way, nestled into your arms in front of you, closing his eyes as the wind ruffled his dark curls. Midnight, your dragon, as pleasant as ever, as easy and gentle as ever, took care to be careful with the two of you on his back.

When you arrived, Rhaenyra hugged you as tightly as she'd ever hugged you, her nose buried in your thick hair, before bending down to take her grandson in her arms.

"I've missed you, sweet girl." she said to you. You smiled and reached for her arm, glancing at your son who'd grabbed one of your mother's long silver curls: "Daemon has missed you too. You know he doesn't show his feelings, but... he missed you." 

You smile, your eyes dropping to the floor.  You missed them, too, terribly, despite the frequent letters.

"And of course... we’ve missed you too, little one!" Rhaenyra added, catching the child's nose with her thumb and forefinger, causing him to burst into laughter.

It felt good to be back.  It was good to have regained some sort of routine in your daily life with your family. It was good to see the walls of the Red Keep return to their original familiarity, chasing away the ghosts you feared you might see again.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Perhaps you should have listened to your stepfather and not stray under any circumstances from the knight who has been following your every step with concern, afraid to lose sight of you. 

Five years earlier, it was Sir Erryk's vigilance that you had deceived when you had carelessly followed your eldest uncle into the dangerous streets of the capital.

The streets of King's Landing offered you a freedom you had missed. But now you almost regret sneaking through the crowds to escape the vigilance of the knight who had escorted you. You decide to take a shortcut, the hood of your cloak pulled down over your forehead.  It must have been your imagination.  You aren’t on the worst side of the city, not like five years ago, and the streets have become safe, much safer now that your parents are in power.

Your footsteps led you to some stone steps, which you climb at full speed, your heart pounding in your chest.  Glancing behind you, you disappear like a shadow around the corner of an alley, but the feeling is still there. You feel as if you are being followed.

At the Red Keep you already had the unpleasant feeling of being observed. In the gardens, with your son. Along the ramparts, enjoying the sea breeze on your face.

But you blamed it on your body's automatic response to the anxiety that had built up in all the years you'd spent within the walls of the Keep.

You slow your pace as you spot the dome and towers of the Great Sept at the end of the alley. From there you can easily find your way back to the Red Keep. All you had to do is keep moving, staring ahead, pressing your pace, wrapped in the thick wool of your cloak.

One step after the other. Breathing deeply. Half-moons in your palms.

The Great Sept growing closer give you a strange kind of reassurance.

And then suddenly, one hand closes over your mouth, the other around your waist. Your back bangs painfully against the cold stone wall of the winding alley into which you have been dragged. Fuck. Fuck.

You are too paralysed to struggle, too paralysed to bite the hand of the stranger holding you prisoner between the wall and his own body.

"You obviously learned nothing from my advice, Lady Strong," the icy voice whispers in the hollow of your ear. Your eyes widen. 

That voice. It couldn't be.

Lady Strong. Lady Strong. Lady Strong.

It can’t be.

That is your sick mind playing tricks on you again.

"As reckless as ever, hm, aren't you? You could easily get yourself killed."

The stranger releases you and you look up again, tears forming at the corners of your eyes, searching for that icy blue, tinged with lilac, that have read through you so many times before.

It is impossible.

He has died three years before, falling from Vhaegar's back into the deep waters of the lake at Harrenhal.

Is it a ghost? Is it a hallucination?

"You are dead. You were dead," you whisper, more to yourself than to him, still in shock from the feel of his body against yours. You feel the tears that have formed at the corners of your eyes roll down your cheek, and your little fists pound his chest.

You have so much to say to him. So many things to reproach him for.

His hand cups your cheek to turn your head and force you to look at him, his thumb wiping away your tears. 

The way he looks at you hasn’t changed; it still makes you shiver. You still feel that your uncle could read through you, that he could discover your deepest secrets.  And there is still that hint of desire, too, that gleam in his one seeing eye.

You want to kiss him. You want to slap him.

He clenches his jaw as he pulls you against him, burying your face in his chest, his arms around you. He rests his chin on your head. One of his hands strokes your dark hair as you stifle sobs into the wool of his cloak.

The situation takes you back to your wedding night, when he had comforted you in the same way after you had told him that you couldn't hate him, even if you had tried.

"I know," you hear him whisper, the vocal cords vibrating from his throat against the top of your head.

He is standing there, in front of you. You cling to the fabric of his clothes with all your might, as if you're afraid he'll slip away again.

"How?" you ask, eyes closed, head against him. If he is to be taken from you again, you intend to enjoy every moment in his company. 

He clenches again. You step back to look into his eyes, to search his enigmatic gaze for answers, for clues, for signs that would explain how. Why.

He doesn't answer you, but he is filled with desire as he grips your chin between his middle and index fingers, as he captures your lips with his own. You rediscover the possessiveness you've been missing. He pushes you a little harder against the wall behind you, as if to remind you who you belong to. Who you were married to.

A familiar warmth blossoms between your thighs, a warmth you haven't felt for too long. You're trapped, right there, your uncle towering over you, trapped between the wall and his body. His fingers close around your jaw and you kiss him back hungrily, wrapping your arms around his neck to pull him closer.

You're perfectly aware that the situation is surreal.  You're perfectly aware that you're making a mistake, that you shouldn't respond to the kiss of the man who used to be your husband, not when he's technically still your enemy, not when he's technically dead. 

But you shut out the voices in your head begging you to stop.

"I still want to hate you, you know," you breathe between his parted lips. He merely mutters hm in reply, trying to shut you up again, his hands wandering under your cape, tracing the ribs of the body he'd missed so much. He reaches for your waist, your hips, which he grabs meanly. 

There's no one in the alley around you, but the hood over his head hides his long silver hair anyway. 

"Three fucking years." Your lips leave his, a mixture of anger and desire bubbling up from your lower belly. Aemond stares at you, his jaw clenched. He knows you need to unleash your emotions when you don't read an ounce of regret in his gaze. "Three. Fucking. Years. And you've told me nothing. You never sought to -"

"I couldn't," he retorts harshly. He seems to be searching for words to explain something you could not possibly understand, but his gaze does not soften. You know he needs time, you've learned to know him.  You've waited three years, what's another moment? But you're tired, and your patience isn't as strong as it used to be.  You look away, a mocking laugh escaping your lips as you repeat his justification. "You couldn't." 

"And risk your mother executing me?" He forces you to look at him again, and you feel the lump form in your throat. You know you are perhaps being unfair, but you were alone for those three years while you mourned him, so alone, and in a way, you want to make him pay.

"You were dead to me, qybor." Uncle. You feel him twitch at the mention of your family tie, at the nickname he used to love to hear on your tongue. "I had to live with the idea that you would never come back."

The tears that had dried on your cheeks threaten to flow again, pooling at the corners of your eyes. Aemond sighs. 

"I thought I was dead too," he whispers. You can feel the tension in every one of his muscles. There's a moment of hesitation, a silence that hovers between you.  You have so many questions, but you don't know where to begin.  Not a sound leaves your lips.

"She tended to my wounds," he adds, and you frown in confusion. "Alys."

Alys. You try to wriggle out of his grip, but he keeps you pinned to the wall.  Alys, you remember the rumours whispered in your ear by that rat of Larys - those false rumours, you remind yourself -  but you can't help feeling your heart clench.  You don't trust your voice enough to speak, to say anything.

"There's no one left in Harrenhal but her," he adds, as if you need that clarification, as if you need to know where he's been all this time. 

You say nothing. Your throat is tight. If you speak, if you look at him, you'll cry again and betray your feelings all over again. You refuse to make a fool of yourself, not now.

"She's the one who saw you. In Winterfell." There's a hint of bitterness in his voice as he mentions the place where you've spent the last few years rebuilding yourself, trying to forget him.  A bit of anger, perhaps, too.

"Cregan Stark welcomed me indeed," you reply curtly.  Perhaps you want to hurt him as he hurt you, but you are deliberately vague in your answer. "I have mourned you, qybor."

Everything is so confused in your mind.  A paradoxical blend of desire, anger, sadness, jealousy.  Of love too.

You want to strangle him and melt on his lips at the same time, and you know that after all this time you should be used to feeling this paradox of emotions with Aemond. Your uncle was a set of contradictions all his own.

"I saw you. On Midnight. That's how I knew you were here."

You nod. Words don't work between you, you know that. It has always been like that; the habit of letting silence speak more than words. The habit of communicating through the carnal acts of your bodies against each other. *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Aemond pushes you against the wooden door as soon as you enter the mediocre room of the inn. He is demanding, more than ever, as his hands run along your hips to your thighs to lift you up and press you against the door, your legs closing around him. He watches you with hungry eyes, like a predator ready to pounce on its prey. You can't stop a moan from escaping your lips. 

There's something feverish, passionate, urgent about the kiss. And when his tongue begs for an opening, your lips part to welcome him. There is only you in this room, an interlude where nothing else exists, where you don't have to worry about your duties and loyalties, where you are guided by nothing but passion.

His hand slams against the wall next to your head and with a movement of his hips he lifts you a little higher onto his waist, your legs locked tightly around him. He grunts into the crook of your neck at the friction of your crotch against his.

"Tell me to stop." His hand which isn't against the wall to support your weight slides up to your jaw. He lifts your chin, his gaze locked in yours, searching for clues, anything that would betray your desire to end whatever it is you're doing. "Tell me to stop now, or I won't be able to."

You don't want to stop. You should, you know you should, but you silence the little voice in your conscience that's begging you to pull yourself together, to end it all before you've even started, before you've even gone too far, and you kiss him with more vigour, with more fervour.

"I'm not going to tell you to stop, qybor," you whisper against his lips. "You know that."

His hardened member twitches beneath you at the mention of the High Valyrian, at the mention of that nickname he's so fond of. It's his weakness, you know, and despite the three years he's been away, he hasn't changed.

It's so good to feel him against you again, to feel his lips against yours, along your jawline to the junction with your neck. In one sharp movement, he rolls his hips to meet yours, pressing you a little harder against the wooden wall, and he catches your moan between his lips.

You know that tonight there will be no shy touches between you, no awkward explorations like in the early days of your love, when it wasn't tainted by war, blood, and death yet. You and he will both be consumed by the burning fire of passion.   You both need to release that tension and frustration, to make up for lost time, to drown, drunk with desire, in the most carnal of acts. All that matters now are his hands on your body to ease the pain pulsing between your thighs, the desperate need to feel him inside you. 

The barrier of your clothes frustrates you. You need to feel his skin against yours, to feel all of him, and your hand runs down his body to pull at the cord holding his breeches together. Immediately his fingers close around your wrist to hold you back. He wants to be in control, you know. But it has been three years and something about you just isn't the same.

"Let me worship you like I used to, qybor," you whisper against his lips, your forehead pressed against his, and you feel his jaw tighten. There's a moment of hesitation in his eyes, clouded by desire.

His thumb caresses your lips, pressing against your lower lip. You part them, just enough for the tip of your tongue to wet the top of his thumb. There are no further words exchanged between you, just silence, punctuated by your gasping breaths. His hand closes around your throat, not pressing too hard, just enough so you can feel the weight of his palm against your windpipe, just to remind you that he's in complete control of the situation.

Fuck, you've missed it; the adrenaline of his hand around your throat, the adrenaline of knowing he could do anything to you and you'd be defenceless.

"On your knees then."

The command echoes through the room and you feel the wetness seeping between your thighs as you slide to your knees in front of him. Your eyes shine with envy and you look up at him as you did years ago. You know he can't resist the angelic look on your face when you're between his thighs. You know he can't resist the dichotomy between the innocent look on your face and the sinful act you're about to commit.  He revels in your submission, and that's something you've learned to use against him.

Your uncle releases his cock from his breeches, his hand wrapped around the base, and the desire you feel between your thighs becomes more and more unbearable. The head is already glistening with anticipation, white pearls beading at the slit, and it takes all of Aemond's self-control not to grab you by the hair and force himself into your mouth entirely. 

Closing the distance, he rubs his member against your lips to spread the wetness before pushing into your mouth. Your lips close around him. He's warm and heavy on your tongue and the hand holding the base of his manhood is replaced by yours to cover what you can't take. Your tongue curls around the tip first, absorbing his salty taste, and you look up at him through your long lashes. He doesn't look away from you.

His hand cups your cheek, his thumb caresses your cheekbone before sliding to the corner of your lips, just where his length disappears between them. It's as if he's hypnotised by the spectacle, by the bobbing of your head, by your hollowed cheeks, by your application and devotion. 

His hands leave your jaw and sink into your thick curls, urging you to take him a little deeper, and he thrusts between your lips with more vigour. You close your eyes, concentrating on not choking as his member touches the back of your throat. You take it as diligently and assiduously as ever, ignoring the tears gathering at the corners of your eyes.

"That's it, just like that. Such a good girl, mandianna [niece], such a good wife," you hear him grunt, his movements more erratic, more jerky, and you revel in his praise, sending a new wave of heat between your thighs. "Only for me."

You feel him throb on your tongue. You know it won't be long now, and you prepare yourself to welcome him, to let the salty taste of his seed flood your tongue, but your uncle pulls back reluctantly. 

"I would rather not waste." he whispers, his eyes riveted on the thread of saliva that connects your lips, glistening with saliva and precum, to the tip of his cock. You shudder. Aemond definitely hasn't changed much, you realise.

His hand finds your cheek again and he caresses your lips to spread the mess you've made by sucking him. You know he isn't finished. This is just the beginning and you're both driven by the consuming hunger of passion. You know what's coming now, your core clenching around nothing, and you rub your thighs together, in an attempt to soothe the impatience. 

He urges you to stand. He has that predatory look in his eyes as he closes the distance between you with his determined steps. 

" Undress," he orders, and you do not take your eyes off him as you untie the linen dress you had put on to disguise yourself as a common girl.

The garment falls heavily to the floor, forming a grey puddle at your feet, and you take a step forward.

"Do you not like seeing me dressed in rags, qybor?" you ask in a playful tone, teasing, referring to the time, years ago, when he had rescued you during your adventurous walk along the grim Silk Road where your uncle Aegon had accidentally led you. 

The memory was so close and yet so far away.

Aemond takes a step towards you, his hand brushing aside the long hair that hides your breasts to tuck it behind your shoulder.

"Not when you are meant to be my Queen." His eye glow with desire. He studies your body in detail as his fingers slide down your collarbone to your breasts. His thumb traces their underside before moving up to your nipples, hardened by the cool evening air and desire. He plays with them, eliciting a moan that satisfies him.  He looks at you like one looking at a prize, a long-awaited gift.

"Three years away from my beautiful wife," he whispers, his good eye gleaming as he looks at your breasts.

"You did have pleasant company in Harrenhal though, didn't you?" you hiss through your teeth and Aemond's hand suddenly closes around your throat to make you swallow your insolence.  You're not afraid, not anymore, for you know he won't hurt you. You have this power over him and it's delicious. 

His face is so close to yours that your noses are touching. 

He doesn't let go of you. 

"It wasn't like that." He whispers. "With her." You know he's sincere because he's almost awkward with his words, his explanation. You can see in his eye that there are so many other things he would like to tell you, but you have learned not to rush him.  It has always been difficult for him to open up, to be vulnerable.

His fingers release you. Aemond is a good head taller than you, and as he puts a hand on your shoulder, moving forward to force you back until your knees hit the mattress, your eyes remain fixed on his. 

Your uncle lays you down on the mattress. It's not the comfort of the bed you once shared, but you don't care, you just need him inside you. 

You need him to make you feel whole again. Aemond was fire, and you were willing to burn for him.  You had always burned for him.

In the candlelight of the small bedroom where you spend the night, you see his thumbs slip under the waistband of his breeches. His clothes quickly join yours on the floor.

There's something soothing about the weight of his naked body on top of yours. Once under him, you know you can surrender completely to him and stop thinking, just stop thinking.

His lips on yours, his hands on your body, his broad torso eclipsing your smaller figure.

He places kisses down your neck to your collarbone, sucking your skin between his teeth to leave purple marks that will blossom tomorrow. 

He kisses your breast, his lips closing around an erect nipple which he sucks gently, then around the other.  Your hands are buried in his long silver hair.  You can feel how wet you are between your thighs. You need him desperately, right there.

The confidence with which his fingers slide down your waist, from your hips to your inner thighs, only emphasises his ravenous expression. His touch on your folds sends a wave of heat through your body, causing your hips to move against his hand. Softly tracing the curves of your crotch, his index and middle fingers finally part your folds to collect the wetness that has formed there.

"Is it sucking your husband's cock that has got you so wet? 

Yes, you want to answer, seeking more contact, but the words are stuck in your throat.

"Stay still," he orders in a hoarse voice as you move your hips, his hands gripping your hips to pin you back against the mattress. 

You comply, for once, because you know he won't give you what you want otherwise. And you can't wait any longer, not today, not when you thought you'd never feel his warmth against your body again, his hands on your hips, his cock inside you.

"You see, you can be a good girl." His voice is softer when you obey. And to reward you, his fingers slide to your entrance, where he applies a little pressure with the tip of his middle finger without actually penetrating you. "Now beg your husband to fill you."

"Please, qybor," you murmur, your hand taking his cheek to bring his face to yours. You want him to look at you. "Please, I need you inside."

Oh, the slowness and precision with which his finger plunges into you makes you throw your head back. He begins to move back and forth, his index finger joining his middle one, caressing your spongy walls, his thumb tracing circles around your bud. Curling his fingers, he strokes that spot inside you that makes your legs tremble and you clutch the sheets beneath you.

You feel your centre tighten around his fingers, the release you've been looking for so close, so very close. You shut your eyes, ready for the familiar wave of warmth to wash over your entire body, but your uncle pulls his fingers away. You grunt in frustration.

You open your eyes only to see Aemond bring his fingers to his lips indecently, spreading your wetness over his own lips. "You still taste so good," he purrs, and you feel the blush rise to your cheeks.

He leans over to kiss you and you taste yourself on his lips. It's indecent.

He pulls back and you see him wrap his hand around his hardened cock, the head angrily red and already drooling in anticipation. He guides himself to your core, rubbing his length between your folds, coating it with your glistening juices. 

The round tip of his member enters you, slowly at first, stretching your narrow entrance as if to give you time to adjust. Aemond pushes and he sinks easily into you until he's fully seated, your warm, wet walls feeling heavenly around him, squeezing him just right.

" You are so tight," he growls against you as your arms close around him, your legs bent and pressed to either side of his body. 

He gives you a moment to get used to having him inside you again, to feeling him so deeply. It's exactly what you need; he stretches you deliciously, with a perfect touch of controlled pain.

You feel whole again and you want to cry.  You never want to lose that feeling. You want to keep him, against you, inside you.

You close your eyes and bury your head in the hollow above his shoulder, clinging to him as if to feel him more deeply, more intimately.

"You can move," you reply, rolling your hips to support your words. Aemond's hand immediately presses down on your stomach to hold you against the mattress and you bite your lower lip, almost guilty of forgetting his earlier command. He always has that need to control. He's the one who decides, you should know it after all these years, and you should stop being so demanding, so desperate.

"I said stay still," he scolds you, and the waiting is unbearable. 

You need him. 

When he finally pulls out and thrusts into you again, you let out a whimper. Your nails dig into the pale skin of his back, leaving crescent marks that will probably still be there the next day.

Once under him, Aemond has the ability to make you vulnerable, and part of you hate him for it.

"You take me so well," he growls after a particularly brutal thrust. "You're such a good girl."

The praise is sweet music to your ears.  You have always needed it, to be praised, complimented.

You feel him hitting that special spot deep inside you, you feel him pressing in so deeply and your grip tightens around him.

"Did you miss me?" you whisper in a voice made weak by pleasure, but all you get in return are the hoarse grunts of his voice.

Aemond lowers his eyes to look at where you are joined, hypnotised by the sight of his cock disappearing inside you. The rhythm he imposes is powerful, deep, and his fingers find their way between your bodies, reaching your little bud at the top of your folds to trace circles on it. You won't last long and he knows it as he feels your walls tighten desperately around him. Your moans grow louder.

"Look at me." His voice barely brings you back to reality, even though your mind is already far away, even though you know you can't last much longer. Painfully, you open your eyes to meet your uncle's icy gaze. " I am going to fill you up." His pacing becomes more erratic, more sloppy, and you know he won't last much longer either. Leaning on his forearm, he continues to stroke your pearl in small circles. "I am going to fill you up and you're going to take it all."

The image of you, belly round with his child, haunts him.  It never stopped haunting him, even on the brink of death, even when he thought he'd exhaled his last breath as he fell into the icy waters of the lake, his heart clenched with regret and remorse. It still is a wonder that he has survived. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Gods still had plans for him.

I'm going to fill you up. Words like that shouldn't bring you to ecstasy, and yet they do. Aemond reaches deeper, and as he feels your whole body convulse with the spasms of your orgasm, he joins you in your release. He spills his seed deep inside you before remaining still, buried against your womb, enjoying your warmth, making sure he's pouring every last drop into you. 

He doesn't want to pull out, not yet, and you close your arms around his neck, your breast pressed against his chest as he softens inside you.

The weight of his body on yours is comforting.  For the first time in years, you feel alive. For the first time in years, the open wound he left seems to be healing.

When he pulls out, you wince at the sensation of his cock slipping between your still too sensitive folds. You immediately miss the feeling of fullness. 

You barely move, your whole body still sore from your lovemaking, but you can feel his cum leaking from your entrance onto the mattress below.

Again, Aemond's fingers are between your thighs that are glistening with the intimate essence of both of you, collecting his own seed and pushing it back into you.  You whimper, still too sensitive, your lips brushing against his, and he remains inside you for a brief moment. He wants to make sure nothing is wasted.

And when he withdraws his fingers, he presses them against your lips for you to clean them.

You snuggle up against him, your head against his chest. Your hand caresses his chest, the fine line of his muscles, and he rests his chin on the top of your head, wrapping an arm around your waist to hold you close. You enjoy the warmth of his body while you still can. Between your thighs you feel the sticky sensation of his seed mixing with your wetness as it still flows out of you, but you don't want to leave the embrace of his arms.

"I saw you in the gardens. With the child."

When you feel his throat vibrate, you look up at him, your eyebrows furrowed. "It was you, then?" You swallow. "It was you watching me." It's more of an observation than a question, and you suddenly understand that constant, uncomfortable feeling of being watched. At least you weren't crazy. 

He lets out a hm and pauses.

"Is he yours?"

You know where this question is leading. You fear the moment of truth.  You'd deluded yourself into thinking you could avoid it, but you were naive; did you really think you could hide the truth from him for much longer, now that he was back?

"Yes." You answer, looking away. You're nervous, and he can feel it.

"He's Cregan Stark's son, isn't he?"

Your heart clenches. You hesitate for a moment. You should lie.  You know you should lie.  To protect your son and your family, as you've protected them for the past three years.  You only need one word.

You hear him sighing beneath you, taking your silence as confirmation.

"No, he's not." 

The words leave your lips before you can even stop them. You hold your breath. Beneath you, Aemond tenses. He straightens, puzzled, silent.

"A bastard, then?" His voice is dry, almost mocking, revealing a form of irritation. "I did not expect this from you, dear niece." Disappointment.

You feel anger boiling inside you at the thought of him insulting your son, your sweet boy you love so much. You swallow the lump that has formed in your throat and rise on your forearms, your eyebrows furrowed as you turn your hard gaze on him.

You don't know how to express the words that are desperately trying to escape your lips. 

" He has blue eyes," you add, and you can see the confusion on his face. A lock of hair slips from your shoulder and falls around your face. "Your blue eyes."

You feel him tense up. He says nothing, just stares at you with his one seeing eye.  It's rare to see Aemond Targaryen so unsure of himself, so full of doubt. He stares at you as if he's afraid he's heard you wrong, as if he's afraid he's invented the words that have come out of your mouth.

"What did you say?"

You look away. You bite your lower lip, regretting your words.  You want to bury your face in his chest. You breath. 

"He is your son, Aemond." You finally admit it.

It's true that Rhaegar's brown curls could easily make him look like a Stark. Cregan had offered to raise him as his own, and you had smiled at his kindness.

Rhaegar is so much like you. Like you, and like Luke, and especially like Jace as a child, of whom he is the spitting image. He has the soft features of your face, but his eyes make him undeniably Aemond's son.

Your uncle holds you close, his arm wrapped around your waist, his long nose buried in the hollow of your neck, breathing in the scent of your hair.

"My son," he repeats in awe.  It's rare to see Aemond smile with sincerity.  Especially after the war has worn him down, made him more ruthless than ever.

"His name is Rhaegar," you say. "Just as we discussed." There's shyness in your voice.

He straightens, you on top, straddling him, and he seeks your lips to kiss you fiercely. His desire awakens beneath you; you feel him harden against your core again.

And this time, he makes love to you.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** 

"I missed the best part." He purrs against you, his hand absently caressing your breast before sliding down your body to rest on your flat stomach, just above where your womb lies. He clenches his hand possessively over your flesh. His voice is almost tinged with regret. Your hand rests on his.

"You shouldn't have left me," you reply, bitter. Deep down, you're still angry with him. Your gaze falls on your stomach, where both your hands lie, yours on top of his, clasped together. "You shouldn't have let your anger dictate your actions," you add, looking away. "But you were blinded by your desire for revenge, by your desire to prove that you could be better than him.” You swallow.

It is his fault, after all, that he missed your son's birth, that he didn't see him grow through the tender years of his infancy.

Rhaegar needed a father, and it was Cregan who raised him.

"Does he even know who I am? Who his father is?"

The guilty look on your face betrays you, and you know immediately that you've hurt his feelings. It may be selfish of you, but he needs to understand.

"You were supposed to be dead. There's still a lot he doesn't know." 

He doesn't say anything. You don't have the courage to meet his hard, stern gaze, you don't have the courage to see the disappointment and pain on his face, because if you do, your heart will tighten and you will fall apart.

"He's still so young. Give him time." You add, your fingers tracing small circles on the back of his hand, in an attempt to soothe him. 

You know how much Aemond wanted a son, and you know it's cruel to take that from him.  You know he would have made a good father. You can picture him with Rhaegar on his knee, reading him stories, telling him about the adventures of Vhagar and Visenya, and you love the image that forms in your mind.

You told Rhaegar about Aemond, though he was still too young to understand. You told him that his father had once owned the greatest dragon in the world, that his father was a fearless man for it was true, and you saw his big eyes light up. 

Aemond pulls you closer to him. "I want to be there for him, you know."  Unlike Viserys, but he doesn't have to say it, you understand what he means in the undertone he leaves at the end of his sentence.  He has always suffered from his father's indifference.

You cuddle up to him and he runs his fingers through your long curls. For a moment, you imagine that everything is fine and you search for his touch. He plants a kiss on the top of your head.

"I've missed you," he admits, the words landing on the tips of his lips in the silence of the bedroom, but you're already dozing off.

You know that tomorrow will be made up of choices and decisions. 

But for now, you fall asleep in the embrace of his very real arms, for once, enjoying the illusion of the life you both could have had.

[lostloveletters]

When Your Heart Beats Next To Mine (John Brady x OC)

Summary: Day 23 - Breeding Kink. Woody decides she's finally ready to try for kids, and her husband is more than enthusiastic about the idea. [AO3 link | Kinktober 2024 Masterlist]

Note: This one’s for all the Woody/Brady babes out there. Y’all are incredibly passionate about them and I love you for it🖤

Word count: 1k

Warnings: Mentions of Catholicism. Sexually explicit content involving elements of breeding kink.

They’d only gotten married a few months earlier, after an almost agonizing engagement of three years, two of those spent apart. The majority of the last year had been spent waiting for Woody to finish catechism, but the Monsignor delivered on his promise of letting them have a coveted spring wedding. But even before the date was set, the extended Brady family bombarded her with their well-meaning comments along the lines of ‘You two will have the most beautiful babies.’

Woody remembered shifting uncomfortably in the cold metal folding chair when it was brought up in catechism—god had created sex for a purpose: procreation. It all went over her head, back then, the homilies that emphasized the sanctity of marriage, of the bedroom.

Pleasure, the cornerstone of her and John’s intimacy, was only incidental. She couldn’t believe she used to cringe when she heard the term making love, but with him, she found it the only adequate way to describe the sensation, the experience of affectionate hands and lips taking the utmost care of her, adoration otherwise reserved for the holiest of holies directed toward her. Whereas in the past she forced out moans and faked orgasms through mechanical, impersonal sex with men who didn’t give a damn about her, she never had to fake a thing with John. 

Sex seemed different when it was so purposeful. Tracked her cycle, planned it so if she got pregnant sometime within the following weeks, John would be home to help with their newborn. Anxiety would’ve put a damper on her desire if it weren’t for her husband, far more understanding than she felt she deserved.

Of course, they’d had sex without condoms before, and she might have liked the way it felt when he emptied himself inside her just as much as he did if it weren’t for the worry that crept up on her when she came back to her senses and made a beeline for the bathroom.

For all her trepidation, she insisted the lights be kept on. She’d gone nearly two years without seeing his face, and in the time since, wanted to look at him at every available opportunity, especially when they were intimate.  

“I wasn’t even this nervous before I lost my virginity,” she admitted, lying naked on the bed, looking up at her husband’s adoring face. 

“If you want to wait—” 

“No, I want this. I want to have a family with you so bad, John.”

He smiled, kissed her softly before murmuring against her lips, “I’ll take care of everything, sweetheart. All you have to do is lay back and look pretty.”

There was always something about the way he looked at her, even when he was more reserved, like when they’d been hiding their relationship at Thorpe Abbotts or keeping up appearances for his family, that she knew he wanted her just as much as she wanted him. Any exasperation toward her near constant hunger for him was just for show.

“You know how long I’ve been thinking about this? About getting you pregnant?”

She shook her head.

“Since the first time I saw how you were with the kids back in England,” he confessed, making her breath hitch. “It was just for a split second, but then I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Got me through a lot of cold nights, knew I needed to get back to you so I could do this.”

Woody never dreamed she’d have kids, her own mother and father so undeserving of their titles, she figured their inability to express any kind of parental affection was probably inherently in her also—to know John had seen the opposite in her from the start, before he even knew her that well, whether from lust or otherwise, made something in her chest bloom. It was him, only him who could make her feel that way, confident enough to take such a big leap.

His palm pressed against her belly, holding her down as he pushed his cock inside her. It wasn’t painful, hadn’t been in a long time. Still, she grabbed his shoulders, seeking a way to ground herself as he sought his release. His mouth on hers, with a curl of his tongue he swallowed her moans, thick and syrupy with desperation.

Her hands had mapped his body so many times, she could reach out for him in the dark and know exactly what she was touching—the cool metal from his wedding band on his ring finger, the slope of his shoulder, the fleshy part of his thigh. The same rang true for him, but her body would inevitably change, be transformed by his love for her, the evidence of their devotion to each other more visible with each passing day.

A string of strained ‘pleases’ fell from her mouth like a rosary.

"Shh," he soothed, "I’ll take care of you. Gonna give you what you need."

“I need you,” she whined.

“I know, sweetheart. I’m getting there, won’t be much longer till I put my baby in you.” He put his hand over her stomach, then, his nails scraping against her skin possessively. Heat spread across her abdomen at the intensity of his gaze. “I think I’m gonna like the way you look so much, they’ll have to put you on bedrest, anyway. Won’t be able to keep my hands off of you.”

Almost wondered where the hell this John had been hiding, lying dormant in the man she married, ready to pounce when she said the word, primal and relentless upon her consent to be bred. Frustratingly coherent when she felt as if her brain had turned off completely. If this was part of being his good Catholic wife, taking him raw just to parade around half a dozen kids at Mass every Sunday, she’d do it the world over for him.

“Doesn’t it feel good,” he asked, his voice teasing, “doin’ what you were made to do?”

God help her, she couldn’t manage more than a whine.

“How many are we gonna have, sweetheart?”

“As many as you want,” she breathed.

He grinned. “Good answer.”

[imagine-a-life-like-this]

Veil of Shadows : Prologue

Word Count : 2.1k

Warnings : swearing, mentions of death, mentions of murder, drinking, weed, edibles, food, brief mention of sex

A/N : So it begins. A little slow, but it'll pick up, I promise! Hope you enjoy!

⚠️Minors do not interact⚠️

            Looking around, all anyone could see was carnage. Blood pooled on the floor, corpses of people who were once best friends, lovers. A group much like a family. One person stood amongst it all, tears pooling in their eyes, wondering how it could all end like this. The sun rising on what was meant to be the second day of their vacation, sirens getting closer. All the plans made left with the deaths of those loved ones. Where did it all go wrong?

            Everyone was excited. Since the start of university, the group of friends started a tradition. It started with twelve of them, Jia and Yuri not yet a part of the group. Yuri had come along the next year, and it was just the thirteen of them the year after that as well. Jia and Yeosang had only recently began dating when she offered her vacation house for the groups vacation tradition. How could they turn it down?

            Jia and Yeosang decided to drive there in a car by themselves, the other couples split into three cars trailing behind them. Mae, Wooyoung, San, and Des were in the car directly behind them, with Yunho, Mingi, Jongho, and Yuri following them. Hongjoong, Y/n, Seonghwa, and Kayla brought up the rear, making sure no one got lost or split off from the group.

            Y/n, Des, Mingi, and Yeosang were on call periodically throughout the drive, mostly for pitstop purposes, sometimes for exchanging snacks. It took a few hours for them to get to the house, but Jia promised it would be worth it.

            And when they pulled up, everyone gawking at the size of the place as they got out of the cars, they knew she wasn’t lying. “I asked my parents to make sure everything would be set up by the time we arrived. So no one should bother us the entire weekend.” Jia explained as they started walking up to the house, mansion might be a more fitting word, they would be staying in.

            By set up she meant everything being cleaned, the rooms being made up, and the fridge being stocked. And set up they did. It was ready for them to party the entire weekend and forget about all their problems, forget about looming exams, homework, and projects that were far from finished. For one weekend, they were just a group of friends with no responsibilities.

            “Fuck this place is huge.” Wooyoung said as he looked around. It was like a mansion out of a catalogue. High ceilings, chandeliers, winding staircase, a pool and hot tub in the backyard. It had everything you could want for a vacation.

            “Should we put our stuff away and get this vacation started?” Y/n spoke up with hopefulness in her voice. Her, Mae, Kayla, and Des were always the most excited to get started with the vacation. Ready to get so high they forget where they are.

            “Of course, my darling.” Hongjoong replied, wrapping his arms around her from behind and giving her cheek a quick kiss. Before she could protest, he grabbed her bag and ran upstairs.

            “Hey! I’m an independent woman!” She called after him as she chased him up the stairs.

            “Well I hated that.” Wooyoung joked. Mae glared at him, then looked down at her bag, and glared at him again. “Oh bunny, let me, your big, strong boyfriend, take that for you.” He said as he grabbed their bags. “After you.”

            “Good boy.”

            “Are there any normal couples in this group?” Jia asked Yeosang, but the others who had yet to head upstairs heard her. They all exchanged looks with each other, all knowing what they had to do.

            “Come here princess.” Yunho said to his husband. He was already holding their bags, he was asking Mingi to jump in his arms so he could carry him up the stairs like he did on their wedding day.

            “Always the romantic!” Mingi exclaimed before jumping into Yunho’s arms. And Yunho whisked him up the stairs.

            “Think we’ll be like that when we get married?” Seonghwa asked Kayla with a lovesick smile. Kayla looked at Seonghwa and then at the stairs, pretending to think for a moment, before nodding.

            “In our own way.” She added. He agreed, grabbing their bags, and gesturing for her to link her arm through his. He gave her a quick kiss before the two walked up the stairs, never breaking eye contact.

            “You’re not going to expect us to be like that, right?” Jia asked. Yeosang looked at the two other couples still downstairs, his eyes meeting those of the person he woke up next to early this morning, before they left him alone in his bed.

            “I can carry my own bag.” Des said as San tried to take it out of her grasp. He was pouting at her, but she wasn’t relenting, despite her thinking he was really cute when he pouted at her like this. “Fine, you can carry my bag. But only if I can carry yours.”

            “That defeats the whole purpose!” Des giggled, shrugging her shoulders. But he agreed, the couple swapping bags, and holding hands as they made their way upstairs.

            “Shall we?” Jongho asked, holding out his hand for Yuri to take. The couple decided on sharing a bag since it was only a weekend trip, and Jongho already had it in his other hand. Yuri thought for a second before going to his other side and grabbing the handle alongside Jongho.

            “Let’s carry it together.” Jongho smiled, glancing back at Yeosang one last time, before him and Yuri headed up the winding staircase.

            “God I can’t wait to get drunk.” Jia said exasperated, grabbing her bag and heading up the stairs, Yeosang following behind.

            Each of the rooms had a sign with names on them, which is how everyone found their rooms. Yeosang thought that was smart, but he never would have thought of that. Not that he would ever have the money for a place with more than one spare room. “The rooms are nice.” He commented when he and Jia got into their room.

            “I made sure we got the nicest room of course.” She smiled, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Nice, big bed. Soundproof walls.” He wrapped his arms around her waist as she brought him in for a kiss. “Your friends can enjoy the luxuries this house has to offer, and we can stay in here.” She says, kissing him again. But before it can get too heated, the door bursts open.

            “We’re going to be making some drinks, rolling some joints, and heading for the pool if you two want to join.” Y/n stood there in her swimsuit, a towel draped across her shoulders. She was always the one trying to include Jia in group activities, even when the others told her not to bother. Yeosang knows no one likes his girlfriend, but he’s glad that they’re always trying. If only his girlfriend could give them the same courtesy.  

            “We’ll change and be right down.” Yeosang replied, and Jia sighed, reminding herself to not date someone with a big friend group once this was over. The group are always hanging out together when they have free time. So why did they want to spend even more time together during a vacation?

            Ever since she started dating Yeosang, Jia has been confused how they don’t get sick of each other. She’s never known anyone that she’d want to spend every single day with. Never known anyone she wouldn’t grow sick of eventually. So she watches them in confusion, wondering how they can still be so excited to see each other.

            By the time Jia and Yeosang made it to the backyard, now in their swimsuits, everyone else was spread out across the yard. Some in the pool, some in the hot tub, some just standing around talking. But everyone had a drink of some sort in their hands, a couple groups were passing around some joints, and Y/n seemed to be passing out edibles among her little group.

            “You wanted a drink, right?” Yeosang asked Jia, pointing towards Wooyoung, who usually played the groups mixologist. He was making drinks for Hongjoong and Seonghwa when Yeosang and Jia approached. “He makes really good drinks.” Yeosang’s smile is met with an eye roll, and the three guys standing there all had to bite their tongues as to not say anything to Jia in that moment.

            “Anything to get me drunk.” She told Wooyoung, cocking her head to the side expectantly. Out of all Yeosang’s friends, Wooyoung has been the only one vocal about his dislike of her.

            “Are you nicer when you’re drunk?” Wooyoung asks with a sarcastic smile. Hongjoong shot him a look that was basically telling him to shut the fuck up, before looking at Jia and Yeosang, telling them that Wooyoung was just kidding around. Everyone knew he wasn’t though, but they’ll play along.

~

            “Can you believe the nerve of that bitch saying what she did?” Kayla asked, mostly directed towards Des and Yuri. Y/n and Mae were intrigued, having already been upstairs when Jia started with her commentary about the group.

            “You can’t just say that and not tell us what was said!” Mae exclaimed. The boys that were in the pool, looked over at the group of girls sitting in the hot tub, very obviously gossiping, and immediately knew who they were gossiping about.

            Jia was a popular topic among their gossip sessions, ever since Yeosang introduced her to everyone when they started dating. It was obvious that they didn’t like Jia, and Jia thought she was better than them. She was oil to their glass of water, they would just never mix. But for Yeosang, they were willing to try.

            The other girls filled Mae and Y/n in on what they missed, and Des continued with what happened after Kayla had left. Yuri finished the story with what she heard as her and Jongho were going up the stairs.

            “That bitch is honestly just lucky that murder is illegal because I’m sure there are plenty of people that would gladly kill her.” Des grumbled, taking a sip of her drink, glaring in the direction Jia was.

            “I know twelve for certain. Jury’s still out on Yeosang.” Y/n added, watching as Yeosang brought Jia another drink, a smile on his face that was met with nothing. Not a smile, not even a thank you, but he didn’t seem phased.

            “How would you do it?” Mae asked, a sinister grin on her face as she took a drink. Des and Y/n turned back around to face Mae, before exchanging looks with the other girls. “I’m kidding! Oh my jeez guys. I’m not that crazy.”

            “Wouldn’t this weekend be the perfect time though?” Yuri piped up, shrugging her shoulders.

            “Perfect time for what?” San asked, causing the girls to jump, making him and the others in the pool with him laugh.

            “Talking about something illegal? Why so jumpy?” Yunho joked, but the girls just rolled their eyes.

            “Whatever.” Mae mumbled, reaching over the small wall between the pool and hot tub, and splashing the guys with some water. San splashed water back, which made Des splash more water towards the guys. And they ended up in some kind of splash fight, screaming and laughing while yelling insults at each other.

            “You seriously need normal friends.”

            “Or you just need to learn to have fun.” Mae countered from the hot tub before splashing Jia. “That felt good.” Mae said softly to her friends, which made everyone start to laugh. Even Yeosang found some humor in the situation, giggling himself, and trying to lighten the mood by telling his girlfriend to just splash them back.

            “No fucking thanks.” She replied before storming back into the house.

            “Her loss. That was fun!” Mingi exclaimed, shrugging his shoulders, and leaving to get new drinks for everyone.

            “I should go check on her.” Yeosang said, his smile faltering for a quick second as he said goodbye to his friends, and heading back inside after his girlfriend.

            “I cannot wait until she’s gone.” Kayla said, rolling her eyes.

            “Dead or break up?” Yunho asked. The rest of the group, sans Jia and Yeosang, started to gather together, handing out drinks to everyone, and joining in the conversation.

            “At this point, I don’t care.” Kayla replied, while the rest of the group pretended to think on the question, before letting out a chorus of dead. And they all exchanged looks.

            “I’ll drink to that!” Hongjoong exclaimed, holding his drink up, and everyone else followed suit. “She won’t ruin our vacation. We’re all still together, and that’s all that matters.”   

back to masterlist

@mxnsxngie @maeleelee @hgema @itswaffleberry

[originalwinnercheesecake]

Questions I have about Patience the puritan, and

Can she still see? She has been in the dirt, away from sunlight or electricity for over a century? So would it hurt her to be back in the light? Or would being a ghost render her unaffected by such sever changes?

What were her relationships like with Thor and Sass. Some people have pointed out that while Isaac was the one to let go of her hand, all three men kept walking without her. So does she want vengeance on them next.

On the flip side of that what were the three older ghosts relationships like her. Thor is still with Flower when Isaac and Sass tell the group about Patience and he never comments on her. But I imagine having to leave someone behind messed with his PTSD over what his old crew did to him, and that he does miss her/feel guilt. It is hard to say what Sass feels about her. Telling the story it seemed like he was annoyed/upset about her being gone now, but then his comment to flower "She might be feral. Do not engage" implies he is afraid of her. As for Isaac... well he was visibly fighting the urge to cry when he had to confirm what happened. So we know she was important to him.

On that note is Isaac being the one who let go of her hand the only reason she has singled in on him for revenge. It has been a hot minute since I took a history class, but generally when I read about Puritan villages the stories take place before revolutionary war. So I am guessing Patience died in between Sass and Isaac. We also know that a big part of Isaac's ark is that he has only in the last few years started to really understand his own romantic/sexual feelings. It is cannon that Isaac used to court women because that was what he thought he was supposed to do. The show already covered Beatrice ... are we sure she was the only women.

I am wondering if maybe the show will go the route, that Isaac and Patience used to be a couple after he died. That like Beatrice Patience eventually caught on that Isaac did not really feel romantic for her. But unlike Beatrice who accepted this and they lived as very close friends, could Patience believe he let go her on purpose? That getting her lost in the dirt was his way of breaking up with her? Drama

Flower says Patience was married to a man named Josiah, and talked about him a lot, along with butter turning, Isaac, and revenge? Was Josiah abusive to her? Does feelings about her treatment by him mix into her feelings for any of her old ghost friends.

Flower calls Patience her friend. Does Patience see Flower as her friend. Would she accept help from Flower if Flower saw her again and offered it.

What is Patience ghost power. Please make her one of the secondary ghosts who knows theirs. (Can we eventually see Stephanie and Nancy's too).

Purtian women were mostly homemakers, sometimes educated, very work oriented (again Flower mentioned Patience talked a lot about butter turning, This implies she was possibly a dairymaid on her husband's farm), up tight, and extremely religious. What balance between that and "Scary witch" will Pateince be? Note I am assuming that Patience was accused of witchcraft and put to death.

How long will it take her to move out of the ground and into the house/shed/some above ground structure on the property? How often will we see her once things settle?

[locution-youngster-enjoyer]

💗Granny May

💗The Narrator

💗Leslie

💗Charlie and Meatloaf

Oh sweet Jesus Christ /hj

You’ve opened a whole can of worms with that one, ESPECIALLY for the Narrator

Granny May

I don’t have a lot to say about her because I don’t care that much about her overall, so I don’t have that much to say about her backstory-

She’s been in the villain business for a long long time and was more respected in her younger years. Her husband was also a criminal, but before him she dated Hal Hardbargain, who made her the mech suit she uses. They’re now bitter exes, and constantly fight because they’re cranky old people. Unfortunately, Granny May’s husband passed away, but she Carrie’s on her villain career because it fulfills her.

Granny’s mom is not a villain, and didn’t exactly approve of Granny’s career, but still loves her a lot.

Eugene and Granny don’t really talk anymore after the shorts. Granny is disappointed he gave up on his villain career so early, but otherwise doesn’t focus much on him.

Uhhhh yeah that’s all I got for her, I haven’t really given her much thought lol-

The Narrator

HAAHAHHAHA oh god

Ok so- in my AU headcanon thing (Idfk at this point), there’s three different levels of reality. There’s the irl world (aka us, yes you person reading this), the middle ground, and any fictional world. Narrator’s live in the middle ground, aware they’re fictional but also living out there own lives in some strange form of free will. This means that it’s possible that any narrator from any media could interact, though it’s typically separated between film/tv show narrators, and game narrators.

Also, most of them without canon names just go with whatever name their VA has, so the Narrator would be named Chris.

Chris is happily married to the Powerpuff Girls Narrator (aka Tom)

Time works differently in the fictional reality (aka the whole show of Wordgirl) then it does in the Middle Ground. Time skips that are shown in the show aren’t actual time skips to the Narrators. Chris will literally just walk off and do something else until whatever time is being skipped to. While he can just stick around after an episode, there’s no real reason to, but he sometimes does so anyway because he actually likes his protagonists.

Tom is a whole separate thing so if y’all want me to talk more about these two please let me know. I love ‘em :))

Idk what else to mention, I just like the silly voice guy

Leslie

MY GIRRLLL. I have so much to say about her

In my au, Leslie and Victoria Best have a strange mentor and student relationship.

This is because that Leslie had a very similar childhood to Victoria. The reason she seems to be so multitalented is because as a kid, her parents put her through so many tournaments and extra curricular activities. Kids viewed her as either weird or mean because she was working all the time. Unlike Victoria, Leslie didn’t constantly boast about being the best, but she did have a silent air of superiority.

Until around 8th grade, when a teacher called CPS on her parents. They lost custody of her (because of the horrible shit they would do to her), and she started living with her grandma.

No longer having the constant force telling her to be perfect, Leslie’s mental health and self confidence tanked. It why as an adult she gets stage fright easily.

She went to a really prestigious high school filled with several people with rich families (including some other characters). One of said characters was Claire McCallister, who she quickly befriended (they also dated briefly, but it didn’t really work out, with them leaving on good terms)

Eventually, her high school and another high school participated in an event where they competed with each other, and that’s where Leslie met Lady Redundant Woman, Ms Question, and Mr Big (pre-transition). She specifically hung out and befriended Shelly, and helped him realize he was trans, so for a while they were absolute best buds.

After school, Leslie started working in economics, but was pretty bored with her life, until she heard of a job opportunity as a secretary for an up and coming company. To her surprise, she ends up reuniting with Mr Big.

Mr Big didn’t originally have Mind Control is his company statement, he suddenly got the idea from a random joke Leslie made that he took way to seriously.

Over time, Leslie started to lose her energy for the job and her self esteem started to sink again. The lack of credit and the overworking she received do nothing to help her.

Charlie and Meatloaf

These guys are so silly :]

Meatloaf’s actual name is Joe

These two were roommates in college and were best buds ever since. They both got a job at a construction company together, and they began to befriend a certain Dr Boxleitner who kept calling for their help because he kept blowing up his lab.

Post the accident, Two Brains ‘hired’ them to come work for him, since they were the only people who he knew and who were willing to help.

They’re also in an asexual relationship with each other

[valaenatargaryensdragon]

Free to Feel Pain

pairing: Fanon!Daemon Targaryen x Female OC

summary: No one will understand the pain Valaena Targaryen is feeling, except one person, her husband and uncle Daemon Targaryen, the father of her children one whom they lost and mourn.

Word count: 3,0K

Warnings: Loss of a child, curse words, crying, Angst, mentions of boobies, incest

Masterlist 1

Masterlist 2

Valaena did not mind that she was her father's second daughter, she did not mind that her father loved her elder sister more because she had someone else to love her, her uncle Daemon. Every since she was a small child he was there by her side comforting her and teaching her.

Valaena found herself falling for her uncle as time flew by and she grew older and more beautiful. Valaena will never forget the day her uncle found her hiding under her bad when she was merely five name days old, she was crying in pain after some court lady mocked her for not having a dragon. Rhaenyra tried to comfort her sister as much as she could but she was the heir after all and she was needed elsewhere. Daemon noticed the lack of his niece that day when she failed to show to their Valyrian lesson and he set off in search of her. Ever since that day Daemon made sure to make it clear that whoever mentions the fact that Valaena had no dragon anywhere in front of her will be beheaded even against the will of their king and Valaena's father, Viserys.

As Valaena grew it was almost impossible for Daemon to hide his attraction towards his niece. Valaena cried the day his marriage to Lady Rhae was announced fearing his departure however now that was a mere memory after almost ten years of marriage. Valaena was over the moon when her father allowed them to marry in the ways of old Valyria. She designed her dress herself and wore it wit pride and she barely flinched at the touch of the blade.

Daemon adored his niece and that everyone knew so when Valaena fell pregnant merely five moons after their marriage no one was shocked. Daemon's attraction only grew with their child in her belly. Valaena used to sit in the room prepared for their child and read books of old Valyria to her belly. More than once Daemon would catch her in that position. Daemon was there with her when her labours started, he sat behind her supporting her weight when she could not anymore, he was the first person to hold their baby boy after the maester.

Aelor was the name the couple chose for their son. Daemon sat with Valaena for hours in their bed staring at the bundle in her arms created from love. That was when Daemon uttered that word for the first time, he expressed his love for his niece/wife and their son. Valaena cried in relief that her feeling were mutual. The couple cuddled with their son and spent days in that position.

Daemon was so proud of his small family that by the second week of Aelor's birth he sat atop Caraxes with Valaena chained in front of him and Aelor strapped protectively against her body as they flew to king's landing for their son to meet Viserys his grandfather/uncle.

Ever since Valaena has given birth to three more children, Jaenara their second born and first daughter, only two years younger than Aelor. The came their third child Naerys, their second daughter with mismatching eyes like Daemon's mother, she was three years younger than Jaenera. Lastly came Valarr, their second son who was only three moons old.

Valaena was content with her life and enjoyed every second she spent with her family. Daemon enjoyed sitting in front of the fire in their chamber with their children around them as he told them stories of the wars he fought and sometimes stories of his and their mother's youthful days. Jaenera and Naerys enjoyed the latter more while Aelor preferred the war stories.

Much to Valaena's relief Aelor's egg hatched when he was still a babe at four moons old, his dragon was as dark as the night sky yet he was not black, if you look close enough you would see the dark blue in his scales and when he flew under the sun his scales showed the colour proudly, Aelor chose the nam Lyrax for his dragon when he was five years of age and hearing about his cousin, Rhaenyra's dragon.

Jaenera's egg hatched when she was only days old and her dragon was of white colour, it was a beautiful dragon that many envied. He was not only beautiful but rapidly growing, he was bigger than a six years old dragon should look. Jaenera was able to ride him when she reached her fifth name day much to Valaena's horror, that night she cuddled her daughter in her sleep begging her as she slept to never do that ever again until she mastered the art of dragon riding, much to Daemon's amusement and that night he also whispered reassurances in his wife's ear that nothing will happen to their baby girl as long as he lived. Only recently did Jaenera name him Suvion, which meant ice in Valyrian.

Naerys's dragon took her time to hatch when Naerys was two name days old, now she was nowhere near Suvion or Lyrax being only a year old but her beautiful purple scales attracted much attention when she flew alongside Lyrax, Suvion and Caraxes, the four dragons were mostly seen with each other feeling their riders emotions and love for one another. One time Jaenera was mad at Aelor when he accidentally ripped her favourite dress, Suvioin refused to be anywhere near Lyrax for a whole week after that just like Jaenera refused to be anywhere near Aelor for a week.

Valaena and Daemon regret now visiting king's landing after Valarr's birth. Unfortunately during their visit a plague spread throughout the capital, it was called the red plague because it would make it's victims vomit blood the first week of their infection then coughing would follow, the symptoms would become worse each passing day that by the tenth day the victim would not be able to keep a singular bite food in their belly and would die from both starvation and pain.

"Help him, please" Valaena begged the maester watching as her baby boy of only three moons moaned in pain as he wiggled in his cot. He was as pale as a sheet of paper. Daemon wrapped his arm around her waist keeping her close fearing her going anywhere near their infected son, he could not handle losing both of them at the same time.

"We are doing our best princess" The old maester bowed his grey haired head. Valaena wanted to scream and shout with each pained cry her son let from his small body. She wished it was her who has been infected, the plague was merciless and killed young children along adults but it would be less painful if it were her dying not her son. Valarr had so much to live for, his egg still hasn't hatched in his crib and Daemon feared now that it never will.

"Your best is not enough" Valaena surprised even herself for her harsh words, she was never one for such harshness.

Daemon tightened his grip on his wife as she tried to step over to their son. She wanted to comfort him as his little mouth opened as he coughed and a little drop of blood dripped down his chin, he had lost so much weight, the rolls Valaena loved so much were slowly disappearing.

"Come my love" Daemon whispered in her ear as he tried pulling her out of the room. Valaena tried to fight but soon her body betrayed her and she slumped against Daemon's chest with tears streaming down her face. Daemon made her stop feeding their son from her own breast in fear of her catching the plague, neither of them knew where their son had caught the plague from.

"Shhh, my silver haired princess, I've got you" Daemon whispered in her ear holding her weight up for her. Valaena sobbed against his chest feeling weak, she was unable to help her own child, her blood.

"I feel so useless" Daemon confessed to Viserys one day as they sat together in the gardens watching as Jacaerys and Lucaerys tried lighting Jaenera and Naerys's mood while Aelor was letting his frustration out duelling some knight and he was showing talent even at eight name days.

"You are not useless, Daemon. You are no god to prevent plagues" Viserys reassured patting Daemon's shoulder. His words did nothing to comfort the distressed father. A scream broke out from the open window in one of the palace rooms, Daemon will recognise this scream anywhere and anytime, it was Valaena. Daemon wasted no time running back to the castle trusting Viserys and Rhaenyra to care for the rest of his children.

Daemon paused at the doors of Valarr's room where Valaena sat in the middle on her knees hugging a tiny blanket. Valarr was no longer in his cot and there were no maesters in the room anymore, there was only Valaena and her handmaiden, Emilia. Emilia was standing in the corner with a hand covering her mouth as tears streamed down her face.

No one needed to say what had happened for Daemon to understand what was happening. He shook his head not accepting the reality, he had hoped and prayed for the first time in his life for his son. He kneeled down beside Valaena who had her face buried in the blanket. He touched her back as lightly as he possibly could but her head still snapped up so their eyes could meet.

"H-he was not b-breathing" Valaena whispered. Daemon closed his eyes trying to stop the images of his son's body from flashing in his mind, he had not witnessed it but he mind was cruel enough to plaster an image of his baby boy's body in his cot unmoving wide eyes with blood dripping down his tiny mouth as his eyes starred emotionlessly at the ceiling.

Daemon had no words so he only wrapped an arm around Valaena letting her collapse against his chest screaming for her youngest son. Daemon and Valaena stayed in the room for hours holding each other. For the first time in many many years Daemon shed tears but his them in the croak of Valaena's neck. Eventually he had enough strength to pull her out of the room and into their own and laid her in their bed. He held her throughout the night, neither knew when they fell asleep holding onto each other still crying not wanting to face anyone and the reality of their son's death.

Valaena was the firs tone to wake up with her back to Daemon while he held her close to his chest. She got out of the bed and walked over to the window cursing the baring sun as it shined bright in the sky. Valaena changed her clothes into a black dress feeling like all the colours meant nothing now, there symbols of happiness and she was no longer happy. She wanted to get away from this wretched place. She braided her hair to get it out of her face and left the room leaving Daemon asleep with blood shed eyes.

She sneaked through the secret passaged Daemon once showed her in her teenage years. She stepped out into the forest where she was completely alone. She took a deep breath of the fresh air when the reality crashed down on her for the first time that day and tears streamed down her face again, she hiked up her dress and ran, she wanted to run away from the capital. She ran as if there was a great bear running after her, like The Stranger himself was after her after he had taken her baby boy from her.

Daemon woke up feeling annoyed with the sun shinning on him. He reached over to Valaena's side to find it empty. His heart dropped to his stomach and he sat up wide eyed searching for her in the room but there was no evidence of her anywhere. Daemon pushed the blanket off his body, his bare feet padded down on the stone floor as he ran out of the room. His guard followed after him without question. Daemon ran into Valarr's room and found on maids cleaning it, then he ran to his other children's room and found all three in their beds asleep still.

"Where is the princess?" Daemon asked finally. His guard had no answer and looked down in shame. Daemon felt fear creep into him, what if she has done something to herself? What if she was hurt? What ifs ran through his mind as the whole castle woke up to his screams demanding them find his wife. He could not lose her too, Valarr was more than enough.

Valaena stopped running when she reached a clearing in the middle of the forest, she had no idea where she was or how far from the castle she was. Her chest heaved as she fell to her knees. her hands hurst as they fell on stones on the floor. Her head was hung low as sobs left her lips. She felt like her heart was being ripped out of her, she blamed herself for not protecting her baby. she blamed herself for suggesting they visit her father. She blamed herself for the pain she was causing Daemon and her children.

The sound of flapping wings did not disturb her nor the sound of a large body landing a couple of yards away from her. She was too deep into her screams and pain to realise. Something nudged her head making her look up and through her blurry vision she saw the huge head of a dragon she recognised form images in the books. She gasped in shock and fear falling back onto her back and looked up at the dragon, Vermithor did not back away from her and kept staring down at her, he let out a huff nudging her knee. Valaena felt compelled as she raised her hand slowly not even thinking of the consequences if the dragon decided to make her a meal. She let out a small gasp at the feeling for Vermithor's scales under her hand. The big dragon pushed against her hand lightly.

Daemon watched as Aelor held Jaenera and Naerys as they cried wanting their mother. He was going crazy and his only comfort right now was Rhaenyra as she took lead in ordering the guards around to her sister's favourite locations around the keep. Daemon looked out at the sky watching as Caraxes flew around anxiously feeling his rider's emotions however Viserys forbade Daemon from leaving the castle in fear of the plague which made Daemon want to rip his brother in half and right now he was thinking of a way to escape and search for his love on his own.

"Shhh, we will find her soon" Rhaenyra picked up Naerys who was only three name days old and held her as she cried. She herself was very worried and was trying to remember anything about her sister that could help with the search.

Valaena picked herself up and moved around the dragon, he pushed his shoulder down giving her leverage to climb up and onto his back. Valaena whispered lightly in Valyrion for him to obey and her answer was only a huff of air. She leaned forward and held his scales having to saddle or chains to hold her to him. She whispered one singular word, fly. Vermithor obeyed and pushed off the ground making it shake and some trees fell over from the force as he took to the sky.

Valaena would trade having a dragon of her own for her son's life but it seems the gods were cruel to do the opposite and gave her her desire of a dragon only after her son's death.

Daemon's jaw slacked as he watched Vermithor land on a hill not far away, it was where the funeral of his son was to take place in a couple of hours. His eyes did not leave the figure atop the beast, her silver hair in a braid behind her back. He walked carefully over to the hill eyes not leaving the huge beast as he leaned his head down. Daemon kneeled down beside the beast showing his respect. The rest of the family joined the couple wide eyed and shocked, Aemond Targaryen however watched in hope that one day he himself would get a dragon of his own just like his older sister.

Valaena descended down from the great beast and over to her husband. She was not ashamed as tears ran down her eyes whens he caught a glimpse of her son's tiny corpse ready to be burned to ashes. She placed a hand on Daemon's cheek which he closed his eyes to enjoy. He rose up from his position and towered over her which she never was intimidated by and never will be.

"I am proud of you, wife" Daemond whispered for only her ears to hear. she gave him a watery smile. The two walked over to where their children stood beside Rhaenyra, their aunt and cousins. Valaena refused to meet anyone's gaze except those of her dragon.

"Dracarys" She said steadily knowing this has to be done. Vermithor wailed feeling his rider's pain before blowing his fire on the small corpse. Daemon held Valaena to his chest as they watched the fire eat their child away. Valaena will never forgive herself and neither will Daemon, as they stood their they each blamed themselves for the death of their baby boy. Neither wanted to admit it just yet but they both would blame themselves for the rest of eternity.

Valaena took Naerys from Rhaenyra and held her close feeling fear consume her for the rest of her children. Aelor and Jaenera hugged their parents around the waist as the family said their final goodbyes to their son/brother in silence.

[magicalmadrigals]

Sneak Peek at Encanto Multichapter

Hi guys! A while ago I mentioned that I was planning to do a multichapter fic about the family after the loss of their gifts. When they all have occupations that tie in with their gifts. I finally got around to making a little start on it tonight and I wanted to see what you guys think. It's not much at the moment, but this is part of the opening (from Juli's perspective) and I wanted to get your thoughts!

......

Julieta sighed, settling into the chair in front of her vanity with the cup of tea her husband made for her so she could set about doing her hair for the day. It was another early start today, what with her and Isa having one or two things to attend to before they headed down to the clinic, but she didn’t mind. Her days no longer began anywhere near as early as they had back when she still had her gift. Back when she would get up before sunrise to go and make sure she was fully prepared to go healing and then get breakfast ready for the familia. It was a lot of work and it wore her out, but she never dared complain, not when she knew how much of a privilege it had been. She adored her gift. When it was taken from her back when the original Casita fell, for a while she had felt as though she’d lost her purpose. She felt as though she was only half the person she once was, what with life with her gift being all she had ever known, but eventually things had improved. She and the others had begun to adjust to their new way of life and she had to admit that, in a number of ways, she actually preferred it like this.

She had far more time to spend with her daughters now, Isa especially given they worked alongside one another at the clinic, and she knew all three of them like the back of her hand. She couldn’t believe how little she’d truly known about them before. They were her children! She loved spending a quiet afternoon with Luisa on the day the clinic was shut, either sitting side by side reading in el salon or simply talking. She loved doing little crafts with Mirabel, listening to her talk about how much she loved helping out at the schoolhouse. It wasn’t only her girls she was able to spend more time with either, but her marido as well and it made her happier than she could put into words. He’d always been so patient and understanding. Back when she still had her gift, there had been evenings when he had wanted to take her out for dinner or make love to her when they went to bed, but more often than not she’d been too tired for anything. Not once had she had to deal with him complaining, but it had been annoying for her and so she couldn’t even begin to imagine how much more so it must have been for him.

Thankfully though, things had improved on that front and their marriage was stronger now than she could ever remember it being. They made sure to go out for dinner together at least once a month – sometimes Pepa and Félix came too which was fun – and their evenings had gotten a lot more…entertaining…to say the least. It reminded her of the earliest days of their marriage, the way they could barely get enough of each other some nights, and falling asleep with him running his fingers through her curls made her feel so content. It had taken a long time to get to this point, it had been nearly three years since things changed and she was still trying to sort some things, but she was so happy. She was at such a wonderful place in her life and she didn’t want to change a thing about it genuinely.

Reaching into the little box on her dressing table for her hairclip, she quickly ran her fingers through her curls to separate them before putting the clip in to keep them out of her face. She no longer bothered with all her hairpins. Not on the mornings she had clinic and Senora López came to take care of breakfast. She was still so grateful her mama had arranged for the extra help. It made her life so much simpler.

......

So this is what I have so far! I'm going to work more on it tomorrow, so if you guys could let me know what you think of this little bit - I know it's not much to go off right now, sorry! - I would be so grateful. Lots of love!!

[whileiamdying]

The Strange Journey of John Lennon’s Stolen Patek Philippe Watch

For decades, Yoko Ono thought that the birthday gift was in her Dakota apartment. But it had been removed and sold—and now awaits a court ruling in Geneva.

By Jay Fielden June 17, 2024

The missing watch, now valued at between ten and forty million dollars, was a fortieth-birthday gift from Yoko Ono, along with a tie she knit herself.Photograph by Bob Gruen

For years, John Lennon’s Patek Philippe 2499 has been the El Dorado of lost watches. Lennon was known for collecting expensive things: apartments in the Dakota (five); guitars (one apartment was mainly for musical equipment); country estates; jukeboxes (three); and Egyptian artifacts, including a gold-leafed sarcophagus containing a mummified princess, who Yoko Ono believed was a former self. But the Patek appears to have been his one and only wristwatch.

A gift from Ono, the watch is more than anyone would ever need to tell the time. A perpetual-calendar chronograph, it is, as Paul Boutros, the head of watches at the American arm of Phillips auction house, says, a “mechanical microcomputer, the most sought after of all Pateks.” Between 1952 and around 1985, Patek produced just three hundred and forty-nine of them. The watch, which Ono bought at Tiffany on Fifth Avenue, records time in eight different ways; the dial houses three apertures (day, month, moon phase) and three subdials (seconds, elapsed minutes, date). If you never memorized the mnemonic “thirty days hath September,” no worries—the 2499 Patek hath. Its miraculous ganglia of tiny wheels and levers will adjust its readings to the quirky imperfections of the Gregorian calendar, including leap years. No other watchmaker was able to produce a perpetual-calendar-chronograph movement small enough to fit into a wristwatch until 1985.

What makes this 2499 even rarer—and perhaps the most valuable wristwatch in existence—is how little we know about it. Ono gave it to her husband for his fortieth birthday, on October 9, 1980, two months before he was fatally shot by a deranged man outside the Dakota. For the next three decades, the existence of the watch remained unknown except to a handful of family and close friends.

But, sometime around 2007, in the early days of social media, a new kind of watch obsessive materialized, equipped with native computer skills and an appreciation for the places where pop culture and the luxury market intersect. In those pre-Instagram years, fanboy wonks traded watch esoterica online: an image of Picasso wearing a lost Jaeger-LeCoultre; Castro with two trendy Rolexes strapped to one arm; Brando, on the set of “Apocalypse Now,” “flexing,” as watch geeks say, a Rolex GMT-Master without its timing bezel, a modification he made to better inhabit the role of Kurtz; and—the Google image-search find of them all—two frames of an uncredited snapshot of Lennon and his Patek.

“I’m not a watch guy,” Sean Lennon said. “I’d be terrified to wear anything of my dad’s. I never even played one of his guitars.”Photograph by Bob Gruen

Since its discovery, around 2011, the image has appeared online again and again, fuelling a speculative frenzy about what the watch—which cost around twenty-five thousand dollars at Tiffany in 1980—might bring at auction today, with estimates ranging from ten million to forty million dollars. (Bloomberg’s Subdial Watch Index tracks the value of a bundle of watches produced by Rolex, Patek, and Audemars Piguet, like an E.T.F.; the Boston Consulting Group reported that, between 2018 and 2023, a similar selection outperformed the S. & P. 500 by twelve per cent. In 2017, Paul Newman’s Rolex Daytona broke records by selling at auction for $17.8 million.) But all the clickbait posts about the Lennon Patek, as it had come to be known, were regurgitations that contained few facts. There was never a mention of who took the photo, where it was taken, or even where the watch might be.

During the long, dull days of the pandemic, I decided to see what I could find out. Several years went by, as I traced the journey of the watch from where it was stowed after Lennon’s death—a locked room in his Dakota apartment—to when it was stolen, apparently in 2005. From there, it moved around Europe and the watch departments of two auction houses, before becoming the subject of an ongoing lawsuit, in Switzerland, to determine whether the watch’s rightful owner is Ono or an unnamed man a Swiss court judgment refers to as Mr. A, who claims to have bought the watch legally in 2014.

Having reached its final appeal—Ono has so far prevailed—the case is now in the hands of the Tribunal Fédéral, Switzerland’s Supreme Court, which is expected to render a verdict later this year. Meanwhile, the watch continues to sit in an undisclosed location in Geneva, a city that specializes in the safe, secret storage of lost treasures.

Lennon holding up his birthday Patek in the fall of 1980 is one of the happiest moments captured on film in the final years of his life. That summer, he’d begun making music again, during a trip to Bermuda which he’d hoped would help repair the well-publicized strain in his marriage to Ono. Lennon’s “lost weekend”—more than a year spent living in Los Angeles with May Pang, a former assistant who became his lover—was not that far in the past, and Ono had fallen into an infatuation with an art-world socialite named Sam Green. (It was in Bermuda that Lennon wrote “I’m Losing You.”)

Lennon had spent the previous five years holed up in the Dakota as a self-proclaimed “househusband,” raising his son Sean so that Ono, whom Lennon called Mother, could take her turn at being the decision-maker of the music-business enterprise they’d named Lennono. While Ono dealt with Beatles headaches, controlled the purse strings, and invested in real estate, Lennon occupied himself by watching soap operas, eating bran biscuits and rice, smoking Gitanes, and listening to either classical music or Muzak. “If I heard anything bad,” he later explained, “I’d want to fix it, and if I heard anything good, I’d wonder why I hadn’t thought of it.”

In the photograph, Lennon, trim and fit from a macrobiotic diet, wears jeans and a loosely knotted striped knit tie adorned with a jewel-encrusted American-flag pin. The picture was taken in the Hit Factory, where he and Ono had been recording “Double Fantasy,” his first album in five years. The room is dim, but he has on sunglasses, celluloid horn-rims recently bought in Japan. Buckled on his left wrist is the Patek 2499.

In order to find out more about the photograph, I tracked down Jack Douglas, the noted record producer who oversaw “Double Fantasy,” and sent him the picture by e-mail. He replied right away. “Bob Gruen took the photo,” he wrote, referring to the well-known documenter of the seventies and eighties rock scene.

When I contacted Gruen, who is now seventy-eight and lives in New York City, he had no idea that his photograph had become the talk of the horological world or why he’d never been given credit for it; he’d published the image in a book, titled “John Lennon: The New York Years,” in 2005. But he remembered the night he took the photo—Lennon’s fortieth birthday. Since late that summer, Lennon and Ono had been spending a lot of time in a multiroom studio on the sixth floor of the Hit Factory building, then on West Forty-eighth Street. “I was one of the few people who had an open invitation,” Gruen told me. “They liked to work late.” Gruen, who said he was living on a “steak-and-Cognac diet” in those days, showed up after midnight, having attended the thirty-sixth-birthday party of the singer Nona Hendryx. “I thought I’d bring John a piece of her birthday cake,” he said.

When Gruen arrived, Lennon was enjoying his presents: the knit tie, which Ono had made herself (a copy of the one he wore at school in Liverpool); the flag pin; and the Patek, in yellow gold, which had a rare and highly coveted double-stamped dial, meaning that both the watchmaker’s and Tiffany’s logos were printed on it. Gruen remembered Lennon being abuzz over the tie and the pin, a nod to Lennon’s fourth anniversary as a green-card holder. He doesn’t recall talking about the watch. But Lennon nonetheless strapped the black lizard band onto his wrist when Gruen reached for his Olympus OM4.

A few other photographs that Gruen took that week have never been seen by the public. One shows Lennon at a mixing board with Douglas, who is wearing a recognizable watch himself, a Porsche Design Chronograph I—stainless steel and coated in black—which Porsche had presented to him and to the members of Aerosmith in 1976, after the band’s German tour for its album “Rocks.” Douglas told me that he and Lennon later wrist-checked each other. “Although I thought his watch was beautiful,” he wrote in an e-mail to me, “I told John it didn’t have the pizzazz of my black beauty, and we had a good laugh.

After Lennon’s death, Ono had a full inventory taken of her husband’s possessions, a document that amounted to nearly a thousand pages. She then put the Patek in a locked room of her apartment. And there the watch remained for more than twenty years.

I found a clue as to what happened next by putting together shards of information from various members of the watch intelligentsia who had all “heard” that the Patek had been stolen. “I think the guy was Turkish,” one said. Another remembered “something about a chauffeur.” This led me to a 2006 article in the Times about a man named Koral Karsan (Turkish: check), who had served as Ono’s chauffeur (check two) for the previous ten years. Karsan, a veteran member of Ono’s oft-shuffled staff—trusted enough that he had full access to her apartment—had simply gone berserk in December of that year, threatening to release embarrassing photos and private conversations he’d been recording unless Ono paid him two million dollars; he allegedly said that if she refused he would have her and Sean killed.

A tall, square-jawed man with a thick burr of white hair, Karsan, then fifty, was arrested. In a series of preliminary hearings in a Manhattan courtroom, he defended himself against charges of extortion and attempted grand larceny by claiming, as the Times reported, that Ono had “humiliated and degraded him, wrecking his marriage and making him so nervous that he ground eight of his teeth to the bone.” A letter he’d written to Ono describing himself as her “driver, bodyguard, assistant, butler, nurse, handyman and more so your lover and confidant” was also entered into the record. Ono disputed Karsan’s claims about a romance, but the prosecution allowed him to plead guilty to a lesser charge, and he was ordered to return to his native Turkey.

According to a story that Karsan would later tell, Ono—who was known to consult psychics—became worried one day in 2006 that a forecasted heavy-weather event might endanger some meaningful Lennon items, including two pairs of Lennon’s eyeglasses and several New Yorker desk diaries (which he used as journals during the last five years of his life); she asked Karsan to find a safer place to keep them. Unbeknownst to Ono, when Karsan was subsequently deported, these items, along with the Patek, followed him.

Ono, who is ninety-one and lives in seclusion in upstate New York, declined to comment. Of Karsan, Sean Lennon told me, “He took advantage of a widow at a vulnerable time. Of all the incidents of people stealing things from my parents, this one is the most painful.”

Karsan, back in Turkey, was in the market for a house. Around 2009, he showed Lennon’s watch to a Turkish friend visiting from Berlin named Erhan G (as he came to be known owing to German privacy laws). Karsan let Erhan G flip through the diaries, including one marked 1980, which includes Lennon’s final entry. Karsan threw out an idea: he’d give the Lennon Patek to Erhan G as collateral for a loan. Erhan G agreed.

One evening in 2013, in Berlin, Erhan G met an executive who worked for a new, much hyped digital auction platform called Auctionata. He couldn’t resist boasting about the Patek 2499 and the rest of the Lennon trove—some eighty items. In short order, a dinner was arranged with Oliver Hoffmann, Auctionata’s twenty-eight-year-old director of watches. “He told me the story of how he’d gotten the watch,” Hoffmann recalled, of his meeting with Erhan G. “It was strange, but it felt whole and true. It was credible because of the many details.” Erhan G, who said that he was the watch’s rightful owner, per an agreement with Karsan, didn’t strike Hoffmann as a man desperate for money. “He owned a successful business and lived in a large apartment in a building close to Potsdamer Platz,” Hoffman said. (Erhan G could not be reached for comment.)

Auctionata, which live-streamed its auctions, was one of Germany’s dot-com darlings, lauded in the press for disrupting the old auction-house model, dominated by Christie’s and Sotheby’s, which had yet to develop a digital-first business. Investors including Groupe Arnault, Holtzbrinck Ventures, and Hearst Ventures had put up more than a hundred million dollars of venture capital for the company. Hoffmann says that the C.E.O., Alexander Zacke, recognized what a publicity boon selling John Lennon’s lost watch would be and pushed for a way to do it with or without notifying Ono. (Zacke did not respond to a request for comment.) Teams of lawyers studied the watch’s provenance and puzzled over how to offer it for sale without raising eyebrows. A document called an extract was obtained from Patek Philippe, which meant that the watch had not been registered as stolen, and Karsan himself travelled to Berlin, where he signed a document in front of a notary testifying that Ono had given him her husband’s Patek as a gift in 2005. As for the authenticity of the watch, there was no doubt: on the case back is an identifying inscription that has never been made public outside Germany.

In late 2013, in preparation for an auction, Auctionata had the watch professionally photographed. (In the photo, the watch floats in a vacuum, a carefully lit token of commerce, divorced from all human and emotional context.) But Erhan G got cold feet. Some years earlier, Ono had sued a former employee who had slipped out of the Dakota with Lennon memorabilia; Frederic Seaman, Lennon’s last personal assistant, confessed to having stolen diaries similar, if not identical, to those which Karsan and Erhan G had stashed away. (He later returned them.) Searching for a private buyer, Hoffmann approached Mr. A, a man he knew from the rare-watch circuit. A deal by “private treaty”—a sale undisclosed to the public—was reached, and in March, 2014, Mr. A agreed that he would consign a selection of Rolex and Patek watches from his own collection, whose sale proceeds would go toward payment for the Lennon 2499, which was priced at six hundred thousand euros (about eight hundred thousand dollars). “This, in some ways, was more helpful than auctioning the watch,” Hoffmann told me, explaining that Auctionata’s watch department needed the inventory. The vintage watches Mr. A consigned, most of which Hoffmann valued at between twenty thousand and forty thousand euros apiece, were in total likely worth more than the 2499.

Mr. A told Hoffmann that he planned to keep Lennon’s watch in his collection, which has included pieces owned by Eric Clapton. But, within months, he took the Lennon Patek to the Geneva office of Christie’s. As part of the auction house’s appraisal process, a Christie’s representative reached out to Ono’s lawyer, who promptly notified his client. Ono rushed to check the locked room, only to discover that the Patek wasn’t there. She had no idea how long it had been gone.

In August of 2023, a reporter named Coline Emmel, who works for a small but enterprising Web site in Switzerland called Gotham City, found something interesting in a backlog of documents filed that summer by the Chambre Civile in the canton of Geneva—an appellate judgment in a civil case that had been going on for five years. European privacy laws, especially those in Switzerland, make legal documents unusually hard to decipher. The Swiss judiciary uses a system of letters and numbers to create pseudonyms for appellants, respondents, and anyone else involved, turning a case file into a cryptogram. Emmel knew enough about Beatles history to recognize that “C_____, widow of late F_____, of Japanese nationality and domiciled in [New York City]” was, in fact, Yoko Ono. Although the appeals court affirmed the lower court’s decision that Ono was the “sole legitimate owner of the watch,” Mr. A—“a watch collector and longtime professional in the sector, of Italian nationality”—was launching another appeal. Emmel posted a brief synopsis on Gotham City, along with the news that a final judgment was now being awaited from the Swiss Supreme Court.

“Mystery solved!” was the gist of the message that ricocheted around the watch world. But, to me, the mystery had only deepened. The basic itinerary of the Patek’s odyssey and its current location had been discovered, but the human detail of how it had passed from wrist to wrist, hiding place to hiding place, still hadn’t been reported. What’s more, where had Ono ever got the idea of giving a guy like John Lennon—eater of carob-coated peanuts, singer of a song about imagining no possessions, peacenik—a watch that was a status symbol of lockjawed good taste? And what was its famously secret inscription?

I had already been in contact with Mr. A; three days before Emmel posted her scoop, he’d cancelled a planned meeting with me in Italy. Instead, we arranged to speak over Zoom. Seated in a panelled room, he told me that, when Ono had found the watch missing, her counsel demanded its return. It was a tricky legal situation, because Ono, having never realized that the watch was gone, hadn’t reported it stolen, and because the case spans several national jurisdictions. Mr. A explained that he didn’t return the watch because he didn’t believe it to be stolen property. He mentioned the inventory that had been taken of Lennon’s possessions after his death, which was referred to in the judgment; he claimed that only two watches were listed—a gold watch (presumably the Patek) and another that Mr. A said was a pocket watch Ono had auctioned through Sotheby’s in 1984, two decades before Karsan swore she gave him the Patek.

Mr. A pointed to Ono’s own version of the story. “Following the death of the late [John Lennon],” the Swiss court’s judgment reads, in a summary of a deposition that Ono gave to investigators from Berlin at the German consulate in New York City, “[Ono] wanted to give something belonging to her to those who had worked very faithfully for her. So, she told [Karsan] to take a watch.” Ono, however, added that she in no way meant the “watch she’d given the late [John Lennon].” What watch did she mean? Mr. A asked rhetorically. “There was only the Patek.”

Christie’s, informed that the watch had been stolen, kept the 2499 secured in its Geneva vault, where it sat for several years. The judgment states, “On December 17, 2015, the parties and [Christie’s] SA entered into a consignment-escrow agreement under which the Watch would be consigned to [Mr. A’s lawyer], until agreement or right is adjudicated on the property.” (Christie’s did not respond to a request for comment.) Mr. A told me that he eventually decided to go on the offensive. In 2018, he initiated a civil lawsuit against Ono to prove that he was the Patek’s rightful owner.

What Mr. A never expected was that his fate would become intertwined with that of Auctionata, which went bankrupt in early 2017. A German court brought in a bankruptcy expert and lawyer named Christian Graf Brockdorff, who, in a review of the company’s inventory, stumbled on the eighty-odd other Lennon items that Erhan G had consigned for a high-six-figure sum. “I doubted that everything that had happened in the past was legally correct,” Brockdorff told me in an e-mail. He contacted the police; a criminal case was opened, and Erhan G was found guilty of knowingly dealing in stolen goods. He served a one-year suspended sentence, having admitted that the story that Karsan had told of how he got the Lennon items “did not correspond to reality.” (A Europol warrant was issued for Karsan, whose whereabouts are unknown; he could not be reached for comment.) That the case itself ever came to be is curious, but its verdict set a legal foundation that the Swiss judgment cited in declaring that Mr. A is not the watch’s rightful owner. According to Guido Urbach, a knowledgeable Swiss attorney, it is unlikely that the Supreme Court will decide any differently.

The secret dedication that Ono had inscribed on the back of the Patek Philippe 2499: “(JUST LIKE) / STARTING OVER / LOVE YOKO / 10 • 9 • 1980 / N. Y. C.”

In a series of follow-up e-mails, I asked Mr. A about what John Lennon’s Patek meant to him. “I’m more of a Rolling Stones man,” he replied, mentioning that he has played bass in a local band for years. Still, “to own the JL watch is really a double good feeling,” he said, adding that he remained hopeful that he could “wear it as soon as possible.”

But, if the Supreme Court confirms the appellate court’s ruling, the watch will likely return to New York. “It’s important that we get it back because of all we’ve gone through over it,” Sean Lennon told me. He added, “I’m not a watch guy. I’d be terrified to wear anything of my dad’s. I never even played one of his guitars.” He paused. “To me, if anything, the watch is just a symbol of how dangerous it is to trust.”

The watch never seems to have given anyone peace and happiness for long. When Lennon was in Bermuda, writing what he described as the best kind of songs—“the ones that come to you in the middle of the night”—Ono was spending time with Sam Green, whom the Times once described as “an unabashed poseur blessed with good looks.” Green had a way with rich and eccentric women. He’d had an affair with the Bakelite heiress, Barbara Baekeland, and by 1980 he was spending his time juggling Greta Garbo, Diana Vreeland, and Ono.

Looking through Green’s papers, which are at Yale’s Beinecke Library, I got an eerie feeling. I found a number of diary entries that corroborated his close relationship with Ono (“Yoko all day and night,” numerous notations read), and a handwritten tally for more than twenty-five thousand dollars—the cost of furniture that Green had sourced to appoint the Hit Factory studio. Whether Green was the one who suggested the Patek as a birthday present for Lennon is hard to confirm, but the cursed history of the watch invites speculation.

The secret engraving, which I found in the never-published Auctionata photo of the watch, is haunting in another way:

Was there a new start? By the time “Double Fantasy” was finished, Ono had lost interest in Green, and Lennon, who had just written and recorded no fewer than four love songs about her, appeared to be a happy man. The weeks they spent together at the Hit Factory that year had been charmed, which means that the Lennon Patek captures a measure of time that no other watch ever will—the little they had left together. ♦

Published in the print edition of the June 24, 2024, issue, with the headline “In Search of Lost Time.”

[crios31]

Characters list

OC

Nickname: Smartass (Momo), Master (Jiu)

Speak multiple languages: English, French, Japanese, Korean

Sports: Weighlifting, used to play contact sports (Rugby and Basketball)

Skip multiple grades making him 3 years ahead

Graduated from a bachelor degree just before the start of the story

Will study as an exchange student

Son Seungwan/Wendy

First appearance: Chapter 1

Has a master degree

From the program

Selected by OC's parent to be his aide

Positive personality

Passion for cooking, baking

Lost her virginity to OC in chapter 1

Enjoy being with OC

Speak multiple languages: Korean, English, ... and ...

Like to learn new things

Minatozaki Sana

First appearance: Chapter 2

Childhood friend of OC, Momo, Mina, Hina and Kai

Will enter university to become a teacher

Know everything about the program sometimes help her mother

Hirai Momo

Nickname: Airhead (OC)

First appearance: Chapter 3

Childhood friend of OC, Sana, Mina and Kai

Myoui Mina

First appearance: Chapter 3

Childhood friend of OC, Momo, Sana and Hina

Smartest of the friend group very curious

Kim Minji/Jiu

First mention: Chapter 2

First appearance: Chapter 4

From the program

One of the three girls selected by OC in chapter 2

Same university as OC in Seoul

Loose her virginity to OC in Chapter 4

Can take OC full lenght in her mouth if she has time to adjust

Park Choa

First appearance: Chapter 5

Work at Eros group/company

In charge of forming OC at the start of the internship

Friend with Taeyeon

Kim Taeyeon

First appearance: Chapter 5

Work at Eros group/company

Friend with Choa

Best employee of the department, trusted to lead important project

Homebody

?

First appearance: Chapter ?

One of the three girls selected by OC in chapter 2

Same university as OC in Seoul

?

First appearance: Chapter ?

One of the three girls selected by OC in chapter 2

In another university of Seoul

Minor Character:

OC's parent

First appearance: Chapter 1

Friend with Momo's, Sana's and Mina's parents

Work

Father created a holding company in Korea which will own after graduation

Mother owned multiple private school: Osaka, ...

Mother created the scholarship program with her husband support

Hirai Hina

First appearance: Chapter 3

Childhood friend of OC, Sana, Mina and Kai

Myoui Kai

First appearence: Chapter 3

Childhood friend of OC, Momo, Sana and Hina

Medical student

Momo's parents

First appearance: Chapter 3

Neighbor of OC's family when they were living in Japan

Friends with OC's, Sana's and Mina's parents

Sana's parents

First appearance: Chapter 2 (Father), Chapter 3 (Mother)

Father used to work with OC's dad in Japan

Mother is the headmistress a private school in Osaka owned by OC mother, in charge of the program in Japan

Friends with OC's, Momo's and Mina's parents

Mina's parents

First appearance: Chapter 3

Father is an orthopedic surgeon

Mother is a lawyer who work for OC parents concerning their mater in Japan

Mother is in charge of the contracts for the program

Friends with OC's Momo's and Sana's parents

Mister Lee

Manager at the Operations Department of Eros Company

Daughter(s)? in the program but exempt from the selection

Mister Park

Director of operations at Eros Company, in charge of the group for OC parents until OC take over

Daughter(s)? in the program but exempt from the selection

[themculibrary]

Clint And Laura (Claura) Masterlist 2

part one

blow a kiss ; fire a gun (ao3) - daredoll M, 12k

Summary: First day on the job and she gets handed a train wreck; you could say that Laura Mitchell’s hard work hasn’t exactly paid off in the way she expected it to. Still, she’s read the SHIELD handbook at least eight times by now so she’s sure she can more than handle some upstart carnie with a bow kink who somehow managed to beat her training score without even going through the academy.

Spoiler Alert: she’s wrong.

Distraction (ao3) - woamx G, 875

Summary: Clint gets a phone call right before having to go out on the field with his teammates.

Five Years in a Blink (ao3) - Gnb_rules M, 3k

Summary: Laura knows the world has changed in the past five years, and in the days after she and the kids return from The Blip, she realizes that she needs to learn how much of her husband has changed as well. Clint/Laura, post Endgame. Mentions of a very loving and deep but platonic Clintasha friendship. Please see tags for more info/warnings.

here is my hand that will not harm you (ao3) - andibeth82 T, 18k

Summary: It starts the day they assign him to Laura Morse.

It starts as something he wants nothing to do with.

And then, it becomes something more.

I'm Not Going Anywhere (ao3) - aberrations_reality T, 3k

Summary: They swore they were going to take it slow. They did. They really did. But Clint has always been terrible at planning; has always had the worst timing. At this point it was probably a curse. So it only made sense that the second he pulled out the ring the window shattered in a spray of bullets and glass.

Never far from home (ao3) - RedBatons T, 112k

Summary: Clint is crazy. Laura already knew this. But this time, Clint was seriously out of his mind crazy. He had one job, to kill the deadliest assassin known to man. And then he decides to keep her like a lost puppy found on the streets. But Laura trusts Clint. The Black Widow, not so much. A story about Laura and Nat's friendship over the years.

One thing, and three people that Laura loves (a non exclusive list) (ao3) - Maia_saura G, 1k

Summary: Laura loved math. She had loved math since the second grade. Other than an intense but ill-advised fling with theoretical physics right before the start of her graduate program, she and math had shared a rewarding and monogamous relationship.

Reconnecting (The Reclamation Remix) (ao3) - Huntress79 M, 2k

Summary: Sometimes, Laura thinks she has two babies instead of just one - her husband’s lingering trauma from his latest mission makes life at the farm not exactly easier, for no one. Until one night, it does. Or: how Clint and Laura overcome trauma and reconnect with each other.

she sees better from a distance (ao3) - andibeth82 T, 8k

Summary: This is the story everyone knows: Clint Barton is SHIELD’s best sniper. Laura Barton is the simple girl who fell into his life and learned to deal with aliens and spies; with secrets and firearms and security.

In this story, Laura Martinelli is SHIELD’s best sniper. Clint Barton is the man she falls in love with, and he’s never even heard of SHIELD.

Sleep Number Rule (ao3) - RecessiveJean T, 7k

Summary: Farm or not, Clint always had a firm policy against bringing home strays.

Well.

Firm ish.

The Ghost of Christmas Past (ao3) - mitchpell T, 28k

Summary: Clint takes his children to New York City to see Rogers: The Musical.

The Girl at the Circus (ao3) - Hogwartswonderland N/R, 3k

Summary: At the beginning of their partnership, Clint told Natasha a story of a beautiful acrobat nicknamed Rapunzel and how he fell in love with her. Five years later Natasha still doesn't know how the story ends. Well, until now. Otherwise the story of how Natasha met Clint's family for the first time.

This little light (ao3) - Builder G, 1k

Summary: “Daaaad!”

The complaint has Clint turning on his heel.  “What now?”

He looks at the coffee pot still in his hand and wonders what the fuck he did with his mug.  And more urgently, how the fuck is he going to get the coffee into his body without it.

we belong to those who live (ao3) - daughterofrohan G, 2k

Summary: The absurdity of the fact that he’s crying in his kitchen with the assassin sister of his dead assassin best friend who was hired to kill him and has only just recently decided not to do it after all almost makes Clint laugh.

You're Here Where You Should Be (ao3) - paperairplanesopenwindows T, 1k

Summary: Summary/Prompt Used: Natasha’s first Christmas with the Bartons + Clint and Laura’s first Christmas with Cooper doesn’t go exactly as planned + (an itty bitty little bit of) If love is for children, then so is Christmas. Clint’s determined to convince Natasha otherwise.

you were more than just a short time (ao3) - mayadrinkswater G, 2k

Summary: laura barton is all-too-familiar with the antics of her husband and his best friend. they always, even in the most serious and near-fatal of missions, come back with a good story. they've perfected their ability to recall them, too, in a near perfect push-and-pull that almost seems rehearsed even though laura knows that it isn't. laura never expected to miss it so much.

or

three times clint and natasha bring a good story home and the one time clint brings a new stray home in the form of kate bishop

[mariana-oconnor]

The Yellow Face pt 2

Last time I was possibly overly critical of Mr Grant (or Jack?) Munro who was not dealing with his wife's curious behaviour very calmly. I stand by the fact that barging into people's houses in a fit of fury is very much not a good response to thinking your wife is lying, but I guess we'll see if I'm right.

“It seemed to be of an unnatural color, and to have a strange rigidity about the features. When I approached, it vanished with a jerk.”

An unnatural colour. Yes, both 'chalky white' and 'livid yellow' at the same time. I didn't bring this up the first time, but I probably should have. Was the face white or yellow? The title of the story indicates yellow, but the first description definitely, clearly, stated 'white'.

“Have you ever seen a photograph of her first husband?” “No; there was a great fire at Atlanta very shortly after his death, and all her papers were destroyed.” “And yet she had a certificate of death. You say that you saw it.” “Yes; she got a duplicate after the fire.”

A lot of very convenient events right there. And of course the death certificate comes up again - although now there is indication that it might be erroneous. I didn't know until recently that apparently you can just go to the hospital where you were born in the UK and say 'I've lost my birth certificate, I need another one.' I assume there is more to it than that, but I can't imagine there was in the 1880s. 'Hey, my husband died of Yellow Fever and I lost his death certificate in a fire, can I get a new one please. Yes, his name was Coen Siddence?"

"Let me advise you, then, to return to Norbury, and to examine the windows of the cottage again. If you have reason to believe that it is inhabited, do not force your way in, but send a wire to my friend and me."

Don't force your way into the other people's house. Good advice there from Holmes. He only follows it sometimes himself, but I do appreciate that he's being clear on this front. Do not break and enter, Mr Munro.

“I am afraid that this is a bad business, Watson,” said my companion, as he returned after accompanying Mr. Grant Munro to the door. “What do you make of it?” “It had an ugly sound,” I answered. “Yes. There’s blackmail in it, or I am much mistaken.” “And who is the blackmailer?”

OK, so probably not her kid. Probably her former husband who isn't actually dead, I guess. Because the death certificate which was so very specifically mentioned is not real.

“Yes, a provisional one. But I shall be surprised if it does not turn out to be correct. This woman’s first husband is in that cottage.”

Welp, theory 1 it is. Theory 2 has been thrown out of the window.

Her husband developed some hateful qualities; or shall we say that he contracted some loathsome disease, and became a leper or an imbecile?

Holmes... I'm not going to bother to unpack that but... okay then.

Right the term imbecile was one of those that used to refer to a very specific level of IQ and apparently there was also considered to be such a thing as 'moral imbecility' which was believed to be connected to genetic criminality and part of eugenics (hoooooo boy). Basically I don't really know what it means in this context, but I'm guessing he's going for the moral meaning rather than an IQ issue as I doubt someone with "a mental age of three to seven years" would really be hatching a dastardly blackmailing plot. Although my nephew can be particularly cunning sometimes in his attempts to get more cake, and he's younger than that, so... what do I know?

HOWEVER.

After all of this, we have to remember that this story started by saying the Holmes was wrong.

So maybe I'm right after all. Hidden child is back on the table, boys!

I was going to put the 'looks like meat's back on the menu boys LotR gif here, but decided implied cannibalism of theoretical disabled children is probably not the best idea I've ever had, so have this gif of Jeremy Brett as Holmes instead.

"She has been married three years, and believes that her position is quite secure, having shown her husband the death certificate of some man whose name she has assumed, when suddenly her whereabouts is discovered by her first husband; or, we may suppose, by some unscrupulous woman who has attached herself to the invalid."

Ah, no... the blackmailer in Holmes version is the northern woman who opened the door and wasn't particularly welcoming. Though it makes no sense why she'd be from northern Britain when the husband would, presumably, have been cared for in the US and she would, also presumably, have had to come over from there with him in order to hunt down his wife.

So she's either really good at accents or... she was British to begin with and knew them over there...?

Taking down with her the photograph which had probably been demanded from her.

This is a very weird demand if Holmes' theory is correct. The photo was one of the things that made me think it was a child, because giving your child a picture of you to look at is just... a nice thing. Taking a photo of the woman you're blackmailing is... I guess it's a control thing, or a weird stalkery thing.

"...on which the wife, knowing that he would come straight down to the cottage, hurried the inmates out at the back door, into the grove of fir-trees..."

Again, a strange detail for the blackmailing plot. This implies that Effie would have had some sort of control over her blackmailers. Surely they would be more likely to stay? Her husband wouldn't recognise the guy, by his own admission. Or they'd leave of their own volition, surely. But allowing their blackmailee to smuggle them from the house seems very weird.

But we had not a very long time to wait for that. It came just as we had finished our tea. “The cottage is still tenanted,” it said. “Have seen the face again at the window. Will meet the seven o’clock train, and will take no steps until you arrive.”

A round of applause, please, for Mr Munro's self control, which appears to have finally returned to him.

“What is your plan, then?” asked Holmes, as he walked down the dark tree-lined road. “I am going to force my way in and see for myself who is in the house. I wish you both to be there as witnesses.”

It was a brief reunion, alas.

“For God’s sake, don’t Jack!” she cried. “I had a presentiment that you would come this evening. Think better of it, dear! Trust me again, and you will never have cause to regret it.” “I have trusted you too long, Effie,” he cried, sternly. “Leave go of me! I must pass you. My friends and I are going to settle this matter once and forever!” He pushed her to one side, and we followed closely after him. As he threw the door open an old woman ran out in front of him and tried to bar his passage, but he thrust her back

Effie... please just talk to your husband. Clearly the 'trust me' line isn't working. Just... like... tell him. I really hope you married someone you can trust. Although, given... y'know, Victorian era etc. maybe you didn't. But communication is a really good strategy.

Jack, Grant... Grack, whatever your name is... Just.. stop barging into people's homes. And telling your wife you don't trust her like that is a dick mood. You need to calm down and talk this through, too.

In the corner, stooping over a desk, there sat what appeared to be a little girl. Her face was turned away as we entered, but we could see that she was dressed in a red frock, and that she had long white gloves on.

Hidden child. HA!

Also... Grack you just frightened a child. I hope you're happy with yourself, you great numpty.

Holmes, with a laugh, passed his hand behind the child’s ear, a mask peeled off from her countenance.

First - mask! Ha again! I mean... you really shouldn't touch the kid's mask without permission, Holmes.

I... did not expect the mask to be hiding the fact that the kid is Black. But I live in the 21st century, I guess. Yeah...

I burst out laughing, out of sympathy with her merriment; but Grant Munro stood staring, with his hand clutching his throat.

At least she's laughing too, I guess. But Grack, you need to prove yourself not a terrible person pretty damn quick. I still have a few shreds of faith in you.

She touched a spring, and the front hinged back. There was a portrait within of a man strikingly handsome and intelligent-looking, but bearing unmistakable signs upon his features of his African descent.

Well that's a super sideways way to describe his race, particularly after the choice of words to describe the kid. Also, hello racist implications of that 'but' right there. Le sigh. This story is really pulling a bait and switch by calling itself 'The Yellow Face', isn't it. You expect racism against one group of people but Surprise! it's about another.

"When I left her in America,” she continued, “it was only because her health was weak, and the change might have done her harm. She was given to the care of a faithful Scotch woman who had once been our servant."

Not going to touch the colourism of the passage before this with a barge pole. That's a whole heap of ugh that I do not have the historical or personal understanding to unpack in a way the subject deserves.

Also, the woman is apparently Scottish, not just vaguely 'Northern'. It does read as a Scottish accent when I look back on it, but still. Coming from someone living in Norbury, which is in South London, 'Northern' could mean anything higher than Watford! Northern? How vague can you be?

(Incidentally if someone from Berwick-Upon-Tweed calls you Southern, it can mean anything south of Sunderland. The Midlands of England is Schroedinger's land. It lives in a permanent superposition of being both The North and The South. Your interpretation depends entirely on which direction you're looking at it from.)

"But when chance threw you in my way, Jack, and I learned to love you, I feared to tell you about my child. God forgive me, I feared that I should lose you, and I had not the courage to tell you. I had to choose between you, and in my weakness I turned away from my own little girl."

Dick move, Effie. On so many points. My theory was waaaaay more charitable to you than you deserved apparently.

"At last, however, there came an overwhelming desire to see the child once more. I struggled against it, but in vain."

Shucks. You wanted to see the child you abandoned. How terrible.

This little girl deserves so much better.

“We can talk it over more comfortably at home,” said he. “I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.”

That... is optimistic. I mean... you're essentially just walking out on the little girl immediately. But he seems to be saying that he's not racist, at least. So yay for that?

That poor kid. For so many reasons.

EDIT: It has been pointed out to me that I missed a paragraph when I was reading, where he picks up the little girl:

It was a long two minutes before Grant Munro broke the silence, and when his answer came it was one of which I love to think. He lifted the little child, kissed her, and then, still carrying her, he held his other hand out to his wife and turned towards the door.

OK! Far more satisfying ending if your brain doesn't skip a paragraph. D'oh!

That's really sweet. You have redeemed yourself Grack. Still have those anger and trust issues to deal with, but this is good. I approve. And I approve that Watson approves. Yay. There is a happy ending.

Still some marital issues, though.

Not another word did he say of the case until late that night, when he was turning away, with his lighted candle, for his bedroom. “Watson,” said he, “if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper ‘Norbury’ in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.

I remember this ending. I like this little nod to Holmes being aware of his own failings. And his trusting of Watson to keep him in line.

Well... I was right. And I absolutely allowed ACD to manipulate me into feeling smug for having beaten Holmes to the punchline. I was not expecting the race reveal, sure. But I think I can be forgiven for that. Effie needs to take a long hard look at herself in the mirror. Grack needs to sit down and deal with his temper problems. And that little girl needs to not be forced to wear a mask and gloves and stay inside all day.

Also, both Effie and Grack need to learn to trust each other. I get different time period, different attitudes, different expectations, but maybe you shouldn't marry a person if you can't tell him about your kid? And maybe talk to your wife rather than going full on B&E?

[toaverse]

Matriarch Julieta AU

An AU where the raid happened to the blue family instead…

So here’s some angst!

Note: Alma, Pedro, Bruno and the warm family will only be mentioned.

Anyways, enjoy!

Julieta couldn’t be happier. She lived in a normal Colombian town near Cali, often spends time with her parents and siblings, and hangs out with friends.

But one day, she met Agustín.

The two quickly became friends. Eventually, the two fell in love, got married, and the two moved to a different town near Bogotá.

And eventually, the couple were blessed with their two daughters. Isabela, their oldest, and Luisa two years later.

And after Julieta was expecting again 3 years later, the small family couldn't be any happier.

But it wouldn't last...

On March 6th 1935, the day their Mirabel was born, the small village the small family lived in got raided by bandits.

Julieta and Agustín took as many bags of their stuff as possible, including their wedding candle, took their three daughters, and fled the town, heading to the mountains.

Unfortunately, the bandits caught up with them...

Seeing no other way out for his family, Agustín sacrificed himself to save his wife and daughters...

Julieta wept when the bandit stabbed her beloved husband, clinging to baby Mirabel when it happend. 6 year old Isabela was shielding 4 year old Luisa from having to see it...

But then, the miracle happend...

Mountain started to rise, and the magic house named Casita came to be.

There was no time to proces any of it. The moment the mother and her daughters stepped into the living house, they saw four glowing doors.

Turned out that the girls got gifts as well. Isabela got the gift of growing plants and flowers, and Luisa got super strength.

But that didn't stop the grief from happening...

Isabela and Luisa saw how their mamá forced a smile on her face, trying to be strong for them while taking care of little Mirabel...

So, being the oldest, Isabela felt like she had to take care of Mirabel so that their mamá could take a break from time to time, and Isa did it with gratitude.

But then there was also a whole town, something that Isabela and Luisa ignored at first due to their mamá grieving and caring for Mira.

But eventually, Julieta started leading the town, something that Isa protested against, but Julie reassured her that it was fine. But Isa knew her mamá was lying...

So, when Mirabel was 5 and got her gift of healing with her food, Isabela reminded her of that.

"Will you use your gift to help mamá too?" Isa asked her youngest sister after her ceremony. "I will teach you how to cook, okay?"

So, whenever Julieta couldn't get out of bed or when she was visibly sad or tired, Isabela took over for her.

Luisa took care and did chores around town, while Mirabel took care of all the meals and that her mother or sisters didn’t get sick.

Julieta however, didn't want her daughters to overwork themselves. She was their mother. She should be taking care of them, not the other way around...

The girls lost their father too...

Isa knew this, but tried to suppress the memories of that tragic night by keeping herself busy with taking care of the family and whatever she could do for her mother and sisters.

She even went as far as to court with and actual marry Mariano when she was 20 to make sure the miracle kept on burning and her parents' legacy living on. Mariano knew about it. Isa didn’t lie or mislead him.

But unexpectedly, the two actually fell in love one year after their wedding, specifically after they talked about the raid and how they felt about it. More than a few tears were shed…

But aside from that, the couple mostly focused on taking care of the family they already have.

Julieta truly appreciated what her daughters have done for her. But sometimes, she wanted to take care of them, to be the mother she wanted to be, the mother her girls deserved…

[dailyunsolvedmysteries-movedd]

The Disappearance of Yukari Yokoyama

Pachinko is a pinball-like arcade game that’s been popular in Japan since the early 1950s. Like pinball, you try to shoot little balls into one of the holes in the machine. You win every ball that lands in a hole, and you can exchange these balls for prizes. Because of Japan’s gambling laws, you can’t directly exchange the balls for money, but there are plenty of places where you can trade or sell your prizes for cash. Since casinos are prohibited in Japan, pachinko parlors have essentially taken their place, where millions of Japanese play the game every year. With pachinko so popular among Japanese adults, it was once a common sight for a long time to see parents bring their kids with them to the parlors. 

Yukari was a 4-year-old girl whose parents Yasuo and Mitsuko took her and her baby sister to a pachinko parlor on July 7, 1996 in Gunma Prefecture’s Ota City. While the Yokoyamas split up, with Mitsuko taking their baby daughter and Yasuo going off to play at a machine in a different row, Yukari was left free to roam around and play in the parlor.

Around noon-time, Mitsuko bought some lunch and took the kids outside to the car to eat. Yukari wasn’t very hungry during the time, but decided that she wanted to eat some more after her mother started to play pachinko again. Mitsuko then sent her daughter off with a snack to eat on a near-by couch where she could keep an eye on her. Sometime after 1:40 PM, Yukari came back to her mother and said something about an “uncle”.  Mitsuko couldn’t hear very well over the sounds of the pachinko machines though, and Yukari went back over to the couch unheard.

10 minutes later, Mitsuko looked up from her game and noticed that Yukari wasn’t sitting on the couch anymore. When she got up to check where Yukari was sitting, she found the girl’s juice and a half-eaten onigiri (rice ball). Mitsuko then told her husband that Yukari was gone. After searching the parlor’s parking lot, the Yokoyamas reported Yukari missing to a near-by police station around 2:10 PM.

While the police searched the area over the next two days, interviewing customers and other people who were in the parlor that day, one witness reported seeing a little girl around Yukari’s age getting into a white car around the time of her disappearance. There were other people who remembered seeing Yukari in the parlor, but nobody paid any attention to her, and nobody could say whether they saw anybody particularly suspicious either.

A big breakthrough in the case came when the authorities reviewed footage from the parlor’s security cameras. At 1:27 PM,a man about 5 feet, 2 inches (158 cm) came into the parlor and went into a bathroom located in the back of the building. The man, whose most distinguishing features were some sunglasses, sandals, and a hat, came out three minutes later and then began to wander the parlor. At 1:33, while Yukari was sitting on the couch, the man came over and sat next to her. He smoked and talked to Yukari, pointing his finger to the entrance a few times until he got up and left the building at 1:42. Yukari then went over to her mother and mentioned something about “uncle”. After her mother paid her no attention, Yukari walked over to the entrance and left the building, after which the security cameras lost sight of her.

Although the surveillance footage from the parlor was widely shown in the media, and the shady man’s image was included on flyers, Yukari’s abductor has never been identified. Some believe the man might have been a prior customer, or was at least familiar with the parlor’s lay-out.

 A lot of people have condemned Yukari’s parents for how utterly careless they were, and some even clain a completely groundless theory that the kidnapping was a premeditated plan masterminded by the Yokoyamas themselves.

As of February 2016, this case has remained completely cold. If Yukari Yokoyama is still alive today, she would be around 22 or 23. Perhaps, even two decades later, somebody might someday identify the man in the parlor’s surveillance footage. His image is below;

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

The Disappearance of Yukari Yokoyama

Pachinko is a pinball-like arcade game that’s been popular in Japan since the early 1950s. Like pinball, you try to shoot little balls into one of the holes in the machine. You win every ball that lands in a hole, and you can exchange these balls for prizes. Because of Japan’s gambling laws, you can’t directly exchange the balls for money, but there are plenty of places where you can trade or sell your prizes for cash. Since casinos are prohibited in Japan, pachinko parlors have essentially taken their place, where millions of Japanese play the game every year. With pachinko so popular among Japanese adults, it was once a common sight for a long time to see parents bring their kids with them to the parlors. 

Yukari was a 4-year-old girl whose parents Yasuo and Mitsuko took her and her baby sister to a pachinko parlor on July 7, 1996 in Gunma Prefecture’s Ota City. While the Yokoyamas split up, with Mitsuko taking their baby daughter and Yasuo going off to play at a machine in a different row, Yukari was left free to roam around and play in the parlor.

Around noon-time, Mitsuko bought some lunch and took the kids outside to the car to eat. Yukari wasn’t very hungry during the time, but decided that she wanted to eat some more after her mother started to play pachinko again. Mitsuko then sent her daughter off with a snack to eat on a near-by couch where she could keep an eye on her. Sometime after 1:40 PM, Yukari came back to her mother and said something about an “uncle”.  Mitsuko couldn’t hear very well over the sounds of the pachinko machines though, and Yukari went back over to the couch unheard.

10 minutes later, Mitsuko looked up from her game and noticed that Yukari wasn’t sitting on the couch anymore. When she got up to check where Yukari was sitting, she found the girl’s juice and a half-eaten onigiri (rice ball). Mitsuko then told her husband that Yukari was gone. After searching the parlor’s parking lot, the Yokoyamas reported Yukari missing to a near-by police station around 2:10 PM.

While the police searched the area over the next two days, interviewing customers and other people who were in the parlor that day, one witness reported seeing a little girl around Yukari’s age getting into a white car around the time of her disappearance. There were other people who remembered seeing Yukari in the parlor, but nobody paid any attention to her, and nobody could say whether they saw anybody particularly suspicious either.

A big breakthrough in the case came when the authorities reviewed footage from the parlor’s security cameras. At 1:27 PM,a man about 5 feet, 2 inches (158 cm) came into the parlor and went into a bathroom located in the back of the building. The man, whose most distinguishing features were some sunglasses, sandals, and a hat, came out three minutes later and then began to wander the parlor. At 1:33, while Yukari was sitting on the couch, the man came over and sat next to her. He smoked and talked to Yukari, pointing his finger to the entrance a few times until he got up and left the building at 1:42. Yukari then went over to her mother and mentioned something about “uncle”. After her mother paid her no attention, Yukari walked over to the entrance and left the building, after which the security cameras lost sight of her.

Although the surveillance footage from the parlor was widely shown in the media, and the shady man’s image was included on flyers, Yukari’s abductor has never been identified. Some believe the man might have been a prior customer, or was at least familiar with the parlor’s lay-out.

 A lot of people have condemned Yukari’s parents for how utterly careless they were, and some even clain a completely groundless theory that the kidnapping was a premeditated plan masterminded by the Yokoyamas themselves.

As of February 2016, this case has remained completely cold. If Yukari Yokoyama is still alive today, she would be around 22 or 23. Perhaps, even two decades later, somebody might someday identify the man in the parlor’s surveillance footage. His image is below;

[kaesaaurelia]

Thinking about the temple I went to briefly in college where a minyan was "any ten willing adults who made it here despite the weather -- sometimes we only get eight, though" because it was Central Illinois and they were mostly interfaith families, vs the shittiness of my mom's childhood rabbi who said he'd marry my parents without requiring my father to convert, then like three months before the wedding said, "Oh, actually I don't do interfaith couples." Thinking about the girl who deadass got up in front of my French class and argued passionately that every country in the world should follow rabbinical law (which version? idk, her version) and try boys old enough to be bar mitzvah'd as adults so they would be subject to the death penalty. Thinking about how exposure to that one single Central Illinois temple's idea of a minyan would've killed her stone dead.

Thinking about the neighbors that lectured my parents about "not raising me right" because we had a Christmas tree so I was clearly not being raised Jewish, and the next year, thinking about how my parents got the most obnoxious neon blinky star and put the tree in the window that faced their house. Thinking about my dad's family that kept giving me Jesus-themed presents for Christmas until we stopped talking to them, who could never acknowledge that my mother had a law degree. (Thinking about how my great-grandmother on my mother's side got her doctorate in French literature after her first husband died and she married her second husband, who was a rabbi. Exposure to my mother's mother's family would've killed my dad's family stone dead too, maybe.)

Thinking about how I grew up being made fun of for not "looking Jewish" even though that's not how anything fucking works, but my mom was adopted and didn't convert, so to lots of people she's not really Jewish and neither am I. Thinking about how in middle school my best friend (also Jewish, no adoption history) and I used to be mistaken for twins (so I do look Jewish, even though that's not how anything works), and about how now she and one of her other best friends (white Latina, like my mom's biological mom) are mistaken for sisters. Thinking about how both of us signed my friend's ketubah when she got married even though her other look-alike friend is goyisch, because the sweet old lady from her temple who was going to sign it got lost on the way to the lodge and, it being an interfaith wedding in rural Illinois, all the other Jews who got there that early were related to her. The rabbi said she considered it valid as long as the signers were unrelated adults, and as a female rabbi I assume she also has faced her share of accusations of Not Good Enough.

Thinking about how recently I had to explain to my doctor how I, a white woman, could have sickle cell trait. My doctor seemed shocked and appalled that an interracial union could produce pale-skinned descendants. Thinking about how my whole life has been an exercise in arguing about how little biological ancestry matters until suddenly it does -- suddenly it's a medical issue you're facing, a mystery kidney condition where they can't diagnose it and you maybe get a kidney removed for no reason and continue to suffer on and off (what happened to my biological grandmother), or, if you're lucky, you have a heads up that the doctor isn't very good and can convince him to hold off on the operation long enough for the Afro-Caribbean intern who knows his shit and has seen this before, to diagnose you properly (what happened to my mom), or you're me, thankfully you just have chronic anemia, mention the sickle cell trait, are disbelieved at first, and then are lectured by your doctor about the primary danger of sickle cell trait: if you have children (presumably with a white man) you are going to have to explain this VERY CLEARLY to him beforehand so he knows you didn't cheat on him, because why would he trust you?

(Thinking about the nurse who told my mom I might "come out black" because she had sickle cell trait, and how my mom had to be prepared to defend her fidelity to my dad.)

Kidney issues? Anemia? Well. I guess angry husbands are a greater health risk to women, after all.

(Thinking about all the times my mom has had to fight for barely adequate medical care; about how many times she has argued with the doctors, half-conscious, about one of her various life-threatening conditions, and forced them to listen for once to the sick fat woman who thinks she knows things; about how many times I could have never been born if she hadn't argued. And thinking about how hard it was to be raised by someone who still to this day can never acknowledge she might be wrong, and I'm not saying this justifies what she did to me, but goddamn, if I'd been fighting for consciousness that many times to yell about insulin or whatever, I'd be hard-pressed to back down, too. I'm not planning to have kids, by the way; the kidney issues are way more likely. Not that he asked.)

Thinking about my great-grandfather the rabbi and his ham bone seder, there being no other bones available for the seder plate in that town in rural North Carolina, and then I feel I have to clarify, no, he was my step-great-grandfather, and my mom was adopted, I'm not really related enough to him to claim him as an ancestor. But then again, what kind of rabbi would look at a ham bone on a seder plate and say it was good, and then look at me and say we're not family? I might not look like him, I'll never know, but I know my mother takes after him because we had a dog toy on the seder plate once and if that's not likeness I don't know what is. I don't think he ever doubted his own Jewishness; some of his family fled the Spanish Inquisition. But I think he'd think I was Jewish enough.

I don't know Hebrew and I didn't grow up going to temple, because that one rabbi sucked and all the other temples in town -- and we were arguably spoiled for choice -- were much more rigid in their interpretations of the rules. I never got bat mitzvah'd or even confirmed. Most damningly, I hate arguing. But I can, and I will, and I come from a long line of people who had to argue to survive, and also one guy who got caught in the middle of hog farm country and had to put together an unplanned Seder. And so, I think, if the ham bone was good enough, and any ten adults who made it to temple in a blizzard can be enough, probably so am I.

(Thinking about the time when I was four or so and learning to set the table, and I asked my father -- who is not Jewish -- why it was important that the forks be straight, and he said, "It's so they know we're Jewish." That one isn't a deep thought, my dad is just a troll. But I was probably eight or nine before I was like "hang on, that doesn't seem right..." and when I got older and tried to read the whole Torah for myself, I kept a sharp eye out for mentions of silverware.)