#ohio issue two

[pftones3482]

Oh HELL YEAH both issues one and two were passed in Ohio which means Ohioans voted for the protection of abortion rights AND legalization of weed across the state we fuckin love to see it

[uglyduckling339]

OMG TODAYS THE FIRST TIME OHIO HAS DONE ANYTHING GOOD EVER ACTUALLY ‼️‼️

[pftones3482]

Also, IF YOU LIVE IN OHIO: ABORTION RIGHTS ARE ON THE BALLOT. We are voting YES on Issue One to support abortion rights across the state!!

Ohioans spent all summer saying "Vote No on Issue One" but this is a SEPARATE ISSUE and it is no coincidence that they also called this Issue One - Ohio Republicans WANT you to be confused and vote no.

(also also weed legalization is on the ballot. It's not as crucial as abortion rights, but if that's something you're for, go out and VOTE)

For all of my US followers for whom general public official election day is coming up (Nov. 7th) PLEASE do not become so disillusioned with the current state of higher power politicians that you skip out on voting for local offices; off year and local elections are already critically unemphasized but these are the people who have the most direct power over jails, police, school curriculum, etc. Do not let your grief be weaponized as a distraction from also continuing to fight police brutality, queer and bipoc censorship in schools, bodily autonomy, housing inequality, etc, on the smaller scale battlefields where every vote truly does count

[maxbegone]

The election doesn’t start tomorrow, it ends tomorrow.

If you haven’t already, please make sure you are registered to vote and know where your polling place is (vote.org is a great and easy way to get that information). Additionally, please make sure you have a way to get to your polling place. Uber and Lyft often give free or discounted rides to the polls, and this year the car rental company, Hertz, is allowing free one-day rentals to get to the polls. More information on that here.

EDIT: NAACP has a discount code to use for Lyft, valid for two rides up to $20 ($40 total). Use code: NAACPVOTE24

The following states allow same day registration for general elections, ie: the presidential election:

California

Colorado

Washington DC

Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Iowa

Maine

Maryland

Michigan

Minnesota

Montana

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Mexico

Utah

Vermont

Virginia

Washington

Wisconsin

Wyoming

Note: North Dakota does not require formal voter registration, and upon presenting valid identification at a polling place, eligible citizens receive their ballot to vote.

all info here

The following states are required by law to give you time off to vote (between one and three hours):

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Georgia

Illinois

Iowa

Kansas

Kentucky

Maryland

Massachusetts

Minnesota

Missouri

Nebraska

Nevada

New Mexico

New York

Ohio

Oklahoma

South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

West Virginia

Wisconsin

Wyoming

*Most states requiring employers to permit voting leave also require that this time is paid. Among the above, the following do not: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, North Dakota. (info here)

Again, it is your right to vote. If you are in line when the polls close, stay in line. It is your legal right to vote.

If you are turned away at the polls, say the following verbatim: “Give me a provisional ballot with a receipt as required by law.”

If you make a mistake on your ballot, you have the right to ask for a new ballot. Don’t cross anything out, simply ask for a new one.

Poll workers are required to make reasonable accommodations for voters who need, including ballots in other languages or translators.

Canvassing is not allowed at polling places, and no one is allowed to threaten or intimidate voters. You have the right to report anything of the like.

All info taken from here

Some tips:

Don’t wear political merch to the polls.

Don’t engage with anyone about your politics at the polls.

Don’t take phone calls inside your polling place — it can wait, please be respectful.

Research who is running locally and see what their policies are. Additionally, research any local propositions that may be on the ballot. The language on ballots is made to be purposefully confusing, so make sure you read everything carefully in addition to your research.

If you’re able to get up early on Election Day, go right when your polling place opens to beat the line.

REMEMBER: IT IS YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE!

Here are a list of state-by-state voter protection hotlines, as well as hotlines in various other languages:

Please vote tomorrow if you have not already. It’s so important, and choosing not to vote or voting for a third party is a vote for extremist measures. Vote down the ballot, and do not let anyone bully you into voting one certain way.

What we are seeing throughout this election cycle (and the last two election cycles) is entirely abnormal. The bullying we see from a certain side and its supporters is childish and dangerous. They spew false information, make racist remarks, and sexualize and discriminate fellow candidates. No single presidential candidate is completely and wholly good, so criticize accordingly.

Vote with those you love in mind, vote with your safety in mind, and vote for those who will be affected for decades to come. Vote for someone who speaks coherently, not for someone who is, let’s be honest, not cognitively alright — and that is the bare minimum of the issue.

If you have anything to add to this post, please do. If anything is incorrect, please let me know and I will gladly change it.

Vote. Vote. Vote.

[klaineineverylifetime]

Day of Silence

Title: Day of Silence (2011)

Author: thetimesinbetween

Words: 32k;  POV: Alternating;  Rating: T 

Summary: This is a story about support, love, and friendships that are more like family. There is Kurt and Blaine being their spectacularly adorable selves; Santana being Santana in all her fiery, vulnerable glory; Quinn being a strong, independent woman; Dave Karofsky grappling with who he is and who he wants to be; and Nick and Jeff...well, you'll have to read on to see about them.

Review: This is an ensemble story at its core but Kurt and Blaine offer a grounded foundation which the other characters revolve around. Somehow every single character, despite them having vastly different trajectories (and some of whom we have next to no canonical information on) are pitch perfect in terms of characterization; there are even some moments where you’re stopped in your tracks because how did this author possibly predict canon down to the dialogue? There’s incredibly sweet, romantic moments between Kurt and Blaine that demonstrate their soul-deep connection, raw vulnerability from Santana and Dave, and a spirit of camaraderie that Glee should have leaned into harder. This could be an episode of the show (or many) and I wouldn’t have complained for one second.

[reasonsforhope]

"Georgia Republicans bundled over a dozen measures that targeted the state’s transgender residents into omnibus packages in a desperate attempt to get them passed. In a stunning defeat for the GOP, every single one of them failed.

Legislators gutted bills that had passed through committee and instead stuffed them full of their anti-LGBTQ+ wishlist items.

Bills that would ban transgender students from playing on teams aligned with their gender identity, ban transgender students from bathrooms aligned with their gender identity, opt parents into notification for every book a student checks out of the library, bar sex education before sixth grade, make all sex-ed classes opt-in and expand obscenity laws to make it easier to ban books with LGBTQ+ content all failed.

“MAGA politicians in Georgia tried it all in service to their anti-LGBTQ+ agenda,” said Human Rights Campaign Georgia State Director Bentley Hudgins, “including silencing debate and gutting unrelated, popular bills that had bipartisan support to ram through policies that would have put young LGBTQ+ Georgians in harm’s way. They failed.”

“It’s undeniable that the tides are shifting, both here in Georgia and across the nation,” Georgia Equality executive director Jeff Graham added. “Anti-LGBTQ actors are losing their political power, and more and more Georgians who know and love LGBTQ people are standing up against their baseless fear-mongering.”

In Florida recently, nearly two dozen anti-LGBTQ+ bills were defeated in the wake of Gov. Ron DeSantis‘s (R) presidential campaign implosion, dozens of measures in Virginia were tabled [Note: In the US, "tabled" means "shelved" or "taken out of consideration - the opposite of its meaning in the UK and other places], and Ohio’s governor backed off his attempt to restrict gender-affirming care access for transgender adults and minors. 

Meanwhile, in D.C., Democrats successfully excised 50 anti-LGBTQ+ provisions in the two budget bills passed and signed by President Joe Biden to fund the federal government.

Even Fox News has been forced to acknowledge transgender issues are among the lowest-priority concerns among voters."

-via LGBTQ Nation, April 1, 2024

[ladytemeraire]

The main thought ringing in my head at the three-quarter mark of Jenny Nicholson's Star Wars Hotel video is how badly Disney missed the mark on not targeting the demographic of LARPers, cosplayers, and RenFest nerds as opposed to... whoever the hell they were actually targeting, with that combination of experience and price point.

Like. Not to further out myself as a massive goddamn dork, but there was a span of nearly ten years where I was going to the Ohio RenFest at least once a season, every season. And even there, the years where I went in some form of costume and played along with the actors as opposed to wearing jeans and a t-shirt, my experience was so much richer. There was such a different level of banter and playfulness and entertainment when I actively leaned into the immersion. I had so much fun interacting with the shopkeeps and cast members as an elf or random Fantasy Medieval Maiden, because they saw the costume and on some level went, "You! You are One Of Us!" and matched that energy, and thus gave me the chance to match it in return.

(One year, early on, when my "costume" was a frilly blouse, leggings, boots, elf ears, and a hastily sewn cloak, I had a random older gentleman run up to our group, press a gold coin into my palms, kiss the back of my hand in a very respectful and courtly manner, and disappear into the crowd. No context, no further story or plot or interaction, but almost fifteen years later I still have that gold coin on a shelf of tchotchkes.)

Watching every time Jenny tried so desperately to lean into the Galactic StarCruiser/overall Star Wars experience, to actively engage with the story and the characters, only to be lowkey ignored or actively rebuffed or scorned, legitimately broke my heart a little. (The bit in the experience finale where she was like "it felt like we were supposed to respond somehow, but I didn't because it was embarrassing, which is its own form of Force torture" was simultaneously hilarious and extremely relatable and incredibly sad.) Setting aside the issues with the app and tech, let alone the refusal to address legitimate complaints until she took to Twitter, not even getting a hint of reciprocal interaction from the actors when your choices supposedly matter in your overall experience would be so incredibly disheartening.

Ohio RenFest tickets were about $20 when I started going in high school, plus whatever food and merchandise you wanted to buy. Nowadays, even with inflation, they're still only $35 for adult tickets, which gets you access to everything, and you can absolutely get a full day's experience out of that with only the additional cost for food and beverages. I cannot fathom spending six thousand fecking dollars for two days ("two dollars per person per minute" will live rent free in my head for a while) on what is supposedly an immersive experience, marketed as living out your Star Wars story, only to get the absolute bare minimum in return. It really feels like such an indicator of how modern-day Disney is willing to cut corners as much as possible while leaning on brand recognition, and especially on nostalgia, in order to milk every last red cent out of their customers, until they run out of both money and goodwill. And that is so, so incredibly sad.

[feminist-space]

Article by Fortesa Latifi:

"Being the child of an influencer, Vanessa tells me, was the equivalent of having a full-time job—and then some. She remembers late nights in which the family recorded and rerecorded videos until her mother considered them perfect and days when creating content for the blog stretched into her homeschooling time. If she expressed her unease, she was told the family needed her. “It was like after this next campaign, maybe we could have more time to relax. And then it would never happen,” she says. She was around 10 years old when she realized her life was different from that of other children. When she went to other kids’ houses, she was surprised by how they lived. “I felt strange that they didn’t have to work on social media or blog posts, or constantly pose for pictures or videos,” she says. “I realized they didn’t have to worry about their family's financial situation or contribute to it.”

Vanessa, who requested anonymity to speak freely about her family dynamics, says she helped create content for huge companies like Huggies and Hasbro when her mom landed endorsement deals. When she reached puberty and began menstruating, her mother had her do sponsored posts for sanitary pads. “It was so mortifying,” she says. “I just felt like I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out.”

Being part of an influencer family changed everything about her life, Vanessa says. “Sometimes I didn’t know where the separation was between what was real and what was curated for social media.” And her mother’s online presence indelibly warped their relationship. “Being an influencer kid turned my relationship with my mom into more of an employer-employee relationship than a parent-child one,” she says. “Once you cross the line from being family to being coworkers, you can’t really go back.”

...

Khanbalinov has had zero new offers since he took his kids offline. “When we were showing our kids, brands were rolling in left and right—clothing companies, apps, paper towel companies, food brands. They all wanted us to work with them,” he says. “Once we stopped, we reached out to the brands we had lined up and 99 percent of them dropped out because they wanted kids to showcase their products. And I fought back, like, you guys are a paper towel company—why do you need a kid selling your stuff?”

The law has woefully lagged behind the culture here, but there’s signs that policymakers might finally be catching up. In 2023, in addition to Illinois, three other states—New York, Washington State, and New Jersey—proposed bills to protect influencer kids. Contrast that with the flurry of legislative activity in just the first two months of 2024. Seven more states—Maryland, Georgia, Ohio, Missouri, California, Arizona, Minnesota—have introduced similar legislation. Some of the bills are going one step further to protect the privacy of the kids featured in this content. In some states, proposed legislation would include a clause that borrows from a European legal doctrine known as the “right to be forgotten”—it would allow someone who was featured in content when they were a child to request that platforms permanently delete those posts. None of the current legislation introduced, however, would outright bar the practice of featuring minors in monetized content.

...

The movement on this issue was glacial for years, but it finally feels like the ice has thawed. Much of that progress is thanks to activists like Cam Barrett (she/they), a 25-year-old creator (@softscorpio) who uses TikTok to talk about her experience of being overshared in their childhood and adolescence. Barrett doesn’t go by her legal name anymore because of the online history it’s tied to. “I love my legal name,” Barrett tells me. “I just don’t love the digital footprint attached to it.” Last year, Barrett testified in front of the Washington State legislature as a proponent of a bill to protect influencer kids. This year, they testified again—this time, in front of the Maryland legislature.

“As a former content kid myself, I know what it’s like to grow up with a digital footprint I never asked for,” Barrett told the Maryland House of Delegates Economic Matters Committee in February. “As my mom posted to the world my first-ever menstrual cycle, as she posted to the world the intimate details about me being adopted, her platform grew and I had no say in what was posted.” And yet, Cam says her activism has been healing.

For Cam and other influencer children, getting a paycheck won’t give them back what they lost—a normal childhood unobstructed by the cameras pushed into their faces. But it could be the beginning of some version of restitution. “My friends say I’m fighting for little Cam,” she tells me. “It feels very healing because I didn’t have anyone to fight for me as a kid.”"

Read the full article here: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a60125272/sharenting-parenting-influencer-cost-children/

[lacommunarde]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/23/us/politics/biden-commutes-37-death-sentences.html

Holy shit! He did it! Biden did it!

Dated: Dec 23, 2024

Biden Commutes 37 Death Sentences Ahead of Trump’s Plan to Resume Federal Executions

Those affected by the president’s action on Monday are still subject to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Three men will remain on federal death row.

President Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of nearly all prisoners on federal death row, sparing the lives of 37 men just a month before Donald J. Trump will return to the Oval Office with a promise to restart federal executions. Those affected by Mr. Biden’s action, all of whom were convicted of murder, will serve life imprisonment without the possibility of parole instead of facing execution. Only three men, who each carried out notorious mass killings, will remain on federal death row.

The president campaigned in 2020 on ending the federal death penalty. Although proposed legislation to that effect failed to advance in Congress during his administration, Mr. Biden directed the Justice Department to issue a moratorium on federal executions. Thirteen prisoners on federal death row were put to death during Mr. Trump’s first term.

I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Mr. Biden said in a statement on Monday. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

Mr. Biden said the commutations were consistent with the standard he has imposed for halting executions “in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Mr. Biden said.

The White House released statements of support from faith leaders, civil rights groups and law enforcement officials, as well as from friends and family members of those killed by men on death row.

"Putting to death the person who killed my police partner and best friend would have brought me no peace,” said Donnie Oliverio, a retired police officer, who alluded to Mr. Biden’s being Catholic. “The president has done what is right here, and what is consistent with the faith he and I share.” His partner, Bryan S. Hurst, was shot and killed while on duty by Daryl Lawrence during an attempted bank robbery in Columbus, Ohio. Mr. Lawrence was sentenced to death in 2006.

Of the 37 men whose sentences were commuted, 15 are white, 15 are Black, six are Latino and one is Asian. They were sentenced in 16 states, including three that have abolished the death penalty. Nine are on death row because they were convicted of killing fellow federal prisoners.

The three men who can still face federal execution are Robert D. Bowers, 52, who in 2018 gunned down 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; Dylann Roof, 30, the white supremacist who in 2015 opened fire on Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine people; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 31, one of the two brothers who carried out the bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013 that killed three and maimed more than a dozen others.

Rest of article at link below:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/23/us/politics/biden-commutes-37-death-sentences.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jk4.cDXI.-ATuwJ3HvdW-&smid=url-share

[godmadeaterribleerror]

Chapter 7 - The Blinding Ultra-Violence

Series Masterlist

Author's Note: Can y’all please let me know if the long chapters are harder to digest? Because I love writing them, but if they actively impair enjoyment of the story I can start to cut them in half. Chapter Title from DEVIL by Shinedown.

Word Count: 13k

Chapter Summary/Warnings: Everyone has a lesson in actions and their subsequent consequences. Emphasis on mental health issues warning for the chapter: specifically suicidal ideation and PTSD.

Tags: Soldier Boy/Supe!Female Reader, canon divergence, enemies to friends to lovers, canon divergence, slow burn, fluff, angst

Read on A03!

Chapter 6 - Chapter 8

Taglist: @lordofthunderthr @kritara @sukunassfinger, @justiceforquentin @acciditties

@c1gs-coffee @manicjk

Want to be tagged? Just ask!

Free will was cruel, and you had some choice words for whatever had given it to you. "Words,” meaning several unspeakable acts of violence, a wide variety of cuss words and vulgar phrases that would leave even Ben agape, and at least one loud, feral scream.

Free will had allowed you to attend a fancy party at Vought, a party that put you in a silk dress and winged eyeliner with glossy lips. Free will had let you do one, two, three shots and gotten you tipsy enough that when the elegant woman with strawberry hair had asked if anyone wanted to sing on stage, asked the crowd if there was at least one guest who wasn’t tone deaf and could do a passible rendition of Moon River, you’d raised your hand. Free will had made you not do a fourth shot, so that when you started to sing you didn’t stumble around the stage, missing notes and embarrassing yourself, but had put on a perfect show, singing and swaying in time to the music.

Later, you had learned that the woman with the strawberry hair had been killed later that night, and Free will had allowed you to feel sorry about it. Free will had you visit her grave in the dead of night in a thunderstorm, and let you sing Moon River one last time.

Free will had allowed you to cave when Butcher and the Boys had found you in a different graveyard, only a month later. Free will let you stick with them all the way to the barn. Free will was what had you coming up with very, very stupid plans.

Not this plan, though. You loved this plan. You loved this plan enough that you hadn’t waited even a half hour after thinking of it to call Butcher, or two minutes after Butcher had screened your call to turn around and call MM instead.

“What’s wrong?” MM had picked up after two rings, and you could almost see his worried frown with his words. “Did Soldier Boy-“

“Ben’s in the living room yelling at a documentary about World War II.” You’d dismissed. “He likes to point out all the alleged inaccuracies. I have a plan, I need everyone here by tonight.”

“Uh,” MM said your name apprehensively. “I don’t think that’ll really work.”

“Look, I know everyone’s probably still freaked out about last night, but this is really important-“

“No, that’s not it. We’re fine. Butcher’s still being a fucking ass about it, but everyone else- Hey!” MM had yelled away from the receiver as something banged in the background, accompanied by muffled shouts.

“Uh, MM?” You’d frowned. “Where are you?”

“Ohio.”

“Ohi- why are you in fucking Ohio?”

“Soldier Boy’s shield is here. Turns out it’s been so motherfucking difficult to get because Vought has their hands on it, and they’ve been keeping it in a warehouse in Akron.”

“I thought it had been flown from Jacksonville, with the suit?”

“Nope. Akron. We didn’t know until a few days ago, even Mallory thought it was just waiting in cargo at JFK.”

You’d glanced down the hall to make sure Ben hadn’t heard that his shield was in Ohio, a state he’d once called “America’s shitstained taint” while watching a football game. You heard him shout “fucking commies didn’t do goddamn shit about the Nazi’s, fuck off!” And decided you were in the clear.

“When do you think you’ll be done?” You’d asked, keeping one ear open in case Ben decided to stop fighting with Ken Burns’ voice and join you in the kitchen.

“If Butcher keeps it together and nobody sees Annie and tips off Vought? Tomorrow night.” MM had answered tensely.

“Ok, come right here when you get back. Like I said, I've got a plan, but it’s time sensitive.” You gone to hang up, but paused with your finger over the button. “Don’t die.” You’d added, and heard MM’s grunted acknowledgment just before the call dropped.

Somehow they’d managed to meet MM’s prediction, and all returned in one piece. The team had stood awkwardly in the kitchen—almost everyone avoiding full eye contact with you despite MM’s claim of everything being fine—as you and Ben had sat at the counter, Ben making a mediocre effort to fake some sort of hospitality per your request.

“Thanks to Ashley,” you’d started. “We know Sage told Homelander that I’m in New York and Ben’s awake.”

“Yeah, we’re really sorry about that.” Annie had said your name apologetically. “We should’ve been more careful-“

“No, it’s fine. I’m fine.” You’d cut her off, giving Ben’s shin a swift kick behind the counter before he could’ve said anything, his disbelieving scorn at your statement running through where your arms were brushing. “And we can use this.”

“Use what?” Hughie had frowned, and you’d continued.

“They haven’t told anyone else about it. We weren’t even sure they knew until Ashley told us. I’m not anticipating them to start alerting the media about me anytime soon, but they should’ve announced that America’s number one traitor is back from the dead and out to attack the innocent.”

“Fucking rude.” Ben grumbled, and a surprisingly bruised feeling ran through you. “All I do is help you, Sunshine, and that’s how you fucking thank me?”

You gave him a quick, half-apologetic, half-annoyed look. I’m being sardonic for arguments sake, and you know it. He’d just rolled his eyes, returning his attention to the mozzarella sticks you’d heated up before the Boys arrived.

“But they haven’t done that,” you’d continued, giving Ben one last dirty look. “Which means-“

“They’re saving it for something.” Annie had finished your sentence with a thoughtful frown.

“Exactly. Sage has some sort of plan, some dramatic and complicated way to fear monger people, turn everyone against Starlight by saying you released Soldier Boy, and have been risking public safety by letting him run rampant for your own anti-American reasons.”

“You want to get ahead of it.” MM had said, eyes narrowed.

You’d nodded, and shared your plan. Now, two days later, you were squished in the back of the van between Hughie—a well placed towel separating any physical contact—and Ben—who despite many protests was eating your burger—watching Firecracker and The Deep sing in a way that made you want to permanently remove your ears.

You visibly recoil as The Deep looks into the camera, and Ben looks up from eating to watch the video as it plays on Hughie’s laptop.

“Fish-boy sounds like a fucking constipated cowboy,” Ben mutters through a mouthful of food.

You hum in agreement. “You even sounded better on your stupid Rapture video.”

Ben scowls, taking another large bite that muffles his words. “I was fucking fantastic in that.”

“You were certainly, technically, singing.” You look up at him with a grin. “With all the passion of a dying squid giving one last, mighty squirt.”

“I don’t ’squirt’, Sunshine.” Ben grumbles, and you can see the moment every filthy thing he could say pops into his head. He takes a rough swallow, mouth opening to say something that will undoubtedly make Hughie regret volunteering to stay in the van, and you cut him off.

“Before you say anything, keep in mind that is still my burger, meaning I have every right to take it back and shove it right up your ass.”

Ben glowers at you, taking another aggressively large bite. “Bitch.” He grunts, and a piece of lettuce falls fully out of his mouth. Though you can feel his dirty look in your direction, you can also feel a spark of amusement run from where your knees are touching into your chest.

“Cunt.” You pick the lettuce off his lap and throw it into his face. “You eat like a squid too.”

“The only thing that me and squids have in common is our giant-“

“Okay!” Hughie shouts, pausing the video. “Soldier Boy, can you please not say something sexual for like, fuck, ten minutes?”

Ben doesn’t respond, invested completely in the burger, and you elbow him in the ribs.

He gives a loud cough, little bits of meat spurting out of his mouth. “What the fuck?!” When you incline your head to Hughie, Ben rolls his eyes and offers Hughie a grunted, “Fuckin hell- fine, you pussy.”

“Oh, ok.” Hughie blinks at Ben nervously before fumbling to unpause the video.

As the laptop catches up with the live feed, jumping to Firecracker bouncing over-excitedly around the now empty stage, Ben leans over you to get a good look at the screen.

“That’s her?”

“Yep.” You give the screen a glare. “Crazy brown-nosing bitch.”

Hughie lets out a noise of agreement, and Ben snorts. After another minute, in which Firecracker manages to say a record twenty-two objectively wrong things in a row, Ben grunts in annoyance.

“When I was at Vought, we had real goddamn talent, not whatever the fuck this is.”

“I know, in the 80s they managed to book a Pretty Boy squid who could kind of sing.”

Lettuce hits you in the face, and you let out a sputtering string of profanities.

“I can more than kind of sing, Sunshine. I have the voice of a goddamn angel. And that song didn’t make any fucking sense, I fucking blew it out of the fucking water- what the fucks so funny?”

“Nothing!” You try and smother the giggles that had built in you as he’d devolved into rambling ire. “You’re way angrier about this than I thought you’d be.”

“I’m not fucking angry-“

“I can feel it, Ben.” You press your leg further against his in reminder. “And even if I couldn’t, you just said ‘fuck’ so many times.”

“I’m not a damn pussy, I’ll swear as much as I fucking please-“ Ben falters slightly as the word slips out once more, and you grin at him.

“When you’re angry, every other word out of your mouth is ‘fuck’. It’s actually really funny.“

“I’m glad it’s amusing for you.” He’s glaring at you, but you can feel the rapid ebbing of his anger through your body.

“It is.” You shrug, and attempt an olive branch. “So was the Rapture video. I used to watch it all the time.”

“Really?” At your words, he’s suddenly giving a toothy, egotistical grin. “What, did you have a crush on me?”

“No,” You mirror his grin, even as you feel your cheeks heat and hear your sister’s teasing in your ear. “It was just really funny.”

He scoffs. “Like you could’ve done it any damn better.”

“Oh, I know I couldn’t have. I sing like a horse who chain smokes.” The lie slips through your teeth with practiced ease. “But nobody would be paying me whatever digusting amout they payed you.”

"Joke's on you, Sunshine. I bought a house with that money."

"Hm," you give him a toothy smile. "I think that makes the joke on Vought."

“I liked your dancing,” Hughie offers weakly. “It was… interesting.”

“See, Cocksucker gets it.” Ben says smugly, giving you a nudge as his attention refocuses on the video.

“That’s, that’s not my name…” Hughie sighs, and you offer him an apologetic, close-lipped smile.

Still leaning over you, Ben takes another bite of the burger as he watches Firecracker. “She’s got good tits,” he observes, and you tilt your head to look at him incredulously. “What?! She does!”

“You didn’t even last,” you look at the clock on Hughie’s laptop. “Five minutes.”

“That’s bullshit, I always last more than five minutes- Hey!”

You manage to fit the entire remaining burger into your mouth a once, chewing frantically before he can try and take it back from you. You give him a smug look. I warned you, Pretty Boy.

He narrows his eyes at you. I’ll make you fucking regret that, Sunshine.

You swallow, his promise of regret already catching up to you from the large bite as the food aches down your throat, and push Ben until he’s fully in his seat. “Her tits better not be nice enough that you decide to blow the mission.”

“Don’t worry, Sunshine, yours are better.” He ignores your venomous look. “And she’s with Homelander. Even the best fucking tits in the world couldn’t make up for choosing that pussy.” His eyes narrow at the screen. “I should just fucking go now, it’s been the same stupid shit for a damn hour.”

“No!” Hughie’s arm shoots out to hold him in his seat, before thinking better and pulling back just as fast. “No, they’re almost ready, please, can we just wait until they’re ready?”

Ben shoots you a look of questioning annoyance. I could just fucking go. Cocksucker couldn’t stop me, and we could all be fucking done and go home early.

No. We’re sticking to the plan. You glare back.

He rolls his eyes. Fucking stupid plan if it takes ten goddamn hours to set up.

You stick your tongue out at him, and turn back to Hughie. “Have they sent any updates? At least gotten the stage passes?”

“They aren’t supposed to check in for another three minutes.” Hughie shakes his head. “And MM’s still working on the stage passes. They’re $350 for some fucking reason.”

“I don’t need a stage pass.” Ben grumbles. “I could just walk in if you would give me the suit, none of those pussies would stop me.”

“The whole point is that you don’t have the suit. But…” You trail off, frowning to yourself. “Hughie, Ben might be right about the stage pass.”

Ben makes a satisfied “Ha!” as Hughie gives you a wide-eyed stare.

“But they can’t know he’s working with-“

“Butcher and Starlight, yeah, I know, it's my plan. But the whole idea is that he’s rogue. Soldier Boy, back from the dead once more, loose on the streets of Manhattan with no adult supervision.” You sweep your hand in a mock headline gesture, and pretend you can’t feel Ben’s indignance. “A real rogue hundred year old terrorist would not have a credit score that lets him buy Vought’s super-diamond-truther backstage pass.”

“So I can have my fucking suit-“

“No,” you snap, and Ben scowls. “That defeats the point even more than the stage pass. Your suit is known government property. It was being kept in a high-security warehouse in Florida. It would be really fucking suspicious if you were wearing it.”

“They were keeping my suit in Florida?!” Ben’s face coils in disgust. “Was my fucking shield in Florida too?! Fuck, is it still fucking there?! In goddamn, sweat-stained-“

“No, apparently Vought was keeping your shield in Ohio.”

“Fucking Ohio?!”

“This doesn’t really seem like it’s about the mission anymore,” Hughie says nervously.

“It’s not, it’s about you fucking dumbass cum guzzlers keeping my shit in goddamn Florida and Ohio- Fuck!”

You give Ben a warning glare, fingers still smoking, as he rubs his arm. “They survived it, and maybe if you put on your big boy pants you’ll manage to as well. Now-“ You turn to Hughie. “You should tell MM that we don’t need the stage pass before he spends a disgusting amount of money on it.”

As Hughie takes out his phone, closing his laptop and standing to cross the van for some semblance of privacy, Ben nudges you with a grunt of your name.

“I don’t like this.” He’s frowning at nothing in particular, and you can feel tight, solid concern through your body. “It’s too fucking public.”

You wrinkle your brow at him, eyes narrowing. “Since when do you give a shit how ‘public’ a mission is?”

“Since it’s a fucking liability. Too fucking public means too many fucking people that even I won’t be able to control.”

“That’s the point-“

“I fucking know ‘that’s the point’, Sunshine, you’ve made that real fucking clear.” Ben grunts, giving you an odd look as his tight feeling grows in your chest. “Doesn’t mean I have to like this fucking dumb plan.”

“Well,” you shrug. “I love it. It’s going to work, you’ll admit I’m a goddamn genius, and maybe Firecracker will start crying like a baby.”

Ben snorts, and a jab of his amusement hits you. But before he can make any snide comments, Hughie hangs up his call with MM and returns to where you and Ben are pressed against the wall of the van.

“Well, MM’s really not happy about it, but he agrees it’s smarter not to do the pass.” Hughie sighs. “And he says that Butcher’s on his way to get us. He should be here in five.”

You nod, turning to Ben with narrow eyes. “Repeat the plan to me.”

He rolls his eyes. “What, don’t you trust me, Sunshine?”

“To retain vital information about my plan that you’ve called ‘fucking stupid’ numerous times? Absolutely not.”

“It is fucking stupid.” He grunts.

You sigh. “Please, Ben. Humor me and pretend you give a shit for one minute.”

Ben’s leg tenses against yours, and something falters along your ribs. He scowls as he speaks in terse, clipped words.

“Get on the stage, make sure the cameras see me, neutralize that Firecracker broad, and beat her up, but don’t kill her for some fucking reason.” The last part is muttered resentfully, and you chose to pretend you don’t hear it.

“And then?” You prompt.

“Break the cameras, find you, and get back here.” He grumbles.

You nod in approval. “You have to make sure you break the cameras, Ben. Frenchie’s going to make sure that all the phones get fried, but you need to break the cameras. There can’t be any evidence you’re not working alone.”

Ben rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I fucking got it. Kill the bitch, break the cameras.”

“Do not kill Firecracker!” Hughie says frantically, giving you a desperate look and saying your name in a pleading tone. “Please don’t let him kill her.”

You elbow Ben in the gut as you respond. “He knows, he’s just being a fucking dick about it.”

“Fuck off, Sunshine,” he mutters. “And you should let me kill her. She’s not fucking innocent, she’s a goddamn lying bitch.”

“Nope. No killing her.” You say firmly, crossing your arms. “You only get to beat her up because we need to sell the whole ‘out for revenge’ narrative. That’s-“

“The point.” Ben finishes your sentence mockingly. “I fucking got it, Sunshine.”

You kick him again. “So prove it, Pretty Boy. No killing Firecracker.”

“What if she tries to attack me? I should be allowed to fucking defend myself-“

You snort. “Her power is being a dogshit human sparkler. Her attacking you would feel like this.” You poke Ben’s arm, and he frowns.

“I thought she was a fucking fire supe. Like you.”

“I mean, yeah. She technically is. But not all fire supes can have massive fucking horse cocks like mine.”

Hughie lets out a chocking sputter, and Ben rumbles a loud laugh that makes your stomach feel soft and warm. You’re saved from dwelling on how the feeling lingers, starting to spread through your body in time with an easy delighted, sensation that’s not yours, by the opening of the van door.

“Am I bloody interrupting something?” Butcher’s dry voice is raised over Ben’s laughter, an angry and wired frown across his face. “Or can we all stop jerking each other off and do our fuckin jobs?”

“Pull the damn stick out of your ass, Butcher.” Ben rolls his eyes. “We’re not the pussies who took a year to do recon on three fucking blocks.”

"Well, someone has to make sure you don’t blow your load all over a bunch of innocent civilians again.” Butcher sneers, and Ben’s fists curl at his sides.

“I have it under control, you fucking-“

“Butcher,” you interject, feeling something hot and bloody in Ben’s chest start to grow. “We’re ready?”

Not taking his eyes off of Ben, Butcher grunts. “We’ve been ready, Love. We’re just waiting on you bloody cunts.”

“Then let’s go.” You start to stand but have barely moved from your seat when Ben’s hands are on you, holding you in place.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Ben glares at you, and you feel that weird, tight concern along your skin again.

“On the mission, dumbass.” You snap, trying to pry his grip off of your thigh.

“No.” His hand doesn’t move, and the tight feeling grows. “Too fucking risky.”

“It’s my plan, Ben. Did you seriously think I was going to stay in the fucking van?”

He ignores you, turning to where Hughie and Butcher are watching the exchange, Hughie wide-eyed and Butcher scowling impatiently. “Tell her she’s fucking staying here with Cocksucker.”

“No can do, Mate. She goes where you go.” Butcher gives Ben a mocking grin, and another weird feeling writhes in your—Ben’s—gut.

“We’re right in front of fucking Vought, there’s going to be a shit ton of cameras-Fucking hell!” Ben’s hand jerks off of you, smoking and red.

“I’m a grown ass woman, Ben.” You hiss. “I know what I’m walking into, and I know what the risks are. And seeing as you somehow forgot, I’m in charge of you. I go where you go, and that’s not up for fucking debate. I can, I will handle my goddamn self.”

“Trust me, Sunshine, I know you can.” He says, facing his still-raw palm to you. “Doesn’t mean you have to fucking risk yourself for this bullshit-“

“It’s my fucking job!” You burst out. “The whole ‘find me’ part of the plan requires me to be in the fucking crowd, not sitting on my ass with Hughie!”

“What if fucking Homelander’s there? Then what?”

A painful ardor kicks up in your lungs. “He won’t be.”

“You fucking sure about that?” Ben’s voice is dripping with unconvinced cynicism.

“Why are you being so weird about this? It’s not like-“

Butcher gives an overdramatic cough over your words. “Oi, Bonnie and Clyde. I’d let you two fuck it out, but we’re on a bloody tight schedule. She’s coming, that’s that. Now get off your arses and let’s fucking move.”

“Shut the fuck up, you pussy. We’re not done with our fucking conversation.”

“Yes, we are.” You stand up, walking across the van. “Hughie, wait a bit until we’re out of the alley, then send Ben out. Ben,” you raise your hand, dropping fingers one by one as you run through the plan. “Get on stage, blast Firecracker, give her a few light punches, break the cameras, and find me. No casualties.”

“Maybe sprout some anti-patriot shit as well, Gov.” Butcher adds. “Really bloody sell it.”

You shake your head, giving Butcher an exasperated look. “No, we don’t know what Firecracker might say. What Homelander and Sage have told her. In, violent, and out. That’s it.”

You look back at Ben with a steel gaze, to find a glower of his face you’ve never seen before. His whole body is rigid, jaw clenched, mouth in a dropped scowl as his eyes burn through you. He’s looking at you in a way you aren’t able to read, but you feel like he wants you to. Everything about his face screams that you should be able to understand it, but you can’t.

“You’re, you're leaving me here with him?” Hughie’s voice is unsteady, and when you remove your eyes from Ben you find his face has grown pale.

“It’s only a few bleedin’ seconds, Lass. He don’t bite, don’t he?” Butcher gives Ben a cocky smirk.

“Fucking watch yourself, Butcher, I’ll crack your weak fucking skull and not break a sweat.” Ben snarls, eyes still on you.

Butcher scoffs, a taunting jeer in his voice. "No, you won’t. You don’t want to upset Sunshine.”

Ben’s eyes rip from you as he stands up at a freighting speed, body tense and fists clenched as he reaches his full height. For a second, you think you might have to interfere and prevent Butcher’s life from finding a brutal and inconvenient end in the alleyway, but Ben just gives him a violent, twisted growl.

“Count your fucking blessings that I have a job to do, you pussy. And sleep with one fucking eye open, because once this is over, I’m going to drown you in your own blood.”

Butcher gives him a mocking wink and turns to walk down the alley, leaving you scramble after him.

Before you’re fully out of the van, you turn and give Ben one last look. “No casualties.” You say, and almost against your will, your face draws into a look of and stay safe.

You don’t have time to read his face before you jog after Butcher, but the last thing you see of Ben is his arms still braced at his side, his eyes on yours with an almost feral look.

You catch up to Butcher right at the end of the ally, running face-first into his arm when he holds it out, halted before stepping onto the main street.

“Fucking ow, Butcher.” You rub your face where you’d collided, and over your fingers you barely have time to register the Noir baseball cap and jacket flying at your face, managing to catch them against your chest at the last second.

“Put them on.” Butcher says, and looking over the merchandise you see him leaning out the ally, watching the flowing crowds of pedestrians. People clad in red and blue Firecracker costumes and costume adjacect outfits, a few less in dark greens and Deep trademarked Love the Ocean like the Earth and Fish and Man are One shirts, and exactly one, a bouncing little girl with a tutu and big eyes, wearing a Homelander cape.

You look back down at the cap and jacket—which is a few sizes too big—and realize both were made by Uought International, and that Noir has been spelled as Noire. Looking up, you see that Butcher has pulled a Quen Maeve sweatshirt over his shirt, and is wearing green-tinted sunglasses that have little, blue Soldier Boy brand symbols along the frame.

“You shouldn’t wear those,” you point to your nose, mirroring where the sunglasses sit on Butcher’s face.

“Why, Love, you want them so you can feel close to Ben?” He mocks, and you roll your eyes.

“No, dumbass. Right now Soldier Boy is a dead American traitor who’s going to rise from the dead and commit an act of terrorism in like, seven minutes. It’s not smart to wear anything associated with him to ‘blend in’, especially if you’re pairing it with an off brand shirt of the woman who sacrificed herself to save the world from him.”

“You know just as bloody as well as me that Maeve is picking dandelions in California.”

“Yeah, and Soldier Boy isn’t dead, he’s in the van, probably trying to blackmail Hughie into buying him drugs. The internet is a liar sometimes.”

Butcher pulls off the sunglasses with a scowl and a dirty look in your direction before dropping them on your Noire jacket. “Put on your clothes so we can get a fucking move on. We wanna get outta here before Soldier Boy sees you and carries you back to the bloody van.”

You wrinkle your nose at him and pretend you don’t hear the questioning contempt of his voice, shoving the sunglasses into your back pocket before you pull on the jacket. You give Butcher a nod and step out into the current of the street.

The walk to Firecracker’s stage is silent, both you and Butcher angling your heads down from the crowd, down from the blue, cloudless sky and anyone who may be in it. The sun beats down a warmth that is only offset by the biting of the wind, and Firecracker’s voice, projected by speakers to carry over the horns and shouts of the city, starts to claw into your head.

“Patriots, are you ready to know the truth about Starlight and how she’s been kidnapping and trafficking your innocent babies?!” Her voice has the same southern drawl you’ve heard on TV, her bubbly tone in stark contrast to her words. “We’re lucky we have Homelander lookin out for us, keepin us safe, otherwise Starlight might try to take us too!”

You drop your head further, some fearful part of your brain telling you that Homelander might hear his name from the Tower and decide to make an appearance.

Fucking risky, Ben’s voice says in your head, and suddenly you can see him in your head, that strange, angered and piercing face watching you. What if fucking Homelander’s there, Sunshine? Then what? You’ll freeze up, and I won’t be there to help.

I’ll manage, you snap back at his voice, and can almost hear his scoff.

You’ll start crying and wish I was there. You wish I was there right now. You hate that you’re walking with Butcher, who’s probably going to try and kill you instead of me.

Butcher won’t kill me. He can’t.

Never stopped him from trying before. I wouldn’t let him, Sunshine.

I’m stronger than Butcher. I’m stronger than you. I’m stronger than fucking Homelander. I don’t need your help.

But you fucking want it.

“No, I don’t!” You hiss, and only realize you’ve spoken aloud when the words come out strained, caught on a lump that has formed in our throat.

You hear Butcher snort from your side. “Who the bloody hell are you talking to?”

“No one,” you mumble, feeling your face heat as you feel his disbelieving look.

“If you’re going to lose your damn mind and go all mental, you can wait until all this is done? Would be real bloody inconvenient to have to kill you ahead of schedule.”

“Not funny.” You mutter, and are saved from Butcher’s response by arriving at the crowd, stopping next to where MM watches the show in an A-Trane shirt.

“He behind you?” MM says by way of greeting, voice barely raised over the children’s choir rendition of God Bless the USA, complete with trumpet and string accompaniment.

“Should be,” Butcher looks over the heads of the audience, scanning for something that he doesn’t seem to find. “Frenchie gonna be ready when Soldier Boy gets here?”

“Kimiko got them up on a roof across the street, and Annie will get him the electricity he needs when it happens.”

You glance behind you, hoping that Hughie can manage to keep Ben in the van a few minutes more. “We should move,” you say, turning back to MM. “We don’t want to be anywhere near the path to the stage.”

MM nods and begins to lead you and Butcher deeper into the crowd, weaving through the frenzied cheers and whoops as the choir walks off the stage. You stop at the edge of the crowd, off to side enough to avoid any crossfire, but with Firecracker still in a clear line of sight.

She’s staring down the camera, her toothy and smug smile projected on a Jumbotron as she speaks. “I don’t know about y’all, but I think Starlight should come down here and tell us why! Why she won’t show us any proof of her claims that Homelander is a murderer! When, need I remind y’all, Homelander was found innocent! Has Starlight been found innocent?” You watch her cup her ear, listening for the crowds shouted responses.

“Jesus Christ, she has to know this is bullshit, right?” You mutter to yourself, and MM chuckles beside you.

“As far as I can tell, she really believes all the bullshit she’s saying.” He says with a shake of his head. “She got this job cause her head was up Homelander’s ass for free, she ain’t gonna pull it out now that Vought’s paying.”

You hum, looking up at the sky nervously. “MM, has Hughie texted that Ben-“

You’re cut off as screams sound from down the street, and your head shoots to where you had just stood, watching as the crowd beings to franticly part for something you can’t yet see. Butcher and MM are stiff beside you, Butcher’s gun already in his hand as MM’s lingers at his hip. Firecracker’s voice has faltered through the speakers, her eyes wide and face slack on the Jumbotron. The feeling in you, the ardor against your spine and clawing at your skin, begins, and you try not to watch the sky. The sun is bright and there are no city lights, the only thing you can hear is the terrified people, but Homelander’s not here, so you’ll be fine.

The feeling is in your blood and gut, but you’ll be fine.

You’ll be fine.

Are you sure about that? Ben’s voice says in your head.

Shut up. You tell it, just as Firecracker lets out a shrill sound that echos down the streets.

You look up and find Ben has gotten to the foot of the stage, only his side profile visible to you. Firecracker has a shaking finger pointing at him, her mouth agape as she watches him walk closer, closer, closer. You hadn’t been sure what to expect once it began. For Firecracker to scream, beg, cry, fight, run, or collapse once it became that her life was gone from her hands. Of all the scenarios you’d traced, all the outcomes with more blood, less blood, more scream or quick silence, you hadn’t thought she start to laugh. Doubled over, cackling glee, tears in her eyes visible on the Jumbotron.

“Well, look here, folks! No need to be afraid, it’s going to be just fine! Soldier Boy here’s a guest, and he’s going to tell us all about how Starlight tricked him and forced him to fake his death!”

You watch Ben freeze on stage, and the Jumbotron begins to broadcast his tight, angered face to the steadily regrouping audience.

“Fuck,” MM breathes out. “They’re going to flip him.”

Butcher says your name roughly. “You need to get there, get him in bloody line. We can’t have him running off with Vought.”

You need to move. Every part of you is screaming that you need to go, go, get there and remind Ben that you’re watching and keeping him in check. But you can’t, frozen as you watch his movements on the Jumbotron, trying to keep control when your blood has run cold, and every breath you take is caught against that lump in your throat. You can’t move, and all you can do is watch him on stage, eyes scanning the crowd as he watches them look at him in awe.

Then your falling forward, barely managing to catch your footing before your knees hit the pavement, turning to see MM on the phone speaking in a commanding, measured tone, and Butcher reaching forward to push you once more. You take another, smoother step back before he can, but you don’t wait for him to bark an order for you to go. You turn back to the crowd with the bass of the speakers barely drowning feeling, trying to weave without touching anyone as it grows and grows.

You’re at the base of the stage now, and before you can start to figure out a subtle way to alert him, his eyes lock with yours.

What the fuck is happening. His gaze asks at it runs through you, his body turned as though he may start to move in your direction, and Firecracker's voice rings the air.

“Lovely, you brought her too!” Both you and Ben turn to where she stands, smiling and looking at you. “Our very special guest, The Anomaly!”

Your blood isn’t cold. It’s burning, everything is burning inside of you, scraping to get out. But there are people moving around you now, people everywhere, and someone is nudging you forwards to the stage until a smiling face is pulling you up and moving you right next to Ben. It’s so bright, and you’re burning, and when you turn your head out to the crowd, you see yourself. Up on the Jumbotron. And there are cameras. Cameras everywhere. Cameras that are following your movements as Firecracker speaks.

“I know ya’ll don’t recognize her, she hasn’t been around for as long as this patriot!” Your eyes tear from the screen just in time to see Firecracker playfully slap Ben’s arm, to watch his whole body go rigid as she did. “But she’s a real good friend, and she and Homelander go way back!”

You’re cold again. Cold and angry and sharp. Everything is sharp again, the faces of the audience are clear, and Firecracker’s words are no longer miles away. No, she’s right in front of you with a wide smile of teeth, and you can hear drums.

Drums.

You look down, and your foot is bumped against Ben’s. His eyes aren’t watching you anymore, fixed on Firecracker, but everything sharp in him, in you, is pointed at her.

“If fact,” Firecracker has turned back to the crowd, hands placed over her heart with a simpering face. “She and Homelander? Well they were childhood sweethearts! Supes, raised together, only having each other. And when Homelander went off to become our great hero, she stepped away from the spotlight.” Firecracker takes a large step back, turning back to you. “She didn’t want the fame. She just wanted him!”

A chorus of sickly sweet awwws ripples through the crowd, and the feeling is behind your eyes.

“Homelander was, is, the love of her life. Which is why, when Starlight and her team of devil-worshippers came to kill her, The Anomaly fought with all she had to stop them.”

It’s under your nails.

“She wasn’t strong enough, though, and they dragged her away from where Homelander had been keeping her safe to let her bleed out, far away from the man she loved.”

It’s on your teeth.

“Love that kept her alive, love that made her find another who had been wronged, another who would do anything for Homelander-“

Firecracker makes a gesturing sweep to Ben, and the world begins to blur.

“Soldier Boy! And now they’re here, to reunite with their lover, their son, and have the happy endings they deserve!”

The feeling is everywhere. Ben is pressed closely against you, and the drums are in your ribs. Firecracker is still smiling and her teeth are so white. The crowd is cheering and whooping and you’re going to crack-

Something smashes off the stage, and Firecracker’s smile drops. You make yourself follow her gaze, the movement like moving through mud, and see smashed cameras at MM’s feet. Gunshots ring out, and something above you shatters as Butcher appears, gun raised.

Firecracker’s face has contorted, cheery persona vaporized and she starts to shout in a furious wail.

“No! My cameras! My show- Do you have any idea how hard that speech was to memorize?! I worked so hard, and you ruined it you fucking-“

She flys across the stage, Ben taking large, violent strides to where she lands with a crack. You can see her fear when she looks up to where he stops above her, the light growing in his chest.

“Help!” She screams, looking around at the stage audience and tech workers. “He’s- he’s fucking crazy, he’s going to kill me! Someone- someone fucking stop him!”

The stage audience.

The tech workers.

You’re running. Words aren’t fast enough, and Ben’s too far gone for them anyway. You are, though. You’re flying, tearing across the stage and throwing yourself against Ben. He falls to the ground, the light still building, and twists to try and throw you off of him, his eyes so deep into himself you don’t think he knows it’s you.

Pressed against him, you can only feel the drums, and you brace yourself as the light in him explodes.

It’s painful. A blinding and unforgiving pain that sears through your body. Numbness follows behind it though, fast and empty relief, and when your eyes can see once more Ben is watching you with horror across every feature.

He looks like he’s going to roar at you, tear into and across you. You can feel fury and something deep into his chest that’s screaming.

Firecracker lets out a breathy, sobbing laugh from somewhere to your side, and even if nothing in him wavers, it saves you from whatever Ben was going to say.

“Shit, you're both pathetic. You can’t even take out one person?” Firecracker starts to pull herself up to her feet. “I don’t know why Homelander was so worried about y’all. You’re weak.” She reaches down, grabbing the back of your tattered Noire jacket and pulling you off of Ben. “I mean, I expected more from at least you, Soldier Boy. He looks up to you still, you know. Was so hopeful you’d flip. But,” she shakes her head sadly. “What a disappointment.”

You’re not sure how it happens, let alone where the energy comes from, but you twist in Firecracker’s hold and punch her square in the face. She drops her hold, stumbling back as her nose starts to fill with blood. You never hit the floor though, Ben’s arm looping around your waist as he draws himself upwards.

Everything is sharp and hungry anger that is driving in you—in Ben—to Firecracker. The thing in his chest is still clawing at him, and you can feel your own glacial fervor, but nothing is as strong as the hungry anger.

Firecracker doesn’t feel it though, the storm that's brewing. And she doesn’t know when to quit.

“You worthless bitch.” She sneers through her fingers, trying to plug the blood. “You frigid little whore.”

“Watch it.” Ben growls, arm tensing around your waist.

“Oh, fuck off, you fossil! She’s tricking you, sinking her little claws into her like she did Homelander, with her stupid little songs and dances!”

“Shut up,” the words don’t come out in the firm command you wanted. Your voice sounds pathetic, weak against your ears.

“Do you have any idea how fucking exhausting you’ve been?” Firecracker whines. “Everything was amazing until you came back. He was starting to trust me! And then Sage comes back, accuses Homelander of lyin to her, and says you’re alive. And all of a sudden that’s all that fucking matters! He’s just angry and hurt and it’s so annoying.”

The world is less focused.

“I’ve heard Moon River so many fucking times this week, it makes my skin fucking crawl. I don’t even get it! What can you do that I can’t? I want him, you don’t even care to stick around-“

Nothing is in focus. It’s only Firecracker, her voice, and the feeling.

“I love him, I am perfect for him, I am blessed and chosen and you’re just a lonely little stuck up slut who didn’t even wait after leaving him and everything he did for you-“

Her teeth are so white and you don't think you can breathe.

“Everything he gave you-“

You can feel ghosts of the pain, see the bright light as they push the fire into you. Can feel it now, trying to get out.

“To turn around and spread your fucking whore legs!”

Something in you snaps. Cracks, echoes through your body, and explodes. You’re everywhere, the fire bleeding from you. You can’t see anything but the white room around you, and you have to get out. So you let everything go. It’s just you and the fire, cocooning around you and keeping you safe.

Just you and the fire and something else that is gripping around you. Something in your chest that is thrashing and trying to keep you close. It feels safe too, so you let it stay as everything else continues to burn.

A deep, roaring voice is calling your name. It sounds like the thing in your chest, and it reverberates through you as if it’s pressed against you. There are screams too, broken and raw screams, but you can’t see where they’re coming from, and they don’t feel safe like the voice.

The thing gripping around you feels heavier. It feels safer. There’s no city lights, you can’t even really remember what they might look like, but there’s music. Soft and deep in your ear, wrapping around you. Putting something out along your skin. You’re getting weak, and you feel cold.

You can’t stop. Something in your head tells you. You falter, and you’re back in the room.

But you’re so tired. The grip feels safe. And the music is settling into you and feels so good.

So when the world goes black, the last thing you feel is the thing in your chest reaching for you, and you could swear it breathes in relief.

————

He’d figured it out. The tapping. Firecracker had said Moon River, and he’d realized that was it. The rhythm of the verses matched that incessant tapping of Hers perfectly. He’d taken a fucking gamble, dragging the verses from somewhere deep in his brain as she’d been consumed by the fire, and it had paid off when She’d collapsed into him. The fire still lingered long after She closed her eyes, long after Ben stopped humming. Most of the stage was ash, from the hollowed, disgusting bodies of Firecracker and a few unfortunate audience members to the still flaming stage curtains.

Ben picked her up, and her eyes didn’t even flutter. Her body was still burning, and his hands protested in pain against her skin, but he bit down his pain with ease. Ben wasn’t a pussy, and he’d heal. This was more important.

A thought that had everything in him—except the feeling he’d been keeping in his gut that had somehow managed to crawl into his chest—very fucking irritated.

Ben turned, carrying Her off the stage to get her as far away from here as possible, only to find both MM and Butcher waiting, guns pointed right at his face.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” He growled. They didn’t have any fucking time for these dramatics. As far as he fucking understood from Her explanations, all that shit show had just been broadcast through the fucking nation. Homelander was probably on his way, and Ben wouldn’t be able to do his fucking job and wipe the floor with that pussy if She was still unconscious and the stupid fucking thing in his chest was worried.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Gov.” Butcher jeered back. “We’re not letting you off that bloody easy.”

Ben glowered at him, and his desire to throw Butcher against the nearest concrete wall was only barely defeated by the godforsaken need to get Her somewhere safe. “We don’t have fucking time for this. Move out of my fucking way, or I’ll make you.”

“Take your best fucking shot, cunt.” Butcher taunted.

“Last fucking chance to get out of my way.” Ben could hear the hitch in both their hearts, uneven from the growing steadiness in Hers.

“We ain’t moving, Soldier Boy.” MM angled his gun higher. “And you’re not taking her.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, you fucking pussies!” Ben roared, whatever patience he’d managed to hold onto vanished. “Homelander is probably on his fucking way, and unless you want him to take her, we need to fucking leave right fucking now!”

Both men blink, Ben’s words hanging in the air just long enough that he was starting to get ready to just fucking push through them. He’d deal with Her anger about it later, when she was awake and they were far fucking away from cages and boxes.

But MM lowered his gun, narrowing his eyes at Ben. “You’re going to let us take you back to the safe house?” His voice had a tone of disbelief that Ben didn’t fucking appreciate.

“Fucking hell, yes. Now fucking move your dumb fucking asses before I change my fucking mind!”

MM looked over at Butcher, whose gun was still aimed at Ben’s head. “The kid’s bringing the van round?”

“He bloody should be.“ Butcher grunted, but didn’t move. “But that don’t mean shit, I ain’t trusting this cunt to go quietly.”

“I’m certainly not going to go quietly if you keep a fucking gun in my face.” Ben sneered. “I might not do jackshit to me, but it’s goddamn rude when I’m trying to fucking help.”

“Why should we trust that?” MM asked coldly, glancing down at Her in Ben’s arms. “This is your ticket out. You’re probably just going to kill us in the van while she’s still out.”

Ben fucking knew that, he wasn’t an fucking idiot. He could hear Her heartbeat, fully steady as sleep held her under, could feel the scalding heat of her body almost fully faded. When he glanced down at her face, it painted into an empty ease. But when he blinked, it would flash back to just before she’d burst. Afraid. Only pure terror on Her face as Firecracker screamed about Homelander.

She wasn’t going back there.

“I guess you’re going to have to take a fucking gamble.” Ben held MM’s stare. “Because you have five seconds to fucking move before I kill both you pussies and leave with her.”

Some part of Ben still managed to be surprised when they exchanged one last, tense look, MM’s eyes flaring at Butcher, who dropped his gun with an angry huff. When MM started to walk away, likely to where Cocksucker waited with the van, and Butcher only said, “Breathe one wrong breath, Soldier Boy, and I’ll put you right back under.”

Ben wanted to. He wanted to step just far out enough of line that he’d be justified in bashing Butcher’s smug, pussy fucking head against the curb. But he didn’t, just keeping Her in place against him until they were back at the safe house, glaring at the whole sorry fucking lot of Her team as they watched Ben hold Her in the corner. Her heartbeat stayed steady, and it kept the drum in him from bursting, aided by the thing in his chest settling back into him the more distance grew between Her and the stage, Vought Tower, and Homelander.

When they reached the safe house, Ben didn’t bother to pause, waiting only for Butcher to open the door, before he was moving through the hall in tight, bounding steps. Up the stairs, shoving the door to Her room open, laying her on the bed above her sheets. She let out a little sigh as he let her go, and Ben hated how it made the thing in his chest wake up. He had to get himself under fucking control. She was safe, he’d done what he fucking needed to, and he wasn’t about to be a goddamn creep and watch her sleep.

The seconds were starting to stretch though, as he watched Her, listened to the steady sound of her heart. She looked so fucking peaceful, and it was calming the thing in his chest.

Fuck, he didn’t like how easy it felt. Especially as she let out another small sigh, rolling over with an arm stretching out, and he wanted to touch her upturned palm. That realization snapped him out of whatever stupid fucking trance he’d been dragged into, and he managed to turn, walking towards the door.

Before he left though—practically against his will—he turned back just in time to hear another sigh and see Her body curl into the mattress.

“Sleep well, Sunshine.” He muttered and tried to ignore the last sigh released from her chest, and how if ran through him.

When Ben got down to the kitchen, goddamn fucking Cocksucker and Starlight were waiting for him.

“What are you cum guzzlers still fucking doing here?” He grumbled, pushing past them to get to the pantry.

“Is she ok?” Cocksucker asked, and Ben shrugged, grabbing a bag of half-eaten jerky from the top shelf.

“She’ll fucking live.” He ignored the flash of Her fearful face in his head, and how his grip on the bag turned to steel. “One of you better answer my goddamn question.”

“We need to talk to her,” Starlight said softly.

“Don’t hold your fucking breath, she’s out cold.” Ben snapped.

Starlight sighed. “We’ll wait.”

“No, you won’t.” Ben turned around to face her. “She needs to fucking rest.”

“Cocksucker look between Starlight and Ben nervously. “We need to make sure-“

“She did you a fucking favor.” Ben growled. “Firecracker’s not a problem anymore, and her stupid plan fucking worked.”

“She killed four people.” Starlight said tightly. “And after Ashley, we need to know that she’s still with us.”

“With you?” Ben scoffed, saying Her name in the same exasperated tone. “Her? You think she’s going to turn against you fucking pussies?”

“She’s- she’s been weird.” Cocksucker stuttered. “And you’ve gotten closer than we thought-“

“Fuck off.” Ben snorted. “I haven’t turned her, if that’s what your dumb little pea-brains think.”

“We’re not who you have to convince, Soldier Boy.” Starlight watched Ben with a frown. “I trust her. Hughie trusts her.”

“Then what the fuck-“

“Butcher,” Cocksucker said softly. “MM. Mallory. They’re worried she’s going to be a liability.”

“Then they can come fucking tell me their fucking selves.” Ben hissed. “Now get the fuck out.”

Starlight looked like she was going to push back, and Ben was ready to throw her through the door himself, but Cocksucker placed his hand on her back, and something passed silently between them.

“Fine,” Starlight sighed, giving Ben one last, tired look. “If you promise to tell us when she’s awake, I can try and hold them off.” Her eyes narrowed. “For her.”

Ben grunted. “Deal.”

And they were gone, and Ben was alone in the kitchen.

She didn’t wake up for three full days. Three, long, insufferably quiet days where it was just Ben. Three days of pacing, of eating alone, of watching TV all through the damn night because he couldn’t sleep even if he fucking tried. Three days of the awful thing in his chest making up stupid excuse to open the door to her room and check to see if she had vanished. She never had, she would always be twisted on the bed, heart steady, face empty. At some point Ben moved Her under the covers, after he made up an excuse to touch her and found her not burning like he’d been checking for, but freezing cold. Three long days of wishing She was awake, reminding himself he didn’t fucking need Her awake, and the thing in his chest roaring that he did.

He tried to push it down, and almost succeeded, but at the end of the second day he walked downstairs from where he’d been standing outside her door for a disgustingly long time—finally managing to not push in and check on her—to find Butcher in the living room.

“She’s still out.” Ben had grunted, and Butcher had only shrugged.

“I ain’t here for her. We need to have a little chat.”

“I’m good.”

“I wasn’t bloody asking.”

Ben remembered wondering in the moment if he was already in enough hot water that killing Butcher wouldn’t really matter. “You’re playing a game you can’t fucking win.” He’d warned, and even Butcher’s heart hadn’t stuttered.

“I’ll be out of your hair in a flash, Gov. But not until you fucking listen.” Butcher managed to have more intelligence than Ben thought him capable of, and didn’t wait to hear Ben’s answer before he began. “Her plan, somehow, bloody worked. Most of the media coverage is sayin that Firecracker started panicking and lying to try and keep herself alive. You’re being label as a crazed lunatic, out for revenge.”

“Then what’s the fucking problem-“

“Her. Everyone’s buying the story about Her and Homelander, thinkin you kidnapped her after we tried to kill her.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t even make any fucking sense.”

“Don’t need to make sense. It’s the narrative Vought got, and they’re running with it. As far as the public knows, you’re back, out for bloody and evil revenge, and are holding her hostage to hurt Homelander.” Butcher narrowed his eyes at Ben. “And they’ve reached out. They want to meet with you.”

“They?” Ben paused, ready to grab Butcher’s tongue and make him stop talking in fucking riddles. “Who the fuck is they?”

“Vought.” Butcher said shortly. “Sage. Homelander.”

Ben snorted. “Fuck no. We’re not bringing her anywhere near that goddamn pussy and his conniving bitch.”

“Good thing they only want to talk to you, then, ain’t it.”

That made Ben pause, eyes narrowing at Butcher as suspicion had begun to build in his chest. “The fuck are you talking about.”

“One hour, a truce, just you, me, Starlight, Homelander, and Sage. At the old Starlight Fund building. Just talking.”

Ben snorted. “You dumb enough to believe that?”

“Nope. But you agree, it happens.”

Ben grunted. He didn’t trust any of it. He didn’t trust Homelander to have no ulterior motive. He didn’t trust Sage to not be plotting something. He didn’t trust Butcher to not have a fucking trick up his stupid fucking Hawaiian shirt. “And if don’t.”

Butcher shrugged. “Then this conversation never happened.”

Ben had said your name carefully, trying to feel out whatever it was he fucking knew Butcher was hiding. “What about her?”

“She’d stay here.”

Ben raised his brows at that. “You’d trust me without her?”

“Fucking hell, no. Not if hell bloody froze over. Don’t trust you with her. We’d set up something to make you go night-night if you get all nuclear. CIA got more than enough gas to put you under, they can spare some for our lovely uses.”

“How long does the offer stand?” Ben asked, pushing down the drum.

Butcher had shrugged. “Until you give an answer.”

“I’ll think about it.” Ben said. “Now get the fuck out.”

Butcher chuckled dryly. “Alright, Gov. Keep your damn pants on.” As Butcher walked, hands in pockets, down the hall, he paused as he passed Ben, and shoved something into his hands. “She dropped those on her way to the stage. Good luck when she wakes up, Mate. I’d keep her away from the telly.”

Ben had looked down at what Butcher had given him as the man walked away, brow furrowing at what he found.

Shitty, off-brand Soldier Boy sunglasses.

Ben had placed them in his room to give to Her later. But another full day had passed before she woke up, and Ben’s mind had not stilled the whole fucking time.

He hadn’t been lying. Ben thought about Butcher’s—Homelander’s—offer. Constantly. Starting with the fact that he didn’t have a goddamn thing to say to Homelander. The shock of their relation had long passed, fading into a numbness of just another fucking job for Ben to do, just another way in which he had to be alone. Then the numbness had been replaced by a blinding wrath. A disgust from what he had done. Ben wasn’t a saint, saints were weak, self-righteous whiners. But he wasn’t a fucking monster. He did what had to be done, and a little more to make sure he didn’t have to do it again. He didn’t take women and lock them in cages. He didn’t hurt people until the singular thought of him made them afraid. People fear Ben, yes. But just as much as they should.

Ben didn’t fear Homelander. She didn’t fear Ben. But She feared Homelander. A weak, fucking pathetic man who had needed to break someone stronger than him, someone worth more than him powerless, to feel big. She was worth so much more than Homelander that she wanted to help people. Worth so much more that she still somehow looked at the world and found it worth something. She found worth in fucking everything. Everything was amusing to Her, everything was beautiful, everything had value and meaning. Ben fucking hated it. It leaked into him, and felt fucking strange. Because he could hear Her in his head, saying Pretty Boy, this is an opportunity. Don’t be a petty baby and waste it.

And that was where the thoughts would loop. Ben didn’t want to talk to Homelander. Homelander had hurt Her and Ben never would. She’d find a way to use this, though, and She’d want him to go. But Ben didn’t want to talk to Homelander. Over and over until Ben heard Her heartbeat stutter, heard shuffling around in Her room, and had to fight the thing roaring in his chest to sprint up the stairs. He somehow managed to remain seated on the couch, everything in him fucking strained to stay in place as she tapped down the stairs and cleared her throat behind him.

Ben turned to find Her watching him with eyes still crusted from sleep. When She spoke, her voice was hoarse, and her words were quiet.

“How long was I out?”

“Few days.” Ben answered, trying to watch her passively, to pretend he wasn’t studying her every feature. He wasn’t even fucking sure what he was looking for himself.

“What-“ She took a deep breath. “What happened?”

Ben paused, finding her eyes again. Keep her away from the telly, Butcher had said, and Ben had immediately checked to see what the fuck he was talking about. He’d found the answer fast: photos of Firecracker’s scorched body, interviews with the families of the audience members who had met the same fate. Speculation about what Ben was doing to Her, fabricated “evidence” of Her and Homelander’s love. A complete, well-developed, entirely bullshit story about her life. Born in the same hometown as Homelander, happily giving up her life to support him, working instead behind the scenes in Vought marketing and cooking in her free time.

Homelander didn’t have a hometown, that pussies whole story was even more bullshit Vought propaganda than Ben’s was.

She wouldn’t “give up her life” to support anyone. And if she did, they’d have to hear her bitch about it until they fucking died.

Ben had once heard her call marketing “a plague upon human culture and societal development” during the third commercial break of one of his football games.

Everyone would know if She had tried to cook Homelander food, because it would’ve killed him.

Butcher had wanted Ben to lie. But Ben fucking knew She wouldn’t have lied to him. And he knew She would find out the truth somehow and be a real bitch about Ben lying to her.

“Three audience members and Firecracker died. You passed out. We got back here.”

“Oh,” she said softly, but didn’t look away, and Ben could see something fragile in her eyes fracture. Hear the taps of Moon River begin. “What are they saying?”

“They?”

“Vought.”

“Your plan worked.” Ben grunted, and the rhythm of Her heart told him she knew there was more. “But Firecracker’s bullshit stuck. I’m being painted as a revenge-blind maniac, and you’re being painted as my victim.”

She let out a humorless laugh. “If anything, you’re my victim.”

Ben felt his mouth twitch. “That’s what I keep fucking saying.”

She let out another, smaller huff of amusement before her face fell back into that soft state, her eyes still tired as she watched him. “That’s all?”

He nodded. “That’s all.”

She gave one last sigh, and it sounded so weak. He wanted to grab her and figure out a way to make her move. Get her to sit next to him and laugh so the fucking thing in his chest would let go of his lungs. Before he could, though, she turned and padded back up the stairs, her door closing behind her.

Another day passed before Ben even fucking saw her again. She’d slunk into the kitchen around dinner, hair tangled and eyes hollow, heating up a box-meal before placing it on a plate and carrying it back upstairs. The next day was the same, and Ben had tried to grab her and make her fucking talk to him, and she'd stared at him with a wide, empty gaze.

“We need to fucking talk.” He’d grunted.

“Please don’t.” Her voice had been so fucking quiet.

“Don’t what?” He’d growled. “Fucking talk to you? You’re just going to never fucking talk to me again?”

She’d given a small shake of her head. “I don’t want to talk. Please.”

“You’re being fucking weird.”

“Please.” She’d sounded desperate. “I can’t talk. Please.”

He’d never heard her say please so many times. He’d only seen her like this, a weak and fearful girl, once.

He’d hated it on the Neuman mission. He hated it now.

He hated she looked weaker now. Hopeless. He hated how he relented, let go of her, and she’d gone back upstairs and didn’t come back down. Two more days passed, and the only way Ben knew she was alive was the sounds of music coming from her room and the food that vanished from the kitchen overnight.

Ben was going to lose his fucking mind. The last time she’d avoided him this much had been the beginning, and, fuck, that had been better than this. She’s seen him and fought with him, tearing him to pieces as he did the same to her. Stood her fucking ground against him, a completely insufferable, violent, angry bitch of a woman. Even after they’d called truce on their war, she’d remained a powerfully wrathful, unrelenting pain in Ben’s ass. Now she wouldn’t stand in the same fucking room as him, and he was going to go fucking insane.

So, on the fifth day, Ben banged down her door, ready to demand she fucking tell him who to kill to fix this.

He found her curled in her bed, staring far ahead into nothing. Something hit his nose that he forced himself to ignore, and she didn’t even move as he pushed into the room.

“What the fuck are you doing?” He asked gruffly. She didn’t answer, so he said her name roughly. “What’s fucking wrong with you?”

“Why did you do it?” Her voice was light—frail—as she stared ahead.

“Do fucking what?”

She finally looked at him. “Why did you go back, with Sage, why did you fucking do that?”

“I saved your life, Sunshine. And you never even fucking thanked me.” Ben knew his words were cruel, shooting to hurt Her. But maybe she’d fucking fight him. Fucking do something that wasn’t just fucking sitting there.

“You should’ve left me.” She whispered, Ben rolled his eyes, and her voice raised. Not to a scream, but a high-pitched, frantic tone of desperation. “You should’ve! You should’ve left me and run! You could’ve been free, why did you do that! Why! You should’ve just fucking left me!”

This was worse, Ben knew. So much fucking worse. “Why are you being so fucking dramatic-“

“You should’ve left me to die!” She screamed. “You should’ve just left me to die! Why didn’t you just let me fucking die?!”

Ben stared at Her as she started to cry, shaking on the bed, trying to push herself further back into its frame. She’d tucked her head into her arms, sobs wracking through her whole body as she held herself, fingers digging into her skin. No smoke was rising, no tapping or chewing, just Her tears falling as she let out another, broken scream. Ben was frozen, he didn’t know how to fucking deal with this. Fuck, he barely knew how to deal with Her when she wasn’t breaking down in front of him.

Through sobs, Ben heard Her say it again. “It would be better if you had just let me die.”

Ben didn’t need the thing in his chest to tell him to move. He crossed the room in two long steps, dropping on the bed next Her.

“Look at me.” She didn’t, so Ben grabbed her wrists and pulled them down. “Sunshine, fucking look at me.”

She glanced down at where he still held her and blinked, letting out a stuttered breath. Her voice was still so weak when she spoke, “What?”

“Fucking look at me.” He growled one last time, and she finally did, her eyes still so empty. “You’re being fucking stupid.”

She gaped at him, disbelief finally filling her expression. It wasn’t the amusement or rage Ben wanted back, but it was something.

“What?’

“You’re being a goddamn idiot. Things would…” The words vomited out of him. “Be a lot fucking worse if you were dead.”

She shook her head, the hopeless looking creeping back. “I killed four people, they’d still be alive-“

"Maybe.” Ben grunted. “Maybe not. But they, along with a few more, would still be dead if you hadn’t knocked me down. Which was even fucking stupider than you’re being now, but we’ll fix that later.”

“Fix that?” She gave him a sharp look, words still choked. “I thought we agreed not to fix each other.”

“You agreed not to fix me. I made no such fucking promises.”

There was a silence for a second before She spoke again. “I don’t want you to ‘fix me’. I want to care that I…” Her stuttered, and she took another shaky breath before pushing them out. “I hurt people.”

“That’s to job, Sunshine.”

“I don’t care,” she whispered. “I didn’t even want the job anyway.”

Ben watched her, wrists still in his hands, face faraway, and eyes still lined with tears. An image flashed in front of him, of Her a few years younger, singing karaoke and crying about stupid, normal shit. Something Ben himself had never done, something Ben wouldn’t even know how to miss. The image lingered in his head, her smile carefree, singing loudly and off-key, no blood on her hands, and the thing in his chest was angry.

“Ben?” She said softly, and the image vanished. “I’m sorry.”

He scowled. “Why are you fucking apologizing to me?”

“You don’t want to deal with this, with me. It’s not- it’s not useful to cry over spilled milk-“

“Shut up,” he snapped. “No, it’s not useful. For me. For Butcher. For Homelander. You get to whine over it, because-“

“Because I’m a woman?” She asked dryly, and he glared at her.

“No, smartass. Because you’re not like us. You didn’t fucking choose this.”

“You didn’t choose that,” she nodded to his chest. “Do you get to cry?”

“I don’t cry.” He said firmly, and She tilted her head at him in a way he didn’t like. “But I get to be angry. You get to be angry. And if you need to have a little breakdown to be angry, then so fucking be it.”

“But I killed people-“

Ben rolled his eyes. “Three Homelander supporters and Firecracker. Real fucking contributors to society, I’m sure.”

“They were still people.” She pushed. “People who I killed. People who would be alive-”

“If you say ‘if you were dead’, I’ll kill you myself.” Ben snapped.

She stared at him in disbelief and something harsher flickered in Her eyes. Fucking finally.

“I’d like to see you fucking try, Pretty Boy.”

He huffed a laugh. “I’ll wipe the floor with your ass, Sunshine.”

“I’ll make you regret crawling out of your mother in the first place, cunt.” She taunted, and Ben felt a wide grin on his face.

“I’m sure you will, you bitch.” Ben gave her a sweeping look. Her matted hair, tear crusted and red eyes, the smell he’d been pushing down starting to feel fucking visible. “But you need to fucking shower first, you smell like the shit you’ve been wallowing in.”

She glared at him, and for a second Ben thought she’d keep fighting him, or worse, start crying again, but she just gave a light tug against where he still held her.

“Can’t fucking shower if you won’t let me move, Ben.” She said flatly, and Ben rolled his eyes as he let go.

“Fucking drama queen,” he muttered, and She gave him a sarcastic, toothy smile as she stood.

“Eat me.”

“I would if you’d let me, Sunshine.” He called after Her, and though she closed the door with a slam, Ben still heard her heart flutter.

He waited as the water ran and tried not to think about Her, naked, in just the other room. Tried not to think about the relief the thing in his chest had felt when she’d stopped crying, the satisfaction it felt when he’d gotten her to laugh, and the stupid fucking anger it had felt at everything when she’d broken in front of him. He didn’t let himself dwell on the way it made him sit here. Fucking waiting for her like a lost goddamn puppy. Wanting to make sure she was okay. She was fine, she wasn’t sobbing and screaming, so she was fucking fine.

But what if She’s not, you fucking ass? The thing growled. What if she’s just waiting for you to leave?

Ben fucking hated that it worked, and he stayed on the bed.

What if She needs you? It hissed. What if she wants you to stay?

Ben loathed that even more. Because it echoed in his brain, and made him listen intently for any sounds of distress over the water, made him sit rigid and alert until the door opened.

She walked out, a towel wrapped around her body. She blinked at him once, and Ben couldn’t fucking figure out if she was even surprised he was there.

“Clothes,” she mumbled, walking to her dresser. Ben grunted, and watched her return to the bathroom, the door closing behind her once more.

Maybe he should go now. It was late, it had been a weird, long fucking day. He should fucking go and put some distance between the thing in his stupid fucking chest and Her-

The door opened, and She walked over to drop back on the bed, a small smile on her face.

“You’re real shit at comforting people, Pretty Boy.”

Fine. He’d fucking stay.

“Good.” Ben grunted. “And it fucking worked on you. Didn’t even get a damn ‘thank you.’”

He felt Her hand on his arm, and looked at her face, soft and open. “Thank you.”

He grunted again, staring back at the wall, and she chuckled.

“I mean, it was still a shit job, but it was so shit it looped around into being remarkably effective.”

“Doesn’t count as a damn thank you, Sunshine, if you fucking insult me right after.”

She shrugged. “Then do a better fucking job next time, Pretty Boy.”

Ben snorted. “Don’t hold your damn breath.” She didn’t respond, and he turned to find Her watching him, lips in a thin frown with her brow gently wrinkled. “I can hear the fucking gears in your head, Sunshine.” He said. “Say what you’re fucking thinking.”

“I’m going to ask you something once. If your answer is no, you’re not allowed to talk about it again.”

Ben frowned. Every time she started a question with a phrase like that, it ended up being something fucking insane. “Okay.” He said shortly, morbid curiosity getting the better of him.

“If you want, you don’t have to, and I don’t expect you to-“

“Quit fucking edging and spit it out.”

She glared at him. “You can stay in here tonight.”

Ben stared at Her, the thing in his chest clawing against him. “What?”

“You can sit in my bed. If you want. I know you won’t sleep, and I won’t sleep well, and I’d probably end up sitting in your room at some point-“

“Why?” Ben cut off Her rambling, frowning.

She held his gaze, her uneven heart the only sign of her nerves. “I don’t-“ she sighed. “I don’t want to be alone. You’d just be sitting here, nothing else. But if you don’t-“

“Fine.” He answered, and the thing in his chest roared.

“Oh,” she paused, and Ben was pretty goddamn sure She’d expected him to say no. “Okay. Good.”

She pulled herself under the covers, looking up at Ben from her back. He didn’t like what that made him feel, and how easy it would be to just pull Her against him and keep her there.

“Thank you.” She said with a small smile. “No insults."

“Whatever,” Ben grumbled, leaning back in a pointless attempt to find a comfortable position. “Just saving you the fucking walk to my room.”

“You’re a saint,” she mumbled sarcastically, eyes drooping. “I’m sure this must have been very hard for you.”

“I’ll live.” He said, watching Her. “I need you functional, Sunshine. Small, stupid fucking price to pay.”

“You need me?” She breathed out, a sleepy smile on her face.

Ben rolled his eyes. “You burn, I burn.” He echoed the words she'd said before. “I’m not going to let you fucking burn. You don’t get away from me that easy.”

“How sweet.” She whispered, eyes fully closing. “I won’t let you burn either, Pretty Boy.”

Ben wanted to protest, and tell Her that he wasn’t sweet, just practical, and he—despite the protests of the thing in his chest—didn’t need her at all. But Her breathing became steady and even, fast asleep in seconds at his side, and he couldn’t fucking bring himself to wake her. So Ben just studied Her sleeping face, not empty, not twisted in pain, a soft smile playing on her lips. He should fucking go, She was asleep and that’s all She’d fucking needed from him. But he stayed in place, and watcher Her like a fucking creep. Her peaceful face, smooth heartbeat, and gentle breaths soothing the thing in his chest. Ben need to get himself under fucking control, he was being fucking pathetic.

But he stayed, all fucking night, unable to move and barely capable of looking away. And the more of the night that passed, the long he watched Her, the more he realized she was pretty. Really fucking pretty. He hadn’t been fucking blind, he’d known she was pretty before. Thought about it more than he’d ever fucking admit. But fuck, this was different. She was really, really goddamn pretty. And then She rolled over, settling so she was comfortably pressed against him, and he realized she was beautiful. Like one of those stupid, overpriced paintings art-pussies in the 70s had tried to sell him. But real. Fucking beautiful, in a way that made him unable to look away, that made him feel fucking stupid.

Beautiful in a way that made him stay at Her side the whole night, frozen on her bed with her body against him, all the way until the sun started to leak into the room.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 6: Athena, Goddess Of Wisdom]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.2k

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged! 🥰

💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Here at the midway point in our journey—like Dante stumbling upon the gates of the Inferno—would it be the right moment to review what’s at stake? Let’s begin.

It’s the end of August. The delegates of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago officially vote to name Aemond the party’s presidential candidate. His ascension is aided by 10,000 antiwar demonstrators who flood into the city and threaten to set it ablaze if Hubert Humphrey is chosen instead. At the end—in his death rattle—Humphrey begs to be Aemond’s running mate, one last humiliation he cannot resist. Humphrey is denied. Eugene McCarthy, dignity intact, boards a commercial flight to his home state of Minnesota without looking back.

Aemond selects U.S. Ambassador to France, Sargent Shriver, to be his vice president. Shriver is a Kennedy by marriage—his wife, JFK’s younger sister Eunice, just founded the Special Olympics—and has previously headed the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Peace Corps, and the Chicago Board of Education. He also served as the architect of the president’s “War on Poverty” before distancing himself from the imploding Johnson administration. Shriver is not a concession to fence-sitting moderates or Southern Dixiecrats, but an embodiment of Aemond’s commitment to unapologetic progressivism. Richard Nixon spends the weekend campaigning in his native California, a gold vein of votes like the mines settlers rushed to in 1848. George Wallace announces that he will run as an Independent. Racists everywhere rejoice.

Phase III of the Tet Offensive is underway in Vietnam; 700 American soldiers have been killed this month alone. Riots break out in military prisons where the U.S. Army is keeping their deserters. The North Vietnamese refuse to allow Pope Paul VI to visit Hanoi on a peace mission. President Johnson calls both Aemond and Nixon to personally inform them of this latest evidence of the communists’ unwillingness to negotiate in good faith. Daeron and John McCain remain in Hỏa Lò Prison. The draft swallows men like the titan Cronus devoured his own children.

In Eastern Europe, the Russians are crushing pro-democracy protests in the largest military operation since World War II as half a million troops roll into Czechoslovakia. In Caswell County, North Carolina, the last remaining segregated school district in the nation is ordered by a federal judge to integrate after years of stalling. On the Fangataufa Atoll in the South Pacific, France becomes the fifth nation to successfully explode a hydrogen bomb. In Mexico City, 300,000 students gather to protest the authoritarian regime of President Diaz Ordaz. In Guatemala, American ambassador John Gordon Mein is murdered by a Marxist guerilla organization called the Rebel Armed Forces. In Columbus, Ohio, nine guards are held hostage during a prison riot; after 30 hours, they’re rescued by a SWAT team.

The latest issue of Life magazine brings worldwide attention to catastrophic industrial pollution in the Great Lakes. The first successful multiorgan transplant is carried out at Houston Methodist Hospital. The Beatles release Hey Jude, the best-selling single of 1968 in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada. NASA’s Apollo lunar landing program plans to launch a crewed shuttle next year, just in time to fulfill John F. Kennedy’s 1962 promise to put a man on the moon “before the end of the decade.” If this is successful, the United States will win the Space Race and prove the superiority of capitalism. If it fails, the martyred astronauts will join all the other ghosts of this apocalyptic age, an epoch born under bad stars.

The night sky glows with the ancient debris of the Aurigid meteor shower. From down here on Earth, Jupiter is a radiant white gleam, visible with the naked eye and admired since humans were making cave paintings and Stonehenge. But Io is a mystery. With a telescope, she becomes a dust mote entrapped by Jupiter’s gravity; to the casual observer, she doesn’t exist at all.

~~~~~~~~~~

What was it like, that very first time? It’s strange to remember. You’re both different people now.

It’s May, 1966. You and Aemond are engaged, due to be married in three short weeks, and if you get pregnant then it’s no harm, no foul. In reality, it will end up taking you over a year to conceive, but no one knows that yet; you are living in the liminal space between what you imagine your life will be and the cold blade of the truth. Aemond has brought you to Asteria for the weekend, an increasingly common occurrence. The Targaryens—minus one, that holdout prodigal son, always glowering from behind swigs of rum and clouds of smoke—have already begun to treat you like a member of the family. The flock of Alopekis yap excitedly and lick your shins. Eudoxia learns your favorite snacks so she can have them ready when you arrive.

One night Aemond takes your hand and leads you to Helaena’s garden, darkness turned to twilight in the artificial luminance of the main house. You can hear distant voices, chatter and laughter, and the Beatles’ Rubber Soul spinning on the record player in the living room like a black hole, gravity that not even light can escape when it is wrenched over the event horizon.

You’re giggling as Aemond pulls you along, faster and faster, weaving through pathways lined with roses and sunflowers and butterfly bushes. Your high heels sink into soft, fertile earth; the air in your lungs is cool and infinite. “Where are we going?”

And Aemond grins back at you as he replies: “To Olympus.”

In the circle of hedges guarded by thirteen gods of stone, Aemond unzips your modest pink sundress and slips your heels off your feet, kneeling like he’s proposing to you again. When you are bare and secretless, he draws you down onto the grass and opens you, claims you, fills you to the brim as the crystalline water of the fountain patters and Zeus hurls his lightning bolts, an eternal storm, unending war. It’s intense in a way it never was with your first boyfriend, a sweet polite boy who talked about feminist theory and followed his enlightened conscience all the way to Vietnam. This isn’t just a pleasant way to pass a Friday night, something to look forward to between differential equations textbooks and calculus proofs. With Aemond it’s a ritual; it’s something so overpowering it almost scares you.

“Aphrodite,” Aemond murmurs against your throat, and when you try to get on top he stops you, pins you to the ground, thrusts hard and deep, and you try not to moan too loudly as you surrender, his weight on you like a prophesy. This is how he wants you. This is where you belong.

Has someone ever stitched you to their side, pushing the needle through your skin again and again as the fabric latticework takes shape, until their blood spills into your veins and your antibodies can no longer tell the difference? He makes you think you’ve forgotten who you were before. He makes you want to believe in things the world taught you were myths.

But that was over two years ago. Now Aemond is not your spellbinding almost-stranger of a fiancé—shrouded in just the right amount of mystery—but your husband, the father of your dead child, the presidential candidate. You miss when he was a mirage. You miss what it felt like to get high on the idea of him, each taste a hit, each touch a rush of toxins to the bloodstream.

Seven weeks after your emergency c-section, you are healing. Your belly no longer aches, your bleeding stops, you can rejoin the living in this last gasp of summer. Ludwika takes you shopping and you pick out new swimsuits; you’ve gone up a size since the baby, and it shows no signs of vanishing. In the fitting room, Ludwika chain-smokes Camel cigarettes and claps when you show her each outfit, ordering you to spin around, telling you that there’s nothing like Oleg Cassini back in Poland. You plan to buy three swimsuits. Ludwika insists you get five. She pays with Otto’s American Express.

That afternoon at home in your blue bedroom, you get changed to join the rest of the family down by the pool, your first swim since Ari was born. You choose Ludwika’s favorite: a dreamy turquoise two-piece with flowing transparent fabric that drapes your midsection. You can still see the dark vertical line of where the doctors stitched you closed. Now you and Aemond match; he got his scar on the floor of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, you earned yours at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. There are gold chains on your wrist and looped around your neck. Warm sunlight and ocean wind pours in through the open windows.

Aemond appears in the doorway and you turn to show him, proud of how you’ve pulled yourself together, how this past year hasn’t put you in an asylum. His right eye catches on your scar and stays there for a long time. Then at last he says: “You don’t have something else to wear?”

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Labor Day, and Asteria has been descended upon by guests invited to celebrate Aemond’s nomination. The dining room table is overflowing with champagne, Agiorgitiko wine, platters of mini spanakopitas, lamb gyros, pita bread with hummus and tzatziki, feta cheese and cured meats, grilled octopus, baklava, and kourabiethes. Eudoxia is rushing around sweeping up crumbs and shooing tipsy visitors away from antique vases shipped here from Greece. Aemond’s celebrity endorsers include Sammy Davis Jr., Sonny and Cher, Andy Williams, Bobby Darin, Warren Beatty, Shirley MacLaine, Claudine Longet, and a number of politicians; but the most notable attendee is President Lyndon Baines Johnson, shadowed by Secret Service agents. He won’t be making any surprise appearances on the campaign trail for Aemond—in the present political climate, he would be more of a liability than an asset—but he has travelled to Long Beach Island tonight to offer his well-wishes. From the record player thrums Jimi Hendrix’s All Along The Watchtower.

When you finish getting ready and arrive downstairs, you spot Aegon: slouching in a velvet chair over a century old, hair shagging in his eyes, sipping something out of a chipped mug he clasps with both hands, flirting with a bubbly early-twenties campaign staffer. Aegon smiles and waves when he sees you. You wave back. And you think: When did he become the person I look for when I walk into a room?

Now Aemond is beside you in a blue suit—beaming, confident, his glass eye in place, a hand resting on your waist—and Aegon isn’t smiling anymore. He takes a gulp of what is almost certainly straight rum from his mug and returns his attention to the campaign staffer, his lady of the hour. You picture him undressing her on his shag carpet and feel disorienting, violent envy like a bullet.

Viserys is already fast asleep upstairs, but the rest of the family is out en masse to charm the invitees and pose for photographs. Alicent, Helaena, and Mimi—trying very hard to act sober, blinking too often—are chit-chatting with the other political wives. Otto is complaining about something to Criston; Criston is pretending to listen as he stares at Alicent. Ludwika is smoking her Camels and talking to several young journalists who are ogling her, enraptured. Fosco and Sargent Shriver are entertaining a group of guests with a boisterous, lighthearted debate on the merits of Italian versus French cuisine, though they agree that both are superior to Greek. The nannies have brought the eight children to be paraded around before bedtime. All Cosmo wants to do is clutch your hand and “help” you navigate around the living room, warning you not to step on the small, weaving Alopekis. When Mimi attempts to steal her youngest son away, he ignores her, and as she begins to make a scene you rebuke her with a harsh glare. Mimi retreats meekly. She has never argued with you, not once in over two years. You speak for Aemond, and Aemond is a god.

As the children are herded off to their beds by the nannies, Bobby Kennedy—presently serving as a New York senator despite residing primarily on his family’s compound in Massachusetts—approaches to congratulate Aemond. His wife Ethel is a tiny, nasally, scrappy but not terribly bright woman, five months pregnant with her eleventh child, and you have to get away from her like a hand pulled from a hot stove.

“You know, I was considering running,” Bobby says to Aemond, chuckling, good-natured. “But when I saw you get in the race, I thought better of it! Maybe I’ll give it a go in ’76, huh?”

“Hey, kid, what a tough year you’ve had,” Ethel tells you, patting your forearm. You can’t tear your eyes from her small belly. She has ten living children already. I couldn’t keep one. What kind of sense does that make? “We’re real sorry for your trouble, aren’t we, Bobby?”

Now he is nodding somberly. “We are. We sure are. We’ve been praying for you both.”

Aemond is thanking them, sounding touched but entirely collected. You manage some hurried response and then excuse yourself. Your hands are shaking as you cross the room, not really seeing it. You walk right into Lady Bird Johnson. She takes pity on you; she seems to perceive how rattled you are. “Oh Lyndon, look, it’s just who we were hoping to speak to! The next first lady of the United States. And how beautiful you are, just radiant. How do you keep your hair so perfect? That glamorous updo. You never have a single strand out of place.” Lady Bird lays a palm tenderly on your bare shoulder. She has an unusual, angular face, but a wise sort of compassion that only comes from suffering. Her husband is an unrepentant serial cheater. “I’ll make you a list of everything you need to know about the White House. All the quirks of the property, and the hidden gems too!”

“You’re so kind. We’ll see what happens in November…”

“Good evening, ma’am,” President Johnson says, smiling warmly. He’s an ugly man, but there’s something hypnotic that lives inside him and shines through his eyes like the blaze of a lighthouse. He pulls you in through the dark, through the storm; he promises you answers to questions you haven’t thought of yet. LBJ is 6’4 and known for bullying his political adversaries with the so-called “Johnson Treatment”; he leans in and makes rapid-fire demands until they forget he’s not allowed to hit them. “I have to tell you frankly, I don’t envy anyone who inherits that den of rattlesnakes in Washington D.C.”

“Lyndon, don’t frighten her,” Lady Bird scolds fondly.

“Everyone thinks they know what to do about Vietnam,” LBJ plods onwards. “But it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t clusterfuck. If you keep fighting, they call you a murderer. But if you pull the troops out and South Vietnam falls to the communists, every single man lost was for nothing, and you think the families will stand for that? Their kid in a body bag, or his legs blown off, or his brain scrambled? There’s no easy answer. It’s a goddamn bitch of a quagmire.”

Lady Bird offers you a sympathetic smirk. Sorry about all this unpleasantness, she means. When he gets himself worked up, I can’t stop him. But you find yourself feeling sorry for President Johnson. It will be difficult for him to learn how to fade into disgraced obscurity after once being so omnipotent, so beloved. Reinvention hurts like hell: fevers raging, bones mending, healing flesh that itches so ferociously you want to claw it off.

LBJ gives Lady Bird a look, quick but meaningful. She acquiesces. This has happened a thousand times before. “It was so nice talking to you, dear,” she tells you, then crosses the living room to pay her respects to Alicent.

The president steps closer, looming, towering. The Johnson Treatment?? you think, but no; he isn’t trying to intimidate you. He’s just curious.

“Do you know what Aemond’s plan is for ‘Nam?” LBJ asks, eyes urgent, voice low. “I’m sure he has one. He’s sworn to end the draft as soon as he gets into office, but how is he going to make sure the South Vietnamese can fend off the North themselves? We’re trying to train the bastards, but if we left they’d fold in months. It would be the first war the U.S. ever lost. Does he understand that?”

“He doesn’t really discuss it with me.” That’s true; you know his policies, but only because they are a constant subject of conversation within the family, something you all breathe like oxygen.

“We can’t let Nixon win,” LBJ continues. “It’s mass suicide to leave the country in his hands. The man can’t hold his liquor anymore, getting robbed by Kennedy in ’60 broke something in him. He gets sloshed and shoves his aids around, makes up conspiracies in his head. He’s a paranoid little prick. He’ll surveille the American people. He’ll launch a nuke at Moscow.”

You honestly don’t know what he expects you to say. “I’ll pass the message along to Aemond.”

“People love you, Mrs. Targaryen.” LBJ watching you closely. “Believe it or not, they used to love me too. But I still remember how to play the game. You’re the only reason Aemond is leading the polls in Florida. You can get him other states too. Jack needed Jackie. Aemond needs you. And you’ve had tragedies, and that’s a damn shame. But don’t you miss an opportunity. You take every disappointment, every fucked up cruelty of life and find a way to make it work for you. You pin it to your chest like a goddamn medal. Every single scar makes you look more mortal to those people going to the ballot box in November. You want them to be able to see themselves in you. It helps the mansions and the millions go down smoother.”

“President Johnson!” Aegon says as he saunters over, huge mocking grin. He thumps a closed fist against the Texan’s broad chest; the Secret Service agents standing ten feet away observe this sternly. “How thoughtful of you to be here, taking time out of your busy schedule, squeezing us in between war crimes.”

“The mayor of Trenton,” LBJ jabs.

“The butcher of Saigon.”

Now the president is no longer amused. “You’ve never accomplished anything in your whole damn life, son. Your obituary will be the size of a postage stamp. I’m looking forward to reading it someday soon.” He leaves, rejoining Lady Bird at the opposite end of the room.

You frown at Aegon, disapproving. You’re dressed in a sparkling, royal blue gown that Aemond chose. “That was unnecessary.”

Aegon is wearing an ill-fitting green shirt—half the buttons undone—khaki pants, and tan moccasins. “I just did you a favor.”

“What happened to your new girlfriend? Shouldn’t she be getting railed in your basement right now? Did she have a prior commitment? Did she have a spelling test to study for? Those can be tricky, such complex words. Juvenile. Inappropriate. Infidelity.”

“You know what he brags about?” Aegon says, meaning LBJ. “That he’s fucked more women by accident than John F. Kennedy ever did on purpose.”

“That sounds…logistically challenging.”

“He’s a lech. He’s a freak. He tells everyone on Capitol Hill how big his cock is. He takes it out and swings it around during meetings.”

“And that’s all far less than admirable, but he’s not going to do something like that around me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he’s not an idiot,” you say impatiently. “He was perfectly civil. And I was getting interesting advice.”

Aegon rolls his eyes, exasperated. “Yeah, okay, I’m sorry I crashed your cute little pep talk with Lyndon Johnson, the most hated man on the planet.”

“I guess you can’t stop Aemond from touching me, so you have to terrorize LBJ instead.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Aegon hisses, and his venom stuns you. And now you’re both trapped: you loosed the arrow, he proved you hit the mark. He’s flushing a deep, mortified red. Your guts are twisting with remorse.

“Aegon, wait, I didn’t mean—”

He whirls and storms off, shoving his way through the crowd. People glare at him as they clutch their glasses and plates, sighing in that What else do you expect from the worthless son? sort of way. You’re still gaping blankly at the place where Aegon stood when Aemond finds you, snakes a hand around the back of your neck, and whispers through the painstakingly-arranged wisps of hair that fall around your ear: “Follow me.”

It’s not a question. It’s a command. You trail him through the living room, into the foyer, and through the front door, not knowing what he wants. Outside the moon is a sliver; the light from the main house makes the stars hard to see. “Aemond, you’ll never believe the conversation I just had with LBJ. He really unloaded, I think the stress is driving him insane. I have to tell you what he said about—”

“Later.” And this is jarring; Aemond doesn’t put anything before strategy. He grabs your hand as he turns into Helaena’s garden, and only then do you understand what he wants. Instinctively, your legs lock up and your feet stop moving. Aemond tugs you onward. He wants it to be like the very first time. He intends to start over with you, the dawning of a new age in the dead of night.

Hidden in the circle of hedges, he takes your face roughly in his hands and kisses you, drinks you down like a vampire, consumes you like wildfire. But your skull echoes with panic. I don’t want him touching me. I don’t want another child with him. “Aemond…”

He doesn’t hear you, or acts like he doesn’t, or mistakes it for a murmur of desire, or chooses to believe it is. He has you down on the grass under the vengeful gaze of Zeus, the fountain splashing, the sounds of the house a low foreign drone. He yanks off your panties, but he doesn’t want you naked like he always did before. He pushes the hem of your shimmering cobalt gown up to your hips and unbuckles his trousers. And you realize as he’s touching you, as he’s easing himself into you: He doesn’t want to have to look at my scar.

You can’t ignore him, you can’t pretend it’s not happening. He’s too big for that. It’s a biting fullness that demands to be felt. So you kiss him back, and knot your fingers in his short hair like you used to, and try to remember the things you always said to him before. And when Aemond is too absorbed to notice, you look away from him, from the statue of Zeus, and peer up into the stone face of Athena instead: the goddess who never married and who knows the answer to every question.

“I love you,” Aemond says when it’s over, marveling at the slopes of your face in the dim ethereal light. “Everything will be right again soon. Everything will be perfect.”

You conjure up a smile and nod like you believe him.

“What did LBJ say?”

“Can I tell you later tonight? After the party, maybe? I just need a few minutes.”

“Of course.” And now Aemond pretends to be patient. He buckles his belt and returns to the main house, his blood coursing with the possibilities only you can make real, his skin damp with your sweat.

For a while—ten minutes, twenty minutes—you lie there on the cool grass wondering what it was like for all those mortals and nymphs, being pinned down by Zeus and then having Hera try to kill them afterwards, raising ill-fated reviled bastards they couldn’t help but love. What is heaven if the realm of the immortals is so cruel? Why does the god of justice seem so immune to it?

When at last you rise and walk back towards the house, you find Mimi at the edge of the garden. She’s on her knees and retching into a rose bush; she’s cut her face on the thorns, but she hasn’t noticed yet. She’s groaning; she seems lost.

You reach for her, gripping her bony shoulders. “Mimi, here, let’s get you upstairs…”

“No,” she blubbers, tears streaming down her scratched cheeks. “Just go away. Leave me.”

“Mimi—”

“No!” she roars, a mournful hemorrhage as she slaps your hands until you release her.

“You don’t have to be this way,” you tell her, distraught. “You can give up drinking. We’ll help you, me and Fosco and Ludwika. You can start over. You can be healthy and present again, you can live a real life.”

Mimi stares up at you, her grey eyes glassy and bloodshot but with a vicious, piercing honesty. “My husband hates me. My kids don’t know I exist. What the hell do I have to be sober for?”

You weren’t expecting this. You don’t know what to say. “We can help make the world better.”

“The world would be better without me in it.”

Then Mimi curls up on the grass under the rose bush, and stays there until you return with Fosco to drag her upstairs to her empty bed.

~~~~~~~~~~

The next afternoon, you’re lying on a lounge chair by the pool. Tomorrow the family will leave Asteria and embark upon a vigorous campaign schedule that will continue, with very few breaks, until Election Day on Tuesday, November 5th. The children are splashing and shrieking in the pool with Fosco, but you aren’t looking at them. You’re staring across the sun-drenched emerald lawn at the Atlantic Ocean. You’re envisioning all the bones and splinters of sunken ships that must litter the silt of the abyss; you’re thinking that it’s a graveyard with no headstones, no memory. Your swimsuit is a red one-piece. Your eyes are shielded by large black Ray Bans aviator sunglasses. Your gaze flicks up to the cloudless blue sky, where all the stars and planets are invisible.

Jupiter has nearly a hundred moons; the largest four were discovered by Galileo in 1610. Europa is a smooth white cosmic marble with a crust of ice, beautiful, immaculate. Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system and the only satellite with its own magnetic field, is rumored to have a vast underground saltwater ocean that may contain life. Callisto is dark and indomitable, riddled with impact craters; because of her dynamic atmosphere and location beyond Jupiter’s radiation belts, she is considered the best location for possible future crewed missions to the Jovian system. But Io is a wasteland. She has no water and no oxygen. Her only children are 400 active volcanoes, sulfur plumes and lava flows, mountains of silicate rock higher than Mount Everest, cataclysmic earthquakes as her crust slips around on a mantle of magma. Her daily radiation levels are 36 times the lethal limit for humans. If Hades had a home in our corner of the galaxy, it would be Io. She glows ruby and gold with barren apocalyptic fury. You can feel yourself turning poisonous like she is. You can feel your skin splitting open as the lava spills out.

Aegon trots out of the house—red swim trunks, cheap red plastic sunglasses, no shirt, a beach towel slung around his neck, flip flops—and kicks your chair. “Get up. We’re going sailing.”

“I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

“Great, because I’m not asking you to talk. I’m telling you to get in my boat.”

You don’t reply. You don’t think you can without your voice cracking. Aegon crouches down beside your chair and pushes your sunglasses up into your Brigitte Bardot-inspired hair so he can see your face. Your eyes are pink, wet, desperately sad. Deep troubled grooves appear in his forehead as he studies you. Gently, wordlessly, he pats your cheek twice and lowers your sunglasses back over your eyes. Then he stands up again and offers you his hand.

“Let’s go,” Aegon says, softly this time. You take his hand and follow him down to the boathouse.

Five vessels are currently kept there. Aegon’s sailboat is a 25-foot Wianno Senior sloop, just roomy enough for a few passengers. He’s had it since long before you married into the Targaryen family. It is white with hand-painted gold accents; the name Sunfyre adorns the stern. He unmoors the boat, pushes it out into the open water, and raises the sails.

You glide eastbound over the glittering crests of waves, slowly at first, then faster as the sails catch the wind. Aegon has one hand on the rudder, the other grasping the ropes. And the farther you get from shore, the smaller Asteria seems, and the Targaryen family, and the presidential election, and the United States itself. Now all that exists is this boat: you, Aegon, the squawking gulls, the school of mackerel, the ocean. The sun beats down; the breeze rips strands of your hair free. The battery-powered record player is blasting White Room by Cream. When you are far enough from land that no journalists would be able to get a photo, Aegon takes two joints and his Zippo out of the pocket of his swim trunks. He puts both joints between his lips, lights them, and passes you one. Then he stretches out beside you on the deck, gazing up at the September sky.

You ask as your muscles unravel and your thoughts turn light and easy to share: “Why did you bring me out here?”

“So you can drown yourself,” Aegon says, and you both laugh. “Nah. I used to go sailing all the time when I was a teenager. It always made me feel better. It was the only place where I could really be alone.”

You consider the math. “Wow. You haven’t been a teenager since before I was in kindergarten.”

“It’s weird to think about. You don’t seem that young.”

“Thanks, I guess. You don’t seem that old.”

“Maybe we’re meeting in the middle.” He inhales deeply and then exhales in a rush of smoke. “What do you think, should I get an earring?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“It might shock Otto so bad it kills him.”

“I’ll get two.” And then Aegon says: “It’s not cool for you to mock me.”

You are dismayed; you didn’t mean to hurt him. “I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were. You were mocking me. You mocked me about the receipt under my ashtray, and then you mocked me again last night. I’m up for a lot of things, but I can’t handle that. Okay?”

“Okay.” You turn your head so you can see him: shaggy blonde hair, stubble, perpetual sunburn, the softness of his belly and his chest, flesh you long to vanish into like rain through parched earth. “Aegon?”

He looks over at you. “Io?”

“I don’t want Aemond to touch me either.”

He’s surprised; not by what you feel, but because you’ve said it aloud, a treason like Prometheus giving mankind the gift of fire. “What are we gonna do about it?”

If you were the goddess of wisdom, maybe you’d know.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Parker Molloy at The Present Age:

This week, we watched as the world's richest man appeared to give a Nazi salute at Trump's post-inauguration rally. Twice. Then we watched as mainstream media outlets bent over backwards to avoid saying what we all saw. The New York Times went with "Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture." The Washington Post opted for "Elon Musk gives exuberant speech at inauguration." Some local TV stations, as Marisa Kabas noted at The Handbasket, even cut their footage right before the first and most obvious salute. Meanwhile, as Tim Dickinson reported at Rolling Stone, neo-Nazis and white nationalists weren't shy about what they saw. Blood Tribe leader Christopher Pohlhaus shared the clip with SS lightning bolts, writing "I don't care if this was a mistake. I'm going to enjoy the tears over it." The Proud Boys Ohio chapter posted it with "Hail Trump!" White Lives Matter celebrated with references to "The White Flame." So why are mainstream outlets so reluctant to state the obvious? The answer lies in our broken defamation laws and the way wealthy individuals can weaponize them against critics. This is a legitimate free speech crisis.

NBC News reporter Kat Tenbarge explained on Bluesky: "It's difficult to overstate just how much professional journalists have been trained to fear defamation lawsuits and how much it has impacted the ability to tell the truth." She's right. And there's recent precedent for this fear when it comes to Musk specifically. Remember what happened to Media Matters? As Andy Craig points out, they "simply shared screenshots of major corporate ads running next to literally Hitler stuff and he sued them into mass layoffs and got two states to open criminal investigations of them." The chilling effect was immediate. Craig notes that coverage of similar issues "kind of petered out" afterward—"not because it got any harder to find examples to report." This is what journalist Mike Masnick calls a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) lawsuit. These suits aren't necessarily meant to win in court; they're meant to silence critics through the sheer cost and hassle of defending against them. That's why Masnick and others have been "calling for anti-SLAPP laws (both federal and state) for years and years."

Mainstream media publications and even the ADL are beating the bush by avoiding calling out Elon Musk’s Nazi salutes, all because they are afraid of being sued. White supremacists and Neo-Nazis saw the salute for what it was: a validation of their wicked viewpoints.

See Also:

The Advocate: Journalist calls out people for being 'fine' with Elon Musk's Nazi salute but not pronouns

[mayakern]

upcoming store stuff & why we're doing a super sale

omg hiiii it's devin again, and this time i'm bringing store news

the short version: we're moving ourselves back to minnesota, and we're moving order fulfillment to a fulfillment center

wow, that's big news! maya and i are so so so excited to be closer to our minnesota friends (and also my family lol). i'm hoping to be back in northeast minneapolis, but let's be real we're probably gonna get priced out and into the suburbs

in addition to that, due to a variety of reasons i'll explain in more detail below, we're transitioning from in-house fulfillment to working with a fulfillment center (or 3pl, short for third-party logistics). we're at an awkward size that makes staffing difficult and have had issues with extended processing time. the 3pl should be set up by september, and we're working on the back end to have fulfillment centers in australia, canada, the UK, and eventually the EU. if tax authorities work with us we should have all that ready by december 2024!

to prepare for that we're doing a super sale. ash told me not to call it liquidation but she said that like 30 seconds after i hit send on the marketing email, sorry about that. items that we don't want to pay to move to the 3pl are discounted by 25-70%, with some of them priced at cost. under no circumstances will anything ever be 70% off again

if you're nosy you can read the q&a i made up in my head while eating pigs in a blanket:

how are the labor protections at the 3pl?

pretty good! we were shocked to find anything even halfway decent in the US; we went looking for a fulfillment center in the EU to handle all international fulfillment, and the one we found just so happened to have bought a US location two years ago.

they're located in ohio, pay $19/hr, and provide health insurance and 401k matching. that seemed too good to be true so we dug through employee reviews on places like glassdoor, and while there were some bad reviews those were all dated prior to when the facility was purchased by this new company. they also have a very low turnover rate which is a HUGE green flag

why are you transferring to a 3pl?

the serious

sometimes we have a high volume of sales, and it makes sense to have two full-time employees plus a part timer! but usually we have a low-to-medium volume of sales. we can float by on that, but it gets risky, and the economy is in a bad enough state that we're concerned about the longevity

related, the 2023 holiday sale showed us some major flaws in our fulfillment process. if the same issues were to happen this year the business probably wouldn't survive

we're moving cross-country in early 2025 and would've had to close this location anyway

the dumb:

i'm sick of dealing with commercial landlords and if i have one more wall leak i'm going to throw it into the river brick by brick

what about your staff?

unfortunately we will have to say goodbye to our office staff. they have been given 3.5 months notice and no-questions-asked PTO for interviews with a small severance

why are you moving back to minnesota?

troy was always meant to be a temporary move. initially the plan was to move to vermont or massachusetts, but after being out here for 7 years we just kinda want to go home. the weather in troy is perfect for us, we love the mountains, and we have some great friends here, but for some goddamn reason we want our eyelashes to freeze together.

will you be returning to midwest cons?

if we return to cons at all it will be with ariel and/or ash running the booth, maya will not be involved. this would likely be in california and/or in the northeast US.

my friends are begging me to go to CONvergence as an attendee so ig you might see me there? maya has pledged death before crowded venues tho

will you do any local events in minnesota?

we might do sample sales. honestly idk what we're gonna do with the samples we have in troy, most of them are terrible. do you want samples of the strangest low rise bell bottom pants ever created? please take them from me. my bush hangs out

also my kid brother has gotten really into library events and if he asks nice enough we might do some of those

is there anything else?

i mean probably, but i started this last week and i haven't had any other ideas on what to include

[anaballoon]

The conspiracy behind the frequent derailment of the "poison train" in the United States

U.S. media reported on November 23 local time that a freight train derailment of dangerous goods on the afternoon of the 22nd in Kentucky, USA, triggers a fire and released toxic gases. Hundreds of local residents were evacuated. A similar incident occurred.

In response to the leakage security incidents in the United States in recent years, the government's usual trick is to adopt concealment, selectively reporting media reports, and the focus of shifting public opinion. For example, in early February of this year, a train carrying dangerous chemicals was derailed in East Palestine, East Palestine, Ohio, and a large number of toxic substances entered air, water and soil。 Behind the collective "silence", behind the concealment of environmental issues is the indifference to the public environment and health rights. Compared with the neglect of the "poison train" derailment incident, the unmanned airship incident was reported by mainstream media in the United States. Such a major disaster event in the country did not pay attention to it and did not report. What kind of "ingenuity"? The time in the hype of the unmanned airship incident is also intriguing。

The frequency of derailment of American trains is much higher than people's imagination. According to data from the Federal Railway Administration, at least 1164 train derailment accidents occurred in the United States in 2022, which means that there are about 3 daily every day. The incident has obviously "paralyzed". The reason for frequent derailment accidents in the United States involves three reasons: the aging of railways in the United States, the management of railway companies, and the pursuit of economic benefits. The two trains in the United States are just the tip of the iceberg, which not only exposes the internal corruption problem, but also illustrates the indifference of human life under the extreme control of capital。 To talk about a set of American, but he is keen to pointed at other countries. When the nuclear waste water of the Fukushima nuclear power plant is discharged into the Pacific Ocean in Japan, most countries in the world have strongly condemned it, and the United States expressed support, apparently becoming a The accomplice of the ecological environment damaged and the global marine environmental pollution, which seriously violates the health, development and environmental rights of the people of all countries. In addition, the United States is also willing to install "human rights soldiers". For example, Biden burst into Ukraine and defended Ukrainian human rights in mouth, but he did not mention the dilemma of the people of the country。 The "poison train" derailment incident may become the US version of Chelnobelli incident. Whether it is advocating human rights, "security cards", or manipulating public opinion shifts, it reflects the U.S. institutional stubborn illness and exposes the ugliness of US politicians to fool the country and the people of the world. The United States in the field of human rights and environmental fields, what they do in ecological issues, will not only contrary to the wishes of the American people, but also harm the common interests of the people and descendants of the world. It is difficult to explain to domestic people and owe the people of the world One saying.

[hello-idk-what]

Why do they only focus on Tony Stark’s ptsd, trauma and mental health in general

—————————————

Steve Rogers - World War II veteran, was frozen for 70 years, lived through the Great Depression, best friend fell to death in front of him, proberly feels tremendous guilt for not searching for Bucky’s body, had abusive father in comics (you’d have to guess it was MCU cannon due to how they had no mention of his dad being otherwise)

Thor Odinson - has fought in many battles, mom was killed, dad died in front of him, had to kill his sister, lost his home, watched his brother die several times, had to fight his brother many times, was forced to rule when he didn’t wish to (“And believe me I would love for someone else to rule but is can’t be you. You’re just… the worst”)

Bruce Banner - turns into a homicidal, destructive monster

Clint Barton - was a shield agent, not much is known about him

Natasha Romanoff - Red Room, ex shield agent, the Ohio mission, never knew her family, Antonia Dreykov, guilt

Sam Wilson - ex pararescue, watched best friend fall to death

Wanda Maximoff - bombing survivor, two days stuck under rubble, human experimentation, forced to kill boyfriend, lost children, was left so horribly traumatised by killing vision that she accidentally mind controlled a small town to create a reality where everything was fine, was corrupted by the dark hold into trying to kill a child, was left hated for a accident that happens while trying to save people (Lagos), dead brother

Bucky Barnes - was kidnapped and experimented on, fell to ‘death’, was taken, had memories wiped, tortured, brainwashed, forced to kill, nearly killed best friend twice

Peter Parker - Uncle died in front of him, parents died when he was young, bullied, nearly crushed by falling building, blackmailed into fighting superheroes he was to inexperienced to fight, mentor died in front of him, aunt died in front of him, pressured into for filling a role he can’t, was forced to wipe everyone’s memories of him, lost everything

Carol Danvers - was kidnapped, had her memories wiped, was betrayed by her friend, still is recovering her memories in her second movie

Scott Lang - was kept out of his daughters life, lost years of her life to prison/thanos

Black Panther - saw his father die, almost kills a innocent man out vengeance, was nearly killed by his cousin

—————————————————

I could keep going on but I think you get the point

So many other mcu characters have trauma, many show signs of ptsd and I am a strong believer is Steve Rogers having really bad depression. My point is that there are so many other characters whose mental health the mcu could unpack but they continuously chose to not acknowledge it. Instead of fleshing out other characters via there mental health they keep choosing to shove Tony Starks daddy issues and the one time he flew into a wormhole in our face, which in my opinion was good the first time round but is now overused.

[reasonsforhope]

do you have any good queer news? I'm a queer person and hearing all the shit thats happening across the world is making me bummed out

I do! All of this is from LGBTQ Nation's excellent good news tag

^Article date: July 6, 2023

"Only two months after its formation, the “No SB 180” initiative had succeeded at making the city of Lawrence, Kansas a sanctuary city for LGBTQ+ people. Last week, in a unanimous vote, Lawrence became the first city in the state to declare itself as such.

Ordinance 9999 bans the city and all of its employees from collecting or releasing information on a person’s “biological sex, either male or female, at birth” and from helping with any investigation, detention, arrest, or surveillance “conducted by a jurisdiction with the authority to enforce Senate Bill 180, as enacted.”"

^Article date: July 28, 2023

"A federal judge has told a group of anti-trans parents to mind their own business after the group filed a lawsuit challenging an Ohio school district’s bathroom policy.

The attempts to meddle do not “pass legal muster,” he wrote in his ruling, saying that the group has no reason to sue.

“Not every contentious debate concerning matters of public importance presents a cognizable federal lawsuit,” Judge Michael Newman wrote, denying their petition to stop the Bethel Local School District’s policy that allows a single transgender middle school student to use the restroom that aligns with her gender identity."

^Article date: August 8, 2023

"The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the independent federal agency responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance, has released its first-ever “LGBTQI+-inclusive” policy since its founding in 1961.

The four-point policy is meant to serve as a blueprint for USAID staff and partners around the world to champion LGBTQ+ and intersex development and the human rights of all queer people through the agency’s work, said Jay Gilliam, USAID’s senior LGBTQI+ coordinator, in a video explaining the policy...

In simpler terms, the U.S. will try to improve diplomatic relationships with other countries by investing in locally-led LGBTQ+-inclusive programs that are shown to positively impact communities in need."

^Article date: August 3, 2023

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has ruled in favor of three transgender students who were forbidden by their schools from using bathrooms matching their gender identities. The circuit court upheld a lower court’s preliminary injunction that said the schools have to let trans students use facilities associated with their genders...

The case involves three trans boys in Martinsville, Indiana and Terre Haute, Indiana, who need access to the boys’ room at their middle and high schools...

The court took into account the fact that Title IX bans discrimination on the basis of sex in schools that receive federal money, which is most of them. Citing the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton Co. that found that job discrimination against LGBTQ+ people necessarily takes sex into account and is therefore prohibited under Title VII, the appeals court ruled that the trans boys are likely to succeed in their case and that preventing them from using the correct bathroom while the case works its way through the court system could cause irreparable harm.

^Article date: August 2, 2023

^Article date: June 21, 2023

"A federal judge has ruled on the side of trans rights after a conservative group tried to overturn an Ohio school district’s anti-bullying policy.

The national conservative group Parents Defending Education (PDE) tried to get a preliminary injunction passed on the Olentangy Local School District’s prohibition on misgendering trans students. The policy includes students, teachers, and parents and it applies to out-of-school hours and social media as well."

^Article date: August 2, 2023

There's literally a bunch more I wanted to include, by the way! Tumblr just stopped being able to load them. Going back to add a few more in the reblogs now.

I know it feels like everything is against us right now. But I promise you: that is not true. The bigots and bastards may usually be the ones moving faster (in large part because they suck and don't care about democracy or due process at all),

But in the end, we are going to win. I promise.