#people live surrounded by american troops & that they could die at any moment

[singingfromthesea]

.

[nebulablakemurphy]

Miss American Pie

Chapter Five: This Will Be The Day (Finale)

Warning: this series features a romantic Yelena Belova x Fem!Reader pairing.

Summary: Everyone has returned but the battle for humanity against Thanos wages on.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

You wake in a coughing fit, the rubble surrounding you sears your lungs. “Natasha.” You call into the rocks and flickering lights. Clearing your throat, you try again. “Natasha!”

“Here, I’m here.” Her voice is rough, pained.

You push yourself toward the sound, through the dust you can make out her hair. “You ok?”

“Mostly.” She’s laying face up, a few scratches visible.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I can’t move.” She nods at the piece of collapsed cement. “My leg is broken, you should go.” Nat says, staring up at the sky.

“I should’ve never let you go to Vormir. I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.” You try uselessly to budge the blockage over her leg.

“What is Vormir?” She asks.

“Doesn’t matter.” You swallow the lump in your throat. “How much do you remember?”

“The red room.”

“Do you remember getting out?”

“No one gets out.” She shakes her head.

“We did.” You inform her. “Yelena did.”

“Yelena?” Her gaze finds yours. “You know Yelena? Is she here?”

“Yes, I know her.” You press your lips together. “She’s not here though.”

“The rest of this building is coming down. If you were really trained in the red room you have to know that.” Natasha frowns. “You need to leave.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Don’t be a hero.” She whispers. “Let me go, it’s ok.”

“No, it’s not.” You argue. “I won’t do it again.”

“What about Yelena?” Natasha gives you a pointed look.

“She’ll understand.” This is what she would do.

“Hey,” Natasha pushes herself up on her elbows. “Would it be a good thing or a bad thing if a giant man in a metal suit carrying a smaller man and a raccoon appeared behind your head?”

You turn toward the man in question. Scott Lang. “It would be a good thing.”

———————————————————————

Natasha is taken somewhere safe. She can’t fight.

As the strange doctor and his disciples start opening portals you see that you’re not alone. Through one comes Alexei, Melina and Yelena.

Her white suit is pristine, dirty blonde hair held away from her face in ponytails.

On shaky legs you move toward her, taking your rightful place at her side. Facing what lies ahead together.

Yelena catches your hand, “this isn’t much of a welcome home.”

You can’t help but laugh, “pretty cool way to die though.”

“Very,” she agrees. “Natasha?”

“She is a little worse for wear.” You warn her, “but alive…and safe.”

Yelena gives you a watery smile, squeezing your fingers. “And you?”

“A tower fell on me.”

“Of course it did.”

Thanos’ army is nothing to scoff at. Giant airborne creatures hover over his troops. Larger monsters stand in their ranks, space ship overhead ready to destroy.

Steve is almost unrecognizable, covered in dirt, his shield battered and broken. But you know it is time when he gives the order. “Avengers, assemble.”

Fighting is easy, it’s what you know. What you were trained to do. Fight to stay alive, fight for what you believe in, fight with Yelena; for Yelena.

The two of you move together like a well oiled machine. Like riding a bike, even after all this time you could never forget.

“We’ve got company to the left.” Yelena says through gritted teeth, kicking at the alien creature beside her. Dropping an empty cartridge to the ground and reloading her gun seamlessly, firing several shots.

Despite everyone’s best efforts they just keep coming. “Do we have a plan here?”

“Getting there,” Steve replies. “Anybody have eyes on the gauntlet?”

“Yeah!” Clint rushes past you with the glove in hand. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Get it out of here!” Tony insists.

“What’s happening?” Alexei shouts over the chaos. “I still don’t have ear piece.”

“Just keep their army away from that guy in the tank top.” You grunt, falling backwards from the force of one of Thanos’ soldiers colliding with you.

“We have to get the stones back where they came from.” Rhodey reminds everyone.

“The time space tunnel is completely collapsed.” Tony points out.

“That isn’t our only time machine.” Lang cuts in.

“Does anyone see an ugly brown van out there?” Captain America’s voice hums through the ear bud.

“I do,” a female voice chimes in. “But you’re not going to like where it’s parked.”

After grappling for far too long, you manage to knock the creature from you. Using your knife to dismember it.

“Next time, we get the cool laser guns.” Yelena yells loud enough to be heard by everyone on the network, as she hauls you to your feet.

“Friday, please add laser guns for the ballerinas to my grocery list.” Stark gives his smart ass remark.

“What’s the word on the van?” Rhodey wonders.

“Working on it now.”

The ship at Thanos’ disposal begins raining fire, no regard for their own troops.

“We’ve got people going down!” Rocket hollers.

“Clint,” you call into the microphone. “How’s that gauntlet?”

“Moving down the field.” The archer replies, “I’m alright too, thanks for asking.”

“Good.” You bite back a smile.

Hell continues breaking loose around you. Glowing circular orbs unfold in the air above, providing coverage from the missiles. You’re not sure if this is winning or losing. It feels like a bit of both.

———————————————————————- Thanos and his army are dusted away. Leaving you surprised and still swinging as the shock wears off.

You won. You. Won.

And you lost.

You lost Tony Stark. The man you’d barely known, but offered you clarity that will stay with you forever.

You lost the Natasha you’d come to know over the five years that Yelena was gone. Some parts of the redhead stripped away for the price of the stone.

But she’s still here. Waiting in the wings to be greeted by Yelena and their little makeshift family. You share a look of understanding when your eyes meet over the blonde’s shoulder.

Others come, Banner refuses to leave her side. Despite the fact that Natasha doesn’t remember him.

Clint falls to the ground at her feet. Breaking down at the sight of his friend, his family alive and well. She doesn’t remember him either, but welcomes him into her arms somewhat awkwardly.

Her expressions flicker from happy to overwhelmed. Hesitant to open herself up to the possibility that she is wanted, needed and loved.

Too confusing for the girl who only remembers the red room. Adjusting to this life will take time.

Everyone begins clearing out, their jobs finished. Rushing home to reunite with their loved ones. Tomorrow will bring about new challenges. The world is in shambles, and so are you.

Steve decides that he should be the one to return the stones. His goodbye tells you that he has a bit more in mind. But this is his life. His choices, not yours.

“Well, I guess we should head out too.” You say after a while. Your car is gone, lost in the wreckage from the explosion.

The setting sun is eclipsed, causing all of you to turn your gaze upwards just in time to see the ship’s door open.

“Is that a raccoon?” Melina asks, pointing toward Rocket.

“Do you want a ride or not?” Rocket shoots back.

“Not the avenger’s super jet, but it will do huh?” Alexei smiles, this is his dream.

“This is better!” A man’s voice carries down from the interior.

“Well,” Yelena shrugs, “if you say so.” She leads the pack up the ramp and onto the ship.

“Fanny and the pigs will be expecting dinner soon.”

“How are they?” Melina asks, “have you been taking care of them.”

“That was me!” Alexei says proudly, bending at the waist to gather Natasha into his arms. “Aye honey,” he grunts, hoisting her up. “You are only little girl in my heart.”

Nat pushes against his chest in retaliation.

“Do you mind if I hitch a ride too?” Clint asks.

“The extra stop will cost you,” Nebula stares blankly at him from her seat.

“They always do.” He remarks, trotting up the ramp.

Bruce paces at the foot of the metal grate, watching the rest of you load up. “I gotta hang back, make sure Steve gets there in one piece.”

“After what happened with Scott the first time I’d say that’s probably the best bet.” You agree, standing near the entrance.

“Yeah,” he smiles, kindly. “Keep me posted on Nat, will ya?”

“I will,” you return the smile.

“I’ll see you around.”

You nod, “I’ll see you.”

The captain of the ship introduces himself as Star-lord, and after a moment without response, Quill.

“Any requests?” He asks, finger hovering over the control panel.

Alexei creeps over to the younger man, quietly relaying a message.

“Alright,” Quill nods. Stroking the keys until a familiar set of notes ring out.

“A long, long time ago-“ The singer croons.

You let out a chuckle.

“I can still remember how that music used to make me smile. And I knew if I had my chance, that I could make those people dance. And maybe they'd be happy for a while.”

“We’re really doing this?” Yelena puts a hand to her head, the corners of her mouth turning upward.

“But February made me shiver, with every paper I'd deliver. Bad news on the doorstep, I couldn't take one more step.” The melody carries on.

“It’s your song.” Natasha turns to her sister.

“I can't remember if I cried. When I read about his widowed bride.” Melina’s eyes are far away, carried back to their years in Ohio. Before the world had been so cruel.

“Something touched me deep inside, the day the music-“

“Died.” Yelena joins in, lulling her head to the side to gage your reaction.

You sigh, all of this beyond surreal. But you allow yourself to live in this moment, because you might not get another. “So bye, bye Miss American Pie…”

“Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry.” The roaring chorus of voices fills the silence you’ve grown used to. Fills the parts of you that were empty for so long. “And them good ol' boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye. Singin', “this’ll be the day that I die.”

“This’ll be the day that I die.” Yelena sings, her face alight with a childlike glee.

——————————————————————-

Melina, Natasha and Alexei stay with you for a while. A few weeks as Natasha heals and becomes acclimated to her life.

She claims to hate the attention, but deep down you know she’s full of it.

The Ohio house is bursting at the seams with five adults, nine pigs and one dog.

That isn’t enough to keep visitors at bay. Namely Clint, his wife Laura and their three children.

Things feel a bit off when everyone begins moving out. Alexei, Melina, and their pigs return to the farm outside of Saint Petersburg.

Natasha finds herself drawn to New York, with Bruce and the makeshift building he’s using as a lab.

You adjust to the steady thrum that is daily life, with Fanny and Yelena.

After dinner you load the dishwasher, drying your hands on the nearby tea towel before selecting a cycle.

“So how does it feel?” Yelena asks, leaning against the doorframe.

“Hmm?” You turn to face her.

“Being a hero.” She clarifies, a smile playing at her lips.

“I’m not-“

“Oh cut the crap, Y/N. You saved the world.” Yelena narrows her eyes at you.

“I did it for you.” You say simply, because it’s true.

Yelena closes the space between you, “why?”

“You know why.” You whisper as she cups your face in her hands, gently stroking her thumb over your cheek. “It’s ok if you wouldn’t have done the same.”

“I’d do more for you, and worse.” She assures you. “But do you really want to spend the rest of your life fumbling around feelings in the dark when you could have someone who-“

“I want you. I only ever want you.” You beckon her closer. “Anyway I can have you, that will be enough for me.”

Sometimes wires get crossed and you want things you never have before. And she provides them before you have a chance to ask. You give back to her tenfold, so that neither glass is ever empty. That is love. True love, the only way you’ve ever known it.

“I am yours…in every way a person can belong to another.” Yelena breathes, “and then some.”

Series taglist: @jeyramarie @freeshavocadoooo @ilovewinter101 @3and30aresoultwins @yelenabelovv @miphas-trident @1800-fight-me

If you loved this series as much as I did, you can check out the prequel here!

[sergeant-donny-donowitz]

You Only Live Twice (HugoxReader)

Requested by @redroseedits​

@owba-chan​ @war-obsessed​ @inglourious-imagines​ @tealaquinn​ @struggling-bee​ @frozenhuntress67​ @kwyloz​ @sodapop182​

Let me know if you wanna be added to the IB or OUATIH taglists! :)

A/N: (p/n) here means your pronouns :)

A/N 2: If dialogue is in italics then the characters are speaking to each other in German

________

"Oh, come now, Herman. This is serious!" Hans Landa was in no mood for jokes.

The basterds had just broken Hugo Stiglitz out of prison.

Landa was tasked to find him.

Find them all.

Herman shook his head, "What you're looking for...it’s something only one kind of person can do."

"Herman...enlighten me. Who?"

Herman grinned, "What you're looking for, sir, has no allegiance. No uniform."

"And what is this anomaly? Now and days everyone's got something to die for." Hans sputtered as he shuffled through his files of contacts. "I can’t trust just anyone with this."

Herman laughed, "Oh please Hans. There are things that are beneath us. Squandering our time to find some yank GIs and some runaway in the forest? It's insulting."

"It's a classified case given to us by high command."

"Send one of their own after Stiglitz. A common criminal after a common criminal."

Hans narrowed his eyes, "What are you proposing, Herman?"

"The Lion's Den."

Hans sputtered with disbelief and waved him off, "A rumor spread by petty thiefs and drunks. Unbelievable, Herman. How could you even believe-"

Herman smirked, "Follow me."

*****

Herman showed Landa the way to a hidden oasis. A tavern, reserved for the most ruthless, bloodthirsty criminals, all hired for some heist or high stakes murder or other.

Landa was amazed, seeing that the den was a real place.

He immediately shook his head, and thought, to hell with it.

He stood in the center, and practically demanded as he waved around his insignia, "Bring me the best killer you have."

People sneered, spat, and laughed, then carried on with their usual dealing, betting, and...well, business.

Herman shook his head, "Are you out of your mind? That could've gotten us killed!"

He scoffed, "Do they know who we are? If anything happened to us-"

Herman and Hans' disagreement was interrupted by an abrupt silence.

Followed by footsteps, and murmuring.

"Your rank means nothing here."

The constant, incessant word on everyone's tongue was 'Vier'. 'Four.'

Your name.

The name everyone in that tavern feared and the streets feared.

Herman managed to stutter, "We-we're here t-to see about a-a job?"

"Anyone who comes in here is. Sit."

Herman nodded to Landa, and they both sat.

You leaned over the table, pressing your palms down on the corners, overshadowing them. "I assume you have payment."

Herman nodded, and held up the briefcase. In it, was millions, meant to cover the cost of the operation.

It was then, that Landa looked up, and saw your face, which nearly stopped his heart.

Upon further inspection...it made him smirk. "Ah...look what the cat  dragged back from the dead. Y/n L/n."

You spoke with ease, as if nothing he said held any weight. You ran your fingers on the blade of your knife, and remarked, "Now, now, Landa. People will think you mad for speaking to spirits."

He nodded, understanding.

He remembered it well.

He was a detective.

In fact, he held your case once.

You were a common, petty thief from a young age.

But, by 17, you were on the rise.

Young, skilled, smooth talking, with all the right connections for all the wrong things.

By nineteen, it had gone to your head.

And...after a series of misfortunes, you were presumed dead, not but two years ago.

"So you faked your death. Is that it, Y/n?"

"Y/n is dead," you guaranteed, slamming your mug of beer on the table, causing hearts to stop around the tavern.

Landa was the only one not shaking.

He didn't understand the danger.

"My conscious is not haunted by what happened two years ago. Therefore, I wouldn't see a ghost of you. So, it must be you."

You pushed the briefcase back to them, which stole the breath from Landa, and you whistled, which stopped Herman's heart.

A group of assassins rose from their game of poker, only two tables away, and surrounded the table.

"Alright. Alright. I apologize to the vengeful spirit," Landa teased, then nodded once, "Vier..."

You sighed, and called off the team.

"Name."

Landa grinned viciously, pushing the money back to you. "Hugo Stiglitz." "Fuck off." You huffed and turned around, "Leave with your head on your shoulders, before I change my mind." "I can tell you where they buried your brother and sisters, if you do this one thing." You stood up, without taking another look at the money. "It's a deal." Landa looked around, confused for a moment, until Herman pulled him outside, to the safety of the city, and explained that when a deal was struck, the money remained on the table until the kill was done. If it wasn't, or the hitman backed out, the money would be sent back to the contractor. Hans Landa looked up, and watched you, and smirked as you disappeared beyond the alleys. For once in his life, he was happy to give a case away.

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

Days later, you were sitting on the roof top of a building older than anyone knew, sometime between dusk and dawn, somewhere between Germany and France.

Then, you spotted them.

Ten men.

Ten basterds, sneaking down the alleys, attempting to move back into nazi-occupied France.

Then, between the broken light of the moon, and that of a flickering street lamp, you spotted him: Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz.

Shrouded by the heaviness of the night sky, and the very essence of surprise, you dropped among them, and attacked Hugo.

But...for the record, you were only human.

You, like any other  soldier, criminal, basterd, or any other human that ever lived, had an off day.

You made a mistake. You looked into his eyes for a little too long, and he looked at yours while you were on top of him. For the record, Hugo had never been so startled, in his life...

or confused.... As a matter of fact, strange as it was, he hadn't been as attracted to anyone in his life, as he was to you, the moment he looked at his would-be assassin. But....it was a mistake, nonetheless.

And...as a result, the basterds took you down.

It happened every once in a while. You'd get too cocky, and then this happened...

But, you didn't really mind.

You always found a way out, this wouldn't be any different.

They uncovered your face, and you appeared to be in an abandoned hostel in a run down town nearing the border between Germany and Belgium.

You knew it only 'appeared' that way.

Why?

Well, you'd run a few deals there before.

You left the blood stains and hidden escape routes to prove it.

But...they didn't need to know that.

They didn't even give you time for your vision to focus.

"Who are you?!" demanded a man with a scar on his neck, his hands at his hips, almost seeming disinterested in your answer.

Another man, a bit older than the others, spoke. From the accent you could tell he was from Munich. Somewhere you had contacts...once... He looked to you, and translated, "Wer bist du?"

You looked up, still feeling a slow drip of blood from your nose falling onto your lap. "I speak English."

The scarred leader nodded, "Alright then. Who the hell are you?!"

You felt something press against the back of your neck. The familiar cold press of the barrel of a gun.

Before you could give an answer, the gun pressed even more forcefully against your skin, and you heard a voice behind you, "You a nazi?" This time...you couldn't quite identify the accent. At least their leader, you knew from old smuggled western radio shows, was from somewhere in the American south.

This one,...you weren't quite sure. But you could feel his looming presence.

Still, what struck you wasn't that...it was the fact that they'd even dared to accuse you of being a nazi.

"Bite your fucking tongue, basterd." You lifted your head back to take a look at him, and felt blood trickle down your throat.

You heard another voice, confused, angry, sarcastic and...short. "Why else would you attack us?"

"For the record, I wasn't there for you, little man." You  looked past them all at the man crouching on a dusty overturned mattress, in the corner of the gloomy room. "I was there for him."

The leader spoke again, "Yeah? And why might that be?" He really wasn't amused, as he reasoned "Other than the fact that youre a na-"

You shook your head. If you heard that accusation again, you'd go berserk, and all hell would break loose.

"I'm a paid assassin. A hitman."

There was an errie silence overtaking the room, one of the basterds, who you'd later learn was called Omar, looked back and forth between his officers and you, his mouth open.

Someone choked on a drink.

Other than that, the room was still.

The leader, who in a few hours would remember his manners and introduce himself, crouched before you, studying your face carefully in  the light they had.

You could be no older than Utivich and Hirschberg, their youngest troops.

To hear that you were a hitman...and the skills you'd shown, well, it was surprising. In a strange way, it was impressive.

He looked up at you, and asked, "What's your name, kid?"

"Vier."

Aldo raised his eyebrow, "Fear?"

You shook your head, "Vier."

He struggled with it for a moment or two, batting between "veer," and  "beer".

Wicki was confused for a moment as well, as he repated under his breath, "Vier?" Vier? Wie die Nummer..." "Like the number?"

You nodded once at him, and looked to Aldo, "Just say Four. That's all it means."

Smitty cocked his head, "That's a weird name."

Omar rolled his eyed, "Obviously an assassin's gonna have a codename."

"Riiight..."

The man holding a gun to you, who you'd learn in a few moments was the famed Bear Jew, muttered, "Ain't you got more important questions to ask?!"

Aldo cleared his throat, and sniffed some tobacco, "Who do you work for?"

"Whoever pays," you chuckled, with a wink, and Donny murmured, "So you're a hook-"

Wicki muttered to get him to shut up in time to save his life, "Donny."

Hirschberg was losing his patience. You felt another gun press against the flesh beneath your ribs as he uttered, "What the fuck are you talking about."

You weren't scared.

You hadn't been scared in years.

You looked at nothing as you said, "The Lion's Den."

Hugo finally looked up, and looked at you directly in the eyes.

The more you said, the more he connected.

Wicki may have been old, but he knew a thing or two. "Oh shit..."

Hirschberg said what was on everyone else's mind, "What the hell is happening?"

Wicki quickly explained, "Everyone's heard of it...it's supposed to be a myth. It's not-"

You shook your head, feeling beads of sweat rolling fown your back, though you weren't nervous. At least, not because of the basterds. "It's hot. Can I take my jacket off?" You sounded nicer than you should have, "No tricks. I promise."

Everyone held their weapons, ready for anything, but Aldo nodded.

You were wearing a tanktop undernearth. Trails of ink telling the story of your life over your arms, and what was visible of your back.

You twisted your shoulder a little, there on the upper side of your back and shoulder, was a black ink lion, its mouth open, tearing apart a chain.

Wicki's mouth dropped.

"It...it's real?"

You nodded, with a slight smirk, "It's just good business."

Aldo looked at the boys, then back at you. "Who paid you for this?"

Hirschberg muttered, "Who do you think?"

You nodded, "He's right, you know."

Aldo grunted, "Alright. Tell us everything we want to know, or-"

You sighed, "You'll blow my brains out, and/or scalp me. I know, I know."

Aldo nodded, "Good, so you get it. Alright, question number one-"

Hirschberg muttered, "We're wasting time. We're gonna kill this asshole anyway."

You shrugged with a sighed, "He has a good point again."

Then, your intended target stood up. He spoke suddenly, which made everyone uneasy. "Don't kill the kid," he muttered as he stepped up, beside all the basterds.

All of them were incredulous, each murmuring some form of "why not?"

He repeated again, a little harshly, "Don't kill the kid."

Somehow, Hugo Stiglitz had enough heart to show his attempted killer some form of mercy.

"Let me alone with (p/n)."

The basterds all looked at each other, then, on Aldo's word, filed out of the room.

"Why did you do that?" You asked, genuinely confused.

"Do what?" He spoke in German, signaling you to shift as well. Even if they were listening, which they most likely were, only Wicki would understand. Meaning, you had some buffer time.

"Save me..." You slouched in the chair pensively, resting your elbows on your knees.

He raised his eyebrow, and was silent.

"You don't know me, Stiglitz. You don't know what you've just done..."

"What?"

"I'm a psychopath! A threat to society. To you. To-"

"I know who you are." He sat back down on the mattress, directly across from you, seeming as though he had nothing to worry about.

You clenched your teeth, "You have no idea who I am."

He was silent again.

So much so, that it frustrated you into saying a little more than you should have. "You were sanctioned by the OSS, but I was sanctioned by a very angry detective."

"And who might that be?" He was sharpening a knife, but somehow you knew that blade wasn't meant for you.

It was meant for whoever sent you.

But you shook your head, and you lied. Because Hans Landa was your personal target. "Don't know. I don't ask."

He was silent again, then looked up at you for a moment, and spoke softly, so even if Wicki was listening, he wouldn't be able to hear, "You're not a psychopath." before resuming sharpening his knife.

Just before lowering his eyes back down to his blade, they flickered over a specific tattoo on your arm. One you'd tried to cover up with another, but still, the older ink's fangs sank their teeth into what remained of your soul. Somehow, even Hugo Stiglitz could see that.

He was a silent but observant man, and it took just half a moment to know what it was.

A series of numbers etched onto your skin by a nazi.

At that moment, it was clear to him you really weren't a nazi. It would've been clear to anyone who saw it.

But now he was sure he knew exactly who you were.

He spoke again, "They branded you. They took your eyes and your soul."

You jumped to your feet. Anyone back at the lion's den would be shaking in fear, but he didn't even flinch. He didn't even look up as you reproached "Who the hell are you to say-"

"I was there."

You pretended you didn't know what he meant, but it was so painfully clear to both of you that you did know. "What are you talking about."

"I was there the day they killed you, Y/n."

That name...

Your breath caught in your throat, your voice locked in your heart.

All you could do was shake your head, and mumble as the shards of a painful lifetime stripped you of your courage, "Don't..."

He did, though. He told you what he knew. "I was just starting out, too. You do know why I joined the gestapo?"

Everyone knew about Hugo Stiglitz.

You nodded.

"It was my very first day. I had my gun aimed right at you, and I missed on purpose." He remembered that day, only two years ago. Even then, he looked at you in awe. He expected to find a hardened criminal, not a kid shielding three others so much younger than that.

You shook your head, recollecting yourself. "You know nothing about me, Hugo."

"They killed your brother and sisters that day, before they took you away" his eyes glanced over the hidden tattooed numbers, hastily scratched out with darker ink. Sending you to a camp wasn't enough. Only weeks later, you were being transfered to be publicly executed in Berlin.

He went on, "They killed everyone you cared about." He looked back at you, "You're not  a bloodthirsty serial killer, you're not psychopath. You cared about somebody, once. Three of them."

"Mind yourself, sergeant." You spoke fiercely, though your eyes gave you away.

He looked directly at you, "Your name is Y/n. You still have some good in you, somewhere. I don't care where you work, who pays you to do what, there's a reason you didn't take that luger out of your boot and take half of us out earlier."

How did he know about that?

"That's where you started. You killed nazis, and only nazis once. You used the money to give people a way to run away."

"I still do."

"You do more than that now."

"They were only six years old, the twins..." You didn't know why you were even speaking to him, but you were. "Johan," You sighed as your heart broke a million times over, "He wasn't even thirteen yet."

That was when you snapped. Petty crime turned into a rampage.

Hugo Stiglitz may be a bit questionable, but he was a good man. You knew that, and you knew he deserved some sort of explanation. "If I killed you, they'd tell me where they buried them."

Hugo related what he knew about your 'death,' "You were being moved to Berlin. There was an accident. You were dead."

"I still am, as far as anyone is concerned."

"Three people died in that accident."

"Four."

He raised his eyebrow.

"Three guards. One for Johan. One for Emma, and one for Inga. And me? I died twice."

Once with them, and once when the nazis believed you were dead.

It was then that he understood, "Vier..."

Four...

Four lives lost. Four burdens you always carried.

You turned to all you had left. A life hidden underground, where everyone was just as damned as you, covered in blood, without a cause, morals either grayed or gone. Reefer and lugers, francs and gold...

Hugo knew the rumors.

He once heard stories of a nameless crime lord, protected by the lion's den, a blood thirsty hitman, with a penchant for blood and an unknown revenge.

But, that wasn't what he saw before him.

What he saw was someone who'd never known mercy before the moment he stood up. Someone with four reasons to chase after a feeling of justice that would forever be a horizon away.

Someone who's stomach was grumbling.

"You're hungry." he noted, back in English,  as he opened the door, letting three or four eavesdropping basterds who leaned against the door tumble in.

***** They got you something to eat, while the basterds were filled in by Wicki on the heavy rumors surrounding you. Nazi killer turned crime lord turned hitman, never losing an appetite for blood and murder.

It wasn't all true...

Anyway, they got sidetracked when they realized Utivich, "Gave the fUCKING TRAINED ASSASSIN A KNIFE?!"

They quickly turned to find you at the rickety table, everything untouched, the knife in the exact place where Utivich left it.

You smirked, "Oh please, I have some decency...and some self control....Also I can hear you."

Donny raised his eyebrow, "Self control...Wh...whaddya mean?"

You grinned, "If I picked that knife up, I may not put it down until it was in somebody's artery."

"You're joking, right?"

You shrugged, "Whatever helpd you sleep at night, soldier."

Aldo sighed,  "We're running out'a time. It's almost dawn. If we gotta stay in Germany another night, we're gon' get caught. Especially since you haven't gotten back to your boss, ain't that right, kid?"

You shrugged, "Boss isn't the...you know what, yeah. You could just...send me," you grinned cheekily, and they all muttered.

You sighed, "Ok, ok. Where you taking me anyway? OSS? Oh! Interpol might give you a pretty penny," you winked, half joking...but considering a few negotiations you'd made with the Serbian, Russian, and Italian mafia....maybe they would get a pretty penny...or two....or...

They all started grumbling, and dragged you along as they slunk around in the shadows. You looked down at your left wrist, on your now cracked watch,  realizing they had two hours tops before sunrise, which wasn't enough time to stealthily cross into France.

"This also might not be great timing...but...I haven't eaten in about thirty hours, sir..."

Aldo spoofed, "So?" as he cleared them to  sneak down another alley.

You shrugged, and bluntly said "Hypoglycemia."

Donny scowled, "Don't care."

"I know you don't now, sure.... But since you're trying to stay under cover, if you're dragging a bloody, bruised, tattooed person down the back alleys of a city, that wouldn't be much help would it?"

Hugo couldn't help but smirk a little, though Aldo grumbled, "Oh for fuck's s.... Utivich, get (p/n) some bread or somethin'. I don't care what, let's just move."

Utivich scrambled around his pack, and pulled out an apple, and hastily handed it to you.

You smiled kindly, "Dankeschön." You raised the apple, and threw it across the alley, toward a shady figure walking down the street, undoubtedly going to a block away you knew well. There were people there you owed, and this would just about cover it.

Before any questions were raised, Omar scurried over to the screaming man, "You broke his eye socket in!"

You shrugged, "Good."

"What the fuck is happening?!"

You turned to the rest of the basterds, "That man is a nazi. There's a bounty on his head right now. I owe a few people down that way, where he was headed to anyway and d-"

You looked down at Omar, "Do shut him up, please. He'll blow your cover."

Omar found some papers in the man's pocket confirming he was a nazi.

Aldo nodded to him, clearing the kill.

You looked at the awe struck basterds. "Now then. He was heading down that way which is what you'd call....a red light district? Is that it?"

Donny asked, "Hookers?"

You nodded, "Hookers. Reefer. Anyway...I have....friends in this city. That clear?"

Omar, who had grown up in Hell's Kitchen in New York, knew a thing or two about how it worked. "We're fucked....we're fucked...we're-"

You smiled a little, "Maybe, if we...cash this in, per se...arrangements can be made."

Aldo muttered, without many alternatives, "Fine."

Hugo smiled a little, only enough for you to see as he commented, "So you do have redeeming qualities?"

You laughed a little, this time, without a sign of cynicism, but sincerity, and it captured his heart.

About halfway there, you started stumbling, and instinctively leaned against the wall.

Smitty's eyes narrowed, "Wait, you're actually hypoglycemic?"

It was then, that Hugo noticed your jacket tied around your waist, even though it was cool night, some sweat over your back, and your hands still slightly shaking, "Why the fuck would I lie about that?"

They were all silent, looking around at each other, when they heard glass shattering. Hugo emerged, with a pastry he'd taken from a bakery they just so happened to pass, and he handed it to you.

You smiled, again kindly, and this time with the intention to eat, "Dankeschön"

He held it out until you took it, "Essen." 'Eat.'

It wasn't much, but it was enough to get you to where you needed to go. Along the way, you lightened the mood a little, as Donny dragged on the dead nazi, and Hugo stabilized you, "Utivich?"

He turned around, and you knew you had the right name, "Didn't think of a criminal as a real person, huh? All those radio shows you Americans listen to."

"Ok, look," Donny chuckled, and you shrugged, "Did you know that Al Capone has syphilis?"

Donny turned to you, "The Al Capone?"

"Syphilis as in....syphilis?"

"Al Capone-Al Capone?!"

You nodded, "Mhm! Syphilis."

"How the hell you know that?" Hirschberg demanded, and you smirked, "I know a few people." And then, you arrived at your destination. Which appeared to be no more than a risque, run down cabaret.

"Can we...come in?" Donny was just about halfway through the door.

You rolled your eyes, "Ten men carrying a dead German local? You'll scare away the regular people, and snitch yourselves out. Wait here." Donny grumbled something, and you chuckled, "Just remember about Al Capone."

And so they did...

And once it was a moment too long, once they started questioning your honesty, you emerged, followed by two rather large fellows, with their faces hidden by the remnants of the night.

They took the dead nazi, and disappeared down the alley.

You carried a box, and held it out to them, "For your troubles, boys."

It was full of brand new weapons and bullets for them. "We can stay here until tomorrow night."

Donny grinned, "Alright," he started making his way to the front door and you cleared your throat. He turned, and you gestured to the alley where your two associates had disappeared down, "This way." You mumbled something under your breath that made Wicki and Hugo chuckle. And just like that,  when the sun set once again, you guided them to France, keeping them safe, which convinced at least Aldo that you were telling the truth. The attack was nothing personal. Odd, but he understood. Still, you were unsure of your fate once they reached their point in France. You knew either way, it didn't bode well for you. "I know what I deserve. No less than a six foot ditch, no name, no marking." You sighed, and looked at Hugo, and you raised your eyebrow, "Don't make that face," You nudged Hugo with your elbow, and smiled to encourage him. He looked down. He heard stories, once, not too long ago, of a rebel named Y/n. A face only locals knew, and the gestapo searched for. Back then, every hit, every deal made you a dime. And every single dime went to helping innocent people escape the nazis.

But one day, you snapped. Since then, every penny was used to cover tracks in your pursuit of revenge. In the process, you got a taste of blood, and it would never be enough. The  basterds didn't know that. They were just thankful you'd gotten them relatively safely out of Germany. Aldo sighed, and nodded, "Maybe...this kid here, maybe Four's got some merits." Wicki grinned, "So, we're letting Vier go?" Donny chuckled, "Look, Four might be a hitman...but did you say how p/n took out that nazi? That's gotta be the best goddamn pitcher I ever saw. Aldo's right." So, it was decided, you were free to go. They weren't saying anything about the attack, as long as you didn’t come back. But, you pulled Hugo back, just before he joined the rest of the basterds, and you basically pleaded, "Don't let me go..." He shook his head. "Go home, Vier." "You don't understand!" He looked you in your eyes again, and said, "I trust you, Vier." "You don't get it... I like it. I like the blood, the rush. I'm a fucking assassin. I can't leave that anymore. I fucking like it. I'll kill again. I'll-" He nodded but said, "Then use it for good." "How?!" He said something he never thought he'd say.He sighed, "I believe in you." It had been a long time since Hugo believed in anything.

He didn't need to say anything else, but  you knew what he wanted to say. He wanted you to do what you did in the past, and nothing more. Only take hits out on nazis. Nothing else. "There's still a soul in there," he tapped on your chest, "A soul with a name." He turned his back on you, and you watched as the basterds disappeared into the forest. You turned around, and marched back to Germany, and his words stuck with you, each day, after that. You did the best you could... Two years passed. Hans Landa came back. Two years before, when the money was sent back to him intact, he tried everything to get back to the Lion's Den, but the case on Hugo passed on to other hands, which stained Landa's reputation as a detective. But, the case made its way back to him, and he was willing to make a deal with the devil. So he did the next best thing. "If you don't kill them, every single basterd. Every last one, and bring me their cold dead bodies, I will put a bounty on your head." Your hands grew clammy, but not  because  you cared about what he said. You looked at your still cracked watch, and sighed. You had given Landa a chance to walk away with his life before. He didn't seem to get that. "Time's running out Hans." You looked at the case he was carrying. It was bigger than last time, and you needed quite a bit to help a few more families. "Show me the money." It caught him off guard, but he grinned cynically as he looked at you, at your scars, your tattoos, at the skilled, nameless ghost that got away with it all. He admired you. In a way, you were one of the only cases that slipped his hands, without him knowing. After all, who looks for the dead? He opened the briefcase, and revealed it was lined with millions of dollars instead of reichsmark. You sneered, "Oh, you remembered?" He smirked, "I will guarantee your safe passage to wherever in America you'd like to go to. I hear that Nantucket Island is nice this time of year." You matched his cynical twist, and grinned yourself as you mused, "And if I decline this offer?" "I have the entire high command, the SS, the Gestapo. You have a few mongrels with rusty knives and old lugers." "Hm..." You chuckled, and remarked "I raise you to...I know where your mother lives, Hans. Beautiful retirement home." He stopped smirking. "Oh don't bother asking  her about me, she won't remember. Poor old woman. Dementia, right? I did speak with her, Mausezähnchen." You grinned. Only his mother called him that, there was no other way for you to know that. You weren't bluffing.

And you weren't done, either. "Oh, so that is you! She gets a little confused between you and your brother, Heinrich. He's in that veteran hospital in Munich, for that bullet to the knee, that so?" Landa scowled, but you weren't done. You wanted to make it clear that you'd take everything from him if you wanted to, just like the nazis had done to you.  "At least that beautiful sister of yours, Greta! Yes, yes, she lives nearby to take care of him, and visit. Shame about her husband, though, isn't it?" Landa glanced up at you, and knew at that moment what you were talking about. His brother in law was in the gestapo, and died about a year ago under strange circumstances. He was also there the day you were arrested, and your brother and sisters were killed. At that moment, Hans knew it was you who killed his brother in law. He couldn't help but laugh. He laughed to hide his rage, and to block out the absurdity of circumstances... Somehow, sick as it was, he admired you. But you weren't the only one who could raise the stakes. "Ah, Vier...you don't know what you've just started." "Nothing can hurt the dead, Hans. I thought you'd know that." "Vier, Vier. What pains you the most is the fact that you're still alive. You're not really dead." He grabbed your wrist, "Late for your insulin shot?" You pulled your arm away, and signaled for all your allies to sit back down. You looked back at Hans and he said, "I will keep you alive. I can send you back." His eyes fell over the numbers that were hastily covered on your arm, "I can track down each and every person you ever helped, and everyone you're going to use this money for." You glared at him. You had to admit, he had an excellent poker face, and you couldn't tell if he was blluffing or not. He as not... "Few of them are still hiding in Bavaria, right? Three Romani couples, and a Jewish family. Seven still waiting to move from occupied France to the other side?" He leaned over the table, and spoke lowly, "You're not the only one with contacts, Vier. I know about Iowa." Your heart stopped... You'd gotten a few families land and homes there years before. "No one will look for them. No one will know where to begin. Clever, Vier. You've been very clever until now." He stood up, and started walking away. He hesitated for a moment, he half turned and remarked, "What is it you always say? There is a price for everything?" and flipped a piece of gold onto the briefcase. "For your troubles."

Once he was gone, you grinned, closed the briefcase, and carried it as you made your way out the door. On the way, you saw one of your allies, "Elise," you smirked, you were always one step ahead than you let on, "Get back to that British officer for me, please? Tell him I agreed to go to the movies." *********** But....you did have terrible timing, and that was maybe another off-day. Still, you made your way back through France. Late as you were, you weren’t too late.  Hugo was covered in blood, but there was still time. "Y/n?" You raised your eyebrow, but nodded nodded hesitantly, "Y-yeah...It's me....It's...Y/n..." He smiled, "So the soul does have a name..." He took your hand in his and you shook your head, "There's no time, Hugo. Come on, where's your friend?" You looked around, spotting Wicki. "They left you both behind?" Wicki mumbled, "We told them to go on without us." "Stupid. Stupid..." You muttered as you started tending to their wounds. Suddenly, you heard shuffling upstairs. You looked at them, "Play dead." "Wh-" "Do it." You jumped behind an overturned table, just as a herd of nazis walked into the tavern."Ah...Hugo...You've moved up on the world. Look at you, Lieutenant First Class. And with your record of insubordination, truly remarkable..." He had just pointed out the odd scene, "It appears somebody is missing. Somebody  fashionable." Then...you made another one of your infamous mistakes. You'd been leaning against the overturned table, and it fell over with a loud, bellowing slam. "Fuck." You scrambled and pulled out two guns, acting as if it were all planned,  shot down Landa's companions, and faced him. "Everything has a price, Hans." You aimed your gun at him before he even had time to let go of von Hammersmark's shoe, "And the price for being a nazi is your head." A moment and a gunshot later, there was one less nazi in the world. In that moment, for the very first time in years, you felt some sort of peace. You looked down at your cracked watch. Without Landa...the basterds just might make it as planned. The war would finally end... You looked at Hugo and Wicki, and smiled a little, wiping blood and sweat off your forehead, "Let's get you boys out of here, huh?" So you helped Wicki out first. You sat him in a car you'd hijacked and left waiting outside. "You're a good kid, Vier." "Y/n." He nodded, "You know the rest of the boys think you're nuts?" "They should," You laughed, and Wicki smiled, "You're a good kid, Y/n." You went back downstairs, and pulled Hugo up. You both looked down at Hans Landa, a long time scourge. Both you and Hugo were blemishes on his record: two unsolvable cases. Two threads that unknowingly were spun together by fate. As he gargled a wordless, bloody farewell to the world, his eyes went wide with realization. You'd double crossed him... He was able to say, "Bravo, Vier... Bravo..." He took his final breath, his eyes dead set on you and Hugo, two ghosts that haunted him to the very end. Hugo raised his eyebrow, suddenly realizing, "I still owe Aldo one more nazi scalp." You laughed, "Everything has a price, Hugo." "According to you, the price of being a nazi is his head...but what's the price for a nazi's head...or scalp?" You chuckled, "What do you have to offer?" Hugo smiled, genuinely, for the first time since the war began, his shoulders eased up, and he looked at you. He knew you'd listened to him, you changed again. He carressed your cheek, though his hand was covered in blood, it didn't matter to either of you. You'd given him a second chance to live two years ago. And in return, he gave you a second chance...Or a third chance. True, he'd spared your life once on the day of your arrest.  But gave you a chance to live again when you were face to face, not as a ghost. You both understood that. He softly kissed you, and murmured, "Whatever you ask for," he winked and you giggled, as you helped him up the stairs, "It's a deal."

[adarlingwrites]

Absolution

Summary:

noun: formal release from guilt, obligation, or punishment

The Capital Wasteland lauded the Lone Wanderer as a hero, a Messiah, a savior who's willing to give her life for the Good Fight. Beyond the legends, the propaganda, and the mythification that surrounded her legacy, there is only one person who knew her bare soul. She gave him his absolution, and now he will fight for hers.

VII

September 20, 2277.

Percy paces around in the room, looks for something to write on, then settles on the couch again. “Charon… you were saying something about your orders from General Chase in your dream. General Chase was a prominent figure in the Sino-American War 200 years ago. My God, were you there during the Battle of Anchorage?”

Hearing ‘Anchorage’ felt like wires crossed in my brain. The itch in my brain when I saw her in the stealth armor for the first time started to make sense. Anchorage is where I first saw it, worn by enemy troops. Crimson Dragoons, some of them snipers, just like her. My throat feels tight, and I cannot answer. I just nod.

“Charon, I won’t be asking about the details of the dream, but was the dream showing a traumatic event? Like, someone dying, or you getting hurt?”

“Yes. It’s... weird,” I manage to rasp. “There are some parts that I know did not happen recently. Then, there are events which happened within the past week.”

“I see. Did you feel like you were living in that moment again, instead of being at my house, on this day?” she asks me, and I nod. She continues to scribble on the piece of paper that she found.

“Any idea what might’ve triggered it?” she asks me, and I shrug. “Anything? Like a sound, or an object that reminds you of the event?”

I pause for a second. I remember the feeling I had looking at the power armor in my room before my body forced me to sleep.

“The power armor, in the room you gave me,” I tell her, and her eyebrows perk up. “I think I used to wear one of those.” Percy puts her pen and paper down, and stands up.

“I’ll refrain from discussing it further unless you want to talk about it, but holy shit,” Percy exclaims, running a hand through her hair, back turned from me. “I’m so sorry for exposing you to that, if I only knew…” Percy sits back down and her eyes drift to her stealth suit that she stripped for maintenance. “Did my armor remind you of Anchorage too?”

“Yes,” I tell her the truth.

“I’ll stop wearing it, if it makes you relive those memories. I’ll remove the power armor from your room too.”

“I appreciate it, but your armor does not upset me, miss. Please, keep it. You have a higher chance of surviving combat situations with it.”

Percy sighs. “If you’re sure that it doesn’t upset you, okay.” She clears her throat when she realizes the professional facade she’s been putting on slipped off.

“Anyway, I’ve yet to observe arousal and mood symptoms, but, Charon, you’re showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder,” said Percy after a few minutes of tense silence, who’s now looking at the book she was occupied with earlier. “I still need to observe you further. I don’t want to make a hasty diagnosis. If you do have it, I can assure you that it’s possible to get better, and I can help you.”

“It is not necessary, miss.”

“You can’t keep saying that whenever something concerning is happening to you,” the mistress scolds me. The dog jumps between us and starts burying his head on my lap.

“Miss, it is not your responsibility to look after my well-being. It is my own. You should not concern yourself with such things.”

“As someone who’s training to be a doctor, I just can’t ignore someone who’s clearly in need of professional help. What kind of doctor would that make me?”

“As my employer, however, it states in the contract that it is not your responsibility. You would know that if you’ve read it in its entirety,” I argue back, and Percy’s frustration grows. She rubs her hands against her face, and throws it up once again.

“But I- what if we weren’t… Why is it so hard to talk to you?”

My throat hitches at her outburst. This is the first time she raised her voice at me while I’m under her employ. Percy sags in front of me, eyes wild in her frustration, but it isn’t anger I am seeing in her face. Frustration. Worry. Sadness.

“If you think having me in your employ is more than you bargained for, you can sell my contract.”

“Wait, no! No. I can’t do that. I can’t just sell you like, like a rifle or-or a piece of armor,” Percy exclaims, holding her forehead with one hand.

“You are not selling me, miss. I belong to no one. You will be selling the ownership of my contract that entitles the holder my services in combat, and my full loyalty.”

“You’re not making it sound any better. Plus, we’re straying from the topic.”

Putting her legs on the couch and crossing her legs, she turns to me.

“How do I put this in a way that you’d understand? Charon, you and I are lucky that this happened in the safety of my home. I can’t have you slipping into an episode in the middle of the wasteland. You won’t be able to protect me, or yourself. You'd become a liability instead of an asset.”

“I think I understand now. Very well. I shall allow you to treat me,” I tell her, and she gives me a sigh of relief. I look at her expectantly, and she gives me a questioning look.

“What?”

“If you have any procedures to do, I’m allowing you to do so.”

My mistress rubs her face. “This isn’t like the time I patched up the wounds on your back, Charon. This process could take months, or even years. It’s a gradual thing.”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t feel the need to.

“But we can take small steps. Just one thing at a time,” she continues, a slight smile on her face. Percy picks up her book again, and scoots a little closer, the dog nestled between us.

“Do you have any hobbies? Things you do for fun or leisure?” she asks me, that expectant look on her face again. I pause to think. I couldn’t answer. “None.”

“None? You do nothing in your spare time?”

“I wasn’t given the luxury of having ’spare time’ by my previous employers, miss.”

Percy’s shoulders sag further. There’s a look on her face that I haven’t seen in anyone in a long time. Pity. Most people would have fear on their faces when they see me. Not this one. She smiles. She feels worried for me. It relieves and overwhelms me at the same time. But pity? I don’t need it. Especially not from an employer. My function is to serve them.

She must’ve realized the look on her face, because she clears her throat and shrugs her shoulder. “Well then, we have plenty of time to look for activities you’ll enjoy.”

As my mistress continues to flip through her book, Dogmeat perks his head up and gives my ruined face a lick. His fur is no longer as dirty as it was when he found him. Probably Percy’s doing. I couldn’t stop myself. I ran my rough hands on his head to pet him, and the dog started wagging his tail. I glanced at Percy, and she was looking, that smile on her face again, and looked away just as I saw it. She clears her throat and flips to a page.

“Let’s start with grounding techniques.”

December 26, 2277.

It’s the day after Christmas. I can’t remember if I even celebrated it before the war, but Percy’s father insisted we stay with him to celebrate. Percy pulled me aside and told me that her father is religious, and though she never was, she still celebrates religious holidays with him and asked me to play along. My mistress looked uncomfortable and on edge the entire time. Though James was all smiles the entire time, there’s a scrutinizing look on James’ face; Percy shares the same look when we talk to strangers. It makes me feel wary.

Hours before James’ death, I was returning from an errand Percy gave me when I can vaguely hear her argument with her father from another room, muffled by the walls of the memorial.  I wasn’t supposed to listen to a private conversation between a father and his child but I heard my name being mentioned by the doctor.

“Persephone Zhou! That is malpractice! And you’re living under the same roof too?!”

“He has no one else! What, just because I patch him up and I help him cope with his problems -” Percy’s. Her father cuts her off before she can finish.

“Honey, you are Charon’s doctor. And from what you’ve told me, you’ve been providing him services as a psychiatrist too. I can’t even find the words to describe how unethical this… dalliance of yours with him.”

“Dad! Oh my God, we’re not in a relationship! Where are you even hearing those rumors?!”

Though the mistress had been good to me, I can imagine the look of disgust on her face when her father suggested such a thing. Ghouls and smoothskins don’t do relationships, no matter how kind a smoothskin may be. That’s just the way things were.

“I’m sorry, Percy. Word travels fast. I’ve heard some concerning rumors about you and your ghoul friend.”

“Dad, if I did stay in the vault and became the head physician because you left and they killed Jonas, would I be disallowed to pursue any sort of connection because I’m the only doc in that hole? I’d be married to the job like you were after mom died? Is that it?”

“The circumstances are different and you know it. The vault is a very insular community so we had to rely on each other for social support. It would die out if its members did not reproduce or adapt to changes.”

“Dad, you’ve been in the wasteland. There’s just pockets of settlements here in DC, and doctors are scarce. Psychs and people training to be one are even scarcer. Would you call it unethical if they pursued friendships or fell in love with someone who they patched up so many times from being shot at by raiders? Or someone they counseled from all the violence in the wasteland? Jesus, dad, the American Psychiatric Association doesn’t even fucking exist anymore. It’s in ruins. I can even take you there.”

“Watch your language! I didn’t raise you to be disrespectful, Persephone.”

“I’m sorry. But how I say it doesn’t change the fact.”

“The fact is it’s still highly unethical. There are still institutions that exist that teach medicine and they would not approve of your point of view. How did you think I became a doctor?”

“I’m not arguing with you any further, dad. I’ll go run your errands now.”

“Fine. But we’re not done talking, young lady.”

December 27, 2277.

It’s two hours past midnight. Percy’s screams and the sound of her baseball bat crashing against the metal of an old car echo through the scrapyard.

Only after accompanying the scientists to the Citadel, getting in a fist fight with a Brotherhood paladin for almost not allowing us inside because of my presence, and locating a thing called a GECK on the Brotherhood’s computers, did she finally allow herself to grieve her father. And she grieved hard.

At the sound of the bat snapping, she let out another scream and threw the broken weapon across the threshold. On her hands and knees, her glasses fell from her face, then she bruised her knuckles punching the dirt. Only then did I intervene, gently holding her arms and keeping it to her side. To my surprise, she doesn’t thrash or fight back. She froze for a minute, before curling into a ball and crying out as she settled against my chest.

The events that led to James’ death play over and over again in my head. If I hadn’t slowed her down…

“Percy, may I say something?”

She looks up to me, nodding, fresh tears staining her cheek. Her lips are trembling. She finally allowed herself to cry.

“I slowed us down. If I had overcome my episode faster, we would have gotten back to the rotunda and prevented the incident. It cost your father’s life. If you should punish me, or sell my contract, I will accept-”

“No!”

The word came out of her mouth as a broken cry.

“Don’t blame my dad’s death on yourself, Charon. It’s the fucking Enclave’s fault, and no one else’s. You- we, we did the best we could,” said my mistress, sniffling.

“I understand.”

She draws closer and puts her arms around my neck, and my brain misfires at the gesture. It’s like someone set me on fire, but it doesn’t hurt. I had carried and held her before, but nothing like this. My heart was jumping to my throat. Warm against me, she buried her wet face at the crook of my neck. Another sob wracked her body and before I could think, my arms pulled her in an embrace, stilling her.

This isn’t the first time she sought comfort from my presence. She did so every time there were thunderstorms. I never dared to touch her, though a part of me wanted to draw circles in her skin and watch it bounce against my finger instead of flaking off, like mine does.

This is the first time I allowed myself to hold her too.

We remained like that for the next twenty or so minutes, then Percy breaks the silence.

“Charon.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t ever leave me. Please?”

“I’ll stay by your side as long as you will have me.”

Her arms stiffened in response.

“Are you saying this just because of the contract, or do you mean it? Please. Be honest.”

There it goes again. My breath hitching in my throat. I didn’t know how to respond. My mistress looks at me expectantly with her bloodshot eyes.

“It doesn’t matter.”

She pulls away from the embrace, and she doesn’t look at me as she picked up her glasses and collected herself. Dogmeat, who was terrified by her venting, finally sidles up to her side again and licks her hand. Percy pets him and embraces him in return, burying her face in the mutt’s fur and planting kisses on his forehead.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wonder what that would feel like every time Percy does it to the dog.

On the way to Megaton, she tinkers with the radio on her Pip-Boy, and a broadcast neither of us ever heard before comes in.

“Charon.”

“Yes?”

“I need to go home.”

When we arrived at the entrance of Vault 101, only then did I realize that she didn’t mean her house in Megaton. She let out a shaky exhale as the heavy vault door started to open after she put a password in the terminal.

“Welcome to my childhood home.”

[casnonotbcofspn]

Why WW3 Jokes Are Terrible

So if you have been literally anywhere on the internet in the last two weeks, you’ll have been exposed to a lot of WW3 jokes. The hashtag started trrending on twitter - the point is that it’s blown up, and WW3 is the hot comedic topic of the moment. 

For context, this all started after a US drone airstrike killed one of Iran’s military leaders, Qassem Soleimani. This strike was approved by Donald Trump, and many are seeing it as a declaration of war, and therefore as the start of WW3. 

That’s what lead to a huge amount of WW3 jokes circulating online, and I want to outline my problems with them.

Firstly, the major themes in these jokes is the reintroduction of the draft. The draft was abolished in America in 1973 by President Nixon, who hoped to squash the anti-war movement, as he thought middle class protesters only cared about the Vietnam War because they didn’t want to be drafted or have their friends drafted (that’s not relevant, but historical context is helpful). Now, there has been rumblings about bringing back the draft for the past five years or so, but there is no actual evidence that this is going to happen.

 So for the draft to come back, what would need to happen? It would need to pass through Congress, with the majority voting in favour of it. President Trump would also have to finalise the process by approving the draft.

 If the draft came back, what would happen? Firrstly, would women be included in the draft? As of a recent federal court ruling, women not being in the draft would be unconstituional. However, this doesn’t mean that women would be included in the draft, because as we’ve seen the currrent administration has no problem with doing things that are unconstituional. So we know that women and men would be involved in the draft and the draft usually composess of people age 18-26. However, the system by which people are selected for military service is unkonown. Many different systems have been used in US military history.It usually starts with everyone (or all men) in the selected age range registering for the draft. What happens next is a different matter.It could involve local draft boards reviewing those registered and deciding who and wouldn’t be drafted (as it was at the start of the Vietnam War), or it could be a lottery system, where birthdays are drawn out in the same way as other lotteries, and those registered and born on those days would be drafted (as it was to the end of the Vietnam War). The draft was used during Americcan Civil War, WW1, WW2, The Korean War and The Vietnam War in America, and each time it was slightly different, so we have no idea how the draft would work if it was introduced again today. 

But back to the jokes. I’m going to say this once. The Draft Is Not Funny. It’s not a quirky topic for you to make a tiktok about. It’s conscription. It’s a system that has always been biased, regularly calling POC, working class people and rural workers to serivce, and allowing the upper classes, the wealthy and those in positions of power to escape, claiming that they have bone spurs in their foot (no shade Donald). It’s not funny, and there’s no concrete proof that it’s going to be reintroduced.

 Also, a slight sub genre of jokes about the draft I’ve seen are people saying they would revert back to stereotypes if the draft was reintroduced. For example, young girls saying that they would rather simply become a housewife and a mother to avoid the draft, or gay people saying that they don’t think they should get rid of the clause in the draft that says homosexuals cannot be drafted, as it would help them avoid being drafted. It is horrendous that it is considered funny in our society to accept and welcome opression rather than fight against the draft, a biased and militarisitc system. Seriously, would go rather “know your purpose” as a glorified dishwasher, baby-maker and sex toy (in reference to a popular TikTok) than fight against the draft? It makes me sad that this is how my generation has been socialised.

My second problem is the least relevant, hence why I am only going to devote a small paragraph to it. We do not know if this war with Iran (which may happen) will be WW3. WW3 may have already happened. Are any of the conflicts that have happened acorss the world since 1945 going to be considered WW3 by historians in the future? We don’t know. WW1 and WW2 are terms that were not used during those wars. They are historical terms applied after the event, so we cannot say that this is going to be WW3, when we have no idea if a) it has already happened or not, or b) how historians will view this conflict that has arisen between America and Iran. Calling it WW3 only serves to dramatise the events ocurring.

A slightly more personal topic for my third problem. I have had severe anxiety surrounding “end of the world” type situations/jokes/news reports my whole life. I am also (un dx) autistic, meaning I struggle to understand when these things which may be jokes are jokes. Instead, I assume that they are peoples actual predictions of what is going to happen. As you can imagine, going on the interent this year has caused me to have a lot of anxiety and panic. With a WW3 joke on every meme account I follow, a refference to WW3 in every YouTube video I watch and every other TikTok I watch being about the draft, the interent is currently a minefield of anxietyr. I look at the wrong thing, and boom I’m having a panic attack. Now this is only my personal experience, Think of how other people with anxiety may be feeling at this time. Think of how other people with doomsday phobias may be feeling. Think of how other autistic people may be feeling. Now these may be cute quriky jokes to you and your neurotypical friends, but for many of us, they are seriously affeecting our mental health. But of course, most of you would disregard how those who are neurodivergent or with mental illnesses feel to get your TikTok about the end of the world trending.

Please consider us, and how these “jokes” are affecting us.

Fourthly (I know, I’ve got a lot of problems with this), I’m going to be talking about the astounding levels of priveledge that western teens have to be making these jokes online. The jokes are usually made by Americans, and I know it’s happening a lot in England too (as that’s where I live), but I don’t know about other western countries. A tweet from (@shraywavy) sums it up well:

“priveledged ass americans making this all ab them/ making jokes is completely absurd, how can yall belittle this situation when multiple brown ppl are about to be killed/displaced n the entire region is ab to be completely destroyed due to continuous imperialist agression”

Americans may find this funny. Americans may find WW3 jokes hilarious. Here’s the thing  - they need to examine their priveledge. They will be okay. Everyday Americans will be okay. Yes, people in the military will die. I think that is horrific, I think that anyone who is coerced by Republican propoganda into volunteering in this war that may happen is a victim, and I feel awful for anyone who loses a relative or friend in this war, if it happens. I will go on to talk about the treatment of American troops in this post. But the majority of US civilians will be fine.  Your country will not be invaded, or bombed. No one will destroy your cultural landmarks. Buildings around you won’t collapse and there won’t be fighting in the streets. Those things may very well happen to Iranian people. And you’re making a joke about it? It is not funny. The spilt blood of good people, people who did nothing wrong is not a joke. How much priveledge and ignorance does it take for you to think making a joke about this  situation when in reality it will not have that much of an impact on your life?

You may think I’m being overdramatic, linking memes to the deaths that may happen. But I’m not. If you make a WW3 joke. You are saying that this situation is a joke. That this situation is funny. Jokes are supposed to be funny. This situation may very well lead to death and destruction in Iran. And that’s funny to you? The majority of people making and liking WW3 jokes obviosuly do not endorse the confliict with Iran. They don’t want Iranian people to die. In fact,  the whole WW3 jokes movement has an anti-war undertone. But you need to think about the implications of the media that you create and consume.

Now, there has already been some backlash against these jokes online. I’m not the first one. Many people have come back at the backlash, saying that these jokes are a coping mechanism for the genuine fears they have about a war. As a big advocate for those with anxiety (and as a person with anxiety and with a lot of weird coping mechanisms), I don’t want to bash people’s coping mechanisms. I just want to analyse them.

Firstly, what is a coping mechanism? A coping mechanism is  an adaptation to environmental stress that is based on conscious or unconscious choice and that enhances control over behavior or gives psychological comfort, as defined by dictionary.com. What is the environmental stress here? The impending conflict with Iran. What is the choice you make to give yourself control or to physcologically comfort yourself? Making a joke. 

Now there is evidence both for and against the idea that humour is a good coping mechanism. There are plently of articles and pieces of research on Google Scholar about black humour as a coping mechanism that I would reccomend you check out.  Personally, I am of the belief that humour can be used a coping mechanism. It’s dicassosiation from the problem. The question is, what is the problem? You’re afraid of the conflict with Iran. Of what might happen. Now it is unlikely that any direct action will be taken against US domestic territories, so I don’t think fear of your everyday life being disrupted comes underneath this. *If it does, please tell me. This entire post is based on my assumptions and I want to be challenged if you feel differently to what I say. 

I personally find ignoring the problem the best coping mechanism in this situation. I will still be politically active about the fact that Trump alone seems to have declared war on Iran, but I need time-out from it to  cope. I want to know from the people that are using these jokes to cope specifically what they are afraid of. I  turned to Instagram for this, but if you want to tell me on here then that’d be helpful (I am aware that no-one is going to read this fucking huge post but still). An instagram acccount (@sapphic.in) reposted a tweet from (@uhhhhmad) which read:

“stop saying ur making memes about war as a “coping’ method every single one of you will be fine the people of iraq and iran will continue to suffer u people have nothing to be fucking coping for”

The comments underneath the instagram retweet of this post don’t really explain what people are afraid of (this post had a series of other posts on it so not all the comments are about this particular tweet). A few people refrenced being afraid of their boyfriend or brothers etc. (basically men they know elidgble for the draft)  being drafted. There are some comments which basically say “it’s a joke calm down liberal”, and if you need me to explain why “it’s just a joke” is a terrible justification for anything, tell me and I’ll explain. But back to the fear of relatives being drafted.

 There is no proof that the draft is coming back. In fact, the only reaso that people are afraid of the draft coming back IS BECAUSE OF THESE JOKES. They are the primary soure of media that all of us are consuming about the situation. They mainly refrence the draft - so everyone thinks the draft is coming back. Then larger news outlets pick up on the fact thatt the draft coming back is a hot topic - not politcially but in teen-created media, so they make media about it. They make it sound as real or as serious as they want - American news outlets have no obligation to tell the truth, and they have a motivation not to (they are businesses, so if they make drastic headlines about the draft people will read them and watch them and they will get more money). So suddenly because of these jokes about the draft coming back everyone thinks that there is a eerious threat of the draft coming back so they need the jokes about the draft coming back to cope?

This leads into my final big problem, but before I go onto that, I’d like to ask anyone who has a family memeber, relative, partner, friend of a friend etc. serving in the US military in the areas where this conflict is happenning (and where this war might happen), how do these jokes make you feel? Honestly, I want to know. I have no idea if they help you to cope or if they make you more afraid, as I have no relatives in the military so I don’t know how it feels.

My final big problem is that these jokes are the primary source of media that people are consuming about this situation. Does everyone read the news etc., making sure they know the latest on what’s going on? I know I don’t. I’m not commenting on the situation though. I’m commenting on the memes, and beleive me I’ve seen A LOT of them. So we rely on the memes etc. to be our informant. That could potetntially leave us well informed, but it doesn’t. Who’s making these memes? Is it journalists, politcial correspondents, military spokespeople, anyone really who works in the military or politics or who knows what’s happening? No, it’s not. It’s teens just like you and me who have no real clue beyond the headlines and the instagram posts what is happening. We’ve created this media hysteria. What do you look at more? The memes/jokes/tiktoks or news articles about it? How the hell are we supposed to stay reasonably informed and take anti-war action when the source of information we use is people making memes because they think they’re funny who have no real idea what’s going to happen next. Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but this is really distracting us from what’s really happening. What the US gvernment is actually doing. These jokes may be anti-war but they are helping those who are pro-war immensely.

The people who do serve in this war will not be positively affected. The American government doesn’t care about the troops. The people who will lose the person in their family who provides them with income in this war will not be cared for by the US. The people who get injured in this war will be victims of the poor veterans healthcare system. The people who get PSTD from this war will be mocked and ignored. Most pro-war people like Trump couldn’t give a flying fuck about the troops and the ordinairy people they’ll affeect. So please don’t make jokes about getting drafted. People who lost people to wars aren’t laughing. People who got drafted in Vietnam or Korea aren’t laughing. Serving in the millitary can have horrific consequences. It’s not funny to make a joke about being forced into that situation.

Finally, I’d like to refrence a tweet by (@eclipsecassette). It’s about the impact that this war may have if it happens. 

“this war will likely bring another wave of islamophobia and xenophobia against anyone visibly brown just like after 9/11 so we should probably worry about that more than getting drafted”

They’re right. We don’t know what this war will bring but know that it cannot bring good. It will bring more xenophobia disguised as nationalism. It will bring more violence and hate crimes. It will bring veterans left injured and in poverty. It will bring destruction to Iran. It will make our world a much worse place. That’s why I say no to war with Iran, and I say no to making a joke out of it.

However, I am just a white teenager living in Britain who’s never experienced war, never known anyone who’s experienced war. Please tell me if I’ve said anything factually incorrect or if you disagree with anything I’ve said. I want to be as well informed on this topic as I can. Also, if I used your tweet in here and you want me to take it out I will. If you’ve got to this point, thank you so much for reading this.

[obrennon]

Basic Information

Full Name: Lance Grayson O'Brennon

Name: Lance 

Alias / Nickname: Irishman, Wolf.

Age: Looks 37 | Actually 700

Date of Birth: February 24th

Species: Werewolf

Hometown: Wexford, Ireland (Southern Ireland)

Current Location: Thorn Haven

Nationality: Irish

Gender: Male

Pronouns: He/Him

Orientation: Pansexual & Polyamorous

Religion: Agnostic

Occupation: Fighter | Bodyguard

Living Arrangements: Where ever Lance does stay he usually has minimal things, enough to make it seem lived in but nothing that would hold any personal touches to it.

Language(s) Spoken: Gaelic, English, Russian, some Italian& Latin, enough French.

Accent: Lance has a thick Irish accent which only gets thicker the more he's either drunk or angry, but he doesn’t try to hide, however, if absolutely necessary and or if he’s feeling like it, Lance can do a rather decent American accent (&& it’s not southern!)

Physical Appearance

Face Claim: Cam Gigandet

Hair Color: Dirty Blonde

Eye Color: Blue 

Height: 6'2

Weight: 155

Build: toned, athletic, muscular

Tattoos: TBD

Piercings: N/A

Clothing Style: earthy & blue colors,  basic and plain style. Jeans, t'shirt and hoodies/jackets. Unless a uniform is needed (i.e. job or fancy event).

Usual Expression: tries to maintain a friendly & welcoming expression, 

Distinguishing Characteristics: has a bite scar on his neck & some medium, claw like scars on his back. a small birthmark on his bottom lip, a small white line. various scars all over his torso, old bullet & knife wounds from before he was a wolf.

Health

Physical Ailments: none anymore

Neurological Conditions: N/A

Allergies: bee stings. which are no longer an issue

Sleeping Habits: Lance finds sleep when he can, but it is very infrequent and only for at least an hour or two. 

Eating Habits: he loves food, always has, Lance can eat at any given moment. 

Exercise Habits: Lance doesn’t need a lot to keep himself in shape, he loves to walk & run, but can also be found boxing & or fighting. 

Emotional Stability: Lance has always been an emotional and passionate person, he gets invested far too quickly & has a problem with trying to be a protector for those who cannot protect themselves. 

Sociability: Lance can be a social butterfly, all smiles & jokes

Body Temperature: Lance has a higher temperature from humans, it’s rather noticeable & sometimes it can be thought he is ill as it is far warmer than any normal temperature.

Addictions: alcohol, fighting

Drug Use: only in an effort to subdue the pain & ache within him, drowning out his demons & the memories that haunt him. but it’s nothing regular & certainly not his choice of self-medication.

Alcohol Use: what day is it? Lance could go for a shot or a few beers, that’s for sure.

Personality

Label: The Warrior / The Challenger

Positive Traits: compassionate, reliable, protective, sincere, passionate, romantic

Negative Traits: self-destructive, aggressive, hot-headed, needy, 

Goals/Desires: other than wasting away to nothing? getting into a good fight is probably his other goal, maybe making a name for himself in The Pit.

Fears: Lance has always been afraid of losing people & yet it is something that happens to him constantly, 

Hobbies: drinking, fighting, billiards, going to concerts / music, enjoys dancing w/ pretty people, karaoke if the urge hits him.

Habits: Lance runs his hand through his hair when he’s anxious or nervous or gets himself into an awkward situation, he also taps chews at his cheek when something is bothering him. 

Favorites

Weather: rain, Lance has always loved the rain. he’s also particularly fond of snow

Color: black & blue

Music: celtic, rock, some hip-hop

Movies: action, thrillers, murder / mystery

Sport: rugby

Beverage: beer, whisky, scotch, coffee.

Food: see food, literally any food will do, are you gonna eat that? no? okay, Lance will.

Animal: wolf

Family

Father: Sheamus O’Brennon (deceased) 

Mother: Caoimhe O’Brennon (deceased)

Sibling(s): Younger sister, Joan O’Brennon (deceased)

Children: none

Family’s Financial Status: poor

Biography

(trigger warnings for suicide (mentioned), sexual, verbal & physical abuse, alcoholism, death, murder, fatal illness)

Lance was very much a mama’s boy growing up, the earliest memory that Lance has of his mother was that she used to sing and read to him, folklore and songs of Ireland; before his sister was born Caoimhe used to take her son to her family's beach house in Wexford where Lance was actually born. His more fond memories of his childhood were spent at that beach house and even after his mother got sick shortly after his little sister was born they continued to go to the beach and it was something he cherished. When his mother became worse and the fights that she had protected her son from got worse, Lance found himself stepping between his father and his mother to stop the blows he would give her.

Distraught his mother made him promise to protect his little sister, no matter what, and even if anything happened to her, only shortly after that Lance’s mother died. The children were devastated and thus was the end of their happy days on the beach. Joan was Lance’s world after his mother died and he did everything to protect her, from fighting bullies in school to keeping his father preoccupied with beating him instead of Joan. They were very close and spent as much time together as possible, she was the one person in his life that truly understood what he did and why he did it; even though she didn’t like that their father beat Lance, Joan understood, even as a young child, that all her older brother was doing was protecting her to the best of his abilities.

One of the things that Lance fondly remembers about his sister is how she used to make little trinkets and jewelry out of the things she found on the street or around the house, thus why he has a pendent of hers that she made for him. It wasn’t until a fifteen year old Lance came home from school to find his father assaulting his sister did he actually fail at keeping her safe.That day still haunts the Irishman, the memories still as fresh as if they had just happened yesterday. The relationship Lance held with his father was little to nothing, he hated the man for not only what he had done to his mother but especially for what he found the man doing to his sister that day. Inevitably it ended badly for Lance and even worse for his father; the blood of the drunkard will never be a regret the Irishman holds, taking that bastard's life was the most assured thing he ever could have done.

The events that followed the incident were not the best either. Traumatized by the whole thing to begin with the siblings were separated and there was no way Lance could have gotten to Joan sooner. But when he did his absolute worst nightmare had come true, unable to handle the pain of what her father did and losing her brother a young Joan took her own life, leaving Lance on his own. When Lance was nineteen he joined the military and never looked back, he excelled through the ranks of the military quicker than anyone had ever thought and soon he was chosen for a special task force.

Still he worked harder than anyone else in the program and soon he was being sent on his own operations only a few years into his training, with experience came the bigger missions and soon he was a deadly assassin. Then everything changed when a great war began and Lance was sent into the forces against others just like him. However, that wasn’t all that changed during the war, there, in the dead of night the Irishman met a creature that was unlike anything he had ever known to be real, the great wolf attacked Lance. As if it wasn’t difficult enough for the man to live with his haunted memories he was destined to live with his mistakes as a creature of the night, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

When Lance woke up on the battlefield he wasn’t sure what had happened, if everything that had happened was a dream or not, but the blood that stained his clothes and the pain that was throbbing in his head made it more of a reality. The eerie silence of the field surrounding him, the bodies that still were laying where they had fallen was almost too much for his confused mind to process. But he got up and dragged himself back to his troop, what was left of it anyways.

His wounds were nursed and bandaged and eventually healed quicker than what was expected. The attack of a crazed creature was long from his mind by the full moon, of course, that did not last long as the change took over his body and when he woke from that nightmare there were more horrors than he had seen in all his days in this horrendous war. His squadron, his comrades in arms, his family was dead and from the amount of blood that coated his body, Lance had no doubt he was the horror that had caused this tragedy. He had no other choice but to go AWOL. Lance had become the monster of legends, of myths and stories.

The Irishman shipped himself off to the Americas, doing so with great difficulty due to his monthly changes and his want to keep from harming people, but it didn’t always work out to despite his best efforts. People were hurt along the way, many more were killed as he tried to teach himself how to harness the beast within him, this was not something so easily attained. This monster was not as easily conquered as learning to use a weapon or to fight was, his new situation was something he’d never be able to accomplish what he wanted and that was to keep from hurting more people.

There was a point where he wanted to die, wanted to stop the pain he was causing by his inability to control anything. In the cusp of complete despair, however, there was hope. An older beast, one who had been turned many decades before him and was soon to find their own place of peace found Lance, it was not of his doing but he clung to the hope he was given. It was as if his mother, the kindest soul he had ever known, was reaching out to him in the form of another to bring him solidarity and control. It took a long while, the two traveled together all over the States before they found a spot deep in the woods of Colorado, where no one but the wild animals would be hunted by the beast until the young one was able to focus his mind.

Old age soon took the other wolf and with him a part of Lance, but not before he had been taught key skills that would help Lance on his journey through the outside world, not only with the politics that were always in play, but also with how people would handle him with the knowledge that he was a beast which caused disaster if not controlled. When he felt the moment was right, Lance ventured out of the woods, very much the image of a mountain man in the early 1930′s just in time to get a leg in some kind of society, keeping to himself before the next war began.

So it continued like this, he would join the military under whatever alias he came up with before going MIA or being pronounced dead and would find himself back in the Americas, it was safer there– for his memories, anyways, it was away from the place he called home. Decades passed and Lance finally found the world had eased on its blood-lust for war, but of course that couldn’t last long. There were some supernaturals that lived among the humans, even married them, an effort to keep the peace between their kinds. In his distrust and doubt, Lance kept to himself, keeping everything to himself, running into trouble whenever his memories needed drowning and he got a few drinks in him.

Eventually he found work in the bodyguard and security detail business, a family of witches, they understood his needs and it was a comfort to have an employer that could excuse Lance once a month for the full moon. He was assigned to his employers daughter, meant to protect and keep her out of trouble, something he had to shape up in his own life, but he was diligent and in his protection the Irishman fell for the beautiful blonde witch he was protecting. That was until his protection wasn’t enough and he wasn’t there to save her, the scene Lance found made him believe she was dead, still, without a body he couldn’t be sure, but it didn’t stop the wolf from mourning and trekking across the land to the worst place to be, which was good enough a place for him to drown his sorrows and try to rid himself of her. Something he found to be impossible, even as he joined the ruffians within Thorn Haven.

[my-dear-hammy]

Heads or Tails: Jamilton/Hamlaf

Masterpost

Summary:

1700-1800's Thomas Jefferson and The Marquis de Lafayette are the same person. Always have been. He's been doing a pretty great job at juggling two lives, that is, until he met Alexander Hamilton. Then everything went down hill

AN

Welcome to my latest fic! In this universe, Lafayette and Jefferson are not two different people but are actually the same person and it's all very complicated but don't worry about it.

----

Warnings are posted at the end of the fic to prevent spoilers. If you need them for anything, be sure to check them because I have a tendency to turn dark at the flip of a coin.

----

Heads or Tail

Chapter One:

The Marquis de La Fayette

----

He felt like an entirely new person. His boot covered feet hit the ground of South Carolina and he could suddenly breathe again. Air filled his lungs for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. He sucked in a large breath, taking in the scents of this new land.

The Marquis de Lafayette had just come from France to serve in the American Revolution, the year was 1777.

That's who he was and that's who'd he be for the rest of his life. Thomas Jefferson didn't exist anymore. It was better this way.

***

"Marquis!" a small figure shouted, running toward him, a bunch of papers flying from his arms as he waved.

Lafayette laughed, "Monsieur Hamilton!" he greeted, his French accent thick, "Comment allez-vous (How are you doing)?" Lafayette hadn't been in the army long and he was still struggling to remember to speak English, everyone thought it was because he didn't know English that well but in reality, he knew it very well. He was just used to France, that's all. But it was one reason he was glad for Hamilton's presence, he spoke fluent French so he never had to worry about being understood when he was around and when he slipped up and spoke French around others, Hamilton automatically stepped in as translator.

"Pas mal(Not bad)," Hamilton answered, coming to a stop in front of Lafayette.

"De quoi avez-vous besoin(What do you need)?" Lafayette asked kindly.

"I've got a letter for from General Washington. Just the layout of the next battle. Nothing major really, you're not in it, like always," Hamilton informed, digging through the parchment in his arms and pulling out a thick envelope for Lafayette and handing it to him.

Lafayette sighed. Not involved. Just like always. The General kept saying the moment would come when he could prove himself but one had yet to arrive. No one knew his skill so no one really knew what to do with him.

"Is there a problem?" Hamilton asked.

"Je suis venu servir (I came to serve), not sit by and watch. I want to fight for this country, its people. How can I do that if I'm never on the field?"

Hamilton smiled understandingly and slapped him on the shoulder, "You're time will come. At least you're not an over glorified secretary."

"At least you do something."

Hamilton chuckled, "Yeah, fight with Congress all night. Trust me, Marquis, you'll get your chance. Look over the papers I gave you, I've got to deliver the rest of these," Hamilton said, waving goodbye and scooping up all the papers he dropped as he walked away as if he'd done it a million times.

***

Lafayette was standing next to Washington when it happened. The news that their lines were collapsing and if they fell back into a disorderly retreat, the British would have them surrounded and capture the entire Continental Army, ending the war.

Lafayette turned to Washington, "Sir, please, allow me to fight! It's what I came here to do and someone doesn't do something we're going to lose this war! Allow me to assist Sullivan in defending against Cornwallis"

Washington was in no mood to argue, he had enough on his mind, so he agreed. Two seconds later, Lafayette was galloping off on his horse, followed by a couple of his squires, Gimat and La Colombe, to his first battle. This was it. By the time they arrived, the enemy had already crossed the ford. Sullivan's troops had barely enough time to form a line in front of a thin wood. The Hessians advanced, rested their rifles on a fence, aimed and sent off a cloud of fire to cover the advancing British troops. Lord Cornwallis's troops advanced in perfect order across the field, his first line firing cannons and muskets; the Americans fired a murderous barrage of musket fire, but the entire right and left side buckled; the generals and officers fell towards the center line, where Lafayette and Lord Stirling were fighting alongside 800 men, brilliantly commanded by General Conway.

By sheering off two wings, the British troops could concentrate all their fire on the center of the line, although their advance across an open field cost them many men.

The smoke hung heavy on the field as gunshots sounded like popcorn, flashes barely seen. A cannon ball whizzed by and exploded in their ranks, sending men flying as they screamed. Lafayette refused to yield.

But that didn't mean the others weren't willing to.

The blistering fire and inexorable British advance sent the American soldiers fleeing in panic. No. If they retreated now and in such disorder, Cornwallis would easily sweep through and wipe out the entire army in one go. He was not willing to let this cause die. He'd rather die a million deaths than let that happen. He had to try and halt the retreat. Lafayette reared his horse into the air, wheeled to the right, to the left, galloping back and forth to block the fleeing troops. "Stand men! Fight! Do not retreat like cowards!"

But it wasn't working.

He leaped off his mount and starting grabbing at men's shoulders and arms, forcing them to turn around, "I order you to turn about, stand and fight!" he yelled over the noise. A major general in full uniform; a madman refusing to face defeat. At six feet two inches, he was taller than any other man there, a knight in battle, commanding his men to hold against the enemy.

Startled by a major general's presence among them in battle, like a regular, and by his loud bellows, the soldiers halted their retreat, rallied around him, and took the enemy charge. Stirling formed his brigade on a slight rise behind Lafayette and gave the French knight covering fire, but the sheer number of British troops finally overwhelmed them. With his troop falling dead or wounded about him, Lafayette ordered them to fall back beside Sullivan's and Stirling's men, and, together, they stood their ground until the British were within twenty yards and forced them to flee to the safety of the woods behind.

Lafayette limped along with the fleeing men, the British just behind him. He knew that they wouldn't follow quickly, the woods would slow them down. The images of battle burned into his memory, the sight of dead and dying men, boys, many younger than he was and he was barely twenty. They'd never live full lives. They'd picked up a gun for the cause and died with one in their hands, defending it to their last breath.

That's how Lafayette was going to die. Gloriously in battle. A hero.

He limped over countless bodies and disappeared into the trees. His squire, Gimat, followed.

"Sir!" he shouted, "There's blood seeping from your boot! You're injured!"

Yeah, and it hurt like a motherfucker. A musket ball had passed through the calf of his left leg while he had been rallying the troops but the fight had to go on. The reality of war was finally starting to seep in. He tried to block the sound of the boys who laid dying behind him, calling for help, for God, for their mothers, or just sobbing.

Lafayette grit his teeth. "I'm fine."

"No, you're not." Gimat and La Colombe lifted him onto his horse and they joined the eastward retreat toward Chester. Aware of the disaster that had just happened, General Nathanael Greene moved from Chadd's Ford to cover their retreat, opening his lines to the waves of bewildered militiamen, mostly boys, and woodsmen, escape the murderous Redcoat fire. The was confusion, so Lafayette tried to use it to his advantage to try and rejoin Washington. His head felt dizzy and the world about him started to spin, the searing pain in his leg seemed to steadily get worse.

He pulled his horse to a stop and his squires helped him down, leaned him against a tree and set about bandaging his leg. A few minutes later, he could hear the noise of British men trampling through the forest after them. As soon as he was able, he leaped back onto his horse and the three of them took off, barely avoiding capture. His heart was racing and his head was reeling and his leg was still in searing pain.

The men were still disorderly. They may be retreating but the army still required order. He spurred his horse forward and blocked the advancement of the troops and ordered them to reform their lines before he allowed them to continue. Finally, Washington and the other generals arrived to relieve him.

"Général Washington," Lafayette bowed from his horse, "Forgive me if I do not dismount. I find myself unable."

"Sir, he took a ball to the leg," Gimat informed.

"Someone get me a surgeon for the Major General!" Washington commanded sternly. He was rather fond of Lafayette, the boy reminded him of himself when he was young. "Captain," Washington addressed another young man around Lafayette's own age, "Help him down and over to Birmingham Church. I want him well taken care of."

"Yes sir," the Captain responded and did as he asked.

Lafayette would have asked his name instantly, but he was too preoccupied trying to stay on his feet as they made their way over to the church. Once he was situated on a makeshift litter, he finally got the breath to do so while the Captain tended to his needs.

"Comment vous-appelez vous(What's your name)?" Lafayette asked, wincing in pain.The Captain looked up at him and he realized he spoke in French again. "Sacrebleu. j'ai parlé en français à nouveau(Damn it. I spoke in Frech again)," he muttered. Where was Hamilton when he needed him?

The Captain chuckled, "Don't let the General hear that language, he wouldn't approve," the Captain said. Good to know, Lafayette tucked that information away for later. "I'm Captain James Monroe, I serve as Stirling's aide, and yes, I can speak French. Would you prefer to converse in French instead?"

"Non, non. I need to get used to Anglais again. The best way to do that is to speak Anglais. I apologize for my language."

Monroe laughed, "Just keep it in French and you should be fine for the most part."

"Excuse my French, then," Lafayette laughed. He had a strange feeling that was going to become a saying.

----

Warnings: Blood, battle, gunfire, war, language

[toasty-coconut]

Well, after a very long two weeks I am finally ready to give you all an update post on my life and my family’s current situation.

For those of you who are unaware, on June 12th, 2017, my 15-year-old cousin, Reid, unexpectedly lost his life while on a Boy Scout hiking trip. I don’t want to get too far into the details of the situation for personal reasons, but he suffered heat stroke a few hours into the trip up the mountain and collapsed. Paramedics were unable to reach him in time with a chopper due to electrical storms on the mountain. When the EMT (a truly wonderful woman) finally reached him by horseback, she and the other scouts who he was with performed CPR on him for an hour and a half before he passed.

My family received the news of his passing a few hours later, and it broke each and every one of us. My cousin was an amazingly wonderful boy with so much love in his heart. He hated no one, and accepted everyone of all races, sexual orientations, gender identities, and personalities. He loved music and being a part of the Boy Scouts. The trip he was on was going to be his final merit badge that he needed in order to become an Eagle Scout. He performed in the men’s choir and show choir at his school and loved every second of it. He was an immensely talented and kind-hearted boy with so much to offer to the world. Losing him took a toll on every single one of us, in part because he was so young, but more so because of what an amazing and loving person he was. None of us could understand why it had to be him (and we still can’t).

22 members of my family (including myself) flew out to Texas last Sunday in order to be with my aunt, uncle, and cousin (his older sister) for Reid’s wake and funeral. Going out there and seeing the total anguish that my aunt and uncle were feeling, along with seeing my cousin’s body at the wake and saying goodbye to him at his funeral, were probably the hardest things I have ever needed to do in my life. Things like this should never happen—especially not to a child who did not want to die and who still had so much to offer to the world. That is what has been hardest for all us of to wrap our heads around. But being surrounded by my family gave me strength through that very difficult time. We were all able to cry together and lean on each other when we needed it. My family was already very close-knit to begin with (I have 14 cousins on my mother’s side and we are all relatively close in age—we basically grew up together), but through this we’ve ultimately all grown even closer, I think.

Reid’s wake and funeral were both very lovely memorial of his life—as hard as they were to be a part of. The Boy Scouts did a wonderful tribute to him at both services, and Somewhere Over the Rainbow was sung at his funeral, as it was his favorite song. To boot, everyone wore orange since it was his favorite color. His life may have been short, but it was clear how many people he impacted in that time. The church and funeral home were packed with friends and family, all of whom were shedding tears for him. His life may be over now, but he will certainly never be forgotten.

From all of this, I think the most important thing that I’ve taken away is to cherish every moment that you have with the people you love, because you can lose them at any second. I wish I had gotten to know Reid better. I wish he and I had watched The Lion King together like he wanted to while he was here for Thanksgiving. I wish I had talked to him more on the phone whenever my aunt and uncle called my house. I wish I had talked to him more about Pokemon since I know that was one of our shared interests. These are all things that I’ll never be able to get back. Even if I know that Reid is still with me in spirit, it’s still difficult to wrap my head around the fact that I’ll never see him again in this life. I’ll never get to see his graduation pictures or enjoy his funny personality at Thanksgiving or see him at a family wedding. So just cherish all of those small moments that you have with the people you care about—because it doesn’t matter how old or healthy they are, they can still disappear from your life in a second.

To go with that, I’m also learning not to sweat the small stuff so much and let petty arguments and dumb things get in the way of relationships. My aunt, uncle, and I have always had some level of tension between us as they are fairly conservative and I am fairly liberal. But at the end of the day I was hugging them both in tears and telling them how much I loved them. I wish this had never happened to them. Never again do I want to have a petty Facebook fight with them or anyone else for that matter. Don’t waste time being pointlessly angry when you can be loving someone instead. Reid always hated hate, so I want to live by his example and have a bigger heart and let go of the things that bother me. It’s what he would have wanted.

With all of that being said, I would also like to mention that through this all my friends have been so amazingly supportive of me. Carly, Dimitri, Cait, and Audrey (I apologize for not using their Tumblr names in this post, but this post is so personal to me that I want to address them personally) came to visit Kelly and I during the time that this happened. Actually, I received the news that Reid had passed only an hour after we picked up Carly from the airport. I was supposed to be spending ten days with them, but unfortunately my time with them was cut short since I needed to go to Texas for almost five of those days. They were very understanding of me and let me talk or cry or get angry or depressed. They distracted me when I needed it and made me laugh when I needed it. Carly even went as far as to rebook tickets that we had purchased to go and see the musical Wicked in Boston, covering all the charges herself. And Audrey purchased me some really wonderful Love Live gifts even though she definitely did not need to. There’s so much that my friends did for me that I can’t even begin to explain it all.

I knew it before, but all of this made me realize that I truly have the greatest friends in the entire world. I know I complain about Tumblr a lot, but if it hadn’t been for this website than I would have never met any of them. I’m grateful for that, because they’ve become such a huge and essential part of my life now. In just two weeks they’ve done more for me than most people ever have. Someday I really want to pay it forward and do the same for all of them. I know you guys are probably reading this now, so seriously, thank you. You all saved me in a time where I needed it more than ever. I thought it was just bad timing that Reid passing happened right as you were all visiting, but maybe it was meant to happen that way because of how incredible you all were for me and my family. I promise you all from here on out I’m going to be the best friend I can be for you all. I love you all so, so much.

As for where I’m going from here, well, I have a long road ahead of me. Reid’s death has taken an enormous toll on me emotionally—so much so that I saw my psychiatrist again for the first time in years. I’ve needed to discuss my problems with depression and anxiety for a long time, and now I’m finally taking the steps to do that. I’m on the medications that I need to be on in order to assure that I start to walk down the road of recovery, but I know that it’s going to be a long one. But I’m hoping that the help I’m getting, combined with the support of my friends and family, will guide me into living a better and happier life. I want to be able to write more, I want to have fun on this blog again, I want to work on my characters again, I want to talk to my friends more. All of these things are things that will come with my depression getting more manageable, I hope. So please keep me in your thoughts and bear with me as I face this new path ahead.

That being said, I’m actually going to be leaving with Kelly to go to LA on Tuesday morning in order to visit our friend Emily. We’re going to be going to Anime Expo and seeing Aqours in concert together, along with doing some sight-seeing and general hanging out. I’ve never been to the American west coast before, so I’m really excited for it. This is going to be a much needed vacation after a very long two weeks (and an even longer six months if you include other things that have been happening in my life that have contributed to this final mental breakdown). Please pray for our safe travels and a safe trip.

All of that pretty much concludes this very long post. I’m sure I’m forgetting things, but I just wanted to get this all out there to give you an update on my life. I’m sorry for being so absent lately—a large factor of it has been my depression. But I’m serious when I say this time that I want to start using this blog more and interacting with all of you again. I miss Tumblr as a creative platform, because it really is a wonderful one. I’ve mentioned it before, but I am fairly social on Twitter. If any of you wish to interact with me, I suggest following me there as well.

Please continue to keep my family in your thoughts and prayers as we struggle to cope with the loss of a very precious family member. I’ve also mentioned this before, but if you still wish to donate to Reid’s memorial fund, the link is here. All proceeds will benefit Reid’s Boy Scout troop 336 and the Voices of Central Show Choir. Reid loved both of these activities very much, and there are many children who would love to participate in them, but do not have the money to do so. The money earned here will allow for them to do that. It’s what Reid would have wanted, as he was such a giving boy. If you wish to learn more about Reid’s story, please consider viewing the wonderful story done on him by NBC Dallas Fort Worth. It captures who Reid was beautifully, and I wish for more people to know about what an amazing person he was.

As a final note, always remember: Be safe, don’t sweat the small things, and tell the ones you care about that you love them.

[bludlight]

The other night I had a really, really wild scifi dream. This is long as fuck so I do not blame you for not reading!

Prior knowledge (what I’ve gathered about the backstory / what was not in my dream but was obvious upon my waking up):

The setting was a small American town that was pretty much functioning as a secret military base. The story focused on a teenage boy named June, and his three friends Kurt, Cal, and Ashley. (For the majority of the actual dream, I am June. So I’ll refer to him in the second or third person until the second part of this post.)

June and the two other boys stumble upon some sort of XXXXX while exploring the town’s surrounding forest area and are exposed to military technology which grants them each the ability of foresight. This prophetic power manifests in the ability for the boys to see ghostly white lights overlaying the environment in areas where significant activity relating to the mysteries of the town are going to happen. These lights (reminiscent in aesthetic to the game Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture) help guide the group through the plot to an understanding of the experiments and murders that would be inevitable. They are also given enough prophetic knowledge of the situation to narrow down their actions into, essentially, a single choice. As an example, June may be walking down the street with Kurt and they see glowing white footsteps that no one else can see. The apparition of these footsteps inherently means to the boys that it has something to do with the secrets they are trying to uncover. Upon pursuing the light (and following the footsteps) the boys will be mysteriously/psychically? given a choice- for example-- to Follow The Gray Man or to Knock on the Restaurant Door. Depending on how the situation goes, they make the choice they think is the best one.

(I think this in particular was my brain blurring the line between watching a movie and playing a video game, giving me some semblance of interaction while still working within a much greater plot. So think of it as a story-heavy video game where you mostly wander and then every once in a while are given a choice by the game mechanics of how to react. Except, interestingly, the characters are self aware enough to ‘see the choices on the screen and know they have to choose one’, if you will.)

The catch, I’m assuming, was this: The boys didn’t know how long they would have to wait for those ghostly footsteps to become, you know, real ones. My brain asked the question: Are these boys going to wait 10 minutes, an hour? before the Significant Thing happens? How far in the future are they seeing, exactly? How the hell does that work? To which, my brain came up with this detail: Ashley.

(It would make a lot more sense for the lights to just show up momentarily before activity, but it would take away from the story in ways I can barely explain.)

After at least gathering that they have acquired powers that are obviously tied to strange things happening in the town (people have started to go missing, etc.) June, Kurt, and Cal confide in their friend Ashley and lead her to where they were exposed to these abilities. There they find only two things: the Device and the Switch (thanks brain). Whatever wild thing gave them powers is gone, but these pieces of technology are worthwhile. The Device is a set of goggles that Ashley can wear to see the lights that the boys can already see. And the Switch is a literal switch that somehow pushes the boys into the future, just a few minutes before the Significant Thing is supposed to happen. 

So if Ashley were with June and Kurt when they saw the footsteps, instead of waiting an undetermined amount of time, she would use the Switch to cross them over to the future immediately. They would disappear from beside her upon the Switch being activated, because although they would technically still be on that sidewalk, they would be there in the future. (She could apparently still see them while using the Device, but not without it.)

Does that make any sense? Maybe? Partially? Abstractly? Good. Now here’s

What actually happened in my dream:

I immediately got the sense that this was the end. Or at least, very near it. Last episode vibes. Showdown feelings. I was June, first person. And it was terrifying.

We were in some sort of old school bus yard with huge rusted pieces of metal bumpers and tires and overgrown open-air garages and overhangs. Now that I’ve set the scene, below is what I actually woke up and wrote at 4:30 in the morning:

That’s when we came upon it. Faint white smears of white light, glowing in front of us. A lot of smears. I knew immediately that it was all blood. It was in pools in front of us, and in a winding trail, and splashed across chunks of scrap metal.

No doubt it was ours.

And this was where we would cross over. I could feel it in my gut. This is where we would finally come face to face with the beast.

My heart pounded in my chest. I knew this would be the moment. The last time we crossed over, because the light showed the activity to come, and it was too much light. I felt sick because I knew. I knew that there would be death.

But we had to do it. I had to do it. I still felt so unready though. We had come this far, had solved this much, and we couldn’t turn back now. But I was still completely terrified. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to go home. I didn’t want this to happen.

And there was only one more Choice to make: blindly. This one made no sense to me like the other ones did. I didn’t understand this Choice. I didn’t know what it meant. But the voice inside of me gave it to me anyway, and it would demand an answer regardless:

Bushes or dirt?

That was it. Past Choices had made sense, had been much more sophisticated. This one was cruel in its brevity and ambiguity. I had no idea what it meant.

But we had to go, and go we did. Ashley operated the Switch and we crossed over. She was suddenly gone, like all the other times, disappeared to the past- or were we disappeared to the future?

The air was still and everything was quiet and I started to talk to Kurt and Cal about what we should do. But after barely two sentences were spoken in this terrifying Future, now so quickly and horrifyingly becoming the present without means of stopping, I heard rapid pattering footsteps approaching us. We all whipped our heads around to look and we all felt the Choice at the same time, but it was only mine to make and we all knew, and Cal screamed:

“June, choose! Bushes or dirt!”

It came for us. It looked like a velociraptor, broken at the joints and tilting from side to side as it ran at full speed.

“Bushes!”

It drove into Cal and clamped its huge, pointed teeth around his arm and ripped it away from his body. Blood spurted from my best friend’s socket. I was right next to Cal and the thing ran passed me, spinning me around, and bit at the skin of my arm, my back, my hip, tearing off seemingly huge chunks of flesh with no effort whatsoever. (I could feel this very vividly in my dream. Being ripped at. Definitely on my list of Top 5 Most Painful Dreams.) It grabbed me by the waist, pulled its head back, and launched me away from it, where I landed in a crowd of tall shrubbery. Now out of sight, the thing turned its attention to finishing the job of killing my friends.

Lying there and still in icy shock, I realized what the decision had meant. I had been given, and had made, the choice to be the one who lived. I had made the choice that saved my life, and Kurt and Cal would die from it.

Through the pain and the sound of screams, I found no time to process this grief. A voice inside of me that was only mine now told me what to do:

RUN.

---

I woke up at suuuum point after this I can’t really remember, but basically knew that I/June was going to run back to the area where I/he found the military technology and there was going to be some sort of story conclusion revealing cool/scary plots of inter-dimensional travel and time travel Gone Horribly Wrong- hence the fucking raptor monster that literally annihilated two innocent children we had (presumably) spent the whole adventure bonding with.

I feel like a lot of things could happen after that point; there are so many missing details to this story, so many plot holes it looks like someone took a shotgun to it. But I’ll keep them to myself because if I think about this dream too much I start to completely zone out lol.

Did I mention this dream happened only a few nights after I dreamt about a post-climate disaster world that humans could only explore via anatomically correct human-shaped robots that are 600 times the size of the person operating it? And that the main character was named Halifax Girl and was part of a troop of operators that would essentially be sent out to discover what the rest of the world now looked like so they could create a new world map?

[awesometheauthor]

Revisiting Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon’s Informaciones

Copyright 2016, All Rights Reserved, National And International

John J. Browne y Ayes, Author.

“Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me.

Be still they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of thousands.”

Linda Hogan. Native American Writer.

I’ve decided to go back to the document, “Informaciones: Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon” AGI/Mexico, 203, N.19 because I have been seeing the same old data concerning the undocumented consort of Juan Ponce de Leon being listed again online. History, especially erroneous theory concerning Juan Ponce de Leon is still being disseminated to our children by stalwart essayists and historians. I guess old things are very hard to let go of by some people. People have been using Fuson’s erroneous work in their essays. Fuson writes that “Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon was Juan Ponce de Leon’s cousin.” Then other authors, Robert Greenberger, followed suit copying the error and publishing it in their books. These authors also cited Leonor as being the “consort” of Juan Ponce de Leon.

In any case, Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon’s Informaciones is a document that was discovered in the archives years ago by me and Richard Troche when I had been researching and collecting data for my book. I couldn’t include a lot of information derived from that document because my publisher had set a limitation on how many pages my book could have. Five hundred and sixty-eight pages were all my publisher’s printer could handle at the time so I had to drastically edit Informaciones down to who were the parents of Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon.

After a lot of thought on the matter, I’ve decided to release and share more data that seems to have been ignored by people who have written about it, especially those parts of the document that confirm many times over who the legitimate wife and father were of Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon and his siblings. You don’t have to be a DNA expert to prove a specific point, just a good paleographer. And, by the way, the undocumented Leonor, “the daughter of an innkeeper” is not in my family tree. Dona Beatriz de Luna is the legitimate wife and mother of all of Juan Ponce de Leon’s children. I am not going to pull back here or be kind because if you insist on keeping undocumented Leonor in your family tree, you forfeit your claim of being a documented descendant of Juan Ponce de Leon, el Viejo.

Archivo General de Indias.

ES.41091.AGI/1.16403.13.203//Mexico,203,N.19

Informaciones:

Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon

Dated 1532

On page number 0000SWYF Yten y Saben que Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon es hijo legitimo de Don Juan Ponce de Leon y de Dona Beatriz de Luna.

Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon’s document begins in the abad of Tenochititlan, Mexico. The document is dated 1532. Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon gives testimony on his “probanzas.” He talks extensively about his “hechos” in la Isla de Espanola de Santo Domingo and Isla de San Juan de Borinquen as well as his adventures in Mexico during the conquest.

He was twenty-seven years of age when he left the kingdom of Castilla and arrived at la Isla Espanola de Santo Domingo during the year of 1505. After his father’s work was done there, they left for Isla de San Juan. History records that the cleric de Ovando sent a letter to the king full of praise for Juan Ponce’s work. The king was impressed and sent a cedula that set Ponce’s work to begin in Isla de San Juan de Borinquen.

The Armada left Isla Espanola to populate the island of San Juan. The captain of the armada was Captain Juan Ponce de Leon el Viejo. In the document, Juan Gonzalez described the large bay that was discovered by him. That bay was large enough to accommodate the entrance of the armada therein and to facilitate landfall of the soldiers.

That bay today sits below San Juan proper.

Juan Gonzalez translated for his father whenever they had any interactions with Indians. Juan Gonzalez never explained in the document how he had become fluent in the language of the Taino. One can theorize that he had studied the language from one of the Taino Indians that Columbus had brought to Spain to show off to the king.

What his compatriots didn’t know was that he was also employed by the king to be his eyes and ears in the Caribbean and Mexico. He was a spy sending back detailed reports and information about the going on within the body politic of those places. One can assume that Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon also sent reports pertaining to the maltreatment and abuse of the Taino at the hands of Spanish settlers. The king probably knew of this well before the cleric de las Casas began sending off his lengthy complaints to the king.

Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon goes on to talk about how Agueybana began the war of revolt in Isla de San Juan. He relates that a lot of good Christians were killed during that revolt including Cristobal de Sotomayor. He went on talking how he and his father went off to protect the settlers of San German, the place his father had founded during 1510. Juan Ponce de Leon set up a foundry there to process gold. They had a brief but fierce battle with the Indians who retreated into the mountains that surrounded San German. In one of those battles, Juan Gonzalez was wounded.

Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon related that he went off with his father on the journey of exploration and discovery of Pascua Florida. He jumped forward to remind his inquisitors how his father was murdered along with many of the good Christians during the task of setting up a settlement.

On page 0000SWYC

Before 1521 Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon left Isla de Fernandina-Cuba, in the armada of Panfilo de Narvaez.

On page 0000SWYD Juan Gonzalez spoke about the battle of la Noche Triste. He was a Captain of cavalrymen and almost got killed in that battle fighting against Aztec warriors. Despite losing a lot of his comrades in that battle he saved many of his companions during the retreat.

Juan Gonzalez relates how he was the first to scale a stone runway after crossing enemy lines. He engaged enemy warriors in a fierce battle single-handedly and was wounded many times before retreating from that battle. He later served in Tlaxcala exploring and fighting with Aztec warriors in those mountains.

Let’s stop here for a moment while we are on the subject of the conquest of Mexico. Historians like to gloss over important facts when it comes to the conquest of New Spain.

When the Spanish arrived in Mexico they encountered Aztec priests tearing the hearts out from live victims atop temples in Tenochtitlan dedicated to their gods. After the victims were bereft of their hearts their heads were cut off and their bodies were thrown down the temple’s steps. One can imagine the terror, anguish, and fear in the hearts of the other victims waiting their turn, while they waited their captors worked trying to convince them that it was a great honor to die this way. In the eyes of the Christian conquistadors, these acts of appeasing false gods must have been repulsive and loathsome. The Spanish might have

thought that the Mexican people had to be saved from demons that must have taken possession of the powerful priesthood. The rulers in their turn must have been deemed to also have been possessed because they allowed the meaningless slaughter of innocent people to continue instead of protecting them. Historians can only see the wholesale slaughter of a generation of the emperor, his nobles, and soldiers-warriors who went out to capture victims for those sacrificial rites.

Historians tend to forget or ignore the fact that these Spanish explorers were commanded by their king and pope to spread the word of Christianity wherever they went by contract. It was the Spanish Christian duty to punish and eliminate by whatever means those who were deemed possessed by the evil who demanded blood and hearts of innocent people. Thus historians have painted the conquistador not as saviors but as butchers and murderers when in fact they were releasing a nation of people from what they saw as devil worship.

The gold that was taken from the Aztecs is no different from our own action of closing down banking accounts and real interests of people who support terrorism today. It was a way to stifle the Aztec nobility from calling up and paying more warriors to continue to fight against the Spanish.

That gold and silver that was taken served a higher purpose to support ongoing discovery and exploration and to spread the word of Christianity in the New World. It also served to support the Christian king back home who was at war on three fronts against the English, French, and Dutch as well as pirates who had been contracted to harass the Spanish by the aforementioned countries. Yes, gold was needed by Spain to arm and outfit infantry, to build and arm ships for Spain’s armadas and to protect her new colonies from invasion as well as her borders and ports.

When the Spanish moved farther south they encountered what was left of the Maya civilization. The Spanish discovered that the Maya were also performing ritual human sacrifice. Again, the Spanish dealt with the heretic emperor, priests, nobles and soldiers in the same way they did in Mexico.

When the Pizarro and his troops entered Peru they must have already known that Peruvian priests were taking children up to the summit of mountains to garrote them painfully and slowly on behalf of their gods. On November 16, 1532, Francisco Pizarro, set a trap on emperor Atahualpa and his retinue at Cajamarca. With fewer than 200 men against several thousand, Pizarro lured Atahualpa to a feast that was supposed to honor the Incan emperor.

When the Inca ruler arrived at Cajamarca, he was met by the cleric, Vicente de Valverde, Valverde attempted to convert Atahualpa to Christianity and urged him to accept the Spanish monarch, Charles V, as his sovereign. This outraged and angered Atahualpa, who refused the friar’s demands. At the cleric Valverde’s signal, Pizarro’s men opened fire on the Incas.

Spanish spies brought news that one of Atahualpa’s generals was planning to attack the Spanish with a large force of warriors. Atahualpa was sentenced on charges of stirring up rebellion, The emperor was sentenced to death to burn at the stake in 1533, this sentence was befitting a heretic who had refused to convert to Christianity. Atahualpa became frightened and horrified because the Inca believed that the soul would not be able to cross into the afterlife if the body were burned. In an attempt to avoid the stake, Atahualpa offered to fill a large room once with gold and twice with silver within two months. However, his offer was refused by the Spanish. Atahualpa converted to Roman Catholicism before his death, in order to avoid being burnt at the stake. He was baptized and given the name Francisco Atahualpa. In a manner conforming with his request, he was strangled by way of garrote on 26 July 1533. He was given a Christian burial.

Christianity has always been at odds with paganism. Before history was recorded in Europe there were Druids. The bogs in England are probably still full of the bodies of people. Christianity finally came to those lands. The Druids were put to the sword and human sacrifice ceased.

In France pagans were given a choice, convert or lose your head on the block. Thousands who made the wrong choice lost their heads.

I want you to remember this because the old authors of the history of the conquest of the New World were the sworn enemies of Spain. They worked very hard putting the Spanish who explored our continent as well as South America to place them in an unfavorable light. These erroneous lessons have been taught to us in my day and are still being taught to our children today.

Now to continue with more Informaciones: Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon.

On page 0000SWYF

ytem y Saben, Item and know that Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon is the legitimate son of the legitimate marriage of Don Juan Ponce de Leon and of Dona Beatriz de Luna. They were his legitimate parents who were born of a noble family.

On page 0000SWYH

Again it is written that Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon is the legitimate son of Don Juan Ponce de Leon and Dona Beatriz de Luna.

On the same page: 0000SWYZF

Juan Gonzalez stated that he was born and raised in his families home in Castilla, Seville. And in Isla Espanola and San Juan, he resided for a time with his parents and family. His father built a villa in Isla Espanola de Santo Domingo and Isla San Juan for his wife and family.

Going back to the above statement, it makes me ask why did Juan Ponce de Leon, el Viejo risk exposing his family to the dangers inherent in the potential of an Indian attack and slaughter of his family. If Juan Ponce fortified the villas he surely would have also staffed them with his bravest and skilled soldiers to stand guard and protect his family from danger. Could bringing his wife and family to the Caribbean serve another purpose? Perhaps he wanted to set an example to other settlers to do the same for the sole purpose of getting adventurous people to come to those islands to populate them. After all, it was part of his contract with his king to populate and build Isla de San Juan de Borinquen at his own expense. Amongst these settlers would be craftsmen who would also build and fortify the island. One must not forget the farmers who would work tirelessly to feed the new population. Furthermore, if Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon was living only with his mother and father the document would have stated it in that way. The document specifically implies other family members, brothers, and sisters.

On page 0000SWYA The name of Agueybana appears in regard to the slaughter of good Christians. The war of revolt begins. On the same page, San German is mentioned as well as Cristobal de Sotomayor who was killed as well as settlers in the villa of Tavora by the Indians. After a short battle with the Taino, the warriors retreated into the mountains that surrounded San German.

On page 0000SWYH

A man, first name illegible, Lopez gave witness testimony that Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon served and lived in the Villa on Isla Espanola and on Isla de San Juan de Borinquen with his family. Lopez confirmed that Juan Gonzalez was the legitimate son of Juan Ponce de Leon and Dona Beatriz de Luna.

It is important to note the word familia in the document. The word family was used to indicate mother, father, brothers, and sisters. Not once in the whole of seventy-two pages of Informaciones has the woman’s name Leonor been cited as being the mother of Maria, Juana, and Luis Ponce de Leon. It is without a doubt that I can write here that Dona Beatriz de Luna was the mother of all the children of Adelantado Juan Ponce de Leon.

On page 0000SWZE, the bottom of page, it has been written again that Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon is the legitimate son of Don Juan Ponce de Leon and Dona Beatriz de Luna.

On page 0000SWZG Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon is the legitimate son of Don Juan Ponce de Leon and Dona Beatriz de Luna, the parents in a legitimate marriage.

On the final remaining pages the name of Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon’s wife is finally mentioned, Dona Francisca de Ordaz.

Again, I have finally shared a lot of the content of the document, Informaciones to finally put to rest undocumented Leonor, “the daughter of an innkeeper.”

Let this be a firm lesson on how old theories raise erroneous ruminations and needless controversy.

I can not understand or speculate why historians chose to ignore Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon’s parents for decades. But I can tell you this today, I have not.

I thank God for gifting me the talent of paleography.

July 5, 2019

John J. Browne y Ayes, author of Juan Ponce de Leon His New And Revised Genealogy, genealogist, historian, visual artist.

Sources:

Atahualpa, Martin Garcia Merou. 1886, Imprenta, M. Biedma

Pizarro, Joseph M. Sinclair, 1929, The Conquest of Peru as Recorded by a Member of the Pizarro Expedition

http://www.lulu.com/shop/john-j-browne-ayes/juan-ponce-de-leon-his-new-and-revised-genealogy/paperback/product-10969692.html

https://www.history.com/news/aztec-human-sacrifice-religion

[marketingadvisorvietnam]

After Hell and Hollywood, Nick Ut basks in peace

Marketing Advisor đã viết bài trên http://www.ticvietnam.vn/after-hell-and-hollywood-nick-ut-basks-in-peace/

After Hell and Hollywood, Nick Ut basks in peace

‘Napalm Girl’ lensman opens up. ‘I think I might have killed myself if I’d not saved Kim Phuc that day.’ 

He’s shot celebrities galore, U.S. presidents and Hollywood stars included, but it is the “Napalm girl” that is Nick Ut’s primary legacy, his powerful contribution to ending one of the most violent, tragic conflicts this world has ever seen – the Vietnam War.

While he’s done, and is still engaged in many projects, Nick Ut knows no conversation with him can exclude or ignore his most eminent work, one that won him the Pulitzer Prize and assured him of an immortal place in history.

With characteristic good humor and patience, he answers every question about the “Napalm girl”, an image that proved like no other the adage about a picture being worth a thousand words. 

The Pulitzer-winning “Napalm Girl”, 1972. From left, the children are Phan Thanh Tam, who lost an eye, younger brother of Kim Phuc, Phan Thanh Phuoc, youngest brother of Kim Phuc, Kim Phuc, and Phuc’s cousins Ho Van Bon and Ho Thi Tinh. Photo courtesy of AP/ Nick Ut

When Nick Ut shot the most famous photograph of the Vietnam War and one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century, he was just 21.

The image of a terrified, burnt, naked 9-year-old girl fleeing a napalm bomb attack brought home the horrors of war more vividly than anything that had been said, written or shown until then. It put the U.S. military on the defensive and added fuel to protests for peace.

But, says Nick Ut, it was almost not taken.

“I almost did not have that photo, because I was thinking of going home. In early August, 1972, there was intense fighting in Trang Bang (about 25 miles northwest of Saigon).

“Then, when I heard my friends say that the fighting had lasted for a few days, I went to Trang Bang early morning of June 8, 1972.”

He saw thousands of people fleeing the town with their children and cattle.

“I followed the Republic of Vietnam soldiers into a nearby forest, then went to National Highway 1 and heard two planes coming. I saw one drop a bomb that shook the whole town, and just two minutes after another one flew over and released four napalm bombs.”

Nick Ut tried to calm himself, hoping that everyone in the town had escaped, only to see a group of children dashing out of the black smoke.

In the following seconds, history was written afresh, and perhaps the picture of the century was born. It seared consciences across the world, particularly in the United States and drove home the point that it was fighting a war it had already lost.

In 1973, Nick Ut was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his photograph, and the same year, the U.S. withdrew its troops from Vietnam.

Should we or shouldn’t we

In the AP newsroom, there was serious consideration and discussion on whether the photo should be published because the “Napalm girl” Kim Phuc was completely naked.

“It was the AP director of photography who allowed the publication and without any alteration, like adding clothes to Kim Phuc. Without him, it would never have been published,” Nick Ut told VnExpress International.

Outside the newsroom, people debated, and are still debating where the line should be drawn. Is it appropriate to capture suffering without helping the sufferer?

But Nick Ut did help, not just Kim Phuc, but all her siblings and cousins in the picture.

After quickly snapping their frantic escape from the smoke, Nick Ut placed his camera on Highway 1 and ran to Kim Phuc. He poured water on her back. Her clothes had been completely burnt by napalm.

“She kept screaming ‘too hot, too hot,’ and repeatedly moaning to her brother, ‘brother, I’m going to die.’”

Nick Ut got all the children into a car and took them to a nearby hospital.

“Kim Phuc couldn’t sit on a chair because her back was burning and hurting so she sat on the floor of the car. She kept calling out to her brother, Tam. ‘Tam, I’m going to die.’”

When they arrived at the hospital, the doctors refused to admit them, saying they were not equipped to treat the kids and the third-degree burns covering 30 percent of Kim Phuc’s body; and advised Nick Ut to take her to a bigger hospital.

“I thought to myself, if we leave, she would die. Suddenly I remembered that I had a journalist’s card, so I pulled it out and said ‘I’m media…the pictures will be everywhere.’”

The doctors finally took the children in, and Ut returned to the AP office in Saigon the same day to develop his picture.

Still in touch

After the “Napalm Girl” was published, Nick Ut had to go into hiding because the Saigon regime’s soldiers were searching for him everywhere.

The naked girl in the photograph survived and lives with her family in Canada now. The napalm scars are still visible on Kim Phuc’s body.

“We meet each other almost every year at different events. Whenever she is in America, we would meet up,” Nick Ut said.

 A reunion between Nick Ut (L) and Kim Phuc (R) published on Nick Ut’s Facebook 

on September 1, 2018. 

In January 2019, her son is getting married in San Francisco and Nick Ut has been invited to the wedding.

Kim Phuc’s brother Pham Thanh Tam died of cancer a couple of years ago, but Nick Ut still keeps in touch with the other children in the picture whenever he can, during his annual visits to Vietnam.

How wars treat children

Nick Ut’s image of children in agony is not unique.

Nilufer Demir’s photographs of the floating body of a dead Syrian toddler whose family was fleeing a conflict triggered by some major powers, or Kevin Carter’s “The Vulture and The Little Girl” are images that haunt anyone who’s seen them.

Comparisons have been made between Nick Ut’s Napalm Girl and Kevin Carter’s The Vulture and The Little Girl.

Carter, a South African freelance photographer, shot the picture in 1992. When a United Nations food distribution plane landed, Carter shot images of young kids scrabbling in the dirt, crying, according to the National Geographic magazine.

As one little girl who had almost no flesh left on her scrawled on the ground, unaware of a vulture standing just beyond her, Carter took the shot and chased the bird away but he did not go the extra mile to save the little girl.

Nobody knows what happened to her.

‘I might have killed myself’

Like Nick Ut, Carter won a Pulitzer prize for the photograph, but four months after its publication, he killed himself, leaving behind a suicide note that mentioned how the suffering and killing of starved and wounded children and corpses haunted him.

While the picture drew worldwide attention to the Sudan famine, it also provoked afresh an everlasting debate on the ethics of a photographer’s work.

“If I had not saved Kim Phuc that day, I think I would have killed myself like Kevin Carter,” Nick Ut said.

He was also personally tormented by the war. His older brother, Huynh Thanh My, was killed on assignment with the AP in the Mekong Delta.

He still carries his own personal scars. In the 10 years that he covered the Vietnam War, he was hit by bullets on his thigh, belly, and arm.

To this day, his leg hurts sometimes from the bullet wound.

But he is grateful that his height, or the lack of it, helped him escape bullets that flew over his head.

With a short laugh, he told VnExpress International: “If I were as tall as you, I would probably have been killed.”

Too good to be true

Nick Ut’s Napalm Girl shook the world, but it was not immune from suspicion.

“Some people thought ‘Napalm Girl’ was manipulated or misinterpreted, including President Nixon and the American general leading the Vietnam War, who said it might just be cooking oil on her,” he recalled.

“A Life magazine photographer was standing right next to me when I took the shot, and he also filmed the moment Phuc and her family members ran out of the bombed town. There were also many other people around me then. Besides, anyone could contact Kim Phuc and ask her if the event was real.

“I don’t waste my time responding to skepticism about whether my work was photoshopped or fake. But I respect everyone’s freedom of speech.”

Another stunning shot that he took, Chasing the Moon, was also suspected of being photoshopped.

Chasing the moon. Photo courtesy of Nick Ut

Nick Ut dismisses the heresy with his pictures and that of many companions who together have been chasing the moon, including Paul Roa, a Los Angeles Times journalist and many of Ut’s colleagues and fellow photographers. They call themselves the “LunARTics”.

“It is not easy to take a shot like that. I have to figure out and understand the timing, which direction the moon and the plane are traveling, calculate the altitude and so on. I had to run around so much to get the shot I want,” Ut explained to VnExpress International with one hand emulating the plane and the other the photographer running on the ground. 

Nick Ut at an interview with VnExpress International. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Nguyen 

The Hollywood stint

After Saigon fell in 1975, Ut left Vietnam to work in AP’s Tokyo bureau. It was there that he met his wife, Hong Huynh, another member of the Vietnamese diaspora.

The two migrated to Los Angeles in 1977, where he commenced a new phase of his career documenting Hollywood and other American celebrities.

American actress and comedian Cloris Leachman surrounded by her trophies, taken in 2011. The 92-year-old talent has won eight Primetime Emmy Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award, and an Academy Award for her role in The Last Picture Show (1971). Photo by Nick Ut

Iraq war veteran J.R. Martinez talks after he was named the grand marshal for Pasadena’s 123rd Tournament of Roses in Pasadena, California, taken on Nov 1, 2011. Photo by AP/Nick Ut

Nick Ut and Huynh have two children who can understand Vietnamese but cannot speak it very well.

While they find photography compelling, the children have not chosen to make a career out of it like their father. His grandchildren, though, aged 8 and 10, love taking photos.

“They are very good at shooting like their grandpa, but on their Iphones of course. Real cameras are too heavy for them,” Nick Ut said, smiling.

Sharing his legacy

Last March, AP announced that Nick Ut would retire after more than 50 years of photojournalism with the bureau.

Following the announcement, in May 2017, he came to Vietnam and gifted the “Napalm Girl” picture to the Vietnamese Women’s Museum in Hanoi.

The same month, he shared his photojournalism experience and expertise and the stories behind his photos with students, lecturers and other photographers at the VOV College, HCMC.

In June the same year, he gave the Vietnam Press Museum in Hanoi two cameras and 52 original photographs that he took during the Vietnam War along with few others he shot in Vietnam after 1975.

Nick Ut is a big fan of Leica cameras. He used one to capture the Napalm Girl. In fact, it is almost impossible to find him on the street without one dangling around his neck.

Nick Ut’s adoration for Leica cameras was cultivated by his late brother who showed him all his Leica cameras and used it every day to cover the Vietnam War.

In June 2018, he was invited to give a talk at the Leica Boutique in Hanoi about his near-death experience as a photojournalist in the war.

Home sweet home

Nick Ut is a naturalized American citizen, but he embraces his Vietnamese roots deeply, especially family values, not to mention its cuisine.

There is plenty of Vietnamese food available in California, but Nick Ut’s craving for authentic homemade cuisine is whetted every time he comes home.

“Ca kho to (braised fish made in southern Vietnam) is my favorite. And I also love canh chua (sour soup), bun cha Hanoi (grilled pork and vermicelli), banh xeo (Vietnamese pancake)….”

While speaking with VnExpress International, he took a break and went outside to buy some banana crackers from a street vendor. He raved about how delicious it was and shared it with everyone at the table.

Nick Ut pays a street vendor for some banana crackers. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Nguyen

The 67-year-old photographer is retired from AP, but not from photography. He has signed up to freelance for Getty Image. He is also working on his book, “From Hell to Hollywood,” which is slated to come out this month.

It will be published in the US by AP, but he hopes a Vietnamese version of it will be produced in Vietnam as well.

He thoroughly enjoys his annual visits to his motherland, which he spends visiting family members and paying respect to the dead.

When asked about his siblings, Nick Ut quietly counted with his fingers. He had 11.

“Some have passed away. But my younger and older brothers are still in Long An Province (his hometown), and another older brother is living in Chinatown in Saigon. All of them have retired.”

Some of his older siblings had passed away before he could see them.

After all the strife and struggle, Nick Ut still nurtures a vision of and a mission for Vietnam.

“When Americans think of Vietnam, they think of Vietnam War. I want to change that. I want them to see the peaceful Vietnam.”

Saigon Change, November 2018. Photo by Nick Ut

Saigon Change, November 2018. Photo by Nick Ut

Saigon Change, November 2018. Photo by Nick Ut

Hoan Kiem Lake, Hanoi, Vietnam. Photo by Nick Ut.

Today, the man who shot the Napalm Girl revels in his real reward: a country at peace. 

Story by Sen

window._io_config=window._io_config||;window._io_config["0.2.0"]=window._io_config["0.2.0"]||[];window._io_config["0.2.0"].push(page_url:"https://e.vnexpress.net/news/travel-life/after-hell-and-hollywood-nick-ut-basks-in-peace-3835521.html",page_url_canonical:"https://e.vnexpress.net/news/travel-life/after-hell-and-hollywood-nick-ut-basks-in-peace-3835521.html",page_title:"After Hell and Hollywood, Nick Ut basks in peace",page_type:"article",page_language:"en",article_authors:[],article_categories:["Others"],article_subcategories:["Others"],article_type:"longread",article_word_count:"101",article_publication_date:"Tue, 20 Nov 18 08:11:03 +0000");(function(d,s,id)var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(d.getElementById(id))return;js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="http://connect.facebook.net/vi_VN/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.0";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);(document,'script','facebook-jssdk'));window._io_config=window._io_config||;window._io_config["0.2.0"]=window._io_config["0.2.0"]||[];window._io_config["0.2.0"].push(page_url:"https://e.vnexpress.net/news/travel-life/after-hell-and-hollywood-nick-ut-basks-in-peace-3835521.html",page_url_canonical:"https://e.vnexpress.net/news/travel-life/after-hell-and-hollywood-nick-ut-basks-in-peace-3835521.html",page_title:"After Hell and Hollywood, Nick Ut basks in peace",page_type:"article",page_language:"en",article_authors:[],article_categories:["Others"],article_subcategories:["Others"],article_type:"longread",article_word_count:"101",article_publication_date:"Tue, 20 Nov 18 08:11:03 +0000");(function(d,s,id)var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(d.getElementById(id))return;js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="http://connect.facebook.net/vi_VN/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.0";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);(document,'script','facebook-jssdk'));

[usnewsaggregator-blog]

What's Dangerous About Donald Trump's Foreign Policy?

New Post has been published on https://usnewsaggregator.com/whats-dangerous-about-donald-trumps-foreign-policy/

What's Dangerous About Donald Trump's Foreign Policy?

When critics argue that Donald Trump is an exceptionally reckless commander in chief, they tend to highlight how the American president deviates from the norm.

By issuing “diplomatic pronouncements” on Twitter and pronouncing actual diplomats irrelevant, Hillary Clinton says, Trump poses “a clear and present danger to our country and to the world.” Trump, the Republican Senator Bob Corker warns, acts “like he’s on a reality show” and “doesn’t realize that we could be heading towards World War III with the kinds of comments that he’s making” about foreign policy, which should be left “to the professionals.” “We are concerned that the president of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic, that he might order a nuclear-weapons strike [against North Korea] that is wildly out of step with U.S. national-security interests,” Corker’s Democratic colleague Chris Murphy recently cautioned during a Senate hearing. In the same hearing, a former Defense Department official testified that he “would be very worried about a miscalculation based on the continuing use of [Trump’s] Twitter account with regard to North Korea.”

Trump, Murphy told me not long ago, “has shown an enthusiasm for military force against North Korea in his Twitter account that is extraordinary.”

But if danger is crudely measured by how many people die in military conflicts as the result of a president’s policies, the dangers posed by Trump’s atypical behavior remain hypothetical at the moment. Leaving aside his genuinely unprecedented moves in trade and diplomacy, the wars that Trump is currently commanding were initiated by his predecessors. He has not (yet) started new conflicts with foes like Iran or North Korea or radically transformed existing ones. When it comes to the real use of military force, rather than the tweeted kind, Trump has acted rather like a “normal” U.S. president—only more so, as he’s escalated some conflicts he inherited. And yet it’s his abnormal actions, which so far haven’t killed anyone, that seem to scare his detractors most.

This intense focus on the discontinuities in Trump’s handling of foreign policy has eclipsed debate over the continuities; ruptures in style often obscure the enduring substance of problematic policies. When, for instance, four U.S. special-operations soldiers were killed in an ambush in Niger, the political circus surrounding Trump’s calls to the soldiers’ families sucked up most of the attention—not the wisdom of continuing the Obama-era policy of sustaining so many low-grade, far-flung counterterrorism campaigns that Congress can’t keep track of them all.

Likewise, in more aggressively prosecuting the Obama administration’s battle against jihadist groups, the Trump administration has helped uproot ISIS from its last strongholds in Syria and Iraq, crippling the world’s most notorious terrorist group and thereby saving an unknowable number of lives in the United States and around the world. As a consequence, however, civilians and U.S. troops in the region are dying in greater numbers. The political scientist Micah Zenko noted this summer that “in Iraq and Syria, at least 55 percent of all civilians killed by airstrikes since the air war began in August 2014 have died under Mr. Trump’s watch.” (U.S. military officials argue that they have taken great care to conduct the most “precise air campaign in the history of warfare” and that ultimately the best way to protect civilians is to defeat the terrorists holding them hostage.)

When The New York Times recently reported that the U.S.-led coalition’s airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq are inadvertently killing civilians at a much higher rate than the coalition claims, no one went on television or held hearings in Congress to denounce Donald Trump as dangerous. Nor was there much of an outcry in the United States this past summer when civilian casualties mounted as the United States and its allies went on the offensive against the Islamic State, or this past spring when more than 100 civilians perished as a result of a U.S. bombing in the Iraqi city of Mosul. The alarms that sounded after Trump’s threat to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea have largely stayed silent as innocent Syrians and Iraqis have fallen victim to American firepower.

In August, after Trump announced a plan to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, as Barack Obama and George W. Bush had done before him, Zenko pointed to a jump in Afghanistan of “70 percent more civilian casualties from American airstrikes in the first six months of 2017 than in the first half of 2016.” And he emphasized the risks of “standard operating procedure in Washington,” asserting that Trump was accelerating trends that predated his presidency. “Mr. Trump proudly proclaimed … that ‘we are killing’ terrorists. He has certainly tried. Every country the United States was bombing when he entered office has seen a sharp increase in the number of bombs dropped since Inauguration Day. But he is also killing unacceptably high numbers of civilians,” Zenko wrote. “Rather than committing to block the pathways by which individuals adopt jihadist ideologies and become attracted to terrorist groups, policy makers of both parties try the same military policies over and over.”

Trump, of course, has been in office for less than a year. The consequences of what he’s done thus far haven’t yet come into focus. He is indeed taking big risks with his subversive approach to international affairs. His freewheeling war of words with Kim Jong Un could morph into an actual war on the Korean peninsula, whether by choice or by accident. The ways in which he has enfeebled the State Department, left vacant ambassadorships across Asia and the Middle East, and publicly humiliated his secretary of state—all while stressing America’s military power—could make conflict more likely in the world’s most volatile regions.

But it’s also worth keeping in mind that more traditional approaches to foreign policy carry their own grave hazards. Consider the worst foreign-policy blunders of the two men who preceded Trump.

Bush secured support from the government bureaucracy, the public, and Congress for the invasion of Iraq, which went on to spark a war that has killed an estimated 200,000-plus people to date (mostly civilians), contributed to the emergence of ISIS, and effectively dissolved a country.

Obama obtained the backing of U.S. allies and the UN Security Council for a NATO military mission to protect Libyan civilians from a threatened massacre by Muammar al-Qaddafi during the Arab Spring. Perhaps that move saved countless civilian lives—we don’t know. But we do know what happened next: Qaddafi was killed, the rebels and their NATO partners triumphed, and Libya collapsed in part because the United States and its UN and European allies neglected the land they had helped liberate. Today Libya stands in political and economic ruin, deprived of basic governance, riven by fighting between rival militias, and hospitable to human smugglers and jihadist groups. Obama has cited the lack of international follow-up to the Libya intervention as the worst mistake of his presidency. Privately, as The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reported, Obama labeled Libya a “shit show.”

If Trump’s aggressive dealings with Kim Jong Un are making war between two nuclear-weapons states significantly more likely, it’s hard to overstate the risks of that approach; millions could die in such a conflict. But in evaluating the Trump administration’s policy on North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program, it’s also important to keep the aggression in perspective. While it’s astounding and unsettling to see the president of the United States call North Korea’s leader “short and fat,” no one died in the making of that tweet. Thae Yong Ho, one of the highest-ranking officials ever to defect from North Korea, recently told me that he thinks past American presidents were too “gentle” with North Korean leaders and Trump’s unpredictable tactics are actually keeping North Korea’s provocations in check. Han Sung Joo, a former South Korean foreign minister and ambassador to the United States, told me that Trump’s tough rhetoric, which he interpreted as the president “expressing his views at the moment” rather than the “result of serious strategic thinking,” has succeeded in pressuring China to do “a little more” to isolate North Korea.

The Trump administration “has handled things in a … measured and firm way that will prevent North Korea from miscalculating,” Han argued. “I do not know if it is wise to push North Korea to the extent they feel they have to react in a non-peaceful way. But North Korea has shown some degree of restraint as far as deeds are concerned, although their rhetoric has also been quite blustery.”

“The most important thing is not to make the situation worse,” he continued. “We can’t expect to resolve the problem in a short period of time. But we have to patiently work on it while all the time maintaining deterrence and defense capabilities, and that the United States [under Trump] has done.”

“So far,” Han noted, “the present U.S. administration hasn’t really made any major mistakes.”

Original Article:

Click here

[saundrahuff-blog]

A love of history

If you love history, few things are better than going to that place you've read about, and stand in the same place, touch the same thing as someone who you just read about. Standing on a battlefield, knowing that people who believed in something enough to die for, or how are trusting someone that is betting on your life in a battle. You can go to almost anywhere, history is there. Strangely, if you love history, a lot of things are better than being able to say I was there when that happened. During something that will become a turning point in history, living it, watching it happen, you loose the romance. Case in point. I was stationed in Berlin, Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was in the army, a SPC, assigned to US Command of Berlin. I saw and heard a lot. I saw more than what is taught in books. No one hardly mentions about the uncertainties. I used to joke that it is impossible to get lost in that city. Walk straight until you hit a wall, follow it around until you reach your sector. It was divided into three sections, French, British, American. The Russians built the wall around those three sectors. When the demonstrations started in east block countries, when we watched so many protesters risking their lives to get a chance at freedom, we knew how the Russians were not sure what to do. Ever see an uncertain Russian? Now think. During this time, communications between troops and Russian command wasn't reliable. There was a whole troop of Russians who disappeared. There last command given to them was to attack if things go bad. So, word is give to open the wall. Yay! Great! Where the hell is that Russian troop? No clue? Should we be worried? Yes? Well fuck me sideways with a cactus. Just what the hell do we do now? Wait? That seems good. We knew they were out there. We also knew exactly where their weapons were pointed. If we arm ourselves, will that just provoke the Russians into attacking? Who knew! As soldiers, we were given a list of rules in hopes that it would not create further tension. First, stay away from the breaches in the wall. Stay away from East Berliners coming over to west. O not tell anyone you are an American soldier. Do not participate in anything. Those rules were the best shot we had of not creating tension. But...... Being the fact that most soldiers were in their twenties, yeah, that realistically had no chance of happening. Any of it. I worked in the Generals office. The highest military position. He only answered to Washington. And guess where me and everyone else was that worked in that office? There was no way this was going to happen and me not see it. It was scary. The first ones to walk and drive thru to west side were the bravest people alive. You have to understand what life was like on the east side of that wall. Their version of the KGB was called Stassi. They were everywhere. You didn't say anything bad about the government. You don't know who was listening. It was common for people to never come home. And a fear of asking what happened. Whole families could disappear. If you did come back, it was years later, broken. Their fear was real. There was a definite reason for them to fear. The wall on their side was more than that wall. It was land mines, barbed wires, guards with guns loaded and cocked, dogs trained to kill. To come over either side, you went thru Checkpoint Charlie. You had a pass that was stamped by American, British, French, and Russians. The Russians would count you, if you were in a group. There were cameras everywhere. No attempt to disguise them. They were there, letting everyone know, they can see you do anything and everything. The soldiers were in charge of stop lights. It turned red every time, so they can count you and confirm same amount of people are in that group. Imagine how it was to live that way 24/7. So the ones taking those first steps over had to be the bravest, most scared people ever. But, once that part was over and nothing happened, it became a flood. Families who were separated by the wall would finally see each other again since decades ago. People who had no freedom, finally saw what freedom was. And to be completely honest, it was a fucking party that lasted three months. Beer was cheaper, people bought drinks for everyone. Bars wouldn't charge, at least some of them. It was festival time. Celebrations going on every day, everywhere. How in the hell my office thought we would be able to resist that much temptation is a wonder. I only got caught once. I would like to claim it was accidental, but I would be lying. I got my picture in one of their newspapers, in a big ass crowd. I assumed I was safe because there were hundreds in that picture. But damned if my COL didn't recognize me. When he handed me that paper and asked if I recognized anyone, the words left my mouth even before they hit my brain. Fuck. Thank God this man was a saint. He yelled at me for being so stupid not to notice who was taking pictures. And the next time I was so stupid to get myself on film, he was going to let happen what was threatened. Lesson learned. Lots of things happened in those first three months. Parties. Even the Russians came over and partied. They didn't have a lot of money, so they would "borrow" a tank and drive it to the bars. Now, honestly, seeing a tank parked outside a bar wasn't the scariest thing. It was when those drunk Russians decided to go home with the tank. I will never forget the time I watched a tank drive over cars, medians, everything. It's not something you forget. The damage those things did I think were the reasons our commanders silently let us go. At least our guys weren't driving a tank. And we learned about East German cars. There was only one brand, called a trabount. Spelling could be wrong. But to get one, your parents needed to put your name on a waiting list, pay for it, and wait 30 some odd years to get it. And it broke down a lot. It was also very common to see the streets littered with these cars. The best part was that since they used the crappiest parts, it was light enough that about four people could lift the son of a bitch up and move it to the side of the road. That was weird watching that. Everyone got used to seeing a lot of new and strange things. One of my best memories was when there was a meeting with top commanders of all the battalions, and in the middle of it, sounds of shouting and metal meeting metal. My COL asked what was going on, so I looked out the window. "It's nothing. Just a drunk tank going home." And the meeting continued. It happened that much. But still, that lost Russian troop was a concern. No one knew where they were. So in the back of all our minds was this reality. The party could end in a really bad way. The actual wall did not disappear. So if those soldiers decided to attack, the thought that we were literally trapped and surrounded with no way out was never too far away. Plus, the city of Berlin became a refugee camp. East Berliners didn't trust their government. It could come crashing back down and they would loose their freedom. So there were thousands that left the east and refused to go back. We had to find places for them, food, shelter, and as safe a place as we could find. All of us did. The Americans, French, British, and west Berliners. We saw a lot of people step up and help out with impossible numbers. But together, all of us, we managed. And to listen to them, what they lived thru, the missing family members, the prison camps, the torture. I honestly can't say I would trust them either. So all of that was what was going on. But reading about it, you don't add in about the idiot soldier getting caught being were she shouldn't have. You don't know about the daily fear of where in the hell were those troops. You don't think how commonplace a group of drunk Russians driving a tank home was. You don't know the agony of trying to do normal things at work when every last one of you is hungover. You don't even realize how much it stank from all those shitty East German cars. And tanks. And when that drunk tank ran over cars with people in them, how do you bring that up to the Russians. And during all this, remember the stassies. Once the people realized that this reality and freedom was for forever, they wanted to know what happened to their loved ones. If someone found out someone was a stassi, they would take that person and gather a group together and beat them. No one survived one of those beatings. If they found one of their offices, there would be this huge crowd of very angry people who could tear that building apart. They kept records of who was taken and what happened, so the goal was to find the records. Before they were destroyed. I accidentally walked into one while I was very pregnant with my daughter. It happened so fast. One moment I'm just walking with a friend, and the next I'm in the middle of hundreds of very angry people carrying what ever weapon they had. But as angry as they were, Germans have a love of children that is so wonderful. Once they noticed a pregnant me, they surrounded me and walked me out and gave me some very good advice I didn't need, to go home. I had the quickest route already mapped out in my head and my feet pointed in that direction. I thanked them and followed their advice. Fear is a great motivator. Say what you want, it is. I took my ass home and didn't go anywhere else besides work and back home. But I have a piece of the wall that I actually took from it. I have commemorative books and photos from the ceremonies. I have a cobble stone from checkpoint Charlie. And when someone talks about it, I can tell them the parts that are wrong or missing. But I don't look at any of those as I do something historical that I read about. I've caught myself thinking about how much I would love to have something that came from some historical event. I don't really think of that time as historical, it's more a memory. That distance that is in place when you are engrossed in learning about one event is gone. And sometimes it makes me sad that I can't view that time as I do other events that I study.

[type2diabetestreatments-blog]

Ask D'Mine: Afraid of the Flu Shot?

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/ask-dmine-afraid-of-the-flu-shot/

Ask D'Mine: Afraid of the Flu Shot?

Yep, we're sticking with our fear theme for the month of October. Who's afraid of a big bad flu shot? You might be surprised!

Only way to find out is to brave this edition of our weekly diabetes advice column, Ask D'Mine, hosted by veteran type 1, diabetes author and community educator Wil Dubois.

Need help navigating life with diabetes? Email us at AskDMine@diabetesmine.com

Nancy from Pennsylvania, type 1, writes: I was wondering if any other PWD has had this happen to them. I was diagnosed with Type 1 five years ago at the age of 48. The first two years of my diabetic life I received an annual flu shot. However, 2 years ago I started wearing an insulin pump. I went for my annual flu shot and within two weeks of getting my shot, my basal rate increased two-fold. Not Happy! I discussed this with my endo and she really had no explanation for this increase. This basal increase was permanent. I haven't gotten a flu shot since and my basal hasn't increased. I've had a consistent A1C of 5.8-6.0 so it's not like I don't take care of myself. Afraid to get the Flu shot again...

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: Yeah, I know: we talked about the flu shot here at Ask D'Mine just the other day. But this was so frickin' bizarre I just had to talk about it (no offense Nancy). First, I gotta say, I've never seen anything like this happen. I've never heard of anything like this happening. I even spent some time with my favorite search engine and couldn't find anyone else reporting anything like this. Well, there was this one guy, but he was also talking about his alien abduction experiences and his past life as Elvis, so I wasn't inclined to give his flu shot story much credence.

You, however, don't seem to be a kook, so we need to figure out what's up with your basal. Next, I fired off an email to an endo friend to ask her if she'd ever heard of anything like this happening before and her reply was "Nope. And cannot think of a mechanism that would cause it either."

So flu shot 101: A traditional flu shot is just a vial of dead flu. It's used to prime the body's immune system to recognize the live flu virus. The nose spray stuff is live flu, but it's had the crap kicked out of it first so that it's very weak. You can think of either one as training wheels on a kid's bike. You use the training wheels to learn how to ride. Once ya got it down, you take the wheels off and you're fine. Your body needs to use flu training wheels for about two weeks after the shot, then it can tackle real live flu viruses.

So for two weeks your body is developing its immune response. I could see, maybe, by some stretch of the imagination, that you might need a wee bit more insulin during that period. But a two-fold increase? Holy crap! And then one that stays around? Also deepening the mystery is the fact you'd had two annual flu shots previously with no ill effect (but of course every year it's a different strain). Also weird is the fact that the basal issue hit pretty much at the end of the immune response period, not at its onset.

You're not gonna like what I have to say next.

I think whatever caused your basal change had nothing at all to do with the flu shot. Issues of cause and effect can be really tricky. That's why it takes so many months to investigate plane crashes. A plane goes down in a storm. Did the storm cause it? Maybe. Or maybe the engine failed. Or the crew was drunk. Or the wing broke.

So bear with me for a moment. Assume, just for the sake of argument, that the flu shot wasn't the cause of your permanent two-fold jump in basal. What else could have caused it?

One thing that jumps to mind has to do with the unique kind of diabetes you have. You're an adult-onset type 1 like me. We're kind of an odd-ball set. (Note that this past week was an awareness campaign about this kind of diabetes, called LADA.) One of the more bizarre elements of adult onset is an extremely extended honeymoon phase. The honeymoon phase is like Custer's Last Stand at the Battle of the Little Langerhan. Picture the poor troops of the Beta Company surrounded by the circling bloodthirsty savages of the immune system, intent on great bodily harm. (Attention beloved Native American readers: no offense intended, just go with the flow of the analogy, OK?) The insulin-producing beta cells keep up the fight as long as they can, but ultimately, they are killed to the last man by the body's haywire immune system.

The honeymoon phase is actually a pain in the ass, as far as I'm concerned—both from clinical and personal experience. Some days the pancreas can squirt out some insulin. Other days it can't. Some days it squirts out quite a bit, other days not so much. It's like juggling feral cats. It's a blessing when the last troops fall because then all the insulin has to come from outside your body and, frankly, it's easier to control that way. Fewer variables.

In most younger type 1s, the honeymoon phase lasts a few months. Rarely more than six, but sometimes up to a full year. In adult onset folks, however, the honeymoon can run longer. A year and a half. Maybe two.

Three years seems a stretch, but that could be what happened to you. It could be that your body had some stable endogenous insulin production for several years, but the savage immune system finally broke the lines of the last standing beta cells and wiped them out. Did the flu shot have anything to do with it? Ummm.... Maybe? I mean the flu shot is designed to kick the immune system in the pants, after all. Did it stir up the natives, as it were? I don't know. This is probably where I'm supposed to say, "Damn it Jim, I'm a writer, not a doctor."

We should also look to your pump. How long had you been on the pump when this happened? It looks like you got it the same year you got the killer flu shot. Normally you'd use a lower total daily dose of basal on a pump than with shots, but your mileage may vary. Are you sure you had all the pump settings dialed in right? This generally takes some time.

I should also ask if you changed the style of infusion set on your pump. Oh, and did you...errr... you know... gain any weight? Any changes to other meds? I've got quite a long list in my office of meds that tend to f—[D&R1] , up blood sugar. Various psych meds, steroids, and hepatitis C meds tend to be the worst, but blood sugar can also be raised (requiring more basal) by dozens and dozens of meds for every malady under the sun, even including cholesterol-lowering drugs and some vitamins.

I can understand that you are not happy, but does it really make a difference how much insulin your pump pumps so long as your A1C is so awesome? (And I am very jealous, by the way.) And I can understand why you are afraid to get another flu shot. You have visions of another two-fold increase dancing in your head. I mean, if that actually happened every time you got a flu shot you'd need to get a super-sized pump in a couple of years!

So I validate your fear. Once burned, twice shy. I get it. I understand it. I don't believe your flu shot caused the basal issue, but there is no way to ever know for sure. Crazy unheard of things happen every day, right?

The flu shot is part and parcel of good diabetes therapy, but it's not like you're going to die without it. Well, you might. I mean, you could get flu, get pneumonia, and die. Happens to almost 50,000 people a year; but you could just as easily be run over by a FedEx truck while jaywalking.

I guess I wouldn't blame you for skipping the shot if that's the choice you've made.

This is not a medical advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly sharing the wisdom of our collected experiences — our been-there-done-that knowledge from the trenches. But we are not MDs, RNs, NPs, PAs, CDEs, or partridges in pear trees. Bottom line: we are only a small part of your total prescription. You still need the professional advice, treatment, and care of a licensed medical professional.

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

Type 2 Diabetes Treatment Type 2 Diabetes Diet Diabetes Destroyer Reviews Original Article

[mayoperry-blog]

Six Unsent Letters

This is a project I did for an English 3 class in sophomore year. After reading “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992″ by Anne Deavere Smith, I responded to the written play in a series of letters that I wish I could send to the characters in the play or to the world. 

Dear Latasha, You were too young. Just like that, your life were cut short by Soon Ja Du with to a single bullet. Du was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, which has a maximum sentence of 16 years in prison. That’s some consolation, right? The judge gave Du probation, 400 hours of community service and a $500 dollar fine. Apparently your life is worth 16 days of community service and a couple hundred dollars. This horrific injustice did not go unnoticed. Your murder, along with Rodney King’s beating sparked outrage in Los Angeles that eventually turned into riots in 1992. You are not forgotten. I’m assuming you like Harry Potter, because you were 15 and what teenager doesn’t like Harry Potter, or at least heard of him? One of my favorite moments comes in the last book, when Harry is speaking to his parents and those who have guided him, and given their lives for him. “‘Dying? Not at all,’ said Sirius. ‘Quicker and easier than falling asleep’ ”. I hope this is how it was for you. I know that your family tries to take comfort in the fact that you did not suffer, nor did you have a single moment to feel the pain caused by that woman. No one has forgotten you, even now. Even after all these years, you are still as relevant as ever. On the 25th anniversary of your death, your family and community gathered where you died. They held candles and exchanged memories of your life cut short. The late rapper 2Pac referenced you in his posthumous 2002 hit, “Thugz Mansion”. Shakur raps, “Little LaTasha sho' grown/Tell the lady in the liquor store that she's forgiven, so come home”. The song talks about how he would rest in peace and find happiness when he is in a place where all the troubles and pains of his life come to an end. 2Pac also dropped names of African American icons, including Marvin Gaye, Billie Holiday, Sam Cooke, and Malcolm X. You are referenced among those who made an impact on the world and the African American community, because you’ve done exactly that. You have not been forgotten, and you have pushed your people to begin the contemporary fight for equality and justice in the eyes of the government. Latasha, you have done more for your people than you will ever know, and I hope that you, wherever you are, can realize that. You have not, and will never be forgotten.

Rest In Paradise Latasha. Sincerely,

Perry Mayo

Dear Mr. King, You are a legend. After your infamous beating from the LAPD, you became the face of your people. They fought, and are still fighting, in your name among others for justice. Your excessive beating stemmed from a high speed chase that ended with you on the ground. Although only two of the four attacking police officers were indicted for your attack, it lit the fuse on a deadly civil bomb. On May 1, 1992, you came forward with a plea for peace. You requested, "People, I just want to say, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?" You are exactly correct. There’s nothing standing in the way of justice except insane bigotry, ground­breaking excuses, and white privilege that goes back for generations. You were not the first to experience unfair treatment from those who believe themselves to be better than you, and you won’t be the last. There were the jews, the Hispanics, the African Americans, and people of color in general. Now, a new group that just has to be oppressed, the LGBTQ+ community, with a special bright red target on those who identify as transgender. Your bravery and resilience empowered those who were too afraid to stand up to their oppressors, and has inspired the silent to voice their opinions. You know what I find almost laughable? The blatant double standard for blacks versus the whites. You’ve experienced this first hand, and you won’t be the last person to do so. You were caught in a high speed chase, and then beat within minutes of death, while in 2012, Dylann Roof was captured by the police after killing nine African Americans in a church in Charleston, North Carolina. You were nearly killed for driving 110 miles per hour, while Roof was taken into custody and given a bulletproof vest during transportation. Why protect the life of a homicidal maniac, while endangering that of a speedy driver? Thank you for your fighting spirit. I’m glad that your people have such a strong sense of unity and fight, because your uphill battle for justice is long from over. History will inevitably repeat itself, but I know that you are ready for the fight, and you will overcome whatever obstacles are thrown in your path. I can only hope that you are proud of yourself for sparking this revolution, and that you realize how many doors you opened for your people. Rest in peace, Rodney.

Sincerely, Perry Mayo

Dear Miss Rae, or Queen Malkah, Author Ralph Ellison wrote that as an African American “I am invisible... simply because people refuse to see me...When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed everything and anything except me.” You can relate and absolutely agree, I’m sure. After the murder of Latasha Harlins, you spoke out about the unity of the African Americans, and your opinion on Charles Lloyd, a well­known black attorney, and how he represented and defended Soon Ja Du, who had killed one of his fellow African Americans. You’re right. He sold his card. He’s a sellout, trading in the pride of his ethnicity and the history for a fat paycheck. He doesn’t deserve to stand by you, if you thought for one second that he was a loss, you are sorely mistaken. He is as useless as a bicycle to a fish in my eyes. It’s people like you who will keep the fight alive, and keep spirits high. You value unity and standing together, especially in times of oppression and opposition. You recognize the disparity of justice between the African Americans, or people of color for that matter, and the white community. Not only do you recognize it, you speak out against it, something many would not do in the 1990s. You see beyond the fake promises of the Pledge of Allegiance for God’s sake. Liberty and justice for all, as long as you’re white, cisgendered, and heterosexual. What a great country we live in. You told Anna Deavere Smith, “if­the­white­media­does­not­decide­to­print­something­that­happens­to­us,­we­won’t­know/ ... Because justice denied Latasha Harlins/Is justice denied every American citizen.” Once again, your majesty, you’ve hit the nail right on it’s pretty little head. Skin tone doesn’t determine what someone deserves, in any circumstance. As soon as people see things from your point of view, the world will be infinitely better. You’d be proud, I think. With all of the movements that have sprung from your injustice, from chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot”, to staging “die­ins” based on the times that the victims cried for help or lay slain on the sidewalk, I’d imagine that you’re pretty proud. You’ve always been aware of the fact that based on the amount of melanin in your skin, you will have higher, harsher, and millions more hurdles than any of us out here, any of us trying to get by. But you, my dear, have navigated those roadblocks with ease and the grace of a golden pheasant. Your people need someone like you.

Here are my instructions for you, Queen Malkah: When times get tough, and big, bad history rears it’s head and tries to trample you and your spirits, you be there to lead your people. You hold your head high, raise your sword to the sky, unleash a battle cry more chilling than death itself, and run. Sprint headfirst into injustice, slashing anything in your way and reduce it to a dust. You charge, and you fight, and fight, and fight until you can’t fight anymore. Even then, you push through, until you’ve made it to the other side with your people close behind. Once you are in the beautiful forest clearing with your warriors surrounding you, only then, can you relax and celebrate your victory as equals of those who have pushed you down. But until then, rally your troops, and continue your battle for equality. We’ll be behind you, waiting for your cues. Thank you, your highness, I applaud you for your bravery.

Sincerely, Perry Mayo, a willing warrior at your service.

Mr. Zimmerman, I will not start this letter with “dear”, because that word implies adoration. You murdered an innocent man. It doesn’t matter if Trayvon Martin seemed “suspicious”. You were told, by the authorities, to star in your SUV and to not approach the teenager. Even if it was self defense, you went against the orders of police and instigated a fight with Trayvon, which ended with the teenager dead in the street. That’s not the worst part, I believe. In my eyes, the most sadistic part of the situation came after you murdered a 17­year­old boy. You put the gun used to kill Trayvon online, and tried to auction it off. Bidding in an online auction for the gun reached $65 million at one point as people on the Internet drove the offers to astronomic levels. Many of those were sarcastic, George, I can assure you that. A top bidder whose account has been since deleted, at one point used the name “Racist McShootface”. Another bidder competed for the weapon under the name Tamir Rice, another victim of police brutality. Tamir was killed by police while carrying a toy gun. He was 12. I just want to make it known that people are against you. I also hope that you know that by murdering Trayvon, you added about a thousand gallons of fuel to the fire that is propelling the black community. So, in a dark, twisted sense of the phrase, thank you, George. Thank you for showing adults that they can’t trust the police or neighborhood watch to keep their community safe or their children alive. Thank you for teaching teenagers that they should stay clear of the police instead of going to them for help. Thank you for teaching kids that the police are more dangerous than criminals themselves, and that you won’t protect them, you’ll kill them. Thank you for giving the next generation and the generations to come a precautionary tale about what happens when white privilege is added to racism, and multiplied by an accessible deadly weapon. So thank you, again really, thank you George, for opening our eyes to more horrors, and teaching us that monsters aren’t just in closets or under beds, on wanted posters or in jail. They’re on our streets, wearing government uniforms, and are trusted with the responsibility protecting the community. Thank you, George Zimmerman, for pushing the black community to fight that much harder for themselves, against people like you.

Sincerely, Perry Mayo

Dear Mr. Garner, You did not die in vain. After being choked to death for selling loose cigarettes, you became one of the faces that headed the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Your plea for help. “I can’t breathe!”, is being used as a battle cry for those fighting for justice. It’s not just in your city, or just those who know you. For two days in a row, a group of white collar professionals staged “die­ins” in support of calls for increased police accountability following the deaths of unarmed black men. Also, dozens African American men gathered on the front steps of the courthouse in downtown L.A. and held a silent vigil for those who have died in police confrontations. At about the same time in Oakland, protesters chained themselves to the city Police Department's headquarters. You helped fuel a movement that is sweeping this nation. Don’t you ever doubt for a second that you died for nothing. Something I find sick is that media has tried to humanize your killer. Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD officer who choked you, has received so many death threats that a police detail guards his Staten Island home around the clock. People want to avenge you. The media has tried to cover up the crime of Pantaleo, by telling us about his childhood, his achievements, his innocence. They tell us about his teachers glowing comments, and that he received awards as an honorable Eagle Scout. We see past that. We know that the media is whitewashing your death, and making it seem like you asked for it. They say, “well, he was a threat who needed to be subdued”. It’s all bullshit. We know, and we are fighting for others to join us. Your untimely death has helped millions realize the type of false reality that we live in, and you’ve opened people’s eyes to the fact that the police aren’t always the good guys, and that black men aren’t always the bad guys. You’ve given people another reason to fight, and one more name to drop when the topic of injustice is breached. With three words, you’ve dumped gallons of butane on the roaring wildfire of black rage, and for good reason. “I can’t breathe”, and the entire black community is suffocating. You’ve given everyone, black or not, stranger or family member, one more thing to fight for. You should be proud of yourself, even if it doesn’t feel that way. Just know that you’ve done well by yourself and your community. I hope that you can finally breathe. Rest In Paradise, Eric.

Sincerely, Perry Mayo

Dear World That I Live In, These past two years, I’ve had my eyes opened to the world around me, and the world within myself. I have not yet fully come to consciousness, for that takes hundreds of years. I personally believe that no one has ever completely come to consciousness. What even is consciousness in the first place? Who am I to determine when or how one has their eyes opened to everything and anything, to the core of what holds our thoughts together, and what keeps us from literally going insane? I’ll tell you what consciousness is. Consciousness is everything and nothing. It is the balance between finding co­dependence and self love. It is realizing why we’re here and what we’re doing, while also not questioning why or how or what, and just being. You don’t need answers.

Consciousness is. How do we come to consciousness? How does one begin to become aware, while remaining in their personal matrix? We don’t. Here’s the only thing that we can do. Fall back into your beingness, let it catch you, and you are at home. There is nothing to do, nothing to change, nothing to fix. Just be. History repeats itself. The same ideas circle around every hundred years, and every hundred years, those same ideas drag the human race to the lowest of low,, to the depths of rock bottom. We sit, and wallow, and fight, until finally, one or two sensible people realize what humans have done to each other, and they pull us back up to a point where we can once again be proud of ourselves. When any given group oppresses another, the oppressed will soon enough turn around and take down another group. The vicious cycle has killed billions and will continue to kill until the world is reduced to a devastatingly singular and lonely person who has no one left, for everyone else was killed by the cyclical hate. One will remain, after the rest of the world has committed global suicide.

You, my dear, are sailing on the widespread and glistening wings of pure imagination if you think, for a single second, that the human race can go forth without destroying itself through a made up hierarchy based on one’s skin tone or who they fall in love with, how much they earn or what lies between their legs.

Here’s my two cents, coming from a teenager who’s seen more than they need to see to make a decision. I call my theory “The Fiji Complex”. I’ve been to Fiji twice, and I came to one

of the biggest realizations of my life during my second trip. I experienced an epiphany, if you will. I realized that the community had a completely different outlook on life, one that seems foreign and possibly laughable to anyone else. The way that Fiji operates is simple, with every citizen living their lives almost identically to their neighbors, whether they realized it or not. They put others before themselves. This is how I see it. Whoever it is, their needs, preferences, assurances or fears come before yours. When you are with someone else, they are top of mind.

Now, it may seem stupid and unrealistic, but it’s not. By putting someone before yourself, you don’t have to ignore your needs, you don’t have to sacrifice yourself for them to live. It’s not, and will never be, a win­lose situation. It’s a mindset. The way that they operate on the islands resonates with me, because it’s one of the most simple theories I’ve ever come across. When you help someone, they’ll turn around and help you. That’s what it comes down to. If you go out of your way to make someone comfortable, sooner than later, they’ll return the favor when you’re in need. If you put ten people before yourself, when the time comes, and you need help, there are ten people on hand who will be at your side at the drop of a hat, simply because you were there for them however long ago. It’s stupidly simple. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. In Fiji, there was no moral hierarchy. People were classified by clan and bloodline, income and gender, but inside, everyone was the same. No one was better or worse, morally or in terms of their mindset. They all had the same core value: the comfort of others. Whoever you are, foreigner, local, man, woman, child, gay, straight, whatever. If you are there, they will make you comfortable, and you will inevitably return the favor.

Now, you may not think, “because they helped me, I have to help them”. As a matter of fact, that thought won’t ever cross your mind. Something from inside will spark, and you will want to help. You’ll long for the feeling of being able to help someone, purely because you want to and you know it’s the right thing to do. With their comfort, yours will come. If you touch 100 people, just by doing small things like opening a door for them, giving up your seat, or even greeting them and acknowledging their existence, you have made 100 allies. You will have 100 people who will stand behind you and push you forward, and 100 people who will be ready to catch you if you fall, and help you back to the place you were at before you fell. Now, imagine if you did this with every person you met, every person you’ve interacted with. When the time

comes, you will have an army bigger than the Romans, stronger than the Spartans, all fighting for you. We need to remember who we really are. There is one earth but a million worlds, and no world is more important than another.

Behind race, income, orientation, gender, we are all humans. We all live together, and we’re all going to end up six feet under sooner or later. There’s not a single reason as to why you wouldn’t help someone. Social norms be damned. I can assure you, with 100% confidence, that helping that man on the street carry his bag is a million times more important than making your subway ride. I can say, without a doubt in my mind, that stepping in front of a child harassing another kid is a billion times more noble and touching than donating a fat check to a charity. The Fiji Complex takes everyone’s fears and social biases, innate or taught discriminations, and throws them out the window. Nothing is more important than a human life, and the value of the person, no matter who they are. A “lowly” beggar is worth just as much as a king adorned in jewels. Both have a heartbeat, a brain, and a conscious. Those are all the similarities you need to treat someone well and with respect.

Once people realize this, everything will be fine. Once people decide that your neighbor is more important than yourself, even just for a second, the world will be one step closer to living in peace, without fear of obliterating the human race. Police will be heroes again, black people will just be people, wars will be a thing of the past. Now, I can’t say how long this will take. Thousands of years. Maybe millions. We may even kill ourselves with pollution before this idea fully circulates the globe, but as long as people begin to realize what they’re doing, progress will be made. As long as two people have their eyes opened to reality, and what we can do as a human race to turn it around, I will feel satisfied. As long as one kid becomes aware of himself and those around him, I’ve done my job. But, until then, we won’t stop fighting. Queen Malkah, myself, and any other person who sees how pure this world can become will continue to preach and spread our message until the day we die. I hope that this idea of a united world isn’t just a dream.

For the last time, Sincerely,

Perry Mayo

[marketingadvisorvietnam]

After Hell and Hollywood, Nick Ut basks in peace

Marketing Advisor đã viết bài trên http://www.ticvietnam.vn/after-hell-and-hollywood-nick-ut-basks-in-peace/

After Hell and Hollywood, Nick Ut basks in peace

‘Napalm Girl’ lensman opens up. ‘I think I might have killed myself if I’d not saved Kim Phuc that day.’ 

He’s shot celebrities galore, U.S. presidents and Hollywood stars included, but it is the “Napalm girl” that is Nick Ut’s primary legacy, his powerful contribution to ending one of the most violent, tragic conflicts this world has ever seen – the Vietnam War.

While he’s done, and is still engaged in many projects, Nick Ut knows no conversation with him can exclude or ignore his most eminent work, one that won him the Pulitzer Prize and assured him of an immortal place in history.

With characteristic good humor and patience, he answers every question about the “Napalm girl”, an image that proved like no other the adage about a picture being worth a thousand words. 

The Pulitzer-winning “Napalm Girl”, 1972. From left, the children are Phan Thanh Tam, who lost an eye, younger brother of Kim Phuc, Phan Thanh Phuoc, youngest brother of Kim Phuc, Kim Phuc, and Phuc’s cousins Ho Van Bon and Ho Thi Tinh. Photo courtesy of AP/ Nick Ut

When Nick Ut shot the most famous photograph of the Vietnam War and one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century, he was just 21.

The image of a terrified, burnt, naked 9-year-old girl fleeing a napalm bomb attack brought home the horrors of war more vividly than anything that had been said, written or shown until then. It put the U.S. military on the defensive and added fuel to protests for peace.

But, says Nick Ut, it was almost not taken.

“I almost did not have that photo, because I was thinking of going home. In early August, 1972, there was intense fighting in Trang Bang (about 25 miles northwest of Saigon).

“Then, when I heard my friends say that the fighting had lasted for a few days, I went to Trang Bang early morning of June 8, 1972.”

He saw thousands of people fleeing the town with their children and cattle.

“I followed the Republic of Vietnam soldiers into a nearby forest, then went to National Highway 1 and heard two planes coming. I saw one drop a bomb that shook the whole town, and just two minutes after another one flew over and released four napalm bombs.”

Nick Ut tried to calm himself, hoping that everyone in the town had escaped, only to see a group of children dashing out of the black smoke.

In the following seconds, history was written afresh, and perhaps the picture of the century was born. It seared consciences across the world, particularly in the United States and drove home the point that it was fighting a war it had already lost.

In 1973, Nick Ut was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his photograph, and the same year, the U.S. withdrew its troops from Vietnam.

Should we or shouldn’t we

In the AP newsroom, there was serious consideration and discussion on whether the photo should be published because the “Napalm girl” Kim Phuc was completely naked.

“It was the AP director of photography who allowed the publication and without any alteration, like adding clothes to Kim Phuc. Without him, it would never have been published,” Nick Ut told VnExpress International.

Outside the newsroom, people debated, and are still debating where the line should be drawn. Is it appropriate to capture suffering without helping the sufferer?

But Nick Ut did help, not just Kim Phuc, but all her siblings and cousins in the picture.

After quickly snapping their frantic escape from the smoke, Nick Ut placed his camera on Highway 1 and ran to Kim Phuc. He poured water on her back. Her clothes had been completely burnt by napalm.

“She kept screaming ‘too hot, too hot,’ and repeatedly moaning to her brother, ‘brother, I’m going to die.’”

Nick Ut got all the children into a car and took them to a nearby hospital.

“Kim Phuc couldn’t sit on a chair because her back was burning and hurting so she sat on the floor of the car. She kept calling out to her brother, Tam. ‘Tam, I’m going to die.’”

When they arrived at the hospital, the doctors refused to admit them, saying they were not equipped to treat the kids and the third-degree burns covering 30 percent of Kim Phuc’s body; and advised Nick Ut to take her to a bigger hospital.

“I thought to myself, if we leave, she would die. Suddenly I remembered that I had a journalist’s card, so I pulled it out and said ‘I’m media…the pictures will be everywhere.’”

The doctors finally took the children in, and Ut returned to the AP office in Saigon the same day to develop his picture.

Still in touch

After the “Napalm Girl” was published, Nick Ut had to go into hiding because the Saigon regime’s soldiers were searching for him everywhere.

The naked girl in the photograph survived and lives with her family in Canada now. The napalm scars are still visible on Kim Phuc’s body.

“We meet each other almost every year at different events. Whenever she is in America, we would meet up,” Nick Ut said.

 A reunion between Nick Ut (L) and Kim Phuc (R) published on Nick Ut’s Facebook 

on September 1, 2018. 

In January 2019, her son is getting married in San Francisco and Nick Ut has been invited to the wedding.

Kim Phuc’s brother Pham Thanh Tam died of cancer a couple of years ago, but Nick Ut still keeps in touch with the other children in the picture whenever he can, during his annual visits to Vietnam.

How wars treat children

Nick Ut’s image of children in agony is not unique.

Nilufer Demir’s photographs of the floating body of a dead Syrian toddler whose family was fleeing a conflict triggered by some major powers, or Kevin Carter’s “The Vulture and The Little Girl” are images that haunt anyone who’s seen them.

Comparisons have been made between Nick Ut’s Napalm Girl and Kevin Carter’s The Vulture and The Little Girl.

Carter, a South African freelance photographer, shot the picture in 1992. When a United Nations food distribution plane landed, Carter shot images of young kids scrabbling in the dirt, crying, according to the National Geographic magazine.

As one little girl who had almost no flesh left on her scrawled on the ground, unaware of a vulture standing just beyond her, Carter took the shot and chased the bird away but he did not go the extra mile to save the little girl.

Nobody knows what happened to her.

‘I might have killed myself’

Like Nick Ut, Carter won a Pulitzer prize for the photograph, but four months after its publication, he killed himself, leaving behind a suicide note that mentioned how the suffering and killing of starved and wounded children and corpses haunted him.

While the picture drew worldwide attention to the Sudan famine, it also provoked afresh an everlasting debate on the ethics of a photographer’s work.

“If I had not saved Kim Phuc that day, I think I would have killed myself like Kevin Carter,” Nick Ut said.

He was also personally tormented by the war. His older brother, Huynh Thanh My, was killed on assignment with the AP in the Mekong Delta.

He still carries his own personal scars. In the 10 years that he covered the Vietnam War, he was hit by bullets on his thigh, belly, and arm.

To this day, his leg hurts sometimes from the bullet wound.

But he is grateful that his height, or the lack of it, helped him escape bullets that flew over his head.

With a short laugh, he told VnExpress International: “If I were as tall as you, I would probably have been killed.”

Too good to be true

Nick Ut’s Napalm Girl shook the world, but it was not immune from suspicion.

“Some people thought ‘Napalm Girl’ was manipulated or misinterpreted, including President Nixon and the American general leading the Vietnam War, who said it might just be cooking oil on her,” he recalled.

“A Life magazine photographer was standing right next to me when I took the shot, and he also filmed the moment Phuc and her family members ran out of the bombed town. There were also many other people around me then. Besides, anyone could contact Kim Phuc and ask her if the event was real.

“I don’t waste my time responding to skepticism about whether my work was photoshopped or fake. But I respect everyone’s freedom of speech.”

Another stunning shot that he took, Chasing the Moon, was also suspected of being photoshopped.

Chasing the moon. Photo courtesy of Nick Ut

Nick Ut dismisses the heresy with his pictures and that of many companions who together have been chasing the moon, including Paul Roa, a Los Angeles Times journalist and many of Ut’s colleagues and fellow photographers. They call themselves the “LunARTics”.

“It is not easy to take a shot like that. I have to figure out and understand the timing, which direction the moon and the plane are traveling, calculate the altitude and so on. I had to run around so much to get the shot I want,” Ut explained to VnExpress International with one hand emulating the plane and the other the photographer running on the ground. 

Nick Ut at an interview with VnExpress International. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Nguyen 

The Hollywood stint

After Saigon fell in 1975, Ut left Vietnam to work in AP’s Tokyo bureau. It was there that he met his wife, Hong Huynh, another member of the Vietnamese diaspora.

The two migrated to Los Angeles in 1977, where he commenced a new phase of his career documenting Hollywood and other American celebrities.

American actress and comedian Cloris Leachman surrounded by her trophies, taken in 2011. The 92-year-old talent has won eight Primetime Emmy Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award, and an Academy Award for her role in The Last Picture Show (1971). Photo by Nick Ut

Iraq war veteran J.R. Martinez talks after he was named the grand marshal for Pasadena’s 123rd Tournament of Roses in Pasadena, California, taken on Nov 1, 2011. Photo by AP/Nick Ut

Nick Ut and Huynh have two children who can understand Vietnamese but cannot speak it very well.

While they find photography compelling, the children have not chosen to make a career out of it like their father. His grandchildren, though, aged 8 and 10, love taking photos.

“They are very good at shooting like their grandpa, but on their Iphones of course. Real cameras are too heavy for them,” Nick Ut said, smiling.

Sharing his legacy

Last March, AP announced that Nick Ut would retire after more than 50 years of photojournalism with the bureau.

Following the announcement, in May 2017, he came to Vietnam and gifted the “Napalm Girl” picture to the Vietnamese Women’s Museum in Hanoi.

The same month, he shared his photojournalism experience and expertise and the stories behind his photos with students, lecturers and other photographers at the VOV College, HCMC.

In June the same year, he gave the Vietnam Press Museum in Hanoi two cameras and 52 original photographs that he took during the Vietnam War along with few others he shot in Vietnam after 1975.

Nick Ut is a big fan of Leica cameras. He used one to capture the Napalm Girl. In fact, it is almost impossible to find him on the street without one dangling around his neck.

Nick Ut’s adoration for Leica cameras was cultivated by his late brother who showed him all his Leica cameras and used it every day to cover the Vietnam War.

In June 2018, he was invited to give a talk at the Leica Boutique in Hanoi about his near-death experience as a photojournalist in the war.

Home sweet home

Nick Ut is a naturalized American citizen, but he embraces his Vietnamese roots deeply, especially family values, not to mention its cuisine.

There is plenty of Vietnamese food available in California, but Nick Ut’s craving for authentic homemade cuisine is whetted every time he comes home.

“Ca kho to (braised fish made in southern Vietnam) is my favorite. And I also love canh chua (sour soup), bun cha Hanoi (grilled pork and vermicelli), banh xeo (Vietnamese pancake)….”

While speaking with VnExpress International, he took a break and went outside to buy some banana crackers from a street vendor. He raved about how delicious it was and shared it with everyone at the table.

Nick Ut pays a street vendor for some banana crackers. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Nguyen

The 67-year-old photographer is retired from AP, but not from photography. He has signed up to freelance for Getty Image. He is also working on his book, “From Hell to Hollywood,” which is slated to come out this month.

It will be published in the US by AP, but he hopes a Vietnamese version of it will be produced in Vietnam as well.

He thoroughly enjoys his annual visits to his motherland, which he spends visiting family members and paying respect to the dead.

When asked about his siblings, Nick Ut quietly counted with his fingers. He had 11.

“Some have passed away. But my younger and older brothers are still in Long An Province (his hometown), and another older brother is living in Chinatown in Saigon. All of them have retired.”

Some of his older siblings had passed away before he could see them.

After all the strife and struggle, Nick Ut still nurtures a vision of and a mission for Vietnam.

“When Americans think of Vietnam, they think of Vietnam War. I want to change that. I want them to see the peaceful Vietnam.”

Saigon Change, November 2018. Photo by Nick Ut

Saigon Change, November 2018. Photo by Nick Ut

Saigon Change, November 2018. Photo by Nick Ut

Hoan Kiem Lake, Hanoi, Vietnam. Photo by Nick Ut.

Today, the man who shot the Napalm Girl revels in his real reward: a country at peace. 

Story by Sen

window._io_config=window._io_config||;window._io_config["0.2.0"]=window._io_config["0.2.0"]||[];window._io_config["0.2.0"].push(page_url:"https://e.vnexpress.net/news/travel-life/after-hell-and-hollywood-nick-ut-basks-in-peace-3835521.html",page_url_canonical:"https://e.vnexpress.net/news/travel-life/after-hell-and-hollywood-nick-ut-basks-in-peace-3835521.html",page_title:"After Hell and Hollywood, Nick Ut basks in peace",page_type:"article",page_language:"en",article_authors:[],article_categories:["Others"],article_subcategories:["Others"],article_type:"longread",article_word_count:"101",article_publication_date:"Tue, 20 Nov 18 08:11:03 +0000");(function(d,s,id)var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(d.getElementById(id))return;js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="http://connect.facebook.net/vi_VN/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.0";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);(document,'script','facebook-jssdk'));window._io_config=window._io_config||;window._io_config["0.2.0"]=window._io_config["0.2.0"]||[];window._io_config["0.2.0"].push(page_url:"https://e.vnexpress.net/news/travel-life/after-hell-and-hollywood-nick-ut-basks-in-peace-3835521.html",page_url_canonical:"https://e.vnexpress.net/news/travel-life/after-hell-and-hollywood-nick-ut-basks-in-peace-3835521.html",page_title:"After Hell and Hollywood, Nick Ut basks in peace",page_type:"article",page_language:"en",article_authors:[],article_categories:["Others"],article_subcategories:["Others"],article_type:"longread",article_word_count:"101",article_publication_date:"Tue, 20 Nov 18 08:11:03 +0000");(function(d,s,id)var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(d.getElementById(id))return;js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="http://connect.facebook.net/vi_VN/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.0";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);(document,'script','facebook-jssdk'));