#the greatest darkness I'll ever see was the grave i pulled myself out of

[historia-vitae-magistras]

I know you mentioned you have ties to both sides of the border. Idk if you live in the states or canada, but I just wanted to say I hope you’ve been doing well, even with the mad house that has been America recently 😭

I'm fine. Extremely, extremely ironically, I swore an oath of service to defend the constitution the same day my country surrendered its soul. And I did so with my badge of office pinned to my lapel with a maple leaf. The same way I walked around with my 'i voted' sticker on my coat just next to my red poppy in utter shock for a week after the election. I'm fine and I'm doing better than most people around me.

And I will survive the next four years of service to the archives of this country, my fucking country, as my grandfather survived the Grande Noirceur, the great darkness, in the nation that bore me. Americans around me are panicking and and wringing their hands and wondering how they'll survive the next four years. Some more realistically and rationally than others. I'm fine. I believe in tomorrow even from this present, coming from a worse past. I was raised by a man who taught me how to survive this and I have never been so steady.

A man who after fighting for Canada and against fascism for five long years was slapped into an insane asylum for communist sympathies and union organizing. He was only released after an outbreak of tuberculosis emptied and shuttered that institution. They further withheld treatment until he signed a confession that barred him from teaching ever again. His livelihood was destroyed three, four, five, six times over even after that because he did not bend and turn the other cheek to fascism. He lost track of how many times he was jailed. Once because he did not betray his mother, a practicing midwife, and turn her in for inducing abortions. For distributing literature. For agitating against injustice and defending the vulnerable and pushing, pushing, pushing for a better world.

And eventually, that great darkness ended and dawn arrived. The Révolution tranquille began. My mother, his youngest child, was born into the liberalizing, secularizing world her father had fought for. I will have to fight. We will all have to fight. Organize, communicate, keep each other safe. Love thy neighbor and screw your courage to the sticking place and we too will have children who will not know this darkness. Fight, fight like hell with everything you have and every thing you are. And some day, some bright and beautiful day, we will kiss the foreheads of our sons and daughters the way my grandfather did my mother and we will know that we have won.

[bunysliper]

Fic prompt: s5 pillow talk 💛

I know it's been forever since you prompted this, I hope you like it!

Talks in the Dark

"What'd you want to be when you grew up?"

The question comes out of the blue, a complete non sequitur to the last words they'd spoken (which had been more breathless pants than an actual conversation), but Kate just laughs, reaching back for his hand and bringing it around her body to bring his chest flush with her back.

"When you were really little, I mean," he continues, dusting a kiss to the skin at the back of her neck. "I know you told me once that when you were in college you were pre-law, and then you became the greatest detective in the world, but when you were your little, tiny, feisty baby Beckett self, what'd you want to be?"

Kate strokes her fingertips over the back of his hand, using the gentle rhythm to help herself think. She knows she'd wanted to be something different back then, all kids did even if it was something absolutely absurd, but she can't for the life of her remember what it was.

"I really don't know," she says. "I guess maybe I always kind of wanted to be like my mom."

She feels him smile against her skin, shivering when he brushes his stubble along her shoulder.

"I could see that," he agrees. "You do stick to your guns when you know what you want."

Kate exhales, clutching his hand a little tighter. She's trying not to be so rigid, but she knows he's seen that side of her too often.

"My dad used to joke that 'stubborn' should have been my middle name."

Castle chuckles. "Katherine Stubborn Beckett; it does have a ring to it."

She smiles. "Not the worst name in the world, anyway."

He hums.

"Come to think of it, though, I feel like I did once tell my parents I wanted to be a groundskeeper in a cemetery after we went to a funeral."

Castle's head tilts on the pillow. "I need to know. Tell me everything. How did you go from lawyer to groundskeeper in a cemetery, and back to lawyer?"

"I remember seeing the care they took in making sure the graves looked nice, and it was quiet and peaceful there."

"And you didn't think, even for a second that it might be haunted?"

She snorts. "Not even a little bit."

"Party pooper."

Kate hums. "What about you? What'd you want to be before little Ricky Castle decided the life of a writer was for him?"

Castle's fingers twitch in hers. "Oh, I definitely wanted to be a ghostbuster who patrolled a cemetery. Zap a few poltergeists with my proton pack before they can terrorize people? The best."

She doesn't believe it for a second, but she laughs anyway, giving him that.

"And then I'd fall in love with an unbelievably, unrealistically sexy cemetery groundskeeper and we'd be together forever, making sure the army of the undead never rose to terrorize the city."

Kate snorts. "No really, Castle. What'd you want to be?"

He exhales. "A journalist, I think. Television, print, either. I wanted to report facts to people and keep them up to date about what was going on in the world. I used to sit Mother down and force her to watch my nightly news reports. Which I wrote myself about events I almost completely made up."

His lips pucker against her skin. "It turns out fiction is much more fun."

Kate laughs. "Now that I believe."

Behind her, Castle hums.

"I am glad to know that about you, though," she adds. Pulling her hand out of his grip, her fingers trail down his arm, making soothing strokes. "Thanks for telling me."

His foot brushes hers. "Thanks for telling me about yours, too. You would make a pretty hot groundskeeper, you know."

Laughter bubbles in her chest. "Thanks, Castle," she drawls. "I'll keep that in mind if I ever decide to change jobs."

He grins against her skin. "Good."

Quiet settles, blanketing them in warmth. Kate sinks deeper into the mattress, allowing herself to drift. She's on the cusp of sleep when she hears her name again.

"Mmm?"

"I love you."

A smile works its way over her lips. "I know."

He chuckles, pulling her closer, rearranging the tangle of limbs they've created until they're both comfortable.

"Hey Cas'le?" she says a second later, peeking an eye open and twisting her head as far as she can. She can't see him, but it's the thought that counts.

"Yeah?"

"I love you, too."

[coricomile]

WRITING QUESTIONS TAG GAME

Tagged by @darkangel0410 . Thank you bb <3

what is your absolute all-time favorite idea you’ve ever had? 

It changes a lot. I get excited when I get the first bit of an idea, especially when it leads me on a (totally for the writing, not at all for the procrastination, really) research spiral and I get to learn new things. The idea to write Sid with OCD tickled at a lot of parts of my brain and I'm still really proud of Leave the Lights On. 

what is your favorite part of being a writer? which parts could you take or leave? 

I like the final product part. I don't particularly like the actual writing. Sometimes the characters do their own thing and the words just spit out effortlessly as they do their own thing and I can get thousands of words done in a short period, but sometimes it's like dragging a moose out of the forest to make it stand on the road and flag down those bursts. My favorite part is the first edit of the "final" draft, where I can see how everything's come together and realize what I've written without noticing it while I was doing it. 

I could leave the constant nagging worry that I'm being too obvious. It's always such a boost when I get a comment saying the reader had no idea x was going to happen and got excited, because I always think I'm tacking up neon arrows pointing to where I'm headed. It's probably because I already know what's going to happen (...sometimes) and that, to me, it seems like the most obvious place in the world. 

what is your greatest motivation to write/create? 

Oh, for sure it's the validation. I love making things for people and my favorite times to write are for exchanges or gifts. I was devastated that I missed signups for Yuletide this year. I'll often have a flash of an idea and then go with it because I want to see it and, despite my desperate wish for someone else to have done it, it doesn't exist so I have to do it myself. But crafting something specific for someone's wants (that I also want once I've etched out the plan that I never would have come up with by myself) is my favorite thing to do, full stop. 

what is your favorite story you’ve written to completion?

The two I'm proudest of are Pull Hard and Make a Wish and I Wish to be a Cornerstone. Beyond them being the longest works I've written, it's interesting to see the parallels and the differences between when I wrote them. They have different strengths and weaknesses, but I tend to focus on one character and how another wrecking ball crashes into their life and makes them question everything. I also am really proud of the ensemble cast in both. They're obviously there to support the main plot, but when I get comments about how they feel like they're living their own complex lives outside of the scenes they're featured in, it makes me so excited. 

what is your favorite out-of-the-box quote? 

You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you don't even have a name for.

I don't care how much of a multifandom cliche it's become, but the first time I read You are Jeff by Richard Siken in 2005 when I was 15 and feeling all those confusing, big feelings for the first time- especially in a car, parked in the dark, with a boy I was falling in love with when we were both too embarrassed and proud and unsure and awkward and terrified to say real words in fear of rejection- it hit me like a guillotine. 

I've used it more than once for fic inspiration, like so many other people have. Especially for those first painful and scary loves, for those terrifying moments of crossing over from one place to another in a relationship. It's how I learned love, like it was almost written just for that first time for me. And it's different for every pairing, because everyone will react to that moment just a little differently. Cliches become cliches for a reason.

which of your characters would you say has the most controversial mindset? why do you say so and how do you personally feel about their ideals? 

Definitely Pete from Pull Hard and Make a Wish. There's a comment on someone's bookmark that says "you'll hate Pete at first, or maybe the first 2/3rds" and yes. You should. He's selfish and misogynistic and Not a Good Person. And, years later, I'm not sure if the end of the story is happy or not, even though I'm the one the wrote it. I was in a Place while writing that felt very much early Pete and it helped me explore some relevant and irrelevant things, and he's the lead so you're supposed to want him to get a happy end, but I'm still not sure if he got it or deserved it. 

if you, when you first started writing, met you now, what would younger you think? 

Wow, she's sure got a lot of kinky thoughts. 

But probably excited to write so much better than the horrific baby's first fics that have, thankfully, been lost to Yahoo Group emails and the fics that, unfortunately, will live forever on FF.net because that email server no longer even exists, even if I remembered my password to take them down. 

I've been having a hard time writing lately and part of it is because it is hard to see how far I've progressed from where I started. A lot of times the actual writing is like pulling teeth with every word and getting lucky when some of the blood that spills out also has a sudden burst of inspiration. It does help, too, that some of the older stories I have on Ao3 still get loving comments praising the writing that I absolutely know could be better when I've read over it again. (I'm looking at you We are Nowhere and It's Now. Why are you the one people like most??) 

But I think little 10 year old me would be starry eyed over some of the things I've written. I should remember that. 

Tagging @compo67 @awabubbles @dyed-red @carolinecrane and anyone else that's excited about their own words.