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hankwritten · 4 years ago

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The Weight of Other People’s Thoughts

Demoman/Soldier, 2k

Request for @lilythedragon05, Scotland

It was a bad idea to follow that tugging cord at the center of his being, the one that called him to Ullapool, and he never would have dared to entertain it if he knew it would have brought him here.

Jane sat by the ocean, stone’s throw from the town, but his distasteful frown kept his eyes locked firmly ahead instead of gazing dubiously at it. What had he been thinking? Coming to Ullapool had only make him feel worse, not better, a smirch against Tavish’s memory if there ever was one. Rubbing in Tavish’s face that he’d never go home again—and here Jane was, free to frolic across the whole damn planet, even if it took him to stupid countries ending in ‘land’.

He leaned further over his knees, barely feeling the sea breeze as he thought about his dead friend.

His murdered friend, he reminded himself. Murdered by someone who he thought he could trust, who now had to carry that guilt with him for the rest of his life.

Everywhere Jane looked it reminded him of Tavish. Maybe that’s why he’d come: self-flagellation. Appropriate punishment. Or maybe he was so desperate not to forget, he’d take the pain that came with remembering. Torturing himself truly, since he could look on the hills and surrounding coast that he had once only known through enthusiastic descriptions, see for himself the places where a young Tavish had played with dummy-grenades. He could imagine him talking to the local shopkeeps. He could practically see him walking up this very path, groceries in one hand, a newspaper filled with fried fish in the other as he took a large bite out of it-

Wait.

Tavish stopped dead, his face enveloped in utter shock. Still mid-chew, he said, “Jdra-ne?”

Jane leapt to his feet. “Apparition!” He pointed an accusing finger at the offending spirit. “Do not think for a second I will be cowed into repentance by the spectral manifestation of my guilt!”

Tavish nearly choked as he tried to swallow his bite of fish. “I…what?”

“Ghosts serve no purpose on my journey to recovery,” Jane continued. “Not even ones that look like my dead friend! Be gone creature of the other world!”

“What I- I’m not bloody dead.”

Jane squinted at him. He definitely didn’t look dead, totally opaque, no fettered chains representing his sins in life and his guilt over failing to help his fellow Man.

“…Are you sure?” Jane pressed.

“You’d think someone would know if they were dead,” Tavish grumbled poignantly, now glaring at Jane for some reason.

“I killed you though. It was-” -pickaxe right through the sternum, crushing, all the red bits coming out when they should have been in- “That was definitely fatal.”

“Aye, was, but I managed to limp my was back into Respawn range. Took a better part of an hour, but I made it.”

There was something odd to Tavish’s voice, something he wasn’t saying, but the realization that he might actually-seriously-really be alive was starting to set in and Jane was too afraid to believe it.

He took a step closer, past the bench he’d been enjoying his solitude at and completing a full circle around the Demoman. Tavish’s head followed him all the while, up until Jane came to a stop in front of him. “…Promise you are not a ghost?”

“I’m not a ghost,” Tavish said, as convincingly honest as he’d always been. Not that his acting skills hadn’t covered for his mendacity before-

-no, no that was a trick, it all turned out to be a lie a damn lie-

“Fine then. You’re not.” Though Jane would keep his eyes peeled for phantasmal anyway. “What the hell are you doing here then?”

“I live here,” Tavish huffed. “Gravel Wars are over, wasn’t going to spend the rest of my years in some blighted desert. Better question is what are you doing here, yank?”

Crap. Well, maybe a half-truth would suffice. “You always talked so much about Scotland I thought…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”

Tavish stood there, one hand still clasped around his groceries. The moment dragged on, vast seas of unsaid things between them, of regrets still festering, to which he ended with, “would you like me to show you around?”

Jane looked down, trying not to stare at his shoes but instead at the foreign soil around them. “…Sure. Why not.”

“Everything is incredibly vertical,” Jane complained as they climbed up yet another hill Tavish insisted was part of the journey.

“Aye, that’s why they call it the Highlands, BLU.”

Jane hated how fucking smug he sounded. Hated, and missed it all the same, missed how this bastard could set a fire in his gut just with one of his damn smiles.

“And there she is,” the Demoman said proudly as the crested the final ridge.

“Damn. Really went to crap in the last couple centuries.”

“Oi, don’t point fingers at me! I’ve only been around for forty of those.”

DeGroot Keep was shriveled and hunchbacked since Jane had last seen it, folding under its own legacy as ages had eaten the tallest spires first and chewed its way down to the cob. Still, he could just make out the choke points, the parapets, the places he used to go charging into with his mêlée weapon held high—all sanded down by the years, the vaguest memories of control points where a portal in time had briefly allowed Jane to witness their existence.

“So what,” he asked, following Tavish into the slight dip in the Highlands where the Keep nestled, “you live in here like some sort of anti-Italian?”

“An anti- what now?”

“Anti-Italians! Despises sun, allergic to garlic, doesn’t show up in mirrors, no sex life. Basic literary reference, RED.”

Tavish rolled his eye. “No, I’m not squatting in the dilapidated castle. Got a perfectly nice home down in the village, I just happen to have inherited this along with…all the other crap.” He waved his hand. “I’ve considered shelling out to having it restored but…dunno. Seeing it go from its heyday to this makes me think that in another couple hundred years it’ll just fall apart again.”

He sat on a piece of tumbled rock, one that used to hang over the Keep’s gate, a bright and shining keystone now used as a stool. Jane joined him.

“Don’t get much of this at home, do you? Old crap. Yer country’s still a wee babe you know, nothing’s even falling apart yet.”

“Incorrect!” Jane amended. “There are plenty of old things in America!”

“For last time lad, Thomas Edison wasn’t immortal, and he didn’t be build a second Shangri-La under Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“Your statements reveal both your ignorance and your compunction, but I was actually talking about mounds.”

“Mounds,” Tavish repeated dubiously.

“Yes! Mounds! Fourteen hundred years ago Americans were building ceremonial mounds in order to track celestial events! They look like animals from the top, lynx, bears, fish, all that crap. I used to walk next to this bird one every day on the way to school.”

Tavish blinked at him, tilting his head. “No offense Jane, but including Native people usually isn’t in your worldview. Where’d you even learn all ‘o that?”

“My mother taught me, so think insinuating more cyclops—lest you show disrespect against her memory and I am forced to take out your other socket!”

Tavish raised his hands defensively, but there was a smile creeping at the corner. “Alright, alright, I get ye. A Mum’s honor is a serious thing.”

“Hm. Good.” Jane glanced ahead, suddenly afraid of lapsing back into silence, as though Tavish would start to slip away from him if they did. “How is your mother?”

“Ah…she passed some years back.”

“…I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s alright.” Tavish paused. “I still see her sometimes.”

“Metaphorically or…?”

Tavish glanced at him, but then away just a quickly, as though frightened of what he might see. “I’d rather not talk about it, if that’s alright with you.” Instead, he stared ahead, the sun setting between its cradle within the mountains. “Heh. At least there’s something that’s the same no matter where you go. Always a sunset.”

“Guess so.”

Still, Jane found he liked this one better than the ones back home. At least, better than all the ones he’d seen before he’d met Tavish.

The next day was spent in the village, and Jane couldn’t help but yearn for more of Tavish’s time, more of his attention. His friend. His friend who was still alive. Tavish had a kind word for every person they passed, all of whom didn’t seem to notice Jane at all, simply starting up a conversation with their fellow local and submitting to the rhythm of the morning. Breakfast was some sort of potato scone, but Jane wasn’t hungry, so he just walked beside Tavish as the other man ate. They found themselves at the same bench where they’d first run into each other.

“So,” Tavish asked. “Ullapool everything you thought it would be?”

“Hm. It’s…nice. It is obviously not perfect for geographical reasons entirely outside of its control, but. I understand how it made you the man you are.”

“Me? Nah.” Tavish wiped off his mouth with his sleeve. “I made myself like this.”

Again, he wouldn’t look at Jane, wouldn’t say what they were both thinking. That things had gone wrong, that they had both fucked up. One of them more than the other, but Jane had found him again, and maybe they could still figure something out, still have time to unearth all that they had deemed too dangerous and buried in the sand.

Jane reached forward, and put his hand over where Tavish’s was resting on the bench.

And watched it pass straight through.

Jane sprang away. “I knew it! I knew you were a ghost!”

Likewise, Tavish stood up sharply. “I am not. I bloody told you I was’t.”

“Liar! I will not be swayed by any more perjury from your ethereal mouth!”

“I’m not lying!” Tavish snarled at him, his eye dark and narrowed, burning hotter than the words would imply. “I never lied. I never wanted any of-”

“Blasphemy!”

“Would you just listen for-!”

“You cannot guilt me apparition! For I know that-”

“Shut up! Just fucking shut up!” Tavish’s fist closed around the neck of his scrumpy bottle, half drained before noon, and threw it full force at Jane’s head.

Jane raised an arm to block the incoming blow, but the impact never arrived. A second ticked by, then two, then three, and slowly he lowered his forearm to reveal the panting Demoman behind it, shoulders heaving and an inscrutable expression tearing across his features.

“How’s that for the truth you bleeding idiot,” he said.

Jane looked to Tavish, then rotated his neck slowly, staring at the bottle that had landed in the grass behind him. He blinked, willing what he was looking at to make sense, to suddenly disappear and go back to where things were a second ago. To believe he hadn’t seen that bottle connected with his own nose.

There was something he didn’t want to do, but he did it anyway, turning his gaze forward inch by agonizing inch, staring down at his own hands. Fully taking how translucent they were.

The moment shattered, Tavish tore his eye away. “Fuck. Fuck I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve…”

Jane was still looking at his hands. There was panic, deep and overwhelming rising within him, but there was no raised pulse to accompany it, no sweat on the back of his neck.

He lifted his chin to Tavish. “What? I don’t…”

“I didn’t die,” Tavish said thickly. “You did. I killed you and I walked off and you just bled out for who knows how long and-”

-the pickaxe but also a sword, just as deadly buried two feet into his chest and the man above him trying to shove it in a few extra inches, strangled screaming as it pushed deeper-

Jane hadn’t been paying attention to the last half of Tavish’s muttered confession. The Demoman was crying now, pawing furiously at his one lone eye as stared out valley below them, looking anywhere but at Jane as his sclera turned red.

“I’m sorry,” he sputtered. “Christ Jane I’m so fucking sorry. If you came to haunt me or whatever I just- I just want you to know that you can’t hate me more than I hate myself. That it’s been killing me every day since.”

He collapsed on the bench, curling away from Jane as he buried his face in his hands.

It could have been some sort of trick. A ghost bottle or…no Jane wouldn’t even try. He attempted to remember what flight he had come in on but couldn’t. He grasped for how many years since the Gravel Wars had ended, and couldn’t find the answer.

Jane was a ghost, yet everything still hurt as much as it had when he had lived. Immaterial, and he still so badly wanted to touch Tavish’s hand.

He sat on the bench next to him. “I didn’t come to make you feel bad, Tavish.”

“Then why did you come?” It sounded like it was meant to be venomous, but instead it only sounded empty—empty and wet with tears, like a plastic bag trampled into a puddle.

Jane looked down at his hands. His useless, ghost hands that he could still knit together. “I…I wanted to see you,” he said truthfully. “I missed you.”

Tavish looked at him, bleary-eyed. He whispered, “I missed you too. So damn much.”

“Whatever I was doing before, I missed you enough to come here. To someplace I thought you would be.”

A panicked jolt crossed Tavish’s face. “You’re not leaving, are you?” The same man who a moment ago thought Jane had come to smother him with guilt was despondent at the idea that Jane might go after all, that he wouldn’t get a chance to hurt himself with his own regret anymore.

“No, no not yet,” Jane said. He tried his best to wrap and arm around Tavish’s shoulder. The mortal shivered where their skin met.

“Okay,” Tavish said quietly. “Okay. Good. Thank you. I don’t think I can…When I saw you sitting up here I couldn’t believe it could be fore something good. That the only reason you’d want to haunt me would be because you hated me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

It was true. Even though he remembered now, remember lying there, thinking how they’d killed each other, Jane had only ever hated the man who’d believed the TV’s lies.

“I really did come because I was thinking of you. Missing you.” Jane paused. “Today was fun. I’m sure you have a lot of other places to show me, right private?”

“…Sure. Sure whatever you want.” Tavish wiped at his nose. “I’m sorry Jane.”

“It’s alright Tavish.” He held his head in the crook of Tavish’s neck. “I’m sorry too.”

#demosolly #boots n bombs #tf2 fanfiction

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welcometophu · 4 years ago

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Not Your Guardian Angel: Chapter 5

Marked Book 3: Not Your Guardian Angel

Chapter 5

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Cheyenne sits cross-legged on Pels’s bed, facing her. There are three towels spread out to keep the bed clean, and they already look blood-spattered by drops of spaghetti sauce from when Cheyenne gestured with her fork while eating.

They’d delivered a big bowl of pasta to Mom, then retreated to Pels’s room with their own second attempt at dinner, the door shut behind them. They’ll know when Peter comes home, and honestly, Pels hopes to be asleep before his SUV pulls back into the driveway.

For a little while, it’s been easy. Pels can eat quietly and forget about everything else, while Cheyenne fills the empty spaces with chatter about school, Adric, and gymnastics. It’s great, until dinner is done, and they put the bowls aside on Pels’s bureau, and Cheyenne pulls the spattered towels off the bed, bundling them up.

“Can I stay in your bed tonight, or do I need to sleep on the floor?” Cheyenne asks quietly.

Pels remembers the first time Cheyenne crawled into bed with her. Pels was seven, and Cheyenne was two. Cheyenne had just figured out how to climb out of her crib, over the rail, and had toddled down the hall to climb in with Pels during a thunderstorm. When that meant that Cheyenne got upgraded to a “big girl bed” by taking Pels’s bed, Mom had given Pels a big double bed to sprawl in. Pels is small enough that she hasn’t cared when Cheyenne has continued to climb in, whenever she’s scared, ever since.

Pels snorts softly. “When have I ever made you sleep on the floor?”

Cheyenne grins and throws her pillow on the bed, then stretches out, her legs longer than Pels’s, feet reaching further down the bed as they lie next to each other. “Okay. So. What next?” she whispers.

“You know what you need to do,” Dad says. He’s standing by the bureau, looking down at the bowls and idly poking at one of the forks.

“Dad, it’s creepy when you hang out at night,” Pels says plainly.

“And you’re ignoring my point.”

“I don’t mind if he’s here.” Cheyenne waves at the air. “I mean, he’s always here, right? Like. He’s been here since I was a baby. I’m pretty sure I can’t care. He’s not my dad, but he’s your dad, so he’s like my Peter. Only dead.”

And nicer. But Pels isn’t going to say that out loud. After all, Dad has his issues and can be manipulative at times, so while he’s definitely not Peter, he also isn’t perfect. Besides, Cheyenne doesn’t need to be reminded just how bad Peter can be. “Okay then.” There really isn’t much she can do about him anyway. If he wants to stay, he’s going to stay. “We need a plan.”

“Where can you go?”

It’s a reasonable question, and Pels has been thinking about it while they ate. If it were Cheyenne, maybe it’d be easy. She has friends everywhere. “I only really have friends at PHU,” she admits. “And most of them have gone home for Spring Break.”

Cheyenne rolls over on her elbow. “Did anyone stay? Or maybe do you know anyone else who lives in Pennsylvania? Or somewhere you could get to on the bus?”

Pels reaches for her phone, but the list of phone numbers in her contacts is small. She may have made friends, but she hasn’t exactly tried her hardest to connect with them.

She opens the group text with Shane and Jess. There have been more pictures since she last talked to them. The latest shows three large cats sleeping in a pile on top of Ángel.

“Oh my God, that’s so cute!” Cheyenne snatches the phone from Pels’s hands, squealing as she opens the photo stream for the chat and scrolls through the pictures. “Are they mountain lions? They’re adorable! Why are your friends hanging out with mountain lions?”

Pels grabs the phone back and uses pictures to explain. “The cats are Talented. The word for their Talent looks kind of like lynx, and they look like lynxes, so I’m going to go with that, because I’m not sure how it’s pronounced. That’s Ángel, and his boyfriend Tony, and those two are Tanner and Luca and that’s Hayley. Here’s a picture where they all look normal. And these are Jess and Shane.”

Cheyenne takes the phone back when Pels offers it, magnifying the pictures to get a closer look. “Jess is really pretty. She’s tall and like, totally solid. I love her hair and her freckles. Shane looks cute. Does he have a cane?”

“He broke his leg last January and it hasn’t really healed quite right.” Pels chews at her lip, not reaching out to take the phone back. “They are also pretty much literally the only people I think I can call.”

“Just call them,” Dad says. He plucks the phone from Cheyenne’s fingertips and drops it on Pels’s lap.

Cheyenne blinks. “I am guessing your Dad has opinions.”

“He usually does.” Pels picks up the phone as she lies back again, holding it above their heads. She presses the button to call Jess, and arranges the phone so the camera gets both her and Cheyenne lying side by side.

“Pels, hi!” Jess sounds surprised, and Pels can’t really blame her. She wouldn’t expect herself to call, either.

When the video comes on, it wobbles and shifts around until it’s set against something and is pointing at a bed in a dorm room where Ángel and Tony are sitting against the wall, and Shane’s on the floor. Jess flops on the floor next to Shane and waves. “Tanner borrowed Tony’s truck and he and Luca and Hayley went out to pick up pizza.”

“We will starve before they return,” Shane says dryly. “It’s already been an hour.”

“Why?” Cheyenne asks.

Pels is pretty sure she can guess the reason and it doesn’t have anything to do with the pizza. Her cheeks go hot when everyone else laughs. “It doesn’t matter,” she says quickly. “They’ll be back soon, I’m sure. I just—” She cuts off, not quite sure how to get started.

“It’s cool that you called,” Jess says easily. “Is that your little sister? Hey, Cheyenne, I’m Jess. Pels talks about you in our group chat.”

“Pels showed me pictures, but it’s really cool to meet you. Is it true that—ow.” Cheyenne rubs her side where Pels elbowed her. “Quit it.”

Ángel turns towards Tony, then leans closer to him as Tony murmurs something. Tony’s expression when he looks back at the camera is far more gentle than his rough looks would make Pels guess. For a moment, they both get very large in the screen as they climb over Jess and Shane to get off the bed, then they disappear from view. “Good to see you,” Ángel says from off-screen. “We’re going to go take a walk. Let Tony stretch his furry legs.”

There’s a low rumble, and a strangled laugh, and the door in the background bangs open as Jess and Shane both watch the action. Jess is laughing when she looks back at Pels. “Tony just bride-carried him out. Which is better than a fireman’s carry, but still, the look on Ángel’s face was priceless.”

Shane leans forward, picking up the phone and moving it closer, presumably on his lap so it’s looking up at him and Jess. “So, hey, Pels,” he says, his voice low and careful. “What’s up?”

“I’m supposed to get to know you.” She doesn’t know why it’s so hard to just say she needs help, but it is. It’s really hard to get the words out.

“And that’s why you’re calling with your little sister on the call?” Shane looks doubtful.

“Is everything okay?” Jess asks.

“No,” Cheyenne says firmly. “It’s not. Pels needs to go back to PHU right now.”

Jesus.

“Not right this second, Cheyenne. But yes, soon,” Pels admits. “Things are—it’s just not good here right now.”

There’s a loud car on the street, and for just a moment she thinks it might be Peter coming home. She drops the phone, scrambling to the window to look out, but a pickup truck rolls by, passing the driveway and continuing on.

“So, my dad and Pels got in a fight,” Cheyenne says, the phone in her hands now as she looks up at it. “He’s my dad, but not Pels’s dad—you should ask her about her dad sometime. Anyway, her and my dad don’t get along, and he doesn’t approve of her tattoo.” When Cheyenne says the words, Pels can almost hear the quotations around “tattoo” as if she’s trying to get them to talk about the soul marks. “Then things started rattling and when stuff like that happens—”

“I always get blamed.” Pels gets back on the bed and into view of the camera quickly. “It’s usually my fault. Kind of.”

“This time it wasn’t, but my dad doesn’t know that.”

“And in order to keep everything from getting out of hand, he’s pissed off enough that we think everything would go back to status quo if I weren’t here making it worse,” Pels says quickly. She knows they need to talk about it more, but she doesn’t want Mom to overhear them talking about Cheyenne’s Talent. It’s obvious that Mom isn’t ready for it, and there’s no point in taking the risk.

“I don’t have friends here,” Pels adds, when Jess and Shane are strangely silent. They glance at each other, and she wonders if they can have silent conversations. They’re best friends; maybe they’ve developed that almost telepathy some friends have. “We moved into this house right before I started at PHU. If I didn’t have GPS, I’d be constantly lost, especially since Mom has me driving Cheyenne around. The only person outside of this house whose name I actually know is Lonnie, the guy at the Coffee Shack.”

“I wonder if they’d be jealous if you told them he was flirting with you?” Dad muses.

“Shut up, Dad,” Pels snaps.

Cheyenne giggles.

Jess’s mouth is slightly open, staring at the phone. Shane looks as if he’s trying to see around the edges of the image. “Do you have someone else there?” Shane asks.

Pels puts a hand over Cheyenne’s mouth. “It is a long and complicated story. Just remember, if I say Dad, it’s—not an awful thing. If Cheyenne says Dad, she means Peter, and he’s the one who doesn’t like me.”

“Noted,” Jess says.

Cheyenne shoves Pels’s hand away. “Short version is Pels needs you guys to rescue her. So can she come home and stay with you?”

Jess makes the funny little fish face again, her mouth opening and closing while her cheeks go red under the freckles. Shane says something to her that’s too quiet for the microphone, and Jess shakes her head quickly. “I’m fine,” she insists. “I’m just going to grab a water bottle. I’ll be right back. You want one? Of course you want one. Shane. Not Pels. I can’t exactly give you a water bottle through the phone line.” She disappears from view quickly.

Shane’s expression goes soft and amused. “You’re ridiculous.”

A water bottle lands on the bed next to him. “Shut up,” Jess says from off-screen.

Cheyenne still has the phone in her hands, so she sits up, cradling it in her lap to look down. “The pictures of the cats were really cool,” she says. “Pels said they’re lynxes.”

“Lince,” Shane says, and Pels is relieved she didn’t try to pronounce it because it sounds more like linn-chay than lynx. “They’re a type of shapeshifter with only one form, and don’t call them Clan; Tony growls every time it comes up. It’s the only type of Talent I’ve ever seen where one person can call it out of someone else, which is why Tanner’s now a cat.”

Pels is sure there’s a story there, and she is equally sure that Cheyenne is going to get Shane to tell it. By the time she tries to decide whether it’s worth rerouting the conversation back to the rescue mission, Shane’s already deep into a discussion of how there was a twenty-two hour truck ride that ended with one of them becoming a cat.

There are pieces left out. There have to be, because it doesn’t fully make sense.

That doesn’t seem to matter to Cheyenne, who simply nods along with all of it. “So Tony and Ángel are soulmates and who else is?” she asks.

“Ángel and Hayley are the ones who did the original ritual,” Shane explains. “They thought they were going to be soulmates, but then everything went a little wrong. Ángel still brought Hayley home for winter break, though, and she met his best friend Tanner and they turned out to be soulmates, and now Luca’s their boyfriend. And Ángel ended up finding out Tony’s his soulmate, and really, it’s all far better matchups.”

Jess flops back on the bed, a bottle of water in hand that’s already half gone. Her cheeks are still faintly flushed, and her ponytail’s been pulled loose so her auburn hair is in dark waves around her face. “They make each other more stable,” she says. “Ángel and Hayley were like the same person sometimes. But Tony’s got a serious side that helps keep Ángel rooted in reality. And Tanner and Hayley balance well, too, and they make an anchor for Luca.”

“But the spell made them fall in love?” Cheyenne asks. “I mean, isn’t that kind of—”

“Popular misconception, but no.” Shane meets Pels’s gaze through the screen. “Magic can’t make you fall in love. All it can do is point out that someone might be a perfect match, but all the rest of it is up to you.”

Pels makes a noise rather than saying anything in reply. She rubs at her wrist, still uncertain, because this just seems messed up. “Aren’t soulmates supposed to be two people,” she mutters, not bothering to phrase it as a question.

“Ángel’s abuela has two marks,” Jess says. “She didn’t actually get together with both, but she loved both. Soulmates are different for different people. Like Rory’s mark is huge, trying to encapsulate Kit, and they balance each other perfectly. Then there’s Tanner and Hayley, and they’ve got Luca, and there’s no mark for him, but he’s part of their life, and Luca called Tanner’s cat.”

“So no, it’s not weird to have multiple soulmates,” Shane says, his tone very careful. “What happened with my mark is definitely different, but apparently magic likes to do things its own way.”

“Especially around Shane.” Jess knocks into him with her shoulder. “Since his innate ability is Chaos.”

“And if you had a Talent, your innate ability would be stable math,” Shane counters.

“It sounds like you two should totally be soulmates, if balance matters that much,” Cheyenne says with a soft laugh.

“Except for the fact that I am very much a lesbian, and apparently the equation includes Pels,” Jess replies.

Pels can feel the warmth rising in her face again. She’s pretty sure she’s supposed to respond somehow here. Either she should be encouraging, or discouraging, or something in between but there are no words that feel right on her tongue.

“You could just go with it,” Dad points out, and Pels turns to glare over her shoulder at him.

“So,” Cheyenne says, a little too loudly. “We need to figure out how we’re going to get Pels back to PHU.”

“And where I’m going to stay when I get there. Because I didn’t sign up to say I’d be there over break, so I’m locked out of the dorm until Saturday. It’s only Wednesday,” Pels points out. If money weren’t an issue, the travel would be easy. It’s sleeping space that’s hard.

Shane and Jess look at each other. “Sleeping space is slightly complicated because of all the cats,” Jess says slowly. “But we’ll work something out, we promise. You won’t be stuck sleeping on a park bench in the winter.”

“I’ve actually napped on those benches on the Quad,” Shane muses. “But it was a lot warmer. There was this one senior—my RA last year—who used to tell stories about camping out under the bushes. Apparently there’s a place where you can get under this ring of hemlocks—I’m not even sure where he’s talking about on campus. But it’s like a pine fort, and he’d go sleep outside there. On the other hand, he’s Clan, so I’m not sure he really cared about the weather or being outside in it.”

Jess elbows him. “We will find a place indoors, with heat and a bed, for Pels to stay,” she says firmly. “What about getting here?”

“I took the bus home, and can take it back, but my ticket isn’t until Saturday.” Pels goes to her bag and digs through it, pulling out the information before returning to the bed and in view of the camera. “It looks like there’s a fee to change it, and I can’t exactly ask Mom to change the booking.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Shane offers. “Just text me the information, and I’ll get it changed.”

“If she can go tomorrow morning while I’m at school, I can totally play dumb about it,” Cheyenne says. “Pels, you need the car to get to the bus station, don’t you?”

Pels nods. “Which means the car will be stuck at the station, and Mom and Peter will be pissed off about it. Do you think you can get Mom to the station to pick it up somehow without Peter getting involved? I don’t want there to be any backlash on you.”

Cheyenne pats her hand. “I can cry on demand, and you’ll be abandoning me. I will absolutely play dumb for you. Besides, I think Mom might be more on your side than you think.”

Pels thinks back over every time Mom’s forced her to wear the right clothes, act the right way, and hasn’t believed her when she’s talked about Talent. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“I think she’s right,” Dad says quietly. “Your mother was different when we were together. I’m sure that person is still in there.”

That’s a rabbit hole Pels wants to slide down, asking Dad about the past. But he never lets her dig into the details, and she has to be satisfied with the tiny random nuggets he drops like that one. So she shrugs, and grabs the phone from Cheyenne, using it to send the details of how to change it to the group text with Shane and Jess.

There’s a bang in the background of a door slamming open. “Hey there!” a voice calls cheerfully, and Pels thinks it might be Hayley. “We’re back with pizza. Where did Tony and Ángel go?”

“I think they’re on the phone.” A quieter voice, then murmuring in the background.

Jess wiggles her fingers in invitation, and three people enter the view. “Wave at Pels and her little sister, Cheyenne,” Jess orders. “This is Tanner, and Luca. You know Hayley.”

Barely. And she recognizes the other two from pictures. Luca’s taller than Tanner, and has one arm slung across his shoulder, leaning in like he has to touch him. Tanner’s hair sticks up every which way, but he’s also carrying four boxes of pizza, and a bag that Pels figures has wings in it.

“We should let you go,” Pels says quickly. “Just… text me when everything’s all set. We’ll figure out what to do on our side. Bye.”

“Is everything okay?”

Pels touches the button to disconnect the call while Hayley’s still speaking, then tosses her phone onto the charger so it’ll be ready to go in the morning. “I should pack.”

Cheyenne pulls her feet up as she sits up, arms around her legs, hunching over with her chin on her knees. “I’m going to miss you,” she says quietly. “Peter’s going to be okay, though. I mean. I think he’ll—”

“He’ll be glad that I’m gone.” Pels finishes the sentence for her. “I know, and I wouldn’t be leaving like this if I didn’t think that. Mom will think she’s failed, and it’s kind of a failure of the whole nuclear family unit thing, but he also can’t stand me, and he hates when I’m weird and different and act like I’ve got the devil in me. Which… I guess I do, but I also have a guardian angel, and well. He’s never going to understand.”

She grabs her dirty laundry from the last few days, shoving it into her laundry bag on one side of her bag. She looks at the few clothes she’d brought home, and the new dresses mom gave her with the leggings. Which were actually kind of comfortable, and a halfway decent compromise. Mom was trying.

Pels packs everything she can except for her toiletries, then lays out one of the soft dresses and a pair of leggings, along with her boots for tomorrow. She has to keep up the illusion, otherwise Mom will know something is up in the morning.

“I like them,” Cheyenne says. “I think you should go for it.” Because of course she’s still thinking about Shane and Jess.

“It’s not that easy.”

“It is that easy,” Dad counters. “All you have to do is reach out and try.”

Pels glares angrily at him. “No, Dad, it’s not that easy. I meant what I said. I don’t know how. I don’t make friends easily, and part of that is your fault. It’s really hard to make friends when I’m always moving, and always having things go haywire, and sometimes I look like I’m drunk because you’re trying to push me to do something. Literally. Although that time you made the annoying bird fly away wasn’t bad. I mean. There are times when you help. Yes. That’s good. But still. It’s not easy.”

Cheyenne’s eyebrows are high. “I take it your dad agrees with me?”

“Shocking to say, but yes, now I have two of you bugging me.” Pels flops down on the bed, curling up and pulling her pillow over her head. “Maybe it’s easy for you, but that’s not me. I don’t know how to make friends. It’s so—vulnerable. It could go wrong. I could suddenly have to leave when Peter decides he’s not paying for PHU anymore. Everything could change tomorrow.”

“I died,” Dad says flatly. “And that didn’t stop me from falling in love.”

“You didn’t know you were going to die when you fell in love with her,” Pels yells, her voice muffled by the pillow. “God. Both of you. Just. Let me do it on my own time. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know if I like boys. Or if I like girls. Or if I like those two people in particular. Or even one of them. I don’t even know them. I don’t know anything.”

“In order to find out, you’re going to have to try,” Cheyenne says. “If you want to cry on my shoulder, I’ll be here. I may be young, but I’m a good listener.” She pats Pels’s shoulder gently, then lies down next to her. “You always take care of me. I can take care of you, too, now. I’m old enough. I know how scary it is to like someone.”

As if her fledgling crush on Adric is anywhere near the same scope as Pels suddenly having soulmates and a permanent marking telling the world about them. Pels sucks in a breath, letting it shudder out as she exhales.

“I’ll always listen, too,” Dad says quietly. She feels his hand on her forehead, light and careful, somehow touching her through the pillow. Well. Ghost. Of course he can do that. “I’ll be with you as long as you need me.”

That implies that there might be a time when she won’t need him anymore, or when he thinks she doesn’t, and he leaves. And for all that she rails against him all the time, that’s a chilling thought.

“I’ll think about it,” she mutters into the blankets. Seriously. That’s all they can ask of her and they’re going to have to be satisfied. She’s not doing this at anyone’s pace but her own.

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disneysholland · 5 years ago

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A Holly Jolly Hoax: Part 1 - t.h.

Pairing: Tom Holland x Reader

Summary: Tom agrees to pretending to be your boyfriend for a Christmas getaway with your extended family. Who you just so happen to not get along with.

Part: 1/x

Word Count: 2.1k

“Hey, do you wanna pretend to be my boyfriend for the holidays?”

I had asked one snowy night at the beginning of December. It was just a joke and I hadn’t imagined Tom would take it seriously, but all he did was shrug and say, “Sure.”

“Wait, seriously? Are you sure? I wasn’t being serious when I said that I hope you know,” I dropped my phone into my lap and leaned backwards, letting my head hang off the back of the couch so I could see him.

“Why not? I know you said your extended family sucks, think of it as a friend helping a friend,” he shrugged, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. “Plus, I know from experience your mum’s cookies are the best there is.”

Mmm, my mom does make great cookies.

“Cookies? That’s what gets you?!” I shook my head, “You’re ridiculous.”

He plopped down next to me, wrapping me up into his side.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, you know. I don’t want you to miss out on the time with your family,” I pulled back so I could look at him.

“Ehh, I’ve had 23 years with them. It’s time to switch it up a little,” he winked.

“Thank you...You’re the best, Tom,” I grinned, leaning back into his side.

The next few weeks were spent learning everything about each other that we would know if we were actually a couple. Which side of the bed we sleep on, what we were like in the morning, everything. Luckily, we had been friends for years so we knew almost everything about each other.

I also had to give him background on the conflict that had plagued my family for the past few years. As my grandma got older and more sick, my mom’s siblings had to get involved more, as she was her caregiver and couldn’t do it all any more. For some reason, they all decided it was a great time to treat her terribly, calling her a liar and a thief, none of which was true. At one point I even had gotten involved, ruining the relationships I had with some of my cousins, which went back to when we were babies.

For a long time it plagued me, and Tom knew it. When we had first met I was a shell of a human, worn out from all the family fighting. Somehow, he brought me out of that dark place I had been in. He gave me somewhere where I felt appreciated and loved. Where I could be myself.

This year will be the first year that I’ve had to see them all at once. And the best part of it all? We’d all be staying at a winter resort together. For five days. Talk about a disaster waiting to happen.

It was the one thing my grandma had wanted this year. After having the hardest year ever and spending the majority of it in a nursing home, she wanted to live and see the world. It had been on her bucket list for years, but my grandfather and her had never had enough money for it. Everyone pitched in so we could make it a Christmas she would never forget.

My mom has partially made up with her siblings, but me on the other hand? I’m a bit harder to make up with.

Something else that was also running rampant through the family was jealousy and also the feeling of not being good enough. When I moved away to work in New York City, I felt the judgment from everyone in my family. Why is she doing that? Couldn’t she do something better with herself? Poor girl...She’ll never make it in the city.

For once, I wanted to prove to them that I was worth something, and that I had my life together. It also felt like a way at getting back at them for treating me and my family so terribly, like look at me! I have a boyfriend and a great job, would you look at that?! Even if it was all based around a lie...or well, a fib?

Tom and I had been getting mistaken for a couple since we first met. Even by our own parents. My face also wasn’t a stranger to the tabloids. Practically every time we went out there were cameras on us, ready to capture the romantic night that they suspected it to be. We even had some of his fans believing that we were together.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish the rumors were true.

He was the sweetest and most genuine guy I’d ever met, which isn’t easy to find. Not to mention...look at him.

We just clicked, it was like a perfect puzzle piece.

There was one time a few months ago when I thought he was going to kiss me. We had gone out to a bar and then we came back to my place and just talked for hours. When he went to leave, he went in for a hug that I had thought was going to be a kiss and well, my lips landed on his cheek and then it was awkward for a while.

Things went back to normal pretty easily after that. We had a way of doing that, we could always bounce back even after being bent out of shape.

---

On the Monday before Christmas I informed my parents about Tom, convincing them that we were a couple with ease. My mom was overjoyed, every time she had seen him, she gushed over him, willing us to get together. This was her dream come true. My dad was happy too, he and Tom had gotten along tremendously, both having enough to talk about with just golf alone.

Tom and I would drive to the cabin from the city as it was just in Pennsylvania, only a few hours away. Most likely, we’d be the last ones to arrive since I worked until Tuesday and we wouldn’t be able to leave until Wednesday afternoon.

“My heart is pounding,” I said as we pulled onto the road that lead to the resort.

“It’ll be fine, I’m right by your side, okay?” he turned towards me, placing a reassuring hand on my knee. I felt my cheeks heat up at the gesture, making me even more nervous.

A beautiful, large cabin was set off to the side, looking picturesque with snow drifting with each gust of wind. I recognized many of the cars parked outside and a few of my cousins and their kids out in the snow, already playing.

“Hey, Y/N. Look at me,” Tom said as I stopped the car, “It’s going to be alright. If anything bad happens we can just go right back to New York, we’re only a few hours away.”

I nodded, taking a deep breath. “Okay.”

Both of us then hopped out of the car, going around to the back to grab our suitcases.

“Y/N?! Is that you?!” My cousin Allison yelled, leaving the kids and her husband standing in the middle of a snow drift.

“Time to put on that happy face,” I said to Tom and turned towards my cousin, “Allison?! How are you?!”

“I’m great! How are you?! I heard you’re living in New York now, how has that been going? And is this your boyfriend?!” She gave me a shocked look.

“It’s been great! I love my job, I’ve made some great friends. It’s amazing, and yes! This is Tom, my boyfriend,” I said, placing a hand on Tom’s back.

“It’s nice to meet you, I’m Tom,” he said, reaching out for a handshake.

“Wait...Are you Spider-Man?! The kids are going to freak out!”

“Yeah, that’s me!” he laughed, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.

“Aww, you guys are too cute. I can’t believe how grown up you are Y/N! I still remember babysitting you when you were little,” she commented, “Well, I guess I’ll leave you guys to it!”

We smiled at her, then went back to our suitcases.

“See? That wasn’t too bad,” Tom said, nudging me with his hip.

“Oh, she isn’t the problem. She never came back after she went to college. You’ll see when we actually get in there.” I patted his chest and tried grabbing my bags.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me carry those, I don’t wanna be a bad boyfriend.”

I shrugged, “I'm taking this one at least. I won’t feel useful if I don’t.”

We then made our trek up to the house, Tom struggling under the weight of both of our suitcases. Despite my attempts at helping, he wouldn’t let me.

Waiting just inside the front door was my dad, luckily, saving us from what was to come.

“So how is it in there?” I lowered my voice once I was close enough to him.

“Well they haven’t killed each other yet,” he mumbled, “Come here kiddo, I’ve missed you!”

I laughed, leaning in for a hug. “I missed you too, Dad.”

“You too, son!” he turned towards Tom, extending his hand for a handshake, “It’s good to see you two together, I always thought you’d be good together.��

“Daaadd, we just got here, you’re not allowed to embarrass me yet!”

“Darling, it’s okay. You embarrass yourself in front of me enough, I don’t think anything your dad can say will embarrass you more,” Tom joked.

I rolled my eyes and gave his shoulder a playful shove. “Oh shush.”

“You guys have room number 9 upstairs, you should probably take your stuff up before you well. See everyone,” my dad winked and then disappeared towards the living room.

Inside, the cabin was beautiful. Dark wood everywhere with beautiful furniture and a grand staircase right by the front door.

Just as I went to go up the stairs I spotted my cousin, Tara, coming down. I gulped, not quite ready to face this yet. All she did was give me a tight lipped smile and slip off into what I assumed was the kitchen.

At least she didn’t hit me or something.

I flipped around and gave Tom an irritated look, continuing to climb the stairs.

Room number 9 was just a few doors down once we reached the landing. Lucky for us.

I gasped as I opened the door. There was just one bed.

“They gave us a room with one bed?” I questioned as we entered.

“Of course, sweetheart! You guys are a couple after all,” my mom said, poking her head in.

“Mama!” I shouted and ran towards her, giving her a huge hug.

“My baby, I missed you! I’m so happy you’re here,” she said, “And with this wonderful boy too!”

“It’s good to see you again, Mrs. Y/L/N,” he laughed.

My mom then released me and embraced Tom.

“It’s so nice to see my girl so happy! But you know, if you break her heart, it’s not gonna be pretty.”

“Mom!” I yelled.

“What?!” She laughed, pulling away from Tom and patting him on the back.

Tom just gave an awkward smile and came to stand closer to me and sling an arm around my shoulders.

“If anything, she’s the heartbreaker in this situation,” he joked, “Don’t worry, I promise I won’t break her heart.”

I gave a soft laugh and turned towards my mom, still standing in the doorway.

“Well, I’ll let you guys get settled. I’ll be downstairs...avoiding my siblings.”

With that, she disappeared around the corner, leaving Tom and I standing alone in the room. His arm was still left hanging around my shoulders.

I gave a cough and he promptly removed the arm and turned back towards the bed.

“You can take the bed, I’ll sleep on the floor,” he said, taking a blanket from the corner and laying it on the ground.

“No, I invited you, you take the bed!”

He threw his arms up in frustration.

“Let’s just talk about it later...Now? Is time to confront your insane family.”

I let my head droop, he was right. Now was no time to argue over who was going to sleep in the bed.

“Okay, fine...Just remember, they have a way of warping the truth. Don’t let them get in your head. Please.”

His eyebrows furrowed together in concern.

“If you’re worried they’re gonna make me ‘turn against you’ or whatever. Don’t. I know you too well for anything to ruin our...friendship,” he brushed a lock of hair behind my ear.

“Okay, well. Then if you’re ready...let’s go see the insanity.”

#tom holland x reader #tom holland fanfiction

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abbottikeler · 4 years ago

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The Ikelers: A Family Chronicle, 1753-2018 (Part III)

The Ikelers in the Nineteenth Century There are many descendants of Wilhelm who, to this day, live within a few miles of Jerseytown and his original Greenwood farm. They are, most of them, eight or nine generations removed either from his eldest son, Andrew, or his only daughter, Elizabeth. (Barnabus, his second son, did not marry, and William, his third born, though he married in New Jersey and lived out his life in Columbia County, could not convince most of his descendants to stay. Many migrated west to Ohio and beyond.) Especially if you can trace your ancestry back to Andrew Ikeler, you will easily find third, fourth and fifth cousins in Bloomsburg and neighboring townships. Evidence of their long presence and influence is everywhere in Columbia County—in two Ikeler cemeteries, a church, a street, and even a village named Ikelertown. In the case of Wilhelm’s friend Daniel, and his son-in-law William, Elizabeth’s legacy lives on in the ubiquity of the Welliver name in local phone directories, in the Jerseytown cemetery established by Daniel, and in numerous published histories of Daniel’s involvement with the ill-fated Whitmayers. There is, in fact, near Bloomsburg a country crossroads and a hamlet surrounding it named “Welliverville.” Those two families, after all, were among the first pioneer farmers to clear and work the land after the 1780 treaty with the local native-Americans. Ikelers and Wellivers have been there ever since. In this segment of the narrative, I’ll be looking at three generations of Ikelers who lived all or most of their lives in nineteenth-century Columbia County, PA. They are, in order, Andrew Ikeler (1772-1850) and his wife Christiana, nee Johnson (1774-1865); Andrew’s son Isaac (1804-1883) and his wife Mary, nee Taylor (1810-1872); and Isaac’s son Elijah (1838-1898) and his wife Helena, nee Armstrong (1840-1913). For information about the siblings of Isaac or Elijah (there were in fact a dozen), the best local sources are the County Courthouse and the Columbia County Historical and Genealogical Society in Bloomsburg. Under discussion here are only the children from whom my immediate family and I are descended. Andrew reached his majority in New Jersey under the sole care of his mother. In 1792, he married the daughter of an English settler—the first with the new surname Ikeler to do so. Christiana Johnson’s father, Isaac, was most likely sympathetic to the British cause, since he allowed the union of his daughter to the son of a notorious loyalist. He also later moved to the Pennsylvania neighborhood where Wilhelm had settled. It appears that Christiana and Andrew may have been the last of their generation of Ikelers to leave New Jersey for Columbia County. The 1888 Beers Book makes reference to Andrew’s journey there in 1804. Presumably, he was waiting for confirmation from his father that the land they needed for their growing family had been purchased. That news came in 1804, and Andrew appears on the tax records of 1805 as the owner of a log cabin and a saw mill and 150 acres of land in Greenwood Township. Unlike most of the farmers around him, Andrew seems to have cut quite a public figure. Near the end of the War of 1812, he led a company of militia to the defense of the nation’s capital. While underway, they learned the threat had passed, so he and his men returned to Columbia County without firing a shot. Again, in 1835, he made news when elected Magistrate at the ripe age of 62. At his death in 1850 he had outlived his brothers and his sister by nearly a decade. We know precious little about Christiana’s life, either in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, but she and Andrew lived long enough to see many of their grandchildren grown, long enough to celebrate their 57th wedding anniversary, and, in her case, long enough to see the end of the Civil War. Born before the nation itself, she died at 91 in 1865. One can only image what a diary of her times she might have written! She and Andrew are buried in the far right corner of what is known as the “churchless” Ikeler cemetery, at the top of a hill overlooking both their and Wilhelm’s original homesteads, and planted in corn to the very borders of the graveyard. The site functioned up until 1840 as the informal burial place for Ikelers and their near neighbors. In that year, Andrew’s eldest son, William, set money aside to preserve it in perpetuity and later erected the limestone tombstone that marks his parents’ last resting place. In the row immediately behind them are several broken slabs of slant, the inscriptions on them (if any) long since effaced. It is very likely that they mark the burial place of Wilhelm and his wife, presumably carried there (in 1808 and 1815 respectively) from their nearby log house in a homemade pine box, or perhaps simple in winding sheet. Ironically, far less is known of Andrew’s son Isaac, my great-great grandfather, and his wife Mary Taylor. Though he followed his father’s example and married a woman of English stock, he kept close to the land Andrew left him, and rarely participated in the life of the wider community. Yet, since he lived into the 1880s, I suspect at least one photograph of him must have been taken, and may somewhere still exist. Certainly there are available photos of other children of Andrew. Much research remains to be done on his wife as well. Happily, some has recently come to light through the efforts of my third cousin, Chris Sanders. Mary Taylor was sold by her father into indentured service at age twelve, along with her brother. The promise of an apprenticeship was often written into the contract—in Mary’s case, the promise was, in the course of her seven years of servitude, that she would be taught “the mysteries of housewiffery.” Why her father, a widower, was driven to take such an extreme measure remains a mystery. Perhaps he simply thought he couldn’t manage their upbringing on his own. It was, as one wise genealogist reminded me, a different time. Mary’s servitude did, at least, have a foreseeable end. She married Isaac Ikeler immediately upon regaining her freedom at 19, in 1829. Her son Elijah, perhaps as a tribute to the suffering she had endured in her adolescence, christened his second son with the middle name “Taylor” just two years before his mother’s death. Her memory was apparently cherished by later descendants as well---they passed it down to this very day as the middle name of at least four other Ikeler males. Mary, fortunately, was something of a genealogist herself, and faithfully kept what she knew of the Ikeler family tree on the flyleaf of her bible. For most of us, that partial record represented the starting point for our research into the early generations. Mary Taylor Ikeler predeceased her husband by eleven years. Isaac passed away in 1883. All but one of their eight children survived into adulthood. Both parents are buried under well-preserved limestone monuments in what became the next, newer Ikeler cemetery, atop Ikeler Hill and directly across the road from the Ikeler Church. Their resting place sits right above the border between Mt. Pleasant and Greenwood Townships, looking down on the very hills and fields they plowed. Elijah Redmond Ikeler, their fourth child and second son, is perhaps the most widely remembered and controversial of all the Ikelers in this history. Even his birth year is debatable, variously recorded as any of four years between 1837 and 1840. Most sources, including his large granite tombstone in Bloomsburg’s Rosemount Cemetery, declare it to be 1838, however. From his early days he appears to have been disinclined to take up farming. At 18 he was apprenticed to a mill owner, and shortly thereafter had acquired a share in the business. At the outset of the Civil War, he seems to have been equally disinclined to take up arms in defense of the Union. Whether he paid the standard $300 to send someone else in his place, or simply wasn’t called up because the local quota of soldiers had already been filled, he clearly had no interest in risking his young life for a cause he didn’t believe in. In a Bloomsburg newspaper article from 1864, in which a local volunteer at the front complains about the lack of support and enthusiasm from the folks back home, Elijah is quoted (among others) arguing in favor of a compromise with the Confederacy that would allow the Southern States to keep their slaves and end the bloodshed sooner. By that time he had already been married for a year—to one Helena Armstrong, two years his junior and a resident of Bloomsburg. Her father owned a prosperous stonemasonry business, producing monuments in limestone and granite for local cemeteries and public places, as well as the marble window frames and sills for the more prepossessing homes along Main and Market Streets. Helena also brought an impressive pedigree to the union with Elijah: among her father’s ancestors were the socially prominent Rittenhouses of Philadelphia, and the Hiesters, one of whom had been an officer under Washington in the Revolutionary War. She was thus a member of the D.A.R., with the bona fides to prove it. On her mother’s side she was descended from the Vanderslices, a Dutch family and one of the wealthiest in Columbia County. How did Elijah, the 25-year-old son of a Greenwood farmer, manage to marry into an established upper middle class family such as the Armstrongs? Probably a combination of ambition, political savvy, and good looks. He looks out from photographs and portraits taken of him then and later with a self-assurance and a symmetry of aspect that commands admiration. By 1865, he and Helena had taken up residence in Bloomsburg, the county seat, at the time a settlement of some 3,000 souls on the banks of the Susquehanna. Elijah would remain a townsman the rest of his life. He struck up a friendship with a much older Bloomsburg lawyer, John Freeze, who had lost his own sons to childhood illnesses several years before. Freeze took him under his wing, taught him the law, and, from 1867, admitted him into his own practice as a fellow attorney. Thereafter, Elijah rose quickly to political prominence, becoming Bloomsburg town treasurer in 1870 and district attorney a short time later. His domestic fortunes, despite an initial setback, were also advancing. In 1867, Helena had lost a pair of twins, but she gave birth to one healthy son, Frank Armstrong Ikeler, the next year, and another robust boy, Fred Taylor Ikeler, in 1870. Why they had no more children after that, though both were in their early thirties, I can only speculate. Certainly Elijah grew increasingly involved with public affairs and the business of making money. He participated in the early prosecution of the Molly Maguires (though the miners were ultimately tried, convicted and hanged by others), and he bought numbers of residential properties within Bloomsburg proper (whether for rental income or resale I haven’t been able to ascertain). By the 1880s he thought himself well enough known and respected to run for elected office. The position he sought was that of Presiding (or President) Judge: a five-year term of office with jurisdiction over both Columbia and two adjoining counties. He was twice elected: in 1888 and again in 1893. He ran again in 1898 at the age of 60, but fell ill in the midst of the campaign and died within a week in August, 1898. At the time of his death he was living on Market Street in a mansion-sized home of his own design, known for years after as “the Judge’s house.” The building has since been extensively renovated and functions today not as a place of residence, but as a funeral home. In the last two decades of his life, there was also much going on at home to keep him happy with only two children. Given his risen position in society, Elijah was clearly ambitious for his sons. They both attended and graduated from Lafayette College—the first Ikelers to earn baccalaureate degrees—and, by the mid-90s, both boys had begun to practice law, just as their father had done. Aside from vague rumors that Elijah was a bit too fond of the bottle, and his arguable lack of patriotism during the Civil War (neither one of which sins was considered much of a problem in that part of Pennsylvania), everything about his life and his family seemed above reproach. Particularly in 1888, when he ran for high office, it was essential to his success: he needed to present an unblemished record to the voters of three counties. One small problem arose the year before that election. A chronicle of Columbia County was being prepared, a chronicle that would rely for much of its information on interviews with prominent members of long-established families in the region—people who could recount their own and their ancestors’ history. The chronicle (known then and since as “The Beers Book”) was due to be published in 1888, shortly before Elijah planned to open his election campaign. And, given his social prominence, there was certainly no Ikeler more likely to be approached for genealogical information than Elijah. All to the good, it would seem: a chance to boast, modestly of course, of his and his forefathers’ accomplishments, and perhaps, amongst interested readers, to gain a few votes. The Ikeler section of the Beers Book that appeared in 1888 does indeed suggest the interviewee was Elijah—more than half of the entry praises the deeds of the would-be Presiding Judge, and has little to say of his siblings or his parents. But the passage makes some quite curious claims about earlier generations. Fact gets oddly mixed up with fiction—the first Ikeler [it reads] was “Joseph Eggler...of an honored old family of German extraction,” not a tenant farmer named Hieronymus Eichler; he landed in New Jersey, not Philadelphia, arriving in 1760, not 1753; most curious of all, “at the outbreak of the Revolution he promptly enlisted with the Colonists, and throughout that historic conflict unselfishly rendered service to his country.” This founding father of the American Ikelers is also said to be Elijah’s great-grandfather, when in fact Hieronymus is his great-great-grandfather. Elijah skips a generation in order to make Andrew, not Wilhelm, the son of this fictional hero. It is Andrew, so the account runs, who brought the Ikelers from New Jersey to Greenwood Township in 1804. What Elijah’s version does, of course, is to wipe out the first seven years of the family’s indentured servitude, credit Hieronymus/Joseph with an honorable, unselfish war record on the side of the Colonists, and eliminate Wilhelm and the “shame” of his fugitive years altogether. There simply is no Wilhelm in Elijah’s account of his ancestry. It’s a neat blending of fact and fiction, calculated to sit well with his neighbors and the electorate. But I suspect Elijah’s dissembling had a second, and perhaps more powerful motivation behind it. He was, we remember, married to a member of the D.A.R., a descendant of a genuine hero on the side of the Revolution. When the chronicler came calling, Elijah could enhance respect for his heritage in the eyes of Helena by “recalling” an equivalent hero in the Ikeler family past. But it was even more important for both husband and wife that he expunge any trace of Wilhelm and the family’s loyalist background. And God forbid, Helena should find out one of her husband’s ancestors was a redcoat under arms during the conflict! Elijah’s efforts to bowdlerize or mythologize his family’s past remained unchallenged for another 27 years, until both he and Helena were no longer among the living. At last, in 1915, and just two years before his own death, I suspect it was I.B. Ikeler who offered a very different story to the county historian who came by collecting information for a second edition of the chronicle: “In another account it is stated that William Ikeler [so the 1915 printed version reads] was the name of the founder of the Columbia county branch of the Ikelers. William Ikeler also came from New Jersey and settled on a farm…approximately one hundred twenty-five years ago [i.e., circa 1790]. His wife’s name was Barnhart, and their issue were four children: Andrew, William, Elizabeth and Barnabus.” Except for getting Elizabeth Bengert’s maiden name wrong, his version squares with the facts as we now know them. I.B. Ikeler was in the best position to set things straight, after all, since it was he who held that “ancient” deed of sale, the proof that William Ikeler had paid 450 hundred pieces of gold or silver for an additional 350 acres of land in 1804.

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cadenlucca · 5 years ago

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welcome back to gallagher academy, CADEN LUCCA! according to their records, they’re a SECOND year, specializing in DRIVER’S ED + SEDUCTION & FLIRTATION; and they DID NOT go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of (messy brown hair, the slightest bit of stubble, and eyes glazing over in the classroom). when it’s the (leo)’s birthday on 8/15/1996, they always request LOBSTER TAIL WITH BUTTER from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation.

NAME: Caden Mateo Lucca

KNOWN AS: Caden

BIRTHDATE: August 15, 1996

ASTROLOGY: Leo sun / Virgo moon / Aries rising

HOMETOWN: Virginia Beach, VA

RESIDENCE: Philadelphia, PA & Washington DC

GENDER: Cis male ( he/him )

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Heterosexual

HEIGHT: 6'1"

HAIR COLOR: Dark Brown

EYE COLOR: Dark Brown

TATTOOS: Latin quote in illegible cursive on his chest; Wolf's head on his calf; Sword with the name Amelia in the center on his forearm

KNOWN LANGUAGES: English, Spanish, Russian, and a handful of others at a beginner's level

IMMEDIATE FAMILY:

Rodrigo Lucca (formerly Lopez): Father, Senator of Pennsylvania

Charlotte Lucca née Blythe: Mother, former Gallagher Academy alum, housewife

BACKGROUND.

Rodrigo Lucca had come from somewhat humble beginnings, moving to Pennsylvania from Venezuela when he was ten years old. A career in politics had always been the end goal for him, which is why he changed his last name from Lopez to Lucca at age eighteen ( knowing people are far too racist to willingly vote for a Rodrigo Lopez ) . He had met Caden's mother when he was a law student at Georgetown University. Charlotte had come from old money, and her family's money coupled with Rodrigo's political ambitions helped them make a comfortable home for themselves in Philadelphia.

It was there that Caden was born, a few years into his father's law career, leaving him busy and often out of the house. Though Caden wouldn't remember, his first few years were spent just him and his mother, with baby Caden refusing to be held or spend time with anyone else unless Charlotte was in the same room. It wasn't until Caden was six and his father joined the House of Representatives for the state of Pennsylvania that the care of the Lucca child was thrown to nannies. They moved into a bigger house, and Rodrigo hired housekeepers and chefs to take care of it all, so his wife could become a socialite among the other politician's wives. It worked for a few years, but by the time teenage Caden would come home for the holidays, he'd find that his mother barely left her bedroom.

The Lucca household had been a lonely one to grow up in, so when the opportunity arose for Caden to go to boarding school in middle school, he jumped at the chance. His father had found him one in Washington DC, not far from the family's second home, so his parents could occasionally visit. But they never did come, and boarding school turned out to be worse than having a house to himself. It was an all boy's school full of sons of other politicians and dignitaries, and Caden didn't get along with any of them. He begged his parents to let him go home, but after calling them every day for a week straight, his father told him the truth: it was easier without him around. Rodrigo had promised if Caden could get through the next year and a half at this school, they could find him a better alternative for high school. So Caden learned how to play nice, developing an easygoing personality that helped him gain friends for the rest of his time there. In return, his father sent him to another boarding school for high school, without consulting his son about it.

By the time high school rolled around, the boy's rebellious side had started to grow. He was angry at his dad for lying to him yet again, so he took it out on the schools he was sent to. Caden threw parties on school property, snuck off campus, and willingly let himself get caught with drugs and alcohol. But when his usual antics didn't work ( because by the third or fourth school, his father strived to make sure his son didn't get kicked out anywhere else ) , he had to work a little harder. He destroyed school property, keyed faculty cars, was caught having sex in public places. Grades weren't an issue for Caden, who was naturally bright and didn't need to try in any of his classes. But it took him five years to graduate high school, and by the end of it he had been to seven different boarding schools from all over the country.

The last thing both Caden and his parents wanted was for him to move back home with them, so he took the opportunity to take his father's credit card and travel the world for almost two years. Though he was always on his own, Caden rarely traveled alone, either meeting up with an old friend or making new ones at the hostels and cities he stayed at. These years were spent mostly in bars and nightclubs, and always drunk, and he had convinced himself life couldn't get any better. But it all came crashing down on his twenty-first birthday, when he went to buy himself a generous present and found his card had been declined. Rather than calling to wish their son a happy birthday, his parents had gifted Caden with cutting him off. His father said it was time for Caden to grow up, and until he did, he wouldn't have any part of his lifestyle.

Despite having very little options, his own pride refused to let him move back home and have his parents win. Instead Caden spent almost a year couch hopping between friends, mooching off them as long as he could. He tried working any odd job he could get his hands on, but a rich boy with no experience didn't have much to offer employers. Jobs never lasted long with him, and he was beginning to lose friends because of his couch-hopping ways. So Caden eventually moved back to Washington DC -- where his dad was now the Pennsylvania Senator for the Democratic party -- and swallowed his pride long enough to beg him for a job. The two Luccas working together lasted a whopping five months before Rodrigo approached his son with the option of Gallagher Academy. Never had Caden planned on going back to school, but he had been so miserable working in politics, he couldn't complain; for him, Gallagher was just another school he was bound to be kicked out of.

GALLAGHER ACADEMY.

It wasn't until he stepped foot in Gallagher Academy that Caden learned it was more than just a school for Exceptional Young People, but for future spies of America. He took the information unsurprisingly lightly, mostly because he preferred to think of it as a former all girl's school ( women, women everywhere ) . Caden had started out with an undeclared major, but throughout his first semester he actually found himself genuinely interested in the new world around him. He had taken the initiative to find a tutor in combat -- a girl tutor -- and after the first semester, Caden decided to declare not one but two majors: seduction and flirtation, and driver's ed. For a man who had expected to not last a full semester of college, he had actually found himself invested in his education.

It didn't hurt that Gallagher put him in touch with many people from his past, especially those he never thought he would see again. Caden's always been a lady's man, especially throughout his travels, but meeting Amelia Taylor in Ireland when he was nineteen had been another story. He had always had a habit of falling for girls too similar to himself, but he hadn't realized how true that was until being reunited with Amelia at Gallagher. Though they started a no strings relationship, Caden had wanted more, which Amelia didn't reciprocate… and Caden didn't appreciate. Spring semester had been spent mad at the blonde, until Amelia had been murdered on Valentine's Day.

Caden turned to sex and alcohol to cope with his problems, per usual. It didn't help that Caden had learned that one of the Gallagher alums on campus was his cousin from his mother's side, a cousin he never knew he even had. He had always assumed he had been accepted into Gallagher because his father was family friends with the Suttons, and as a Senator he had connections ( though he didn't talk to his parents very often, so the jury was still out on whether Rodrigo Lucca knew if it was a spy school or not ) , not because he was a legacy. Had his cousin not shown him a picture of his mother as a Gallagher student, Caden never would've believed that Charlotte Lucca had ever been anything other than the cheating, alcoholic housewife she was now.

After one shocking death and one life-aftering secret being revealed, it took the rest of the semester and start of Caden's summer to carry on. A romance with a witness protection student helped, as well as breaking into where Amelia's found killer was held on campus and beating him to near death ( Caden still doesn't know if they actually killed Cecil or not, nor does he care ) . When the semester ended, Caden also had the pleasure of meeting his mother's side of the family that he had never been told about, and in return was given a glimmer of hope at the prospect of having a real family. ( More information can be found here. ) He still has a long way to go, having not spoken to his parents since Christmas, but Caden isn't the same man he was a year ago -- and for once, he actually likes having direction in his life.

PERSONALITY.

Caden is extremely charismatic, very obviously the son of a politician. He's a grade-A conversationalist from years of experience campaigning for his father and making new friends wherever he goes, but most opportunities never allowed for relationships to become more than skin deep. Back in high school, he developed a talent for arriving onto a new campus mid-semester and immediately surrounding himself with the coolest guys and hottest girls. While social media has made it easy to keep up with all these friends of his, usually once he'd leave a place, the friendship would cease to exist ( unless he needed a place to crash ) , so lifelong friends aren't really something Caden has much experience with.

Not only is he good at charming his way into friendships, but Caden is also known to be well-versed in the ladies department. He's an obvious, shameless flirt, and for whatever reason women seem to love him. Monogamous relationships are few and far between, and tend to not be healthy or long-term. Friends with benefits are more his speed, setting boundaries right away so nobody can get mad at him for intentionally breaking their heart in the process -- though it's happened a few times anyway.

Though arrogant and sometimes smarmy, generally Caden is pretty easy to get along with and doesn't go out of his way to be an asshole. Every so often his idea of a joke and the way he roasts his friends can go too far, but when it comes down to it he would do anything for the people he cares about.

Caden's no stranger to vices, but drinking is certainly his biggest; I put this under personality because he acts like enjoying alcohol is a personality trait. He's always down for a good time, which tends to be his detriment.

MORE INFORMATION / HEADCANONS:

Caden knows fluent Spanish from growing up with it in the house, both because his father spoke it and because his parents made sure to only hire nannies who would speak Spanish to him. He doesn't like speaking it though, because it reminds him of his father.

His first tattoo ever is a Latin quote on his chest, which he had gotten specifically because his father had told him NOT to get a tattoo when he turned eighteen. Caden had been drunk when he got it, so the translation is completely wrong; thankfully he had chosen such a heinous cursive font that it's impossible to read, and he'll never tell anyone what it's supposed to mean.

Thanks to Mommy and Daddy he's not great with expressing his feelings; his way of caring is shown through flexing his credit cards and doing something special for the important people in his life. Expect ridiculously lavish birthday and Christmas presents.

Some of his favorite travel destinations include Tokyo, Reykjavík, Amsterdam, New York City, and Ireland.

During his boarding school days he was known for being a notorious prankster, though he retired the title once he graduated. His favorite prank had been filling a teacher's office with condom balloon animals. ( Okay I never said he was amazing, he was a sixteen year old boy. )

His seven boarding schools had been in Maine, Kansas, California, Washington, Michigan, and two in Pennsylvania.

Though he's not a movie buff, Caden is a slut for a good John Hughes move. The Breakfast Club is his favorite of all time.

Caden's a closet Potterhead and 100% a Gryffindor.

TL;DR: Caden is the son of the Pennsylvania Senator who he doesn't get along with ( daddy issues hello ) and has spent most of his life acting out through getting kicked out of boarding schools, traveling the world instead of working, and finally landing on coming to Gallagher rather than working. His mother was a Gallagher Girl but didn't find out until recently. He's essentially a fuckboy with a heart of gold.

CURRENT & WANTED CONNECTIONS HERE

#gallagher:intro #like this or react on discord and ill attack ya #hes a dummy yall

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kimmie113080 · 5 years ago

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Refusing to Yield chapter 19

This is based on real life. Just the name has been changed to protect the person identity. There is mention of all types of abuse. If that is a trig, please don’t read. Reader get into a relationship with Kim Seokjin and Min Yoongi but all BTS is in this series.

The weekend goes by real fast it is Monday morning when we are leaving for the airport. We all arrive to the airport at 5 am for our flight at 9 am. All bags are checked in were handling to airport security. When we all get stop by airport security. I started getting scared when we security walks up to all of us. Papa m and uncle Jim our on one side of the wheelchair Jin and Yoongi are on the other side. Bryan is the one pushing the chair. Head of the airport security comes over since there is 31 people walking in our group and I am in the wheelchair. Bryan has my paperwork already for the head of security. You must be BTS?

Yes, sir we are BTS. We are going to have everyone go through first and then we are going to have Miss Brown warded. Miss Brown are you able to stand by yourself? No, sir I can’t stand on my own. Okay you have a nurse with you correct. Yes, sir that is Bryan who is pushing me. Okay he will go through the metal detector right before we warded you and have two state troopers with you. Yes, sir one of them will push you the metal detector. You can choose which one you would like to push you through, and he will also be able to help hold you up also. I am Jason Hontz state trooper I will push Miss Brown through the metal detector and help support her.

Miss Brown are you okay with how this is going to happen? No why are you not okay with this? If you are having everyone go through before me, you didn’t tell me if everyone can wait for me or do, they must start heading towards the gate? I am sorry Miss Brown I should have made myself clear on that part. They can wait for you before heading to the gate. We have a mutual friend who filled me in the situation you have. He personally asked to work this morning so they would be no problems with you getting through security. He is waiting for my call to let him know there was no problems. My I ask who our mutual friend is? Judge Carl and he told me if I denied any request from you that he wouldn’t play golf with me for a whole year.

Wow I didn’t think he could be mean to someone he knows. He can be a little scare when he must be. Are you okay with everything now? Yes, sir I am okay with how this is going to work. Can I ask you another question? Yes, Miss Brown are all the airports going to do the same thing or are they going to do it different then here? No, Miss Brown they are going to do they same thing since Judge Carl has pull everywhere you are going to be at. Uncle Jim yes peanut we need to make sure we show Judge Carl all our tricks to stay on his good side. Papa m goes first followed by Uncle Jim, Namjoon, Hobi, Jimin, Tae, Kookie, Tim, Big B, little r, little k, Big S, little j, Big A, little c, Big C, little f, Greg, little w, Big R, Big J, Big K, little s, little f, Tom, Fred, Jin, Yoongi, Bryan, me and Jason. Bryan yes Jason how are we going to hold Ann up?

Jason you are going to stand on Ann left side and I will be on the right side. Okay Ann are you ready to stand up with our help? Yes, Bryan I am ready stand if you guys are ready. I am count of three Jason we are going to stand up. One, Two, Three lift Jason. We all get through security by 7 am. Since our flight didn’t leave until 9 am we had about an hour to make it to our gate for the flight. I asked is there a bathroom I use? Mr. Ayers goes yes you can use the family bathroom at every airport. Thank you, so much for your help this morning and I will tell Judge Carl how nice you were to all of us.

Your welcome, Miss Brown but you don’t mind me asking why you in the wheelchair are. I have a couple different spinal conditions and one of them is affecting my legs. I can’t image what it is like to be able to use your legs and then not be able to. Believe me it is hard for me sometimes either. Like I want to shower, use the bathroom and dress my lower half. Here is the family bathroom and I will be standing out here, so no one gets the wrong message. I have another question for Mr. Ayers. Yes, Miss Brown are going to escort us to our gate? Yes, Miss Brown even through you have a team of security. While you are in this airport and every other airport head of security will escort you to your and wait with you until you board the plane.

Thank you, so much Mr. Ayers for making sure we are safe in this airport. When will all of you be returning through this airport three months today? Why do you ask Mr. Ayers because I want to make sure I am here the day all of you return? Judge Carl only knew you where flying out today but not returning. I trust some of own know security team, but your safety is my number one concern. I take it this how it is going to be in every airport? Yes, Miss Brown it is going to be the same way in every airport. Thank you, for this information Mr. Ayers. Your welcome Miss Brown now let’s get you in the bathroom okay. I come out of the with Jin and Yoongi asking where everyone else is at.

They went to go get food. They should be back any minute now. Right then everyone else shows up carrying food. Ann, we brought you back some fruit to eat since we know you can’t travel with a full belly because you get sick sometimes. Thank you guys and we should be heading to the gate now. As we are going to the gate for our flight as one place gets done eating, they are taking turns pushing me so everyone can eat before we get to our gate. We reach our gate flight to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that is our first stop on the tour. Papa m goes up to the attendant all our boarding tickets. The attendant doesn’t even look at to see who is handling her all the boarding tickets and she goes I am sorry but we are not checking any individuals right now because we are wanting for a group that has 32 people in it to show up. Papa m let me handle this Ann don’t do anything stupid.

I won’t papa m I promise. I go excuse me miss here are our boarding tickets. I just told the gentle in front of you we are waiting on a group of 32. I don’t understand why two of the BTS guys would want to date an ugly female so you will have to waited. I am glad you called me an ugly female to my face to. I didn’t call you ugly just the female who is traveling with BTS. Maybe you should look up instead of playing with your phone and you will know who you are talking to. I am just going to call security, and have you thrown out for not listening and being a rude person. You mean your calling to call Mr. Ayers head of security and tell him what. You are talking shit about the female in the chair right in front of you who is dating Jin and Yoongi from BTS.

You want to know something he has heard everything you said since he is standing next to me, so I guess you better look up now. I also want you supervisor here now. Miss Brown yes, Mr. Ayers I have already radio for her supervisor and other security guards to come to this gate for you. Thank you, so much Mr. Ayers for your help. You don’t have Mr. Ayers with you only comes to the gate with BTS and that ugly female around them. Okay you say I don’t have Mr. Ayers with me Page him over his walkie talkie then. I will do that to prove you wrong. Mr. Ayers you are need at gate C10 for a rude person as she starts making the announcement its echo’s right back to her and she looks up surprise. Thank you, Mr. Ayers so quick please banned this person from the airport she is rude and kept saying she was with you and BTS? Hi Mr. Ayers, you requested me to come to this gate. Yes, I did Mrs. Jones what seems to be the problems your employee seems to think looking at her phone is more important than looking up to see who is trying to check in.

Plus, she has insulted the manager of BTS who I have been standing next to for the last 10 minutes and she tried to page me to the gate when I was already here with the group. She was also rude to the own of the company when he tried to check them all in. I didn’t insult the manager of BTS that group isn’t even here yet. I beg the difference this what you said. I don’t understand why two of the BTS guys would want to date an ugly female so you will have to waited. I am glad you called me an ugly female to my face to. I didn’t call you ugly just the female who is traveling with BTS. Maybe you should look up instead of playing with your phone and you will know who you are talking to. I am just going to call security, and have you thrown out for not listening and being a rude person. You mean you’re calling to call Mr. Ayers head of security and tell him what.

You are talking shit about the female in the chair right in front of you who is dating Jin and Yoongi from BTS. At that point she looks at me with a shock look on her face. Jin and Yoongi just comes to stand by my side because they can see I was a little upset. Fred, yes Mike can you take Ann away from here for about 10 minutes while I handle this now. Take everyone except Jin and Yoongi. Please make sure she is calm. Mrs. Jones yes Mr. Ayers is there a lounge right by the gate where Miss Brown can go to relax before her flight. She has been in this airport since 5 am and I think she need to lay down for a couple of minutes before her flight. Yes, there is a lounge across from the gate please take her in there make her as comfortable has she can before the flight and on top of it you all are being put in first class do to my employee behavior. Ann are you okay?

No, Fred I don’t feel good. I feel like I am going to threw up. Bryan do you have any of Ann’s nausea treat on you. I think so Fred why. Ann feels think she might throw up and I know it puts pressure on her lower back. Ann here is your nausea treat I have it right you want me to help you. Yes, please Bryan. Okay Ann I will help take your treat. After 10 minutes Bryan ask how am I feeling? A little better now thank you both for quick thinking.

Tim and little w come back in with Jin, Yoongi and papa m. Princess yes Yoongi are you feeling better now? Yes, Yoongi I am feeling a little better but how did you know I wasn’t feeling good. Tim and little w came out right after you told Fred you felt like throwing up. We just got everything taken care of out there so we could come be with you. What happened out there. Ann you need to stay calm because I think the added stress made you start getting nausea. Bryan yes little w it was not the stress that made Ann get nausea then what made her sick. Ann usually can not eat travels. It is more like she gets motion sickness if she eats.

That is why when we came back to you guys with food. I got Ann a small fruit cup that I knew would be lite on her stomach. Little w Ann told all of us the last time on tour she could not eat a lot before she flies but did not explain. Remember what I told you the day she told Tim how she might all of us. That Ann has a hard time voicing when something is bothering her. Yes, we remember little w. Ann, yes little w you know I am proud of you right. Why are you proud of me little w. You are starting to let everyone know when something is bothering you. Little w yes, Ann I do not realize I have been doing it.

Ann it is a good thing you are not realizing that you on doing it on you know it just mean it is becoming natural to you. Should we get out there so we can board flight to Philadelphia, Pa. We all come out at once, but I start to get nervous because there is on security at our gate now. Papa m why is there more security here now than before. The attendant who was supposed to check us in decided to get of social media tell everyone who is a BTS fan that we are in the airport and what gate we are at. Mr. Ayers thought it would be a good idea to have more security here so we could board the plane. Where is the manager who is dating Jin and Yoongi? I only see a handicap female with them. She is the manager of the group someone says. They look at me and started whispering to themselves.

I looked down at the floor as we make it across to the gate when a female came up to me. She looked at me. She looks at all the other females around she kneels to me. I looked scared not knowing what is going to happened. You don’t need to put your head down Ann just because of these jealous females. I know for a fact you make Jin and Yoongi happy. Pay no attendance to them. I can see in your eyes what kind of person you are. All the other female shut up at that point. I looked at her nodded my head and held it high like I belonged with Jin and Yoongi.

Show everyone who hurt you or did wrong to you that you are meant to be in this world. How did you know? Like I said earlier I see it in your eyes Ann. People are always going to hate but just never lower yourself to their level. Thank you for your kind words you don’t know how much what you said mean to me. I do know how much those words mean because someone told them a couple years ago. Ann, we must get on the plane okay. Can I get your number so we can stay in contact with you? Ann you will be seeing me around. Okay see you around sometime.

Peanut do you who she was? No, uncle Jim I don’t know who she was, but her words did comfort me. Peanut yes uncle Jim remember we don’t who she is, and I know what you are saying, and you are right. I just wanted her number, but she is the one who said she would be seeing me around. I know peanut, but we are going to do some digging if she shows up and again just so you know. That is okay with me uncle Jim because I know you all want to keep me safe. Is there a way that I lay comfortable next to Yoongi during the flight? Peanut I will ask the flight attendant after we take off and we can take off your seat belt. Are your legs bothering you that bad? Yes, my legs and lower back are bothering me bad.

Excuse flight attendant can I ask you a question? Yes, you can ask me a question. My niece lower back and legs are bothering her bad is there away during the flight when the seat belt sign goes off can she and her boyfriend lay down together so she can be comfortable until the seat belt sign comes back on? Sir they can lay together now. We have seat belt extenders for people who can not fit in the regular seat belt. Okay thank you so much. Yoongi lay across those two seats there. W e can have both you and Ann lay down during the whole flight so Ann can be comfortable. They have seat belt extenders so both you and Ann can be in the same belt during the flight. The flight attendant just went to get the extenders for us.

Fred put Ann in front of Yoongi so she can lay down during the whole flight. Uncle Jim I thought we could not lay down until we are up in the air and the seat belt sign is off. Peanut they extenders for the seat belt so you and Yoongi can lay down together. Thank you, uncle Jim for asking if we could lay together during the flight. Your welcome, peanut now just try not to move to much? I will not uncle Jim. The flight attendant comes back with the extenders so Yoongi and I can be seat belt together. She brings two just in case one does not connect the seat belt together. Do want to put one around your legs during take off and landing or just one around both of your waists? Bryan you are my nurse would do you think.

Ann just have it around your guys waist well be enough. You heard want my nurse said just around your waist. After all the rest off the passengers board the flight and they going through safety measures the pilot welcome everyone on the flight the flight would last 4 ½ hours and once the seat belt sign was off people could get up and use the bathroom but if the sign came back on during the flight please make sure to put your seat belts on. Halfway during the flight Bryan and Fred got up so I could bet put on my right side for the rest of the flight. Yoongi are you okay to lay with Ann for the rest of the flight or should we have little w take over so you can sit up for a while? Let little w take over for the rest of the flight because I want to sit up and I do not think Ann’s back will handle it. Little w can you come lay down on your right side so we can put Ann on her right side for the rest of the flight? Yes, Bryan I can do that. The flight attendant came over to ask if there was anything she could help with. Bryan said no there is nothing you can help with right now. We all have been around Ann for all time now that we got this to a science getting it done. Thank you for offering you assistance to us.

Fred before I lay back down can I use the bathroom. Since Yoongi laid with me for half of the flight. Jin yes, Fred your princess needs to use the restroom? Okay I can take her to the bathroom and just get anything ready for when we come out. I am sorry but only her boyfriend can help her in the bathroom. Miss, he is also my boyfriend but what about the one you were just laying with? Miss I am dating both Yoongi and Jin. I can not get comfortable with Jin when my back is bothering me bad. Yoongi and my friend little w are the only two I can lay that with for the pain level to be around 5. I know to you that it might be weird but for us we love each other the same.

When your uncle asked if you could lay down during the flight with your boyfriend, he didn’t tell me you had two. We try to tell everyone since it is both go into the bathroom with me or if it is small one of them goes in with me. Why don’t you have a female to help you in that area? Some females are not strong enough to carry me or if I get stuck in a position, they can’t get me out of it. The flight attendant does not need to know the truth. Jin takes me to the bathroom we come out little w is all set for me to lay on my right side for the rest of the flight. Jin and Yoongi are sitting by each other. Bryan and Fred are watching the flight attendant for some reason. Jason and Tom are doing the same thing. The attendant decided she hand Yoongi a note.

I caught it out of the corner of my eye. I asked Yoongi aloud enough for her to hear me. Yoongi can you please bring me the note the attendant just gave you? Yes, princess I will bring you it now. I start reading it and I ask to speak head of the flight attendant of our flight? She comes from the back of the plane to me. Miss what can I do for you I would like the attendant who is assigned to first class put somewhere else if possible because she handed one of my boyfriend this note after him and my one friend switched spots so his back wouldn’t bother him laying down with me for the whole flight. You can read it for yourself, but I would not like her around me or anyone else in this group. Did you think it was appropriate to write this and give it to one of her boyfriends? I just thought he should be given a chance to be with someone who is crippled person that can not do stuff on their own.

At that point little w was trying to calm me down because he knows about my insecurities when it comes to another women no matter what. Tim, Greg and Jason are all around me keeping me out of everyone sight. Bryan was sitting next to us and he whispered to Tim asking what the help was. Tim whispered back Ann has insecurities when it comes to other pretty women. We are trying to protect Ann from her sight and calm Ann down. Fred overhears what is being said and decided to make a comment of his know. I can not believe people can be this shallow now days with society changing like it. I look over at Fred and he has this big smile on his face like I got your back sis. With that comment uncle Jim is coming next to Tim kneeling looking at me like he knows I am going to start crying. The flight attendant who gave Yoongi the note name is Kate.

Kate so you know my niece hasn’t always been cripple and she still does enough stuff on her know to take care of everyone in this first-class section. There maybe four things she can not do on her know but anyone of us would rather have her around us where she can not do a couple of things then someone who is conceited, self-center and shallow person you are. Please leave so we can get my niece to calm down for the rest of this flight and I will be taking that note with me. Once we land and off this plane, I will be going to a supervisor in the airport to let them know what you did during this flight to someone has been hurt by two different employees of this airline on two separate incidents. Erin if you would like to keep your job, I suggest you keep Kate out of first-class. I am taking over first-class because I feel the same way as you do that someone should not make fun of someone who has no control over what is happening. Miss is there anything I can get you? Do you have any pudding or yogurt of this flight? Ann do you need one or both treats? Both I said yes. We have chocolate pudding.

Miss Erin yes, my name is Bryan Ann’s nurse? Yes, what can I do for you. I need to talk to you for a minute if that is possible? Yes, step this way. Ann must be hurting a lot to ask if you have pudding or yogurt on this flight. Why do you say that because Ann does not like taking medicine, so we have to hidden it in pudding or yogurt? We call it her treat. Here are both bottles and you can see Ann’s name is on them. What do you need me to do? I need you just to give me the pudding so I can put her pills in, and I will take it out there so you can see what we all go through.

Ann, I have your treat right here can I help you take it? Yes, Bryan you can help me take it. Miss Erin if you have a hot towel, I would take one of those to put it across Ann’s lower back? Yes, Bryan here is the hot towel. Miss Erin picks up the phone and starts talking to someone she see me start getting nervous and slowly walks over to me and say Miss Ann do not worry I was tell the rest of the flight attendants that there is to no one near or in the first class until we are at the gate. We will be landing in about 20 minutes, so I need all of you to get back to your seats and put your seat belts back on. We had you seat belt together only at the waist or the legs two. Just the waist Bryan thought bother my back more if my legs were seat belt too. Okay Bryan I guess you know how you had them seat belted earlier so go ahead a do it again. Yes, I do know we seat belted Yoongi and Ann earlier it was just around the waist and that is how we are doing it again.

When we each the gate all the other passengers got off first then we followed. Jin and Yoongi on each side of me walking through the airport. We had the head of the airport security meet us at our gate at our gate. Uncle Jim asked head of security to speak with a manager from the airline company about the flight attendant from our flight. That was the last flight she worked has attendant on for the company. After uncle Jim showed the manager what the flight attendant had wrote to Yoongi. Head of security escorted us to the baggage claim all bags were collected and got in our ride for the hotel. Once we arrived at the hotel papa m decides to check our group in the hotel. I am checking the BTS group in. We have been waiting for all of you to arrive. There is 32 people in your group correct.

Yes, there is 32 people in are group since your group is so big, we gave the top floor to all of you. I see there is a Miss. Brown listed but I don’t see a David Ott listed in your group. Is there a problem that Miss. Brown is listed but not a David? Yes, David had phone us and told me personally that Miss. Brown was not allowed to stay here unless he was with her. I started shaking in the wheelchair thinking he knows every hotel we are staying at on this tour and we are going to have this problem at all the hotels. Peanut we have your stay away order with us he will not be allowed around you okay? No, uncle Jim I am not okay why does he keep doing stuff to me? Ann honey he is doing all this to worn you out and you will go back to him. Can I have Ann’s stay away order against David, Frank, Sean and Steve to give to the manager, so he knows to not to give any information out about Ann being here. The hotel manager looks lost for words when he gets all four stay away orders.

Jim call judge Carl and tell him that we at least know David broke the order by calling the hotel and telling them Ann could only stay here if he was with her. I am on it. Tom can you call the Philadelphia Police Department and have the chief of police come here so we can tell him what is going on. I am calling now. Is there a place we can have Ann lay do in or stay in while we get this all taken care of? I will give you the room key for the suite she is stay in with Jin, Yoongi, Namjoon, Hobi, Jimin, Tae, Kookie, Fred, Bryan, Tim, Jason and little w. We have the rest of you in our other suites up on the top floor also. Everyone but Jim, Tom and I go to that suite. Ann honey try to calm down because you might have to talk to the chief of police. Papa m can’t you talk to him on my behalf?

Ann I will try but he needs to talk to you we will bring him up to you so please don’t worry about other people knowing your business okay? Yes, papa m and if we must, I will call and make other hotel arrangements that only us will know about okay honey. Yes, papa m I will try to relax and calm down. Thank you, Ann honey I will see you soon and let you know what is going on. Mike yes, Tom the chief of police is on their away here now. Good thank you for staying down here and helping us with this matter. This is the reason I and Jason came along to make sure everyone was safe and to make sure none of them got within 20 feet of all you. Mike yes, Jim just got off the phone with Judge Carl to him what David did. He is going to add more years to his sentence, and he wanted all the hotels we are staying at to send the 4 stay away orders ahead of us arriving in case they were contacted too. I feel bad for Ann because she keeps going through all this stuff.

Tom yes, Jim everything that my niece has gone through in her life at a young age has ripped my heart into pieces, but see everyone that is at this hotel with her and protecting her to their best ability has made me happy that she will not walk alone through this anymore. Jim yes, Mike with everything going with Ann. I am sorry I never asked how you are handling all of this. Mike yes, Jim all of this has worn me down, but I am trying to stay strong for Ann wellbeing. What room is Ann Brown in? I am sorry but we do not have Ann Brown listed has one of your quest. Well that is strange because I tracked her phone to here. May I ask who you are sir? I am David Ott and I remember telling someone at this hotel that she is only allowed to stay with me here? I am sorry sir, but she is not here, and you are going to have to leave. I am not leaving without Ann because I know she is here.

Excuse David but you are under arrested for breaking the stay away order that Miss. Brown has against you. We will be sending you back to prison maximum security with no contact from the outside. You can not arrest me here since this isn’t your state that you are a trooper in, but we can. I am the chief of police of Philadelphia and you sir are under arrest for breaking the stay away order Miss. Brown as against you. That order only covers the area she lives in not here. The stay away order protects her wherever she is at. Ann is now in the lobby. I see someone running towards me but before they could get to me, they were tackled. Fred is on the floor wrestling the guy that was running at me. Peanut what are you doing in the lobby? I got a text from you asking me to come down.

Peanut I never text you come down to the lobby. Who is Fred wrestling on the ground with? Ann honey I need to stay as calm as you can right now. Ann, I came to take you home with me. Your dad and brother are waiting for you to come home also. I am just start looking like into thin air. Shit Tom call Jason and tell him to bring everyone in the lobby now. Peanut please relax your okay he can not hurt you. Fred the cops have him get to your little sister now! Little sis it’s me please come back to me he can not hurt you anymore.

Little sis I am here please come back to me? Fred I am here little sister. Are you okay? No, I said in a small voice let get you not of this area okay? Yes, please as the elevator ding, I jump not knowing who anyone was on the elevator. Fred what is going on? I will explain later right now we need to get Ann out of the lobby but not outside. Ann just started using her small voice. Princess it is Jin and Yoongi let’s take you by the pool okay? Yes, please I said in a small voice.

Little w and Tim, Mike is going want to talk to you two quick go to him. We are taking Ann by the pool. No, Tim and little w do not leave me? Ann we will not leave you, but we will send Big R and Big B in your place? No please do not send anyone. I do not feel comfortable with anyone leaving me right now. Okay Ann no one will leave you. Princess I thought your uncle wanted you in the lobby? Jim did not text Ann? Then who text Ann’s phone using her uncle’s Jim number? Right now, we are not going to talk about that but just know I tackled the asses before he could get to Ann.

Ann are you feeling better now? Yes, Fred I am feeling much better and thank you for the quick action back there. Ann you are my little sister and I will always be there to protect you.

#bts #bts series #bts army #bts fanfic #kim seokjin #min yoongi #kim namjoon #j-hope #park jimin #kim taehyung #jungkook

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outoftheforestshow · 6 years ago

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Letter From Birmingham Jail A U G U S T 1 9 6 3 by Martin Luther King, Jr

From the Birmingham jail, where he was imprisoned as a participant in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote in longhand the letter which follows. It was his response to a public statement of concern and caution issued by eight white religious leaders of the South. Dr. King, who was born in 1929, did his undergraduate work at Morehouse College; attended the integrated Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, one of six black pupils among a hundred students, and the president of his class; and won a fellowship to Boston University for his Ph.D. WHILE confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms. I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every Southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliate organizations all across the South, one being the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Whenever necessary and possible, we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promises. So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because we were invited here. I am here because I have basic organizational ties here. Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth-century prophets left their little villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Greco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid. Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider. You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being. I am sure that each of you would want to go beyond the superficial social analyst who looks merely at effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative. IN ANY nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in this nation. These are the hard, brutal, and unbelievable facts. On the basis of them, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation. Then came the opportunity last September to talk with some of the leaders of the economic community. In these negotiating sessions certain promises were made by the merchants, such as the promise to remove the humiliating racial signs from the stores. On the basis of these promises, Reverend Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to call a moratorium on any type of demonstration. As the weeks and months unfolded, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. The signs remained. As in so many experiences of the past, we were confronted with blasted hopes, and the dark shadow of a deep disappointment settled upon us. So we had no alternative except that of preparing for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community. We were not unmindful of the difficulties involved. So we decided to go through a process of self-purification. We Letter From Birmingham Jail 2 started having workshops on nonviolence and repeatedly asked ourselves the questions, "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" and "Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?" We decided to set our direct-action program around the Easter season, realizing that, with exception of Christmas, this was the largest shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this was the best time to bring pressure on the merchants for the needed changes. Then it occurred to us that the March election was ahead, and so we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that Mr. Conner was in the runoff, we decided again to postpone action so that the demonstration could not be used to cloud the issues. At this time we agreed to begin our nonviolent witness the day after the runoff. This reveals that we did not move irresponsibly into direct action. We, too, wanted to see Mr. Conner defeated, so we went through postponement after postponement to aid in this community need. After this we felt that direct action could be delayed no longer. You may well ask, "Why direct action, why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. So, the purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. We therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather than dialogue. One of the basic points in your statement is that our acts are untimely. Some have asked, "Why didn't you give the new administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this inquiry is that the new administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one before it acts. We will be sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Mr. Boutwell will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is much more articulate and gentle than Mr. Conner, they are both segregationists, dedicated to the task of maintaining the status quo. The hope I see in Mr. Boutwell is that he will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from the devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was "well timed" according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "wait." It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "wait" has almost always meant "never." It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied." We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say "wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodyness" -- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Letter From Birmingham Jail 3 YOU express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "An unjust law is no law at all." Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes an "I - it" relationship for the "I - thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. So segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Isn't segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? So I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court because it is morally right, and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong. Let us turn to a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow, and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. An unjust law is a code inflicted upon a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or creating because it did not have the unhampered right to vote. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout the state of Alabama all types of conniving methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties without a single Negro registered to vote, despite the fact that the Negroes constitute a majority of the population. Can any law set up in such a state be considered democratically structured? These are just a few examples of unjust and just laws. There are some instances when a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I was arrested Friday on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong with an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade, but when the ordinance is used to preserve segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest, then it becomes unjust. Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws. I MUST make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically made? Isn't this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical delvings precipitated the misguided popular mind to make him drink the hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because His unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to His will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see, as federal courts have consistently affirmed, that it is immoral to urge an individual to withdraw his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest precipitates violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. Letter From Birmingham Jail 4 I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth of time. I received a letter this morning from a white brother in Texas which said, "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but is it possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry? It has taken Christianity almost 2000 years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. YOU spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I started thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodyness" that they have adjusted to segregation, and, on the other hand, of a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because at points they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred and comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up over the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. This movement is nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination. It is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incurable devil. I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need not follow the do-nothingism of the complacent or the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest. I'm grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, I am convinced that by now many streets of the South would be flowing with floods of blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who are working through the channels of nonviolent direct action and refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes, out of frustration and despair, will seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare. Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come. This is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom; something without has reminded him that he can gain it. Consciously and unconsciously, he has been swept in by what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, he is moving with a sense of cosmic urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. Recognizing this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand public demonstrations. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations. He has to get them out. So let him march sometime; let him have his prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; understand why he must have sitins and freedom rides. If his repressed emotions do not come out in these nonviolent ways, they will come out in ominous expressions of violence. This is not a threat; it is a fact of history. So I have not said to my people, "Get rid of your discontent." But I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled through the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. Now this approach is being dismissed as extremist. I must admit that I was initially disappointed in being so categorized. But as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist in love? -- "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice? -- "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ? -- "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist? -- "Here I stand; I can do no other so help me God." Was not John Bunyan an extremist? -- "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a mockery of my conscience." Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? -- "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist? -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? I had hoped that the white moderate would see this. Maybe I was too optimistic. Maybe I expected too much. I guess I should have realized that few members of a race that has oppressed another race can understand or appreciate the deep groans and passionate yearnings of those that have been oppressed, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent, and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too small in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some, like Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, and James Dabbs, have written about our struggle in eloquent, prophetic, and understanding terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They sat in with us at lunch counters and rode in with us on the freedom rides. They have languished in filthy roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of angry policemen who see them as "dirty nigger lovers." They, unlike many of their moderate brothers, have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation. Letter From Birmingham Jail 5 LET me rush on to mention my other disappointment. I have been disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand this past Sunday in welcoming Negroes to your Baptist Church worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Springhill College several years ago. But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say that as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say it as a minister of the gospel who loves the church, who was nurtured in its bosom, who has been sustained by its Spiritual blessings, and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen. I had the strange feeling when I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery several years ago that we would have the support of the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests, and rabbis of the South would be some of our strongest allies. Instead, some few have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows. In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and with deep moral concern serve as the channel through which our just grievances could get to the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed. I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say, follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother. In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sidelines and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, "Those are social issues which the gospel has nothing to do with," and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which made a strange distinction between bodies and souls, the sacred and the secular. There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period that the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators." But they went on with the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven" and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest. Things are different now. The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's often vocal sanction of things as they are. But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. I meet young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson scratched across the pages of history the majestic word of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. For more than two centuries our foreparents labored here without wages; they made cotton king; and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful humiliation -- and yet out of a bottomless vitality our people continue to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. I must close now. But before closing I am impelled to mention one other point in your statement that troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I don't believe you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its angry violent dogs literally biting six unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I don't believe you would so quickly commend the policemen if you would observe their ugly and inhuman treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you would watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you would see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys, if you would observe them, as they did on two occasions, refusing to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I'm sorry that I can't join you in your praise for the police department. Letter From Birmingham Jail 6 It is true that they have been rather disciplined in their public handling of the demonstrators. In this sense they have been publicly "nonviolent." But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the last few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. I wish you had commended the Negro demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer, and their amazing discipline in the midst of the most inhuman provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, courageously and with a majestic sense of purpose facing jeering and hostile mobs and the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman of Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride the segregated buses, and responded to one who inquired about her tiredness with ungrammatical profundity, "My feets is tired, but my soul is rested." They will be young high school and college students, young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience's sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage. Never before have I written a letter this long -- or should I say a book? I'm afraid that it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else is there to do when you are alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell other than write long letters, think strange thoughts, and pray long prayers? If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me. Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright © 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; August 1963; The Negro Is Your Brother; Volume 212, No. 2; pages 78 - 88.

#Martin Luther King

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pyrofleurs · 6 years ago

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In 2018 I entered the New Year scared. In 2018 I knew I was scared of change, scared of not knowing, scared of failure. All the way up until the very end, I never dared to think that I could say I had "a good year". Too superstitious, too worrisome, still too afraid.

In 2018 I trained in Florida with my college swim team. I made it through the entire trip mostly intact. I didn't get hurt like I thought I would. I ate breakfast by the ocean and sang horribly along to Shania Twain with my roommates. I hadn't gone the first three years because my shoulder wasn't strong enough, but this year it was.

In 2018 I created art, so much art I filled rooms with it. I ordered faux gold leaf off of Amazon and I got it everywhere. I carried it with me in my hair, in my clothes, stuck to my glasses and falling out of my backpack. I kept a journal and filled it with critiques, with inspiration and with half-finished sketches and shitty thumbnails. I got gold leaf all over that, too.

In 2018 I started off the year with a girl who taught me how to fall in love, how to fall out of love, and how to write a cover letter, but not in that order. In 2018 I realized that I don't have to want what my friends want in a relationship, or what my favorite characters would want in a relationship, or what I thought I would want in a relationship. I realized that I am allowed to not want a relationship.

In 2018 I cried because I didn't have anything to put on my resume. I cried because I had to create a website and fill it with works I hadn't started yet, with grand accomplishments that didn't come. I cried shuddering sobs on my apartment couch with my face in my hands because I had no employable skills and whatever I could do, there would always be someone who could do it better, and they probably had a better GPA than me, too.

In 2018 I woke up on the morning of my very very last swim meet maybe ever and I don't even remember what I did because I was so nervous. I remember I placed one spot out of my dream, one spot out of a NCAA college championship final, and had a blazing, screaming breakdown on the slippery tile floor of the women's locker room while a teammate hugged me to her chest. I remember my coach found out and took me out of the next relay. I remember the next day I swam my first best time in five years. I remember my shoulder held up, all tendons intact, and the coach I had tried so desperately to impress for the past four years told me he was proud of me, his voice muffled by a bone-crushing hug. I remember singing songs deliriously happy with my teammates on the bus ride home. I remember that the most vividly.

In 2018 I visited old places with new friends, and drove new places to visit old friends. I bought too much coffee, I bought gold and red and white gel pens, and hundreds of dollars worth of oil paint, too. I bought a succulent, but killed him because I loved—watered— him too much. I asked my friend to buy me another one that was a little harder to kill next time, and that one I kept alive.

In 2018 I watched a hockey player named Evgeny Kuznetsov send a hockey puck smoothly through the legs of a goalie with a penguin on the chest of his jersey and exorcise twenty years of demons in one flick. In 2018 I screamed and jumped and cried with the joy of an entire city that deserved it, thinking once, finally, please god maybe just this once it's okay to believe. I went to games and watch parties and packed myself tight in a sea of sweaty red jerseys and got sprayed with beer and cried with joy with the crowds on F Street and watched as the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup.

Oh, and in 2018 I graduated. I held my diploma and grinned with my boots soaked with mud and posed for pictures and only slipped once, I think. In 2018 I got my first office job and sprained my finger because I clicked a mouse too much. I got into my first ever car crash on the way to work, sandwiched between a red pickup truck and a transit bus with the pop of a side mirror and the crunch of glass and walked everywhere for a month, dripping sweat, while I waited for my car to be fixed.

In 2018 I finished editing the novel I had started in 10th grade, learned how to write a query letter and a synopsis and sent it to as many agents as I could find. I got rejected by all of them and gained invaluable experience in return. In 2018 I did every single day of Inktober except for one, because that was the day I submitted my work to all of those agents. In 2018 I realized that thrusting content creators upon a pedestal is no less harmful than if I did the same to myself, and maybe I should stop doing the same to myself. In 2018 I realized that I will never do anything perfect on the first try and that it is a good thing.

In 2018 I sat in an interview room and had a genuine conversation with the people around me and discovered I wanted to keep writing. In 2018 I started a real, full-time job with real full-time benefits and remembered how I cried ten months ago on my apartment couch because I thought that as a professional I was worthless. I thought about how I truly believed I was supposed to know everything already and I thought about why I was so invested in something so dangerously wrong.

In 2018 I saved pictures of sunsets from my office window, from my college apartment, from Florida and Washington D.C. and Ohio and St Ann, Jamaica. I saved sunrises from Massachusetts and storm clouds from Pennsylvania and the ripple of waves from pools and oceans and lakes. I saved plane tickets and hockey tickets and pins and posters from my teammates, journals and scribbles and symbolism and crumpled-up papers and my old purple backpack. And if I picked it up and shook it upside-down all that would fall out, coated in gold leaf floating gently down, down, covering a year in gold dust narrated by a girl who swore she was once afraid.

#2018 was a really important year for me and i wanted to be emo about it for a sec #but like..... happy emo. i learned a lot this year and this may have came off a bit too sad fjdslf but. needed 2 Write #sam.txt #couldnt figure out a more neutral term at the end so im -_- abt using the word girl #but 'person' doesnt sound right.... uhhghgjk

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rambling-at-midnight · 7 years ago

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Hacked: Part 9

Pom, Dennis, and Juna, who is holding Crookshanks, are waiting for you at the cabin. The sun is just starting to rise over the buildings and you stop for a moment to admire the view, knowing it’s the last you’ll be seeing of it for two long years.

The small cat, looking healthier after just two days of being under Juna’s care, meows when he sees you. You grin at him, scratching his head with one finger. He’s still so tiny.

“You’re coming back, right?” Juna asks, her chin trembling as she tries not to cry.

“I will,” you vow, crouching down to be at her level.

“I’m going to miss having you keep this terror busy,” Dennis says, jerking a thumb at his sister, before holding out a new armband for you. You take it with a watery smile and snap it over your right wrist, as the left is occupied by his watch. You press the single button on it and it melts into a new hoverboard. “For when you can’t carry around that one,” he says, nodding to your trusty old board. “The modes are activated by your voice. Bulletproof. Everything that has and more.” You pull him into a tight hug, gripping his neck as tightly as you can, standing on your tiptoes as he’s a bit taller than you. Maybe he’ll grow even more while you’re gone.

“And this is technically from Pom, but I made it and so I can explain it better,” he adds, holding a gun out to you. “The bullets reject blood and dirt and anything else, so they’re always pristine, and they always leave no trace, and they’re magnetic and will return to the gun no matter what. Once one has been fired, this—” he taps the cylinder—“opens up and it’s ready for another shot. Doesn’t fire until you say that you’re shooting something, so you won’t accidentally shoot yourself while it’s in your pocket or anything.”

You hug your newfound friend too, thanking her for her thoughtful gift, even though you probably won’t be shooting many things while you’re in Canada. Maybe you’ll go to a shooting range, if they even have those there.

Then Stick exits the house in an immaculate black suit, carrying a backpack. “Hey there,” he says, friendly, smiling. It looks and sound wrong. “I’m Samuel Gates.” He sticks out his hand.

You stare at him for a long moment, your mind working furiously to find out where you’ve heard that name, before you put it together. You can’t hold back the laughter. You bend over, nearly hysterical, but that might also be knowing that your life is ending. The burner laptop is in the school’s Dumpster, but it’ll only take them a few hours to trace the device that’d posted the article. When you straighten, you finally grasp the hand he’d been extending and pump it, your grin threatening to split your face open.

“Your article has already got more than a million people,” your fake father tells you and you feel dizzy. “Wow,” you breathe.

Pom slugs you in the shoulder. “You did it.”

You nod as if in a daze. “I really did it.”

“Your ride’s nearly here,” Dennis says sullenly.

“When will you guys tell me about the results of the case?” you ask quickly.

Stick shrugs. “It doesn’t matter what happens. I just filed the complaint because I want some eyes off of you, at least for the time being. People will be so busy watching the case they won’t notice you, sneaking across the border to Canada.”

“You did that… for me?” You smile broadly and look down, touching your cheeks with your hands. “Thank you,” you whisper.

You hate to ask Stick for more than what he’s given you—he’s given you everything—but you need to take care of one more thing before you leave. “I hate to ask for more, but I have one more thing…” You pause, and Pom nods at you, her eyes glistening. At least you’ll always have a friend in her. “When my mom dies, can you make sure she’s not alone?”

You kind of expect Pom to ask you why, especially because you had been complaining about her to her a week ago, but you forgot that she’s also lost her mom. She understands.

“I have to leave,” Stick says regretfully when two cars pull up to the clearing, one sleek and black and the other a beat-up Jeep. “And so do you.” He hands you the backpack. “For your troubles,” he says, then winks. You giggle.

“Come visit me, all right?” you order playfully, putting your hands on your hips as you glare at your three friends. “I’m going to miss you guys.” You turn away before remembering something and turning back around. You give them the address of the house that’d thrown out Crookshanks. “That’s where I found Crooksie,” you explain. “The dude there’d just thrown him out.”

Juna’s face had clouded with anger.

You hug them each one more time before jogging over to the Jeep. The driver is an older dude that’s been on missions with Pom before, but you’ve never spoken with him directly. You smile politely at each other before shoving the backpacks under your feet and hopping in. “Sweet car,” you say. He grins. It is a sweet car—it’s really tall and compact and the windows have to be cranked up manually.

“Thanks. Music or no music?” he asks, carefully following behind the car Stick is in.

“No,” you say shortly, fiddling with your hands in your lap. Your heart is in your throat, the butterflies having a migration in your stomach, and your eyes won’t stop scanning the skies for your dad in his suit to come swooping in, ready to arrest you. You’re afraid the music would muffle the sounds of approaching police or Avengers. “Thanks for driving me,” you add.

“No problem,” he smiles. “It was practically a fight between the older kids. You’re basically a legend—hacking into Tony Stark’s personal accounts and releasing the stuff to the public? You’ve got guts, kid.”

More like you’re too stubborn to not go through with a reckless idea you’d mentioned once without thinking about the consequences.

“Still,” you mutter. “It’s quite a drive.”

“I’ve got nowhere else to be,” he assures you and you lean back in your seat, nerves tangled, fraying, and as tense as they’ve ever been. It starts to hit you, then, exactly what you just did: you pretty much ruined your dad’s reputation and maybe even life, your life is completely thrown off whack, and you’re leaving your friends behind without an explanation.

You nearly feel sick to your stomach when you remember that you’re never going to see Peter again, and even if you do, you won’t be able to tell him that you’re you. You’re going to say that you’re Ava Blake, Canadian orphan. You start to rummage through the backpack Stick had given you to take your mind off that. It has multiple credit cards, a few mini-bombs, and some cash, both American and Canadian.

“I’m Oakley,” he adds.

“Y/N,” you respond.

At one point or another you must fall asleep because you jerk awake to Oakley jostling your shoulder. Your heart pounds and you instinctively scan your surroundings for someone chasing you. You’re parked in the lot of a 7/11.

“We’re in Lenox Township, Pennsylvania,” Oakley tells you. “I thought you might need to take a bathroom break or get some food.”

You nod, rubbing your eyes. “Yeah.”

Six hours later, you get to the border. Oakley pulls into a line and gives a card to the guard at the gate. “She really did it?” the guard asks, impressed.

You smile shyly at him. “Yeah.”

He lets out a low whistle. “Damn. Keep it up, missy.” It would seem Stick’s got people everywhere.

Toronto reminds you a little too much of New York and you can feel your throat close up at the sight of it. Finally he pulls up in front of an old apartment building. You stare up at it, feeling suddenly very small and very scared. You wish anyone was here with you. You wish you had Crookshanks. You wish you’d never posted the article, you wish you’d never had the idea for the article, you wish you’d never been born from Tony Stark.

The apartment is large. Jacob and Bella both congratulate you on your accomplishment and that, at least, fills you with a bit of warmth, knowing that at least with Stick’s people you’re basically a hero. He’s probably—no, definitely—impressed. And this is only for two years. You can live with these two people, fresh out of college and practically teens themselves and insisting that you think of them as your older siblings and not parents. This is better than living with your mother for sure. You have the whole summer to get to know this city and your foster family. Your friends can come visit you during it.

You’re going to be fine.

If Peter had known what was going on, he would’ve chased after you.

It sounds like a weak excuse and he knows that, but it’s the truth. He hadn’t questioned your ‘job’ excuse, because you always seem to be working, and he had thought he could ask you what in the hell you meant by that kiss at lunch or during another class he shares with you. When he gets the call from Tony saying that the case had fallen through even before it had started, and that Peter needs to read an article before he can explain anything else, Peter had been ecstatic. It was just that he wasn’t a big fan of the article. He’d never even heard of a kid that was kidnapped from Tony Stark, and he immediately started to wonder how the author had gotten hold of those articles and Tony’s credit card records. The women would have been pretty easy to track down, but still. The article has a few really convincing and true points, and that makes Peter hate it even more.

Tony promises he’ll talk to Peter as soon as he can, after he smoothes out the whole article issue, and Peter has to brace himself before entering his apartment every day, preparing himself for Tony to be on the couch with Aunt May.

And you’re gone.

Ned and Michelle haven’t heard from you for the last two weeks. Your email and Google Voice are disconnected, and when Michelle had gone to the trailer where you used to live, your mother had confessed you hadn’t been home since the day you’d kissed Peter. She’d said it carelessly, MJ had reported, and Peter had had to restrain himself from going down there himself to shake sense into her. How could she not care that you’re missing?

He still doesn’t know why you kissed him. He’d told Ned and MJ that you said you loved them but he hadn’t mentioned the kiss. When he’d said that to them, MJ’s face had settled into a scowl. “That sounds like a sort of good-bye,” she’d drawled. “You didn’t think to mention this before? She might have been planning to run away, or even…” She lets her voice trail away before saying the dreaded possibility everyone has thought about.

Tony discounts the article easily, saying that the alcohol was because Thor had been over at that point and since he’s a god, he’s got a good alcohol tolerance. Everyone knows that Tony had slept around but he hasn’t had a one-night stand in years, especially because he’s got Pepper at home. He’d also mentioned that he had been told that the city would pay for the construction and he’d gotten all the local officials to agree with that, probably by paying them off.

When you hear about that, you’d nearly shot someone—your whole life, thrown out the window, and he just got to sit there, throwing money at the right people and wriggling out of yet another tight spot. You nearly cruise all the way back to New York just to put a bullet between his eyes, but Bella and Jacob had managed to convince you not to. Sure, your life’s definitely not the one you planned for, but at this rate, you’ll still be free. If you kill Stark, there’s no way you wouldn’t be hunted down.

It took three long weeks of Peter anxiously searching the streets of New York for you before Tony shows up to explain.

“This is a pretty complicated story,” the billionaire says heavily, slouching in his chair. The bags under his eyes are dark.

“Do you—do you want anything to eat?” Peter stutters, crossing his arms before uncrossing them because it probably looks rude but having them at his sides limply is weird, so he crosses his arms again, turning red.

Tony waves him off. “You deserve an explanation, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t exactly say that,” Peter chuckles, but he’d definitely like one.

“The article was written by Y/N Y/L/N,” Tony says abruptly.

Peter’s arms fall to his sides and he stares at Tony, slack-jaws. “P-pardon?”

“Y/N Y/L/N. She went to your school. She’s one of my—mine,” Tony stutters. It takes Peter a second to figure out what he’s saying before his eyes widen with recognition. Now he sees it—you two have the same eyebrows, the same chin, the same nose. He can’t believe he didn’t see it earlier. “It’s sort of complicated.”

“Y-you said that,” Peter laughs, tapping his thigh with his hand. You… you’re one of Tony Stark’s children, the elite group no one really wants to be in. He’d kissed Tony Stark’s daughter. Tony Stark’s daughter is now missing. He half expects Tony to shoot him right here in his apartment for doing so.

“Did you know her?” Tony says quietly.

Peter shrugs before admitting, “Yeah,” and resigning himself to his death.

“Can you tell me about her?”

#peter parker #Peter Benjamin Parker #peter parker x reader #peter parker fluff #peter parker write #marvel #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #marvel fluff #marvel fic #marvel write #mcu #reader x peter parker #peter parker fanfic #peter parker fanfiction #peter parker fic #reader insert #peter parker x you #you x peter parker

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vmfx · 4 years ago

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#1 ANSWER.

It was my first week into my new job that I meet Barney. It didn’t take long for me to realize how much of a low-art asshole he was. One thing they didn’t tell me about being hired to work in this place was to not be myself or have dissenting views.

Only a couple of weeks went by and I started to see how bullish and intrusive Barney was. Ordinary conversations became interrogations. Barney became easily fascinated when he asked me about myself, my point of view, or what my stance was on certain people or subjects. So fascinated that it got annoying real quick. For instance, my co-workers were talking about this since long-forgotten reality show The Jersey Shore. As usual, I could care less about pointless things. I was minding my own business doing my job until I was caught in his crossfire.

“So, tell me. What do you think about Snooki?”

“No thanks.”

“What?You’re kidding me. Tell me you wouldn’t want a piece of Snooki.”

“No.”

“What?! You’re serious!”

“No. I don’t care for her.”

“C’mon! You’re serious, right? Everyone thinks Snooki is hot! You don’t think Snooki is hot?”

“I don’t.”

“So…you’re saying that you don’t find Snooki hot.”

“No.”

“C’mon. What are you? A homo?”

Let’s take the time and run through this. Barney asked me a question and I gave him an answer. Simple as that. He wasn’t happy with my answer because he expected me to say what he wanted to hear. I shattered his expectations. Instead of letting it be, he kept on persisting me for re-assurance because his small implosive mind couldn’t take it. He also assumed to speak for everyone that some non-factor was hot, confusing opinion with fact. When I ultimately refused to give in, he insults me. As the old saying goes, ‘the television is always right’.

Because of this, Barney the One-Trick Pony™ constantly (and falsely) accused me of being gay. He went as far as trying to set me up with one of his lady friends. He even went further in lecturing me on why I needed to be married and why I should carry on the family name.

That was my mistake. I should’ve kept my mouth shut. I leave myself open to this and Barney turns into this Long Island ‘muthuh’ who endlessly criticizes others because they don’t live up to their standards. But he was no normal muthuh, he was a six-foot-three 350-pound 45-year old has-been who lived alone, had no girlfriend, and was very much into queer jokes, six-packs of beer, and phone sex which he openly disclosed to me while I was having lunch.

Perhaps if I criticized Barney on wearing an old, faded, crackling football jersey because they’re pathetic legendary losers who consistently fail to make the playoffs, he would be greatly offended. But I don’t do that to people. Unlike him, I have some sort of respect for others. I also can’t imagine if I called him out on his low-brow world of 1-900 numbers, bathroom stall writing, and online porn; because no one should ever put another person’s manhood in question of someone who watches sports, guns down a twelve pack, and relies on cheap obvious women. God forbid.

**********

Another Sunday, another weekend to disrupt my life and throw away beautiful blue skies, green grass, and white clouds to go to work; to deal with the curious public and an even more curious group of co-workers. When I mean curious, I mean ‘violating my privacy to the point it’s disgusting’ curious.

As usual, anything and everything about everyone working behind the counter is mined, revealed, sensationalized, and talked about for weeks if not months at a time. Whereas cameras are everywhere where I work; their plastic domes, tinted lenses sophistication, and inability to talk have absolutely no effect. But human nature is so cunning and so complex that my co-workers are an even bigger threat. They do everything they can to make other certain co-workers uneasy and destroy whatever sense of boundaries, privacy, space, or etiquette they were supposed to have all for a laugh or two. Our. God. Given. Right.

Elvis, who is best friends with Barney, is one of the most insipid, obnoxious, and mentally bankrupt individuals I have ever met. He always seems to strike up random conversations with me at the worst possible moment, which is usually when I’m working. If it’s not about something I’ve gotten over or experienced days, weeks, or months ago, it’s always the same stale repetitive boring questions. “So, how’s your dad? Is he still staying home? Still watching Maury? Does he go out? What does he eat? Do you guys go out? Where do you go? Do you have fun with your dad?”

Sometimes as I’m having lunch alone in the break room in complete silence, he would sit down with me, uninvited of course, and start asking me those rapid-fire series of pointless questions that are below me because I moved on from that game decades ago. “So what’s in today’s paper? What happened? Anything good? What’s this headline say? Hey, would you fuck Amana Bynes? You wouldn’t? Why not? Are you OK? Why are you feeling annoyed?”

This is pretty much the level of stupidity I endure every day working with Elvis. As if I don’t get enough unwanted unsolicited dumbstruck comments and unneeded questions from customers, I end up having Elvis’s display of genius come to me. It’s very hard to avoid. We’re only a few feet from each other at all times but somehow dumb is so generous where I live that there’s always more to go around and share. It wasn’t until very recently that a red card was pulled right in front of my face that made me dismiss him and write him off totally.

One Friday morning before work, I took Cath- to a salon to go get her cut for her sister Cheree’s graduation in Pennsylvania. My assistant manager Alphonso gave me a very rare Saturday off. It would have been ideal for both Cath- and I to get together for Saturday but it wasn’t possible because that was Cheree’s graduation day. Take one in the loss column. The following busy Sunday at work, Elvis once again pitches for conversation towards me.

“So, uh, how was work yesterday?”

“I didn’t work yesterday. I was off.”

“Oh, really? Off on a Saturday?! How did you end up getting off on a Saturday?”

“I don’t know. Alfonso just scheduled me off for Saturday, I guess?”

“Really?”

“…yeah.”

“So what did you do on your Saturday off?”

“Well, nothing really. I just went to the gym then stayed home for the rest of the day to relax.

“Wow, you went to the gym and that’s it?”

“Yeah, it was miserable out. Then again, all that didn’t matter as my friend was in PA for a graduation.”

“Was your friend a guy or a girl?”

“…it didn’t matter. Nothing really happened that day.”

“Was your friend a guy or a girl?”

“Why are you asking me this again? Why does it matter who I hang out with?”

“Was your friend a guy or a girl?”

I shook my head at Elvis, exhaled, and walked away from him. Next week we will play this game again, but for now I just saved myself from another round on endless embarrassment and unwanted humiliation.

That is why I can no longer talk to people anymore. It mattered so much to this fucking stumble. Elvis was looking to once again take something personal of mine and turn it into a front-page headline for the entire department to throw around, make fun of, and blow up as the workplace news story of the week. Because we’re so needy for excitement and self-gratification that we have to know every little thing that goes on in other people’s personal lives, in this case for my co-workers to use it against me.

This seriously took off on me. Our own mini-NSA-in-training Elvis was really that fascinated as to what gender my friend was. That meant so much to him. He really wanted to get off on the fact that I spent time with a female since the only things that take up real estate in his mind are getting plastered on weekends and “hot girls”, according to him. OK, so what else does he want to know? Did I sleep with her last night? What was she wearing? Was she a Ginger or an Asian? What positions did we do? How long did it last? What exact words did she scream out? Was it good? And did I kiss her goodnight, make her breakfast, or just get dressed and run out of her house? Do I get $100 for every correct answer?

How would Elvis like it if I would stop his world every five minutes to ask about his everyday mundane life of nothing? Would he appreciate it if I would distract him endlessly with pointless questions and ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers? Would it annoy him to no end if I intruded into his personal life only to ridicule it along with all of the other co-workers around? Should I ask him about the photos his friends took when they drew cocks on his head while he was plastered drunk at a party? Or when was the last time he touched a girl or when had any female gave him eye contact? I wouldn’t think so, either.

**********

Questions. I gave up on them. I no longer have the time, care, or patience to tend or answer them anymore. I don’t deserve to stand in one place with my life being put under a microscope as undeserving people around me are dying to know a lot of things about me that will never pertain or affect them.

I mind my own business doing what I need to do for the day. I only focus on the bigger, more important things at stake. They stand there and start asking me questions about my personal life as it is so special or urgent. It’s not, really. It’s just a little different than others. What could I tell them? They feel unusual enough to stop at every answer and act like they’re so surprised. Really, what is such a big deal about the mundane things in my life that catch them off-guard? Obviously they’re un-accepting and shallow-minded, the blinders they wear have not been widened.

I had gotten tiresome of their interview sessions. I stay away and I do, but only for a while. I have been told to ignore them, to not answer them. I do take the advice but these downturns push harder. They ask and ask and ask and persist to no end until I give up and hopelessly answer because I know they will never stop if I don’t. Somehow my answers complicate things even more for them so the hits just keep on going. It’s a lose-lose situation.

The difference between me and them is that I understand and they don’t. I respect people for who they are because I understand. I have it all figured out so I don’t need to ask any further. Barney and Elvis’s child-like fascination with my life want me to “get with the program” because they don’t get it the first time. Conversations aren’t worth having with certain masturbatory people when they clutch and pull themselves over the answers they are given.

I’m not a celebrity and I never asked to be one. I never asked for them to make me special. I never asked for a circus surrounding my life and I never asked to be put on the hot seat. I don’t need them questioning every move I make in my life when there are better things during the day I need to focus on. I don’t have to answer to anyone if I don’t want to. I don’t need to pay attention to the feeble-minded and uneducated to constantly disrupt my day and waste my time. I have way more important things to worry about other than to satisfy simple minds who can’t figure it out and worry about things that have nothing to do with them. They truly don’t deserve the attention, therefore they will be forgotten about.

#VMFX #writing #personal #oops #WTF #privacy #Long Island

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welcometophu · 5 years ago

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Into the Split: Reinforcements 2

Twinned Book 3: Into the Split

Reinforcements 2

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Dinner is an ongoing affair. The big room at the center of the house reminds Nikolai starkly of the same room in Havenhill, and it’s easy to understand how Alaric would have been off-balance there. Food is set up along the outer edges, and tables have been placed in the center. People take what they want and drift from place to place, either standing and talking, or settling in at a table for a time.

It’s easy to get lost, or overwhelmed.

Every time Nikolai blinks, it seems as if someone new arrives. Rory introduces him to his mother and fathers and later to his grandparents as well. Alaric is in the middle of introducing several Clan from other communities when one loud girl arrives and brashly interrupts to pounce on the back of one the girls with Alaric. When most of the Clan group leaves, Dayton carries Stormy on her back, a small parade of others following behind.

At the sound of a shriek, Nikolai looks to the door and spots a small child—the youngest he’s seen at the gather tonight—barreling across the room. She throws her arms around Alaric’s legs, then lifts her arms high and demands to be picked up. He does so, fitting her on her hip and spinning around so that her brightly colored knit cape swings out.

Across the room, Val stands with a skinny teen. She smiles fondly as she watches.

Nikolai grasps for Seth to hold on to. “Alaric,” he says quietly, waiting until he stops spinning. “I thought you didn’t know Val.”

“Hm?” Alaric’s gaze follows where Nikolai points.

The small girl in his arms waves wildly. “Mama! Elijah! Come meet Alaric! He’s a dog!”

She slips down slightly as Alaric’s hold loosens, his fingers momentarily slack. He grabs on, hoisting her up again. “Only sometimes, Miranda,” he says, hand steady on her back.

“Only sometimes,” she agrees. “You’ve never met my Mama.”

“I haven’t.” Alaric slowly lowers Miranda to the ground, making sure she’s settled. His expression is closed and tight. “You’re right. I should.”

“Maybe they’re both bedrock,” Nikolai murmurs. Maybe this is a turning point when Val and Alia meet on this world. Maybe them not being together is how their worlds diverged, and he can’t tell if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. In many ways, Havenhill is far ahead of where the Haverhill community is now. But his world overall is in far more dire straights.

Val approaches, her hand out and a steady smile in her expression. “You’re Alaric. My name is Valentine, and this is Miranda’s older brother, Elijah. I’m glad we finally got to meet. When I heard that Susan, Allison, and David were planning to come, I asked if my family could join your Gather. Miranda was excited to come to your home.”

Alaric takes her hand, shakes it without letting go after. “Do you know my mother?” he asks, a soft growl under his words.

“I—” Valentine tugs her hand free, takes a step back. “I don’t know. It’s possible we crossed paths in the past. Did she attend PHU like you do?”

“Most of us do.”

Her smile is thinner, stretched a little too wide. “Then it’s a possibility. You’ll have to introduce us when you get a chance. All I know so far is that her son is excellent with fiber work, and good with small children. She obviously raised you well.”

Miranda tugs at Alaric, and he picks her up again while half-distracted. His skin is pale, and it’s a moment before he replies, “I’ll take you to her. And thank you.”

Seth tugs at Nikolai. “This would be a really good time for us to step out,” he murmurs.

Alaric turns around, and Nikolai remembers then that he has excellent hearing. ��You can go anywhere in the community that you’d like, although I don’t recommend driving. Not everywhere has roads,” Alaric says quietly. “Just don’t get into anything someone might consider personal.”

“The house where we stayed in Havenhill?” Seth asks.

Alaric expression twists into distaste. “If you want. It’s worse here than there. No one considers it habitable. And there’s only the one. Ignore the mess. My father wrecked part of it when he lost his mind briefly.”

That statement makes Nikolai curious, but Alaric is already turning away, Miranda in his arms as he stiffly heads for Alia with Valentine and Elijah in his wake.

Seth squeezes Nikolai’s fingers, and Nikolai nods. Yes. It’s time to go. There are far too many people here.

Nikolai can breathe more easily when they emerge from the house. More cars are parked in front than he remembers being in the parking lot of the store where they got clothes after they first arrived in this world. He reads the license plates: New York, of course, but also Ohio, Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania… there are representatives from all over the northeast and beyond.

“I take it we’re not the only ones getting claustrophobic?” Nate’s voice is cheery as he waves from where he crouches off to one side, lacing up his sneakers. “Dax is heading that way. We’re going to go do something he doesn’t want to do, if you want to come along.”

Nikolai looks around, expecting someone else. “Where’s Cass?”

“Inside with the rest of the SigPsiE contingent. I think Drea’s claimed sisterly rights or something in order to introduce them all to all of her friends. Besides, she’s… getting better about not being attached to Dax every second of the day.” Nate straightens up slowly, arching his back as he stretches. “I’d thought about getting Dax to go on a run, but we can walk if you want to go with us.”

“What are you going to go do?” Seth asks. “We were going to head out to the place where we stayed in our world’s community.” His gaze shifts to where Dax stands. It looks like he’s heading toward the house, or somewhere along the way. Even Nikolai can see that he’s stiff, before Seth comments, “He’s definitely apprehensive.”

“We’re going to talk to a ghost.” Nate gestures, and they follow, catching up to Dax. “We’ve got company.”

“I’m sure Orson will be thrilled,” Dax mutters. “Running?” He has on sneakers as well, bounces on his toes. He’s graceful for someone so broad and tall, whereas Nate looks a little more like an antelope, all arms and legs.

“Unless something’s chasing us, I’d rather not,” Seth replies.

Dax shrugs and starts walking down the path. Nikolai remembers this way between the Benford house and the big house in Havenhill. It had been clearer there, with more small houses and outbuildings leading off the path. This road is open for a ways, then it closes down to a narrow path between the trees, definitely walking only, as if it’s traveled only rarely.

Nikolai doesn’t remember there being a cemetery in Havenhill, but there is definitely one here, off the path a long ways, much farther of a hike than he’d expected to take. He can’t see it in the distance when they start out, but Dax leads them there with ease. They pause at the edge marked by the first graves. There are footsteps in the mud outside, and paths worn through the grass above the graves. Some are marked by flowers or plants, others plain aside from the headstone. Dax hesitates, eyes closed and hands clenched.

“We are not going to talk to a ghost,” he says slowly. “I am. And I’m going to do my best to just talk to the one ghost. Which hasn’t been difficult in the past, but something’s riled up the spirits here. They’re much chattier than before. Would’ve been nice for Alex to warn me.”

“Do Alex’s warnings actually make sense?” Nate asks.

Dax huffs. “You have a point. C’mon. Orson’s right over here.”

The grave is newer than the others, the grass still new and sparse, fresh growth in the spring. It is well kept, however, with ivy climbing the stone and hostas around the base. The stone is bright and still sharp from the fresh cutting only months before.

Orson Herne. Beloved Son and Brother.

He was only twenty-two when he died.

Dax crouches on the fresh grass, his fingers just skimming the tops of the tiny blades. “Hey,” he says quietly, looking at the stone. “Long walk to get here, but you know that. Like Alaric said, this place wasn’t built for people like us. Everyone else can run on four legs, or fly.”

He smiles slightly. “You have a point. It’s tough on the lizards and bugs.”

The smile falls away, his brow furrowing. “Slow down. Please.”

Seth takes a step closer to Nikolai.

Nate moves to stand behind Dax, his hand hovering over Dax’s shoulder. “Do you—”

Dax cuts him off by bringing one hand up. Then he presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I get it,” he mutters. “You said that. I’m trying to protect him. I’m trying to finish this. Why the hell is everyone else so angry about it now? Is it because of the Mages—” He stops abruptly, hands falling from his face as his mouth opens slowly. “Oh.”

Dax pushes back, brushing against Nate briefly before he pulls away. He opens his mouth, draws in a breath and for a moment he looks as if he’s about to launch into a speech, the words hanging heavy in the air, waiting. Then he simply says, “Okay.” He takes a step back and nods. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Nate asks.

Dax shakes his head, exhales roughly. “Not really, not me, but they—it will be. I need to get out of here and put some distance between me and this place. You said we’re going... where?”

“The old Benford—”

“Berman,” Seth corrects him.

“The Berman house,” Nikolai says. “If we’d just kept going down that one path through the trees, we would’ve gotten there. It’s where we stayed, in our own world. Or similar. And I’ve heard it’s where Mattie came back from being just a Shadow.”

“Sometimes it’s weird being the one non-Talented person hanging out with you guys,” Nate muses. “You all have all this going on, and all I can do is tag along for moral support.”

Seth nudges his glasses up his nose. “Never underestimate the value of moral support. I’m an Empath. That’s pretty much what we do.”

Dax turns and heads for the edge of the cemetery again, back the way they came. Nate falls into step beside him, while Nikolai catches up when Seth follows.

Nate glances back at them. “Yeah, but your moral support is more like,” he lifts his fingers and wiggles them at Dax. “Mine’s a lot more being there and talking.”

“He talks a lot,” Dax agrees.

“Some people might find that a more comforting method of providing empathy than the Talented version,” Seth argues. He’s the shortest of all of them, walking swiftly to keep up. Nikolai doesn’t worry about them moving too fast for Seth, though. They walked all over New York; he’s sure he can manage this distance. “Some people don’t like Talent. There’s a reason Humans fear us.”

“Plus Shadows,” Nikolai reminds him.

“There’s that.”

Nikolai reaches out to catch Seth’s hand, and they slow down slightly, letting Dax and Nate move on ahead. He doesn’t have a reason for it, just that maybe they don’t have to rush right now. There’s no reason to hurry, they aren’t running from anything.

He sees Nate’s hands lift and move as he speaks, but Dax and he are far enough ahead that Nikolai can’t quite overhear them now. The distance stretches as they move along the narrow path.

“They’re going somewhere. We’re out for a relaxing stroll,” Nikolai observes.

Seth’s gaze is narrowed watching the others. “Mm,” he agrees, as Nate reaches out and grabs Dax’s shoulder and points at something off in the distance. “We just happen to be going in the same direction.”

The distance between them steadies eventually, which is good, since Nikolai’s hard-pressed to see the difference between the small path they follow through the trees, and the turn-off to head toward the Berman place. Roads have been left behind, and these are places where wolves run and birds fly. The need for human pathways just isn’t there.

He can feel the place before they arrive. It pricks at his senses even more than the Benford house did, tingling across his skin. Nikolai pauses as the house comes into view. “You feel that?”

Seth nods. “I feel something. Not sure if it’s the same thing you feel, but this is worse than home. This place has a very active stay out kind of feel to it. It’s uncomfortable getting closer to it. I’m not sure how they just walked up so easily.”

Nate waves and motions for them to come forward. He’s waiting at the base of the steps, but Dax already has the door open and is looking in. The door looks like it’s been ripped apart by something with claws, and hangs awkwardly on the hinges.

“There aren’t any ghosts here,” Dax calls over his shoulder. “It feels dead, but there’s no one here waiting to talk to me.”

“That’s because Mattie’s already gone,” Nate suggests. “I wonder if you would’ve been able to talk to her before she was pulled out?” He crosses his arms, shudders theatrically. “This place even gives me the heebie-jeebies. I can’t imagine what it feels like to you.”

“It feels like the Dreamscape is already here,” Nikolai replies. He has one hand up, staring at his fingers as they move through the air. He’s looking for that moment when he slips, when the Dreaming comes out into the real world. It doesn’t happen, but it feels like it could, if he even breathes wrong. Like it’s waiting for him to cross over. “This place could be dangerous.”

“It was.” The door is pulled out of Dax’s hand, and Mattie stands there, Chelsea a column of darkness behind her. “I Emerged here, and my family died. This place ate my soul.”

“Feels like it could do it again,” Seth says dryly.

“Probably,” Mattie agrees. She pulls what’s left of the door open wide. “Why don’t you come in?”

Dax walks past her, circling around Chelsea. They stare at each other as the rest move in, and Chelsea slides forward, one hand out and reaching for Dax’s face.

“Not for eating,” Mattie says.

Chelsea pulls back, shadowed hand falling. “I wasn’t going to. He feels… different. I just wanted to see.”

“It’s okay.” Dax closes the distance between them, reaching for Chelsea’s hands and wrapping his fingers around shadowed wrists. He lifts them both, offering his face for her to touch.

“Are you sure you should—”

“I’ve been thrown across rooms by ghosts.” Dax interrupts Nate, holding still while Chelsea’s fingers spread tendrils of darkness across his skin. “She doesn’t feel anything like that.”

“She also drinks souls,” Seth reminds him. “Nikolai woke up one morning to find her feeding on us.”

Nikolai can’t see her features clearly, but he feels certain that the look Chelsea throws is both hurt and indignant.

“I apologized,” she says. “And I’m not doing that now. I’m not hungry. Much.” Her attention refocuses on Dax, the darkness almost hiding his face as she leans in close. Her hands curl around the nape of his neck, and he stands there quietly. “What are you?”

“Descendent of The Oracle of Delphi and an Empathic line, and I talk to ghosts,” Dax says easily.

“You aren’t like the skinny one, but you are still brimming. Your energy is not for me.” Chelsea slips backwards, light spilling into the space around Dax as she goes. “You carry the weight of others.”

“Hundreds of ghosts over the years,” Dax agrees. He shudders, seeming to shake something off. “Just one active one, currently.”

Nikolai tunes them out. He wants to see more of this place, and lets the tingling on his skin draw him through the living room and into the kitchen. The floor is covered in dirt, left alone over the ages. Windows are broken, wind whistling through. Old pans lie on the stove and dishes on the table, as if it was immortalized in a moment after someone disappeared.

The kitchen is where the sensation is strongest, as if he could step from reality into the Dreaming right here. He draws in a deep breath, and lets it out slowly, centering himself. He feels Seth’s calm from the other room; even from a distance, his anchor is stable.

“There,” Mattie whispers.

Nikolai turns, startled. “I didn’t hear you following me.”

She moves past him, touching the stool that stands by the stove. “I was right here,” she says. “You can feel it, can’t you? How thin the barrier is still. I wonder if there are other places like this in the world, if every time a Shadow Emerges it leaves a rift behind. I wonder if that is how other Shadows slip into the world, if that gives them access. It didn’t feel this thin in Havenhill, did it?”

Nikolai shakes his head. “Not really, no.” He presses his hand next to hers on the stool, and for a moment the kitchen is in color, macaroni and cheese bubbling on the stove, the scent rich in his nose. He steps back quickly, and everything returns to darkness, dust, and dirt. “Is this where you were were trapped?”

Mattie crosses her arms, sinks to sit on the stool with her back to the stove. She nods. “I was waiting, I think. I never went far.”

“Do you think it’ll be the same for Chelsea?” Nikolai has an idea how it worked with Mattie now even if he’s not sure of the actual mechanics. He has a feeling there will be a lot of faith involved, but from Carolyn’s description, he can see how they slipped into the Dreaming and found Mattie there to bring her back. “Do we need to go where she Emerged? Do you think she’ll be waiting there?”

Mattie presses her lips together, shakes her head slowly. “I don’t think it will be the same. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Chelsea’s linked to Pawel. She keeps drifting back to him.”

Nikolai’s gaze goes slowly to the doorway. Seth, Nate, Dax, and Chelsea are all still talking, voices slipping over each other, Chelsea’s more sibilant than the others but no less strong. “So you think that if she’s waiting anywhere, it’s near Pawel,” he says quietly. “You think that’s where to find her.”

“If she’s anywhere, I think it could be there,” Mattie agrees. “Are you going to restore her soul to her before the ritual? Whatever they are planning might kill her. I know they want to stop the Shadows.”

Where stop might mean kill, or lock out, or any number of things that means Chelsea isn’t here anymore. Which could also mean Nikolai and Seth have no way of getting home.

He doesn’t want to think about that part.

“She’ll be around after whatever we do,” he says, as if it’s actually that simple. “She needs to help us get home, since you can’t.”

“I can’t,” Mattie confirms. “I can’t get into the Split now, not easily. It feels as if I should be able to, but I think something’s changed there. Something that makes it only for those without souls, only for those who hunger and have needs that go beyond sanity. Perhaps after the ritual, that will change.” A small, wistful sound before she smiles. “I’d like to travel.”

“I think we need to figure out what’s happening with the ritual, first, and getting me and Seth home after that.” Nikolai doesn’t want to lose sight of the goal, but he understands the idea of looking ahead. He wants to know what comes next, too.

He closes his eyes and relaxes for a moment, lets the sensation of the Dreamscape wash over him without letting it slip out. It’s so close that he could mold it here, bring it into being. He has a feeling that’s important, so he accustoms himself to the sensation and does his best to keep it under control. He’ll save this for later.

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techcrunchappcom · 4 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/covid-19-news-live-updates-the-new-york-times-20/

Covid-19 News: Live Updates - The New York Times

Here’s what you need to know:

Most public health officials now believe it is important to keep schools operating, particularly for young students.Credit…Sarah Blesener for The New York Times

New York City is reopening some of its public schools Monday in the teeth of a worsening coronavirus outbreak.

The decision to do so reflects changing public health thinking around the importance of keeping schools operating, particularly for young students, and the real-world experience of over two months of in-person classes in the city’s school system, the nation’s largest.

Schools around the country have had to make the difficult decision of when to close and what metrics to follow, with some staying open amid local positivity rates in the teens and others using low single-digit thresholds.

Of the nation’s 75 largest public school districts, 18 have gone back to remote learning in the past month, according to data compiled by the Council of the Great City Schools and reported in The Wall Street Journal.

In California, many of the biggest school districts were already closed before new restrictions took effect on Sunday in three regions of the state. The new restrictions include stay-at-home orders, but do not require schools that had reopened to close again (an earlier version of this item incorrectly said they do). In the last week, California has reported more than 150,000 new cases, a record for all states.

Decisions to shutter schools have often been made on the local level and in inconsistent ways. Some schools have “paused” for short periods of time — as was the case in dozens of Central Texas districts or recently in Delaware, at the governor’s suggestion. Others have opted for blended learning with some days in school and some days remote.

Many have endured jarring periods of closing, opening and closing again. All of the solutions seem to be leading to burnout, instability and turmoil. New York City students, parents and teachers have felt their own whiplash, from a full shutdown before Thanksgiving to a partial reopening less than three weeks later.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has committed himself to keeping schools open, his aides say, and has started with elementary schools and those for students with severe disabilities. (About 190,000 children in the grades and schools the city is reopening this week would be eligible.)

Three of the country’s largest districts — in Birmingham, Ala., Tulsa, Okla., and Wichita, Kan. — made the opposite decision and closed over the past week. In Birmingham, the superintendent said the pandemic was “drastically impacting our community and our schools.” In Tulsa, two public school employees died recently after testing positive for the virus. And several of Wichita’s public schools had so many staff members quarantined that they could hardly cover vacancies by the time the district decided to close, the superintendent said.

The United States has diverged from other countries around the world in closing schools but leaving indoor dining and bars open. Many parents have criticized that situation, saying that risks of infection are higher in restaurants and bars and that it prioritizes the economy over education. Across Europe and Asia, students, especially very young ones, have largely continued going to school while other parts of daily life have shut down.

While Mr. de Blasio’s decision was applauded by many parents, there is no guarantee that the pattern of chaos that they have faced will abate as the fall turns to winter. New York City’s rules for handling positive cases all but guarantee frequent and sudden closures of individual classrooms and school buildings.

And it remains unclear whether the city will be able to reopen its middle and high schools to in-person learning any time soon.

One thing that could hamper the city’s efforts, officials cautioned, is a truly rampant second wave in New York.

The test positivity rate has only increased since the city closed schools and the seven-day rolling average rate exceeded 5 percent last week. Hospitalizations have quickly mounted.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, at age 76, is in the high-risk category for the virus.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and President Trump’s personal and campaign lawyer, has tested positive for the coronavirus, Mr. Trump announced on Twitter on Sunday.

Mr. Giuliani has been admitted to Georgetown University Medical Center, according to a person who was aware of his condition but not authorized to speak publicly. Mr. Giuliani, at age 76, is in the high-risk category for the virus. Later Sunday, he wrote on Twitter: “Thank you to all my friends and followers for all the prayers and kind wishes. I’m getting great care and feeling good. Recovering quickly and keeping up with everything.”

His son, Andrew H. Giuliani, a White House adviser, said on Nov. 20 he had tested positive for the virus. He had appeared at a news conference with his father the day before.

Mr. Giuliani has been acting as the lead lawyer for Mr. Trump’s efforts to overthrow the results of the election. He has repeatedly claimed he has evidence of widespread fraud, but he has declined to submit that evidence in legal cases he has filed.

“@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus. Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. It was unclear why Mr. Trump was the one announcing it.

Mr. Giuliani recently traveled to three battleground states that Mr. Biden won to make his case. On Thursday he attended a hearing at the Georgia Capitol, where he didn’t wear a mask. He also went maskless on Wednesday at a legislative session in Michigan, where he lobbied Republicans to overturn the results of the election there and appoint a slate of electors for Trump.

“Mayor Giuliani tested negative twice immediately preceding his trip to Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia,” the Trump campaign said. “The Mayor did not experience any symptoms or test positive for COVID-19 until more than 48 hours after his return.”

However, a person in contact with the former mayor said he began feeling ill late this past week.

Mr. Giuliani has repeatedly been exposed to the virus through contact with infected people, including during Mr. Trump’s preparation for his first debate against President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. in September, just before the president tested positive.

His infection is the latest in a string of outbreaks among those in the president’s orbit. Boris Epshteyn, a member of the Trump campaign legal team, tested positive late last month. The same day, Mr. Giuliani attended a meeting of Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania about allegations of voting irregularities. One of the lawmakers at that meeting was notified shortly after, while at the White House, that he had tested positive.

Mark Meadows, the president’s chief of staff, and at least eight others in the White House and Mr. Trump’s circle, tested positive in the days before and after Election Day.

Mr. Trump was hospitalized on Oct. 2 after contracting the coronavirus. Kayleigh McEnany, the president’s press secretary, Corey Lewandowski, a campaign adviser, and Ben Carson, the housing secretary, are among those in the president’s circle who have tested positive this fall.

Mr. Giuliani appeared on Fox News earlier on Sunday. Speaking with the host Maria Bartiromo via satellite, Mr. Giuliani repeated baseless claims about fraud in Georgia and Wisconsin on “Sunday Morning Futures.” When asked if he believed Mr. Trump still had a path to victory, he said, “We do.”

Melina Delkic and Bryan Pietsch contributed reporting.

The victims of coronavirus were remembered during a Mass at at Nembro’s cemetery in November.Credit…Fabio Bucciarelli for The New York Times

Every Monday night in the northern Italian town that had perhaps the highest coronavirus death rate in all of Europe, a psychologist specializing in post-traumatic stress leads group therapy sessions in the local church.

“She has treated survivors of war,” the Rev. Matteo Cella, the parish priest of the town, Nembro, in Bergamo province, said of the psychologist. “She says the dynamic is the same.”

First the virus exploded in Bergamo. Then came the shell shock. The province that first gave the West a preview of the horrors to come now serves as a disturbing postcard from the post-traumatic aftermath.

In small towns where many know one another, there is apprehension about other people, but also survivor’s guilt, anger, second thoughts about fateful decisions and nightmares about dying wishes unfulfilled. There is a pervasive anxiety that, with the virus surging anew, Bergamo’s enormous sacrifice will soon recede into history, that its towns will be forgotten battlefields from the great first wave.

And most of all there is a collective grappling to understand how the virus has changed people. Not just their antibodies, but their selves.

Bergamo, like everywhere, now confronts a second wave of the virus. But its sacrifice has left it better prepared than most places, as the widespread infection rate of the first wave has conferred a measure of immunity for many, doctors say. And its medical staff, by now drilled in the virus’s awful protocols, are taking in patients from outside the province to alleviate the burdens on overwhelmed hospitals nearby.

But the wounds of the first wave gnaw at them from within.

Talking about these things does not come easily to people in Italy’s industrial heartland, jammed with metal-mechanic and textile factories, paper mills, billowing smokestacks and gaping warehouses. They prefer to talk about how much they work. Almost apologetically they reveal that they are hurting.

Though no corner of the city has escaped the fallout, job losses have been concentrated in mostly Black and Latino areas like West Farms in the Bronx.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

More than one in four workers in the West Farms neighborhood of the Bronx are out of work.

They were store clerks, hotel housekeepers, waitresses, cooks, for-hire drivers, security officers and maintenance workers before the coronavirus snatched away their livelihoods. Even before the outbreak, most were barely getting by on meager paychecks and scant savings.

Now their hopes for better lives are slipping away as they fall behind on rent, ration food and rack up credit card debt. Unemployment in this poor and largely Latino enclave of 19,000 was in double digits before the outbreak.

It has gotten far worse.

With an unemployment rate of 26 percent in September, West Farms has become a center of New York’s economic crisis, one of the hardest-hit urban communities in the country and emblematic of the pandemic’s uneven toll.

Though no corner of the city has escaped the fallout, the mass job losses have been concentrated in mostly Black and Latino pockets outside Manhattan that have long lagged economically behind the rest of the city. Communities like West Farms have also suffered disproportionately from the coronavirus itself, with higher rates of people becoming ill.

New York City’s economic crisis is among the worst in the nation, with unemployment at 13.2 percent in October, nearly double the national rate. But within the city, the pain varies vastly. Manhattan’s unemployment rate is 10.3 percent, but in the Bronx, the city’s poorest borough, it is 17.5 percent — the highest in the state.

In contrast, some of the city’s most affluent and largely white neighborhoods in Manhattan have fared far better. The unemployment rate on the Upper East Side was 5 percent in September, up from 1 percent in February. On the Upper West Side, it was 6 percent, up from 2 percent.

Poor workers, including many Black and Latino people, have been hurt much worse during the pandemic than by past recessions, including the 2008 financial crisis, said James Parrott, an economist with the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.

He said the pandemic had triggered many more layoffs among lower-paid workers, while far fewer higher-paid workers — including those in finance, technology and professional services, who tend to be mostly white — have lost jobs or benefits.

Du Weimin, chairman of Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products, is one of the richest men in China.Credit…Yu Ga/Visual China

As a government regulator sidled into a car, the Chinese pharmaceutical executive handed over a paper bag stuffed with cash.

The executive, Du Weimin, was eager to get his company’s vaccines approved, and he needed help. The official took the money and vowed to try his best.

Several months later, Mr. Du got the greenlight to begin clinical trials for two vaccines. They were ultimately approved, generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

The government official was jailed in 2016 for taking bribes from Mr. Du and several other vaccine makers. Mr. Du was never charged.

His company, Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products, produces about one-quarter of the world’s supply of vaccines. And Mr. Du, who has been called the “king of vaccines,” is one of the richest men in China.

Capitalizing on that success, Mr. Du and his company are at the forefront of the race to produce a coronavirus vaccine, a national priority for China’s ruling Communist Party. Kangtai will be the exclusive manufacturer in mainland China for the vaccine made by AstraZeneca, and the companies could work together on deals for other countries. Kangtai is also in early trials for its own candidate.

As the Chinese government has pushed to develop vaccine companies of global renown, the state has fostered and protected an industry plagued by corruption and controversy.

Drug companies, eager to get their products into the hands of consumers, have used financial incentives to sway poorly compensated government workers for regulatory approvals. Hundreds of Chinese officials have been accused of taking bribes in cases involving vaccine companies.

Oversight has been weak, contributing to scandals over substandard vaccines. While the government after each incident has vowed to do more to clean up the industry, regulators have rarely provided much information about what went wrong. Companies have been allowed to continue operating.

Dr. Ray Yip, a former head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in China, said he considers Kangtai to be among the top tiers of the country’s vaccine companies, adding that he “has no problem” with the manufacturing and technology standards of most players.

“The problem for many of them is their business practice,” Dr. Yip said. “They all want to sell to the local governments, so they have to do kickbacks, they have to bribe.”

Kangtai did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In a statement, AstraZeneca said it “conducts appropriate and thorough due diligence prior to entering an agreement with any entity.”

The lack of transparency, compounded by dubious business practices, has rattled public confidence in Chinese-made vaccines, even though they have been proved safe. Many well-off parents shun them, preferring their Western counterparts.

Christmas decorations in London last week.Credit…Andrew Testa for The New York Times

As a deadly wave of coronavirus cases extends across Europe, several countries are planning to loosen restrictions over the holidays to allow families and friends to gather.

In a four-day period beginning Dec. 23, people across Britain can form a Christmas bubble, which will allow members of up to three households to spend time together in private homes or to attend places of worship.

In Germany, officials have agreed to extend a partial lockdown to Jan. 10, but loosen restrictions from Dec. 23 to Jan. 1, allowing private gatherings of as many as 10 people from any number of households. Spanish officials have decided to allow travel between regions to see relatives and close friends, but said that social gatherings around Christmas and New Year’s Day must be limited to 10 people if not from the same household.

In France, residents will be under a nationwide curfew from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. beginning Dec. 15, when a national lockdown ends. However, the curfew will not apply from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve, officials said.

“We will be able to travel without authorization, including between regions, and spend Christmas with our families,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said.

Norway, one of the few European countries to keep a second wave at bay, currently limits private gatherings to five guests. But around the Christmas period, the country will allow residents to double their guests over any two days. However, people must continue to socially distance.

While some countries are becoming more permissive, Italy will tighten its restrictions on Christmas Day, Dec. 26 and New Year’s Day, when residents will be prohibited from leaving their hometowns. Travel will be banned between regions in Italy from Dec. 21 through Jan. 6, and an 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew will be implemented.

Delicate attempts at balancing a typically social time of year and easing the burden on hospitals arrived after nearly 105,000 people died of Covid-19 in November in 31 countries monitored closely by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

Health experts have cautioned that holiday travel could drive new spikes in cases.

Workers from the Bearded Fishermen charity patrolling an area known as a suicide hot spot near Gainsborough, England, last month.Credit…Andrew Testa for The New York Times

The past few weeks have been busy for the Bearded Fishermen, a mental health charity in England. With the country just emerging from a second lockdown, the group has seen a measurable uptick in calls for support and an increasing need for its crisis services as the community grapples with the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The cold and wet weather, long nights, it does affect a lot of people,” said Mick Leyland, a founder. “And being on lockdown as well, it’s even worse.” In one recent week alone, they had responded to a number of crisis calls, including some from people threatening to take their own lives.

With the pandemic devastating Britain and two national lockdowns leaving many feeling isolated, experts say there are rising concerns about the mental health and well-being of people across the country. Research has shown a rise in reports of loneliness, a particular concern for young people, difficulties for those with pre-existing mental health issues and an increase in reports of suicidal ideation.

Though there is no recorded uptick in the national suicide rate yet, the risk of suicide among middle-age men remains concerning in Britain, where for decades the group has made up the highest number of suicide deaths.

The impact of the pandemic and its knock-on effects — lockdowns, an economic downturn and social isolation — on mental health have been well documented around the world. And in Britain, which is simultaneously grappling with the highest number of Covid-19 deaths in Europe and a deep recession, health experts worry that the impact could be felt for years to come.

People in Carlton Gardens in Melbourne, Australia, on November 15.Credit…Erik Anderson/EPA, via Shutterstock

Australian states on Monday celebrated “Freedom Day,” as coronavirus restrictions eased in the lead up to Christmas and summer in the Southern Hemisphere.

In New South Wales and Victoria, more people will be allowed in bars, restaurants, shops and places of worship, and dance halls will be reopened in a limited capacity.

“From Monday, life will be very different,” said Gladys Berejiklian, the premier of New South Wales.

In Sydney, Australia’s most populous city, up to 50 people will be allowed on dance floors at weddings, and attendance at funerals will be unlimited. Up to 5,000 people will be permitted at seated outdoor events, and from next week, workers are being encouraged to return to the office.

In Victoria, where an outbreak in July sent the city of Melbourne into one of the world’s longest and strictest lockdowns, people can now have 30 people over at their homes and gather in groups of 100 outside. Masks, previously mandated, have to be worn only on public transport, in indoor shopping centers and crowded places.

Melbourne welcomed its first international visitors since June on Monday, when a jet carrying 253 passengers arrived from Sri Lanka. The travelers will quarantine for 14 days in hotels under strict conditions.

Last month, Victoria achieved effective elimination of the virus, and has now gone 38 days without a new case. But as people celebrated across the country, Daniel Andrews, the premier of Victoria, warned that even with the eased restrictions, there was a need to remain vigilant.

“This thing is not done,” Mr. Andrews told reporters on Sunday. “It is not over, it can come back.”

A Michigan pastor is under fire for telling his congregation to catch the coronavirus and “get it over with.”

He made the remarks during a sermon on Nov. 15, as a sort of aside while he preached about other issues. “Several people have had Covid — none have died yet. It’s OK,” said Bart Spencer, a pastor at Lighthouse Baptist Church in Holland, Mich., referring to some in his congregation. “Get it, get it over with, press on,” he advised.

Bart Spencer, senior pastor of Lighthouse Baptist Church in Holland, Mich.Credit…via The Holland Sentinel

The video was shared on Facebook about two weeks later and made waves across the country as another symbol of the divide between those who want pandemic restrictions scrapped now, regardless of rising infections, and those who urge continued caution.

In comments posted underneath the video, some voiced support of the pastor and others called his sermon reckless.

Mr. Spencer’s remarks echoed a push among some conservatives for a herd immunity approach — allowing the virus to rage unchecked until so many people have antibodies to the virus that it can no longer spread readily. Some, like Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, have claimed that surviving an infection confers superior protection compared with a vaccine.

But the course of any one patient’s infection is nearly impossible to predict, and the immunity it eventually confers is believed to vary greatly.

The Lighthouse Baptist Church did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday, but Mr. Spencer told a TV station in Grand Rapids, WXMI, that he stood by his statements. “I would never tell them to go get sick, but you don’t know how you’re going to get it,” he said.

Mr. Spencer said in an interview with The Holland Sentinel that he and members of his family had contracted the virus and had recovered.

Holland, in Ottawa County, has been hit hard lately. Over the last week, the county has averaged about 86 new cases a day for every 100,000 people, well above Michigan’s average of 69, according to a New York Times database.

In all, the county has reported 15,326 coronavirus cases through Saturday, about 5.3 percent of the population. Most experts estimate that achieving herd immunity would require at least 10 times that number.

#covid #World

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expatimes · 4 years ago

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Defeating fascism beyond the ballot

The world can breathe a sigh of relief that it will not know just how unhinged Donald Trump would have become with the validation of re-election, especially after already surviving literally hundreds of scandals and an official impeachment.

Trump’s defeat – largely to the credit of Black people, especially Black women – is immeasurably consequential for the planet. Even without a majority in the Senate (which Democrats still have a slim shot at winning in Georgia’s upcoming runoff elections), the United States can now work internationally and domestically to undo the damage Trump caused during four years of his presidency.

However, the US faces steep, deep-seated problems that neither began, nor will end, with Donald Trump. As liberals celebrate a “return to normalcy,” the people who delivered this victory will not be satisfied by a return to a profoundly violent status quo.

Trump and his disciples already plot a comeback, but if we study how he was narrowly defeated, we can prevent society from welcoming his brand of politics again.

Denormalisation

If liberals thought of Trump’s constant lying and false promises as “un-American,” they should listen to Native Americans and read about the long history of Indigenous genocide as nonpartisan US government policy.

This is a country built on Black enslavement and Indigenous genocide, constructed by a racist system of law and lifted by imperialism. Now, as the empire crumbles, it is also a country descending into a neo-feudal society only buttressed by a consolidating panopticon of state violence and corporate surveillance.

These are not problems that can be addressed individually and there are no cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all solutions. Rather, everyone has the power to wield, given their specific positions in society, and everyone must play a role if we want to change institutions and systems. Start exactly where you already are.

Trump has spent years broadcasting that he would try anything to maintain the presidency, including legal and clandestine voter suppression and intimidation. If the election’s integrity can be protected from Trump and his supporters’ ongoing attempt at a coup d’état, we will still emerge into a polarised country where nearly half of the voting population – roughly 70 million overwhelmingly white people – do not consider bigotry a deal breaker.

The ratio of people who approve of political violence is growing substantially across the ideological spectrum. Furthermore, a good portion of the populace has a twisted view of reality, where rumour and conspiracy are more important than critical thought or facts. Research shows that many of them can be converted, but how?

Personal relationships can slowly rebuild shared trust. In practice, this includes the sometimes difficult job of listening patiently and empathetically to friends who have fallen for concerted misinformation campaigns and more diffuse efforts of manipulation. Everyday compassion might be our best way out of the social media bubbles and conspiracy theories that cloud our collective foresight.

Undoing oppression cannot be a burden placed on the oppressed – people living at the intersection of marginalised social categories. People mobilised by this electoral wave must support and invest in communities of colour, but without demanding that marginalised people find “common ground” with fascism. The hard work of confronting and transforming this system must be carried out by those most structurally privileged.

Critique as a gift

One of the most important long-term strategies is scaling up this kind of work into intentional organising and community building everywhere: our work, families, friends, everyday interactions and wherever else possible.

The long-term political battleground is cultural, as Antonio Gramsci wrote from prison almost 100 years ago and US conservatives have understood since at least the 1970s. In the words of Republican media strategist Pat Buchanan, “if you capture the culture of the country, eventually you might prevail.”

The right-wing strategy of recapturing American culture after the anti-war movements of the 1960s and 70s explains why the strongest sources of censorship and “political correctness” in this country are not leftist “online mobs,” but rather conservative entities like the Texas State Board of Education, which has spent decades rewriting history with political intent.

In its narratives of exceptionalism and refusal to teach this country’s violent history, the board denies generations the opportunity to reckon with the structures that shape their present realities. And given Texas’s population size, textbooks produced for that state influence instructional materials in many other states, and the effects of this miseducation grow and become embedded over time.

Evidence of the “culture war” strategy is abundant today, well beyond Fox News. Spend a minimal amount of time on social media and you will come across the disinformation machine fuelled by millions of dollars of Koch money, propaganda videos on YouTube from accounts like PragerU (which is not a university of any kind), and thousands of similar copycat accounts that are likewise monetising narratives of white victimhood and paranoia.

We must learn and teach each other how to better recognise propaganda, appreciate difference and confront injustice. Furthermore, we must commit ourselves to more intentional and democratic relationships, contrary to the dominant paradigms where we are always in competition and our victories must come at someone else’s expense.

Breaking the grip of these ideas will require building an alternative through mindful practice – embracing constructive critique, learning to give and cherish feedback, knowing how to apologise and grow, and preferring strategic bridging over destructive sanctimony. Neither performative cruelty nor tone policing can help us get there. Accountability is not the same as fixating on someone’s small mistakes or clumsy language.

As bell hooks has put it, “Forgiveness and compassion are always linked: How do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”

Uprooting arrogance at a societal level requires self-examination. We should support each other more and police each other less.

Merging left without compromising values

Lasting change will also require merging around a transformative agenda that speaks to different constituencies without sacrificing progressive values or pandering to colonial tendencies.

Among other things, this vision for systemic change must include Black reparations, radically curtailing or even withdrawing the state’s power to inflict violence on marginalised communities through policing and criminal punishment, honouring the treaties this country made with Native peoples, expanded equal access to rights like education and healthcare, demilitarisation, equal pay, progressive taxation on the ultra-rich, green jobs, decarbonisation and environmental justice.

The policies above are overwhelmingly popular with the electorate but they remain difficult under our current institutional design. Therefore, organisers must work community by community, state by state, and federally towards procedural reforms that can yield structural payoffs.

These include abolishing the electoral college, honouring Puerto Rico’s vote for statehood, instituting ranked-choice voting, protecting voter rights such as universal registration and mail voting, making election day a holiday, mandating voting as a civic duty, reforming campaign financing, instituting an independent commission to reverse partisan districting, democratising the Senate by making it proportionally representative of states’ populations, curtailing executive authority to make war and surveil the world, and more.

In all, our platforms must be driven by intersectional analyses attentive to how each policy will differently impact people depending on their various identities and social positions. We otherwise risk reproducing a long trend within so-called progressive movements led by men and white people, and especially white men, where their concerns become the default. Everyone else is dismissed with demands to “not be divisive” about our very real differences, which are treated as something to reduce or eliminate, rather than appreciate and welcome.

Personnel is policy: taking and making space

In the finer details, social transformation will require shifting the field organising strategy and infrastructure of political parties, especially the Democrats. The 2020 election cycle proved that the old guard’s strategies are ineffective, but also that their antidote is bottom-up energy. In particular, one of the most significant investments donors can make is in year-round community organising and canvassing efforts to build up sustained power.

Trump’s defeat belongs to social movements and activists, especially Black organisers and Black women in particular, who turned out to vote in record numbers.

Credit is also due to Indigenous voters who undeniably helped tip Arizona, Wisconsin, and played an important role in Democratic victories in other states, despite the disrespectful erasure of Indigenous peoples in corporate media coverage of the election. States like Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Michigan were likewise won by organisations like Mission for Arizona, spearheaded by young Latinas.

These organisations lack the resources of the Democratic establishment but did the hard work that paved the way for Trump’s defeat. Let us save the symbolic gestures of gratitude and actually provide these groups ongoing support and investment.

Incorporating these solutions requires altering not only policy platforms but also the makeup of the party. Democrats are more diverse than the Republicans in membership, but not much more in leadership. White consultants who occupy most positions of power inevitably approach issues with internalised biases, and thereby come to the “impartial” conclusion that “X community does not vote, so more resources must be redirected towards old white voters instead,” which only becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As long as strategic decision-making remains dominated by white strategists, the party will continue redirecting resources away from its most important and yet most disrespected backbone of support – people of colour – thereby feeding apathy and disaffection. Do not expect marginalised communities to continue rescuing a party that refuses to hear or show up for its own base.

A politics of love

“Your Congresswoman-elect loves you,” Cori Bush declared during her acceptance speech. “If I love you, I care that you eat. If I love you, I care that you have shelter and adequate, safe housing. If I love you, I care that you have clean water and clean air, and you have a liveable wage. If I love you, I care that the police don’t murder you.”

Flawed as the electoral process is, it remains crucial to making social change. Elections provide a structure of opportunity, attention and resources to organise and reshape discussions about our material, everyday realities. Activists interested in changing society must therefore continue to engage their momentum and give them direction, all while changing their traditional model – from one where our energy flows upward to support the liberal establishment, towards one where we instead draw resources from electoral cycles to improve and sustain our communities beyond them.

Activists should remain critical of the risk of activist energy being co-opted by a Democratic Party that has presided over a bipartisan dismantling of public services such as housing, bloating and militarisation of a racist policing system, mass incarceration exacerbated by their own crime bills, mass deportation programmes, indiscriminate surveillance, growing inequalities, and a war and carbon-based economy.

At the same time, the work of groups like those mentioned above shows that it is possible to build electoral power without sacrificing organisational autonomy at the grassroots.

The pace of change in political institutions is unbearably slow by design. However, taking state power remains important to altering the daily realities of people’s lives. Around each new win up and down the ticket, no matter how small, we can rally new resources and recruits, feel our power through our results, and grow the fight for radical democracy, both within and well beyond the state.

Love is an everyday, radical mission. Collective liberation requires an ethic of care and a strategy for building political communities rooted in shared respect for all living things. In this, anyone can play a role, everyone is needed and everything must be built with intention – forging welcoming spaces, ceding space, redistributing power, organising solidarity everywhere, winning small battles, persuading the public and scaling upward to generate new possibilities in our unwritten future.

Given the interlinked crises facing humanity, radical change is more urgent now than ever, so let’s pick up a clipboard and do the work, following the leadership of the people of colour, especially Black people, and especially women, who won this election.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

. #world Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=15259&feed_id=21933

#DonaldTrump #Inequality #JoeBiden #Opinions #Politics #Racism #UnitedStates #USampCanada #USElections2020

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