#there's a dark secret hidden in an annex

[oumaheroes]

The Missing

(Victorian Snatched AU)

Summary: ‘For a moment, they stood looking at each other in silence. Alisdair felt the stirrings of something in his chest, a sensation of things being out of place and about to fall. ‘Is he not here?’‘

Arthur is missing. With no money and no help from the law, Alisdair searches alone.  

Characters: England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales

Chapter 1

-------

Arthur, four. All quiet in the carriage on the way home from their mother’s funeral, Patrick riding up top with the driver and the rest of them inside. Arthur’s best clothes, not even that old, were still starch stiff and pristine despite the long day. He and Rhys were too young for proper black mourning attire but Arthur had treated his clothes as if they were just that, fearful of the puddles in the muddy path of the churchyard lest he dirty them. The biggest show of restraint Alisdair had ever seen him make.

Their father sat beside him, drunk. He’d been so the entire day, if Alisdair were to be more honest, but had continued to get worse throughout the service, a hidden flask on him at all times that allowed him to take secret swigs whenever he thought no one was looking. He filled the seat on his and Arthur’s side, a tense, swell of human being that hunched down to tug at his hair with his hands and rock backwards and forwards gently.

As they turned the corner away from the church, he choked back something, a sob or a curse Alisdair couldn’t tell, and suddenly he pulled Arthur into his arms to hold him close, pressing his face into his body.

Arthur stiffened and looked to Alisdair beseechingly. Their father never touched them, had never once held him as far as Alisdair had seen, but despite his displeasure Arthur stayed there quietly, looking to Alisdair the entire time.

  --------------------

It was exceptional, how the brain handled panic. How it could take even the most horrifying situation and somehow skew some sense and calm into it.

On the annex outside Patrick and Arthur’s bedroom, Alisdair turned Arthur’s teddy over in his hands, noting its damp fur and smudges of moss which clung to it- residue from the drain and its night beside it.

Patrick thundered into the bedroom behind him, breathless and echoey on the bare floorboards, ‘Anything? Al!’

‘Out here.’ Alisdair stood. The night was still early enough for the streets to retain the last of the day’s traffic, the handover of commuters travelling home to public house wanderers still ongoing. A loud cackle from a lady of the night in the distance, a siren’s song by the docks.

Alisdair held up Arthur’s bear in answer to Patrick’s question and watched understanding grow across his features.

‘Jesus.’ Patrick held a hand to his mouth and sank heavily onto the window ledge by the bed. He looked out to the London skyline behind Alisdair, scanning the rooftops as if hoping to see Arthur somewhere out there, ‘How… He didn’t run aw-?‘

‘Of course he fucking didn’t.’

‘Well, then where-‘

‘Christ! I don’t know where. If I knew where we wouldn’t be here, would we? Fucking idiot.’

Patrick buried his face into his hands with a deep moan and Alisdair turned away to look at the homes on either side of them.

All of the houses in this area were the same, a quick springing up of brick tenements to deal with the influx of population as the inner city swelled and broke its banks. Old villages swallowed up under the growing capital, communities wiped out and redone in their newly mixing masses. The new factory-worker homes all had the same design; flat annex roofs rose like stairs up the hill of street, fat bellied chimney stacks shared by two homes each. Between them all a rabbit’s warren of streets, dark and winding to the dark glitter of the Thames.

It was immense. Alisdair felt his heartbeat quicken, a fist in his throat squeezing it tight.

‘I thought he was with you.’ Patrick said quietly, head still in his hands, ‘I would never have-‘

‘Don’t, Pat.’ Alisdair couldn’t handle that conversation yet.

‘I don’t understand. He… I thought-‘ Patrick cut himself off. Alisdair heard him breathe behind him, taking shallow and quick gulps of air, ‘What do we do now?’

Alisdair shook his head mutely, looking from one narrow alleyway to another. He heard Patrick come out onto the roof behind him, the wet crunch of his feet on the gritty concrete.

‘This can’t be happening.’ His brother’s voice was quiet, almost a whisper, ‘I don’t understand what’s going on. Where did he go?’

Alisdair longed for a pipe, or a drink. Something to stop the numbness in his chest, something familiar and normal to force everything to make sense again. It was a struggle to speak.

‘I think someone took him.’

Patrick reared back, ‘Piss off. From where.’

‘Here. The bedroom.’

‘… the bedroom?’

‘Arthur told me the last night.’ Alisdair forced himself to name his own failures. ‘He’d come in to me and Rhys again and woke me up. When I took him back, he told me that he thought someone was watching him.’

Patrick moved to the window, closing the pane and opening it again with one hand. It moved cleanly and smoothly in one go. Alisdair remembered closing it the other night when he’d put Arthur back to bed, the rust from the fused catch sticking to his fingers. With no lock, it was far too easy to open, and Alisdair couldn’t think of why they’d chosen to leave it like that for so long. Maybe because they had nothing to steal, and anyone who knew them or stopped to glance at the house long enough would recognise that much.

Patrick must have been thinking along a similar train of thought. He opened the window again and leant inside to finger the fused metal catch at the top. ‘He’s been glad to see me when I’ve come home recently.’ He said, standing up from the bed and wiping his hands on his trousers, ‘He’s been awake each time, like he’s been waiting for me.’

‘He told me that someone had been coming up here when you weren’t in, walking about on the roof for the last week. He caught them looking through the gap in the curtain.’

Patrick was silent. Alisdair couldn’t look at him, he didn’t want to see either judgment or pity on his brother’s face. ‘I thought he had been having nightmares, or half-heard a chimney sweep passing over. I thought that he was scared and was saying anything he thought might get me to stay. But now…’

Alisdair had meant to only relay what had happened, the facts and nothing else, but his words sounded like an excuse to him once said out loud, like an attempted dismissal of guilt. Why had he left him. Why hadn’t he kept him with himself and Rhys. The questions were already haunting him.

Patrick clicked his tongue and walked out on the centre of the annex, looking to the houses and their roofs either side, ‘That can’t be it.’

‘What else could it be?’

‘Why would anyone do that?’

Alisdair shook his head and joined him. There was nothing to indicate that anyone had been up there. No footprints or dropped items, or note explaining the situation. Windows were unbroken, the garden gate still closed. Whether it was locked or not didn’t matter, it was easy enough to climb over and if someone had been using the roofs to cut across, that wouldn’t even factor into it. The only thing out of place, Arthur’s bear, told them nothing other than Arthur had been out here at some point. Or, had thrown his most precious possession outside, to then leave another way without it. None of those options made sense.

None of this did.

‘He’s seven.’ Patrick chewed the inside of his cheek, ‘We don’t have any money to ransom him. No one we know would want him. We have nothing worth bargaining for. And he can’t… he can’t do anything; he’s not got a trade to be used.’

There was always more to offer than money. A life could go for anything, if the right price was asked.

‘He’s small.’ Alisdair said slowly, ‘and he can read and write. It’s more than most.’

‘It’s not worth-‘

‘It could be, Pat.’

Patrick’s jaw tightened. ‘Whatever happened, someone must have seen him go. Surely someone would have noticed if he was taken, Arthur wouldn’t exactly go gently.’

Alisdair breathed in deep through his nose, then out. Damp coal fire air, the smell of late nights and winter. He looked to Patrick; his one boot still untied. He looked young, half dressed in too large a coat like a teenager again masquerading as an adult version of himself. Alisdair checked his watch, tilting it until he could see the numbers of the dial in the moonlight, ‘You need to go to work.’

‘What?’

‘You’re going to be late if you don’t go now.’ Patrick’s mouth opened, then closed, and Alisdair looked back to the dark streets on the downward slope of the hill below. ‘They’ll drop you if you miss a day. You know that.’

‘I’m not going to work.’ Patrick said incredulously, ‘Are you serious?’

Alisdair felt the bear in his hand. Rhys had been telling Arthur that he’d fix it up for months now. It still wasn’t done.

‘I can’t go to work not knowing where he is.’ When Alisdair walked to the edge of the annex, wanting to calculate the drop, Patrick came around to join him and grabbed him by the shoulder, ‘Al, for God’s sake-‘

Alisdair shook him off, ‘You’re going to have to.’

‘Arthur’s gone.’

‘I know. He is.’

‘Then-‘

‘We can’t afford you not to.’

‘Alisdair-‘

‘Think about it Patrick! Do you think I want to ask you?’

Patrick said nothing for a while. Alisdair turned away again and heard Patrick shift his weight from one foot to another. Alisdair imagined that he was doing as he himself was- looking out to the shipyard on the river where the heavy barges were waiting to be unloaded. Hundreds of men waited there each morning, hoping for the chance that only a few of them would get to be taken on. Salaried men like Patrick were lucky to know there was a guaranteed place for them with pay at the end of the day.

The tight, choked feeling in Alisdair’s throat grew. He rubbed at his neck, hand shaking.

Eventually, Patrick said, ‘Then what are you going to do.’

‘Go looking. I’ll go around the streets and ask about.’

Another beat of silence. Alisdair could feel Patrick waiting behind him still, not wanting to leave things like this, broken and splintered like glass, but also knowing as Alisdair did that the rent was due. The debts were still there, even if Arthur wasn’t.

‘Try the sweeps.’ He said eventually, ‘There’s a local few always down by the King’s Arms around this time.’

Alisdair nodded but said nothing more. Patrick left, the door closed, and Alisdair watched his head pass under street lamps below until it vanished from view.

Rhys was in the kitchen when Alisdair went inside, sat at the table with a mug of something hot between his hands. He stared into it fixedly, drawn and dazed behind the steam in the yellow flicker of the tallow candle lamps.

Alisdair stopped in the doorway, his arms across his chest. ‘Did you hear, then?’ He asked softly.

Rhys nodded and hunched over his hands, pulling the mug in close. ‘Most of it. You were loud enough.’

Alisdair opened his mouth, a habitual platitude already there, and then closed it again. ‘I’ll go out and look. You go up knock up the street and then wait here, just in case.’

Rhys sniffed and looked up, ‘Just in case?’

Alisdair shook his head and reached for his coat.

--------------------

The alleyways and streets of London twisted around and in on themselves, thin, spindly webs of spider silk between wide caverns of thoroughfares.

Alisdair moved quickly and aimlessly through the unempty night, past drunks and the homeless in their makeshift beds, their huddled bodies revealed by the islands of light cast by the gas lamps as propped in corners or on front steps. They watched him curiously, noting him immediately as out of place, and he felt their eyes and judgement follow him home.

--------------------

‘No one saw anything.’

Rhy greeted Alisdair hours later in the dark, shoulders hidden under blankets by a dying fire. He jumped up when Alisdair came in, only to sink down again into the fraying armchair when he saw that he was alone.

‘Thirty-seven was asleep with her kids, thirty-five is still that single bloke who drinks in pubs alone- he wasn’t in.’ Rhys spoke his findings to the embers as Alisdair sat heavily in the spare chair, body bone tired and numb, ‘Thirty-three and thirty-six didn’t answer, Mr Tanner’s deaf, and thirty-four is the new family from China who don’t speak English.’

‘The rest of them?’

‘No.’

‘How far did you go?’

Rhys sat back on his haunches, his expressionless profile flickering orange as he looked into the fireplace. ‘Until I couldn’t see the house anymore.’ He turned to Alisdair, his lips tight, ‘Are you sure that-‘

‘Rhys.’

His brother shook his head and picked at the edges of the blanket, ‘Twenty-eight said they heard someone scream. Like a woman, or a child.’ He said the words quietly, hardly more than a whisper as if he were afraid to speak them. When Alisdair didn’t reply, Rhys looked at him, eyes searching, ‘We would have heard, wouldn’t we? If he had.’

Alisdair slowly began to untie his boots. Rhys moved closer across the floor on his knees, ‘We would know. You would have heard, Patrick might have-‘

Alisdair tugged off his boots and stood up abruptly, ‘Do you really want me to answer that?’

Rhy’s mouth tightened, lips pressing together to form a thin line. He shook his head and hunched over, fist under the blankets hard to his chest as if he were holding himself in.

Neither of them slept that night. Patrick came in to join them in bed hours later, the smell of fish clinging to his skin and hair like smoke under his bedclothes. They were too big to all fit together comfortable but he wedged himself in against the wall, Rhys in the middle like they had done years ago before Arthur was born.

Together they passed the night awake, listening to the sighs of the city until the collective church bells chimed morning.

--------------------

AN:

Okay, so I said that I probably wouldn’t flesh this AU out beyond the first chapter and I was happy enough to let it lie mean and painful vague, but the story still tugs me too much to leave it alone. I hope that you liked this and it was worth the year wait!

The comment about Victorian mourning is a small nod to a very complex and layered cultural movement in Victorian era Britain and parts of the extended empire. One easy site to read about this topic in brief can be found here, though please do some of your own research! I find it very interesting

Thanks for reading!

[backus-naur]

Idea Journal: Tunic Graphic Novel Adaptation

I recently finished playing Tunic, and one of my favorite pastimes after finishing a piece of media I enjoy is thinking about how I would adapt it to a different medium. Tunic is one of those challenging ones because so much of the fun comes from discovering the secrets yourself, and there is no way to exactly reproduce that experience in a medium other than videogames. So to me a good adaptation would need to

Capture the spirit of the game, including the feeling of mystery and discovery, but also

Not try to faithfully recreate the game. This would be bad for both the people who haven't played the game before (because it would spoil the experience of playing the game and finding the secrets themselves) and the people who have (because they already know the secrets and wouldn't have anything new to discover).

So how would we achieve that? Here's what I came up with.

Make it a graphic novel

There are a few reasons why I think a graphic novel would be the best non-videogame medium for a Tunic adaptation. First, we can play with the art style to capture the variety in the game's scenery and visuals, which oscillate between colorful-and-whimsical and dark-and-mysterious. Second, having it be a physical book evokes the experience of flipping through the in-game manual. Just like in the manual, we could add annotations and hidden secrets to the pages, and encourage the reader to flip back and forth to piece together details of the story that might not have been obvious at first. And then there's one more big reason...

Use the game's runic alphabet

It wouldn't truly feel like a Tunic adaptation without one of the game's most notable and memorable features. So just like in the game, my idea is that all narration and dialog could be written in the form of runes, with some English words peppered in for clarity. And since it's a graphic novel, we can rely on the illustrations to convey what is happening even if the reader can't fully understand the text. The idea is to reproduce the effect that this has in the game: provoke the reader's curiosity and make them think about what might be being said, while also letting the story withhold information and hide details and secrets in the text. Of course, if the reader does know how to translate the game's runic script, they can. This might give them some interesting revelations, which only adds to the feeling of discovery that we're going for.

Tell the story of a previous ruin seeker

Like I said before, we don't want this to be a faithful recreation of the game's story, but we still want something that is recognizable as an adaptation. So instead, we could tell a story that at first looks just like the game's story: a little fox sets out on an adventure, exploring the world, collecting items and fighting monsters. But later on, things start to go wrong: the little fox runs against an insurmountable challenge, makes some hard choices, and ultimately gives up on their aspiration to be a hero. It turns out that they are one of the failed predecessors of the game's player character, one of those that the manual mentions have abandoned their quest and disappeared. The story then becomes about how they deal with their failure. Do they forgive themselves and move on? Do they try to run from their shame? Do they even perhaps become one of the game's enemies?

Reveal secrets that the game doesn't

The good thing about focusing on a failed ruin seeker is that it naturally avoids revealing any of the major secrets of the game. After all, the character never got far enough to discover them. But Tunic is a game about discovering secrets, so we need something for both the main character and the reader to uncover. Thankfully, there are all sorts of questions that the game leaves unanswered. Even before reaching into the deep lore of the game's world, we have mysteries like: What happened to the Library Annex? Who are the Envoys? What is the true nature of the Magic Orb? These are all examples of secrets that can be revealed, in full or in part, during the course of the story.

Make the story a puzzle for the reader

Finally, the biggest challenge in a Tunic adaptation is how to reproduce, in a non-interactive medium, the experience of actively piecing together a mystery that is at the heart of the game. In other words, how do we make it so the reader is not just given all the answers, but has to seek them out for themselves? My solution is non-chronological storytelling: tell the story out of order, so that the significance of some events will only become clear in context that the reader will only get later on (think Memento, for example). Not only does this push the reader to piece the story together to make sense of the plot, it also matches how in the game you collect manual pages out of order, with later pages shedding new light on earlier ones. Like in the game, the fact that the text is written in runes also helps, since we can use it to obscure the meaning of conversations and even purposely mislead the reader on what precisely is happening or is being said until later.

What is the mystery that the reader needs to piece together? I dunno. There might be multiple. They can be related to the unanswered questions that I mentioned before, or to the ultimate fate of the main character. It might be an event that is never shown explicitly but that changes the course of the plot (maybe what led the main character to give up on their quest). It might even be some inconspicuous background element that appears throughout the book and turns out to have a hidden meaning. But whatever it is, it should be something that makes the reader flip back and forth to find the clues and put them together into a satisfying answer. After all, that's what Tunic is all about.

[silhouetteofacedar]

Fox Mulder, Closet Romantic Ch. 25: Prima Materia

Previous Chapter - AO3 - MSR, rated E

Five Months Later

Friday, November 13th, 1998

“I can’t believe you,” Scully hisses as they exit Skinner’s office. “We’ve discussed this, Mulder. Multiple, no, countless times. You can’t just accuse someone of being a supernatural entity based off a… a wild hunch!”

“A hunch? Scully, we have concrete evidence. It’s literally documented in the folder you’re holding right now.”

“That ‘evidence’ is obviously subject to interpretation,” Scully retorts, stomping down the hall in an attempt to keep pace with Mulder’s long strides. “An interpretation I thought we’d agreed upon before going into that meeting. And I don’t appreciate you abandoning a solid hypothesis, that we discussed at length, in favor of whatever the hell that just was.”

Mulder stops outside the elevator, turning to her. “That was the truth, Scully. It’s out there, if you would just open your mind a little and accept that there are things science still can’t explain.”

“But science can-” She reaches out and punches the button for the elevator, “-explain it. You just like the sound of your own theories and ideas better than fact. Fox Mulder, the champion of truth, the only man willing to consider the extreme.”

“You know you like it,” he says in a low tone.

Scully’s eyes go wide, and she grabs his elbow. “Do not-”

The elevator doors open, and they scurry into the lift. Mulder presses the button for the basement.

“Do not use my weaknesses against me at work, Mulder, that’s not fair,” she says as the doors slide closed.

“Weaknesses?” Mulder asks casually. “Am I your weakness, Dr. Scully?”

“I’m serious. We’ve have a few close calls in the past few months; if we’re not careful, we’re going to be found out.”

“How, by arguing? We did that before we started fu-”

She gives him an imploring look.

“-working after hours,” he corrects. “Besides,” he continues, angling his chin downwards to reach her ear, “I happen to know arguing turns you on.”

Scully licks her upper lip. “I’m just saying we have to be more careful,” she insists, staring straight ahead.

“Then I guess this isn’t the best time to invite you out for a drink,” Mulder says.

Scully glances at him out of the corner of her eye. “It’s Friday the thirteenth,” she notes with a twinge of a smile. “Don’t you think it’s a little risky?”

Mulder shrugs as the elevator doors open into the basement. “Historically, the thirteenth is my lucky day.”

-

“You know, it’s been nine months since our first date,” Mulder says conversationally. They’d walked to Casey’s Bar from the Bureau and are now perched on stools at the far end of the counter, nursing a beer each.

Scully furrows her brow, obviously doing some quick mental math. “February… that was a date?” she says, somewhat amused. “You should have told me at the time. I wouldn’t have waited so long to put out.”

Mulder raises his eyebrows. “Dana,” he says in mock surprise. “I thought you were a good church girl.”

“What gave you that idea, my penchant for kneeling?” she mutters into her glass.

Fuck, she’s good.

They’ve been together for six months now, and it’s surprising how little has actually changed between them, in the practical sense. They’ve been pretty good at keeping their relationship a secret, Mulder thinks. It helps that everyone in the Bureau already thought they were crazy, codependent, and tanking their respective careers. Apparently, bad reputations make the best cover.

He and Scully arrive at the Hoover building in separate vehicles, squabble over conflicting viewpoints, have lunch together almost every day. He rests a hand on her back, guiding her through the halls, and she gives him withering glances and dramatic eye rolls when appropriate. From the outside, they’re still the same Mulder and Scully.

And then they go home to one of their respective apartments and tear each other’s clothes off.

Well, they usually make it home. That quickie in the office annex was an outlier.

Nine months seems significant somehow. The length of human gestation, Mulder thinks absently. It seems like a length of time worth celebrating.

“Would it be terribly corny of me to propose a toast?” he asks.

“A toast to what?”

He’s suddenly shy. “Us,” he says softly. “How far we’ve come. And how much,” he adds, giving her a nudge with his elbow. She rolls her eyes at him, and it feels overtly fond.

Scully lifts her glass. “To us,” she says warmly. “And to spooky shit.”

“You remember,” Mulder says as they clink glasses, recalling that first toast in Casey’s all those months ago.

“Mm,” she replies, sipping her beer. “I do. It was a… notable evening.”

“What made it notable for you?” he asks.

“We had an actual conversation, for one,” Scully muses. “About our personal lives, attraction, about how we relate to the outside world; and by extension, how we relate to each other. I remember very clearly feeling like we were close to something.”

“So did I,” Mulder admits. “So what happened, on your end?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “The spell wore off, maybe? When I got home that night I remembered all the reasons it would be a mistake to let myself feel. And then Mark happened, and you know the rest of that story.” She turns on her stool to face him more fully. “What happened for you?”

“I took you on a very cold, very dark picnic,” Mulder reminds her.

“Which was wonderful,” she offers.

Mulder nods. “But then when I asked you out again, you had a date. I don’t know, maybe I was going too slow, being too subtle. But when you started going out with that jackass it felt like… in a way, you were saying that what I had to give wasn’t enough.”

Scully doesn’t say anything, just stares down at her glass.

“And I realize that it’s selfish of me to project that onto you,” he amends. “Your choices aren’t about me. But fuck, I wished they were.”

“You’d be surprised how many of my choices actually were about you,” she says softly. “I surprise even myself. You told me before that you didn’t think I’d last a full year working with you, remember? There was validity in that. This job… it’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. So much is at stake for us, so much has been taken. But I chose to continue because I believed in you, and in our work. We have different methods and come to different conclusions, but we’re working towards the same thing. That’s what I believe.”

He reaches over beneath the cover of the countertop and takes her hand, clasping it atop his knee. They sit in silence for awhile, taking sips of their drinks, palms pressed together.

The truth hides in many places, Mulder is learning. Places more secret and sacred than dusty file folders or abandoned warehouses, more mundane than the locked rooms of the Pentagon or trapped beneath thousands of years of ice. The greatest truths are scattered pieces he stumbles upon every day; reflected in his bathroom mirror, scribbled on post-it notes in their office, hidden under Scully’s warm tongue. He knows he’s an obsessed man, prone to irrationality and impulse; but in quiet moments with his partner, he finds small fragments of peace he never thought he could reach.

“Where are you?” Scully says softly, drawing him back into the present. A dim barroom, a sweating glass, her soft hand in his. He wonders if the day will come when his mind wanders too far for her to follow.

“I-I know how crazy this is going to sound, Scully but bear with me… do you ever think that we’re… that we’re bonded somehow? Like we were always supposed to end up here. Together.”

“Like here, here? In this bar?”

“Maybe. Maybe less specifically this bar and more generally this time and place on earth. This universe, this dimension. With each other.”

She shakes her head gently, smiling. “Mulder, it’s been a long week. If we’re going to talk about the metaphysical I need to either have more to drink or be under the influence of a postcoital surge of oxytocin.”

He leans closer to her. “Do you have a preference as to which, because I’d gladly provide either.”

Scully pushes her half-empty glass away from her, eyes dark and soft. “Take me home, Mulder,” she whispers.

His heart squeezes. “Will you stay?” The night, the rest of our lives, until our boat drifts over the edge of the earth?

She nods, and another piece of the truth slides into place.

[siverwrites]

Pigeon Man, H!

Thank you! Had to go for FFVI AU because of course I did.

-

When Cidgeon went to the Empire two points drove him. One: magic must not be discovered by the outside world, and Thamasa was well-warranted in its fear as he discovered while he strayed further and further astray from the village. However, while magic could be hidden, he knew all too well the thirst for knowledge and the need to satiate curiosity, and just as that yearning drove him, so too could he recognize the signs in others. And two: that same curiosity drove him from the village more and more often. Magic and history the village had in plenty and little else. His keen interest in the growing technology of the world was met with bafflement from some and disdain from others. What need did they, still blessed with magic, have for such things? Better to keep to themselves where they had what they needed and never mind what the outside world was doing.

So, in time he found himself in Vector pursuing two goals. As much as Thamasa’s ways exasperated him at times they were right in that magic was best left alone and he would see his home protected. For himself here was a place where they not only readily accepted technology, they sought to build it into their everyday lives. The city was at once both fascinating and overwhelming. Here, he could truly learn and study and while he did so try to redirect certain lines of research toward safer paths.

For some years things were good. His skills and research developed well. While he didn’t always get along with his peers—Dr. Asbolus in particular often grated on his nerves—many fruitful and valuable conversations and collaborations were had.

Some things couldn’t last. The roots Cidgeon feared when he first came to the Empire started to expose themselves. A greater focus was placed on military expansion and weapons research. Whispers of something secret in the labs circled and Dr. Asbolus wore an air of smug superiority while Cidgeon's own areas of research were swept aside.

The Empire was mighty. All those in its embrace were better for it.

Tzen was conquered.

Annexed. Surrendered. Taken under the Empire's wing. It didn't matter how they put it. A slaughter was a slaughter.

Were they better off now? Were all those killed better off now? Was the boy huddled in the corner of this room better off?

Cidgeon paced the room. He didn't know what possessed him to take the boy in. He had plenty of concerns as was without this added complication, but there was a hungry look in Asbolus' eyes that sent a chill through Cidgeon--something was happening in the deeper labs--and Cidgeon knew with a sudden certainty he wouldn't allow this much. And there was something about him…

"You'll be safe here," Cidgeon attempted gruffly. Dark eyes briefly meet his. Hands clenched against his legs.

Cidgeon held back a sigh and made another circuit around the room. He would have to redouble his efforts, find other ways to divert the Emperor's attention. The Empire was headed down dark paths and he needed to discover just what Asbolus had found.

And somehow look after a child. Fool.

It was much later still when a new realization struck. Cabanela paced across the room reading a book for his studies with a bounce in his step even now, and seeming completely unbothered by the scolding Cidgeon had given him shortly before about lingering around the labs too much. Cidgeon himself stroked Lovey-Dove’s head—another past product of Cabanela’s recklessness yet one Cidgeon couldn’t bring himself to find fault with (and when had he become one to take in strays?).

Things had been steady as of late. As Cabanela passed by Cidgeon's desk, looking up from his book to give Lovey a winning smile, it struck Cidgeon that while his goals and fears for Thamasa and magic as a whole remained unchanged, they'd become overshadowed by something else.

There were two shining souls here, two who had suffered at the hands of the Empire. He wouldn't see them tarnished by its taint as well. He would do all he could to protect them.

[thequeenxofhearts]

I’ll Find You (Jason Todd x Reader)

Dick climbed the stairs to Y/N and Jason’s apartment.

The Joker had escaped from Arkham three days ago, and Batman was trying his best to find the him, but this time he’d hidden himself well. There was something telling Batman that whatever the Joker had planned, it was going to be something awful.

Bruce became concerned as Jason hadn’t been in contact with him since the Joker had escaped. But Alfred assured them both that if something bad had happened to him, the Bat Computer would have picked up Jason’s distress call, but Bruce wasn’t too sure.

 Dick knocked on the apartment door, but there was nothing. He knocked again, “Jason, Y/N, open up, it’s Dick.” He said. He knocked again. “Y/N? Jason?” He asked and continued knocking. “Jay? Y/N?”

The door was yanked open and Dick was startled by the sight in front of him. Jason stood in the doorway, his skin was pale, and he had bags under his eyes. His hair was a mess and was clearly unwashed and he looked like he hadn’t been eating. He was stood in his boxers and a red wife-beater shirt, which had a fresh stain on the front.

“Jesus Christ, Jason.” Dick gasped. “What do you want?” Jason asked, Dick wafted a hand in front of his face when he got a whiff of Jason’s breath. “Bruce is concerned that you haven’t been in contact, you know the Joker got out of Arkham?” Dick asked, Jason’s eyes widened, and he yanked Dick into the apartment and slammed the door.

“What the hell, Jason?” Dick asked, he watched Jason quickly lock the door. Dick looked around the apartment, and he took in the state of it. There was paper scattered over the floor, Jason’s ammunition was laid out on the kitchen counter next to a pot of fresh coffee.

“Jason, where’s-”

“She’s gone! He’s fucking taken her!” Jason exclaimed as he stumbled over to the dining table. “What?” Dick asked, “The Joker?” Jason nodded, “He’s got my Y/N!”

Dick stepped towards the dining table and saw that Jason had a map of Gotham City laid over it. He examined the map and saw that Jason and drawn several X’s over certain buildings.

“Jason, tell me what happened.” Dick said, Jason looked up at him and Dick took in his state. “We went to bed on Monday night, I had just gotten back from patrol with Bruce, it was the night the Joker had escaped.” Jason ran a hand through his messy hair. “I woke on Tuesday morning and she wasn’t in bed, her side of the bed was cold.” He choked and for the first time, Dick saw Jason crying.

He took in a shaky breath and continued with his story, “I thought maybe she was in the living room, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t in the bathroom either. I thought she’d left me, but all of her stuff’s still here.” He wiped his eyes, and Dick pulled a chair out and sat next to Jason. “Then I found this in our bedroom.” Jason said, he pulled out a green canister which had yellow writing scribbled on it: HAHAHA

“Did you go and look for her?” Dick asked, Jason’s eyes locked with his brother’s, “Of course I did Dick!” Jason exclaimed, slamming his fist on the table, “I looked everywhere but I couldn’t find her.”

 “I went to the old toy factory but there was no sign of either of them there. Then I went to the old movie theatre but there was nothing.” Jason sighed angrily.

“Sshh!” Dick hissed, Jason narrowed his eyes at him, but before he could say anything, he heard a sound. It sounded like scuffling and they both looked to the front door just as a small brown envelope was pushed under.

They both jumped up and ran to the door, Jason quickly unlocked it and yanked it open, but there was nobody there. He looked around the hall and up and down the stairs but there was nobody.

“What the fuck is going on?” Jason asked, Dick had picked up the envelope and opened it, he pulled out a leaflet. “What is it?” Jason asked. “A leaflet for Anne Frank.” Dick said. “What?” Jason asked. “It’s at the old theatre.” Dick said, “Look at the date, April 17th 2009.”

“I remember this.” Dick said, “Bruce took Barbara and I to watch it. You know it’s a true story?” He asked, Jason nodded. “She hid in a secret room with her family during the-”

“What?” Dick asked. “I didn’t think of it!” Jason exclaimed. “I went to the old theatre, but I couldn’t find anything, because he’s hiding her!”

“That’s a bit of a stretch Jason.” Dick commented. “It’s all I’ve got so far.” Jason said, and he ran to his bedroom to change into his Red Hood outfit.

Dick stepped into the bedroom as he was pulling his grey Kevlar over his head and began to pull his boots on, “You can’t stop me Dick!” He shouted. “Jason, there was something else in the envelope.” Dick said, and Jason looked up, “What?” He asked, but his breath caught in his throat when he saw Dick holding a familiar looking necklace.

 Y/N woke up when she felt Jason gently brushing her cheeks, “Happy Birthday, my love.” He whispered when she opened her eyes. “What time is it?” She asked tiredly. “Time to wake up.” Jason said gently and pressed his lips to her cheek.

Y/N rolled her head to the side to look at the alarm clock, as she did Jason peppered her neck with kisses. “Jason, it’s 7am!” She exclaimed. “But it’s your Birthday.” He mumbled, lacing their fingers together and pinning her hands above her head.

“Still too early for morning sex!” She giggled; Jason grunted. He removed his lips from her neck and turned to the bedside cabinet. “Is it too early to open this?” He asked. He opened the top draw and pulled out a small box, Y/N sat up and accepted the box from Jason. She opened it and inside was a silver necklace, the pendant was a jewelled Egyptian eye.

“Wow, Jason. It’ beautiful.” Y/N said, smiling widely at Jason. “Do you want me to put it on?” He asked, she nodded, and Jason took the necklace from her and put it around her neck. “I knew it would look perfect on you.” He smiled, she held the pendant in between her fingers. “Some people think that this, the Eye of Horus, is the Egyptian symbol of evil, but many people believe that it is the symbol of protection.” Jason settled himself next to Y/N, he took her hands in his and smiled sweetly.

“I’ll never let anything happen to you.” He smiled, catching her by surprise with a kiss.

 Jason took the necklace from Dick; it was stained with blood but otherwise seemed intact.

   Y/N flicked the bathroom light off and stumbled back to the bedroom. Jason’s snores filled the apartment and Y/N climbed back into bed and snuggled up against his warm body. She started to drift back to sleep when she heard something in the room. Out the corner of her eye, she watched Jason’s hand slide under the pillow to where he kept the gun. She noticed the window was slowly opening, and smoke filled the room and she blacked out.

Now here she was, curled up in a tiny cold, dark room, held captive by the Joker. She had no idea where he was keeping her. But she knew he wanted information and, but she wasn’t willing to give that up.

She knew that the Joker knew the secret identity of the Red Hood, it was the reason he’d captured her. He had one of his henchmen burn her until she gave up the identities of Batman, Robin, Batgirl and anyone else involved with Batman.

When she didn’t give him the identities, he beat her with a crowbar as a punishment. And then locked her in a tiny cold room.

“Well, it’s been two days and lover boy hasn’t come for you, ha! I’m starting to think he doesn’t really love you.” The Joker laughed and he slammed the door.

Y/N wiped her eyes, the last two days she had experienced the most awful torture, she didn’t think it was possible to experience this much main; her body ached and bled. She was covered in burns; some had begun to blister until they were torn open by the crowbar, which left multiple gashes over her body. She was exhausted.

  Red Hood and Nightwing stood on the roof of the old theatre, looking down through the skylight. From there they could see three of the Joker’s henchmen. “Follow me.” Nightwing said and he gracefully jumped through the skylight. Red Hood followed him, they both landed on the stage.

The three henchmen were startled by the sudden interruption from the two vigilantes and were immediately taken out.

“Anne Frank’s secret annex was hidden by a bookcase.” Nightwing said. “Yeah, but that’s not the Joker’s forte.” Red Hood added. “Question is, why were they guarding the stage?” Nightwing asked. He and Red Hood exchanged looks.

“Most theatres usually have a box on stage which leads to under the stage, I can’t remember what it’s called thought.” Nightwing said. “Doesn’t matter what it’s called.” Red Hood said, following Nightwing across the stage. He’d found the way to get under the stage. Nightwing pulled the metal grate off the front and they climbed inside.

“This seems to obvious.” Red Hood said, “He’d hide her really well.”

“He would.” Nightwing said, thinking about the leaflet that Jason had received, he looked around the small space underneath the stage. And something caught his eye. “Here.” He said. The floor wooden, but there was a rug in the middle of the floor.

He went over to it and lifted it up and revealed a trapdoor. He and Red Hood exchanged looks, and Red Hood yanked it up and they saw a set of metal stairs. Red Hood ran down the metal stairs with his gun in his hand, Nightwing followed.

Four henchmen were waiting for them, Nightwing took them out with his escrima sticks and Red Hood threw a few punches before the henchmen could begin to prepare themselves.

 “HA HA.” They heard the Joker’s laugh, and they saw him sitting on a wooden chair. “I was wondering when you’d come for her, Jason Todd.” The Joker said.

Red Hood pulled his hood back and removed is domino mask. “Where is she?” He asked, “Why did you take her?”

The Joker laughed, and as he stepped closer to them, Jason saw that his purple blazer was covered in blood splatters. He held his gun up to the Joker. “Jason, don’t kill him.” Nightwing warned.

Jason lowered his gun, and the Joker sniggered. Jason pulled the trigger and the bullet tore through the Joker’s foot. Jason didn’t stop there, he kicked him and punched him to the ground, his fist was covered in blood and as he punched him, he screamed ‘where is she?’

 “Jason!” Nightwing dragged him away from the Joker, who was lying on the ground struggling to breath. Jason looked at Nightwing, but there was something behind him that caught his eye.

Jason pushed Nighwing to the side and stumbled towards a metal door which was padlocked. “Y/N!” He shouted, but there was no response. He pulled his gun out, aimed it at the padlock and pulled the trigger twice.

Jason yanked the door open and he dropped to his knees when he saw Y/N slumped against the wall. Her body covered in burns, blisters, gashes and bruises.

“No!” He cried and crawled to her and took her into his arms. He brushed blood stained hair out of her face, “Y/N.” He mumbled as he cradled her in his arms. Nightwing watched the two of them, he put his hand over his mouth. Then he pressed the distress button on the side of his domino mask.

“Y/N.” Jason muttered, tears falling down his cheeks. “Y/N.” He pressed his lips to her forehead and let the tears fall down his cheeks. Then to his relief, he heard a sound escape her lips.

“Jay?” She asked weakly. “Y/N?” He asked, “I’m here, it’s ok.” He said. “Jason.” She muttered, and her eyes slowly fluttered open.

“Jason?” She asked. “I’m here, it’s ok. Dick’s here too.” Jason reassured. “Help’s coming, Y/N.” He reassured her, she nodded slowly. “I’m sorry I let him take you. I’m so sorry.” Jason cried, Y/N lifted her hand up as best she could and placed it against Jason’s cheek. He pressed his hand to hers. “It’s not your fault.” She said weakly. Jason shook his head, Y/N shook hers.

“He used a gas to knock us out. I saw you go for your gun.” She said. Jason took her hand from his cheek and pressed his lips to her blistered knuckles. “I’m sorry.” He said when she winced.

“Nightwing!” A booming voice called. “Down here, Batman!” Nightwing called. Jason heard Batman’s heavy footsteps rushing down the metal stairs and he was quickly at Jason’s side. “You knocked him out?” Batman asked, Jason nodded. “You got here quick.” He commented. “I responded to a distress call.” Batman said, “Are you ok, Y/N?”

Y/N nodded slowly. “Can you move?” Batman asked. “No, I’ll carry her.” Jason said. “Take her to the Batmobile.” Batman said.

  The GCPD took the Joker back to Arkham and the henchman to jail.

 Alfred, with Barbara’s help, patched up Y/N’s wounds. Jason was relieved that she’d be ok. He sat next to her bedside and waited for her to wake up.

“Jason?” She asked, when she began to stir. “I’m here.” He smiled at her when she opened her eyes.

“Are you ok?” She asked. “Am I ok?” He asked, “I’m fine, you’re the one who was attacked.”

“You’re a mess.” She smiled, Jason chuckled, he still hadn’t washed or had any sleep since her rescue. “I’ve had the worst few days of my life, I never thought I’d see you again.” He said, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“I knew you’d come for me.” She muttered, “You promised.” Jason smiled, “I’ll always come and find you.” He said.

“Can you do me a favour?” She asked. “Yes, anything.” Jason said, brushing her hair. “Can you brush your teeth before you kiss me?” She asked.

Jason laughed, wiping a single tear from his eye, he nodded. “Of course.”

[lo-55]

Tilt The Hourglass Ch. 11

Forget putting a bell on Maul, Maul was going to put a leash on Kenobi. 

The foolish boy had made the executive decision to leave before dawn with no more than a note.  

Maul handed the piece of flimsi to Jango, his jaw set tight. 

Dear Mr. Fett and Maul, 

I went back to the Agri-Corps dome to get another look at the secret room in case I saw something I missed before that might help Master Jinn. I will return with lunch around midday planet time. Thank you for last night, and I apologize for the inconvenience. 

Sincerely, Jedi Initiate Obi Wan Kenobi

Jango didn’t look any happier to see the note than Maul felt. He knew Kenobi was impulsive and foolish but this was truly ridiculous. 

How was it possible that this was the same man who had consistently beaten Maul through his lifetime? 

Maul paused. 

Well. Kenobi had charged a Sith head on after his vaunted master had fallen to his hand. He’d taken only a single other Jedi to confront that same Sith when he had back up. He’d left the Jedi with no help at all to try to rescue Satine. Maul had seen him fight on full battlefields and loose his lightsaber. And, he was also the one who had raised Skywalker and Tano. 

What was that saying about Neti falling from their branches? 

Maul realized with no small degree of horror that Kenobi had mellowed with age, and this one was twice as rash as the one he’d known. 

Well fuck. 

Maul had been busy in his room in the morning after breakfast, and Jango had been off talking to someone on a private comm that he wasn’t allowed to eavesdrop on, and in the middle of all that Kenobi had just. Vanished. 

“I should have kept a better eye on him,” Maul scowled at the flimsi, quietly willing it to light on fire. He’d never gotten the hang of spontaneous combustion, and it didn’t work now either. 

Jango shot him an unimpressed look over the edge of the parchment. It was small, hotel issued. 

“I’m pretty sure you’re younger than him,” Jango said patiently, “so if anything he should have been watching you.” 

He didn’t even bother with Maul’s bristling pride this time. Jango wouldn’t snap at him, of that Maul was certain, but he was clearly irritated by Kenobi’s lack of forethought. 

It didn’t help that a moment later the door swung open and Clat’Ha strode in, her eyes white around the edges, with Jinn in tow. 

Maul blinked at the white bandages plastered to the normally dignified Jedi’s nose. Was Jinn getting in bar fights now? At this point it wouldn’t surprise Maul. 

“What-” 

Jango was cut off by Clat’Ha, who had gone pale. 

“It’s Obi Wan. He’s gone missing.” 

Maul’s blood went cold. His face blanched to grey-pink. “What?” 

Missing? Truly missing? 

Maul’s mind went to Xanatos. He was the only other threat they had encountered on this journey. Well, the only one that still lived. The draigons were gone, the pirates were space dust, only the washed out Padawan was left. 

“He went to the AgriCorps dome this morning,” Jango said, showing them the note. Jinn’s mouth thinned into a line and his brows pinched together. 

“Si Treemba said he saw him there, but he vanished. They heard shouting and fighting near the annex they found the other day, but when they got there Obi Wan was gone,” Clat’Ha shook her head mournfully. 

“We have to find him,” Jango spoke for all of them. 

Jinn held up his hand. 

“We must be patient,” he counselled, and Maul knew he wasn’t the only one who wanted to strike the Jedi in the face. “If we rush in with haste, we run the risk of putting him in further danger.” 

“Funny to hear that from the Jedi,” Jango snapped. 

Jinn narrowed his eyes. “I wouldn’t expect a man like yourself to understand the subtleties of bidding ones time and gathering information-”

“It’s hard to gather information when you hoard cards to your chest like a hutt on a losing streak-” 

“If you needed to know I would tell you-”

“Like you told Obi Wan? Listen you-” 

“Enough!” Clat’Ha snapped, stepping between the bickering men. It was enough to get them to cut it out, at least momentarily. “Arguing helps no one, now shut up. Our first priority needs to be looking for Obi Wan. I’m going out to the dome to see if I can find any leads. And you two are not going to go after eachother the second I’m gone, got it?” 

She looked pointedly from one man to the other, until both were bowed to her will. 

Maul would have been impressed in any other situation. 

“Kenobi isn’t dead,” Maul said with certainty. All three looked at him, startled. Maul met their eyes defiantly. “He’s not weak enough as to roll over and die just like that.”

“...The kids right,” Clat’Ha’s shoulders relaxed and she slowly eased into a smile. “We’ll find him. I’m off, I’ll comm you if I find anything new.” 

“I’m going to go to the dockmaster,” Jango said finally. “I’ll find out if there’s a ship that’s left Bandomeer that might have him on it. Maul, you should come with me. It’ll be dangerous.” 

Maul shook his head. “I’ll find you later. I wanna check on a rumor I heard first.” 

Jango eyed him suspiciously, but Maul had proven himself resourceful and dangerous. Reluctantly, the Mandalorian agreed. 

“Just keep your head down, okay? I’ll be very upset if I don’t get the chance to adopt you properly.” 

Maul kicked his boot. “Cut the sentimental Banthashit,” he scolded. “You’re supposed to be a Mandalorian, a fearsome warrior!” 

“And there’s nothing Mandalorian’s value more than our ade, Maul’ika. Children are our future, and you are mine.” Jango patted his head lightly, minding his horns. “Meet back here tonight, or I’m coming to find you.” 

Maul rolled his eyes. As it he hadn’t noticed the tracer Jango had slipped into his poncho pocket. He would leave it be for now. If he went somewhere he didn’t want Jango following he would take it out and attach it a tooka for Jango to follow after. 

For the time being, he left the apartments and headed to the Offworld admin building in Bando. 

It wasn’t hard to sneak in through the vents. It was one of the only good things about being this small again, was how easy it was to slide through buildings and ships. He had to carefully rerout a few cleaning droids, but besides that he didn’t have any trouble finding Xanatos’ office. He did, however, notice that the door was hidden behind the same opaque wall that Kenobi had found in the dome. 

Certainly Xanatos’ work. 

Maul briefly considered kicking out the grate and ripping Kenobi’s location from Xanatos’ screaming throat, but the building was situated between an actual mine and a smelting facility. There would be guards, miners, and a hundred other workers in the building, and if it went into lock down Maul had seen laser grid generators in the vents on his way in. He didn’t fancy fighting an army of disgruntled Offworlders or getting cut in half again, thank you. 

There was always window, he supposed… 

But Maul was patient. He had to be. 

He hated it. 

It went against his very nature. Still, he was rather good at lying in wait. 

He watched Xanatos work. It was hard to see from this angle, but in the reflection of the window Maul caught his fingers moving, and the input of codes. He watched the pattern that formed. The computer showed only a code, and while Maul didn’t have the key he had enough to work it out. 

He even got the password. 

Crion. 

When Xanatos made for the door Maul carefully lifted a familiar lightsaber off of his hip and set it gently aside. As soon as Xanatos left Maul slowly eased his way out of his hiding place. He grabbed the lightsaber, one he had once thrown into the plasma generators in Theed, and searched Xanatos’ correspondences for any mention of Obi Wan in his little code. He found a few, but they were vague and brief. 

It told Maul just enough to know that Obi Wan was alive, and had been sent a mine in the seas. 

Maul copied as many files as he could and saved them a data stick in the desk drawer before he made off for the vents and the outside world. 

By then it was nearing dark. The miners had traded shifts, and the office workers had gone home. 

Maul was sneaking around the side of the building when he heard something very interesting. 

Jinn. 

The master was sneaking around the shadows like a common thief. Like Sith. Maul nearly laughed. The Jedi hypocrisy would never cease to amaze him.  

"If you have plans for Bandomeer, you should know I am here to stop you," he said, his voice low but full of Force. It really was his intention to put a stop to his former Padawan’s ploy here. 

Xanatos flung one side of his cloak behind him dramatically, and Maul could see the lines of lineage. Kenobi had a habit of stripping himself of his own cloaks, as did Tano. His hand rested casually on the hilt of a lightsaber. A familiar lightsaber. 

Xanatos patted the lightsaber. "Yes, I still have it. After all, I trained for all those years. Why should I give it up like a thief, when I deserve to carry it?"

Maul was beginning to think he was going to have to write down when he knew about Jedi traditions and cross check it. He had been raised to kill them, which meant he needed to learn how they fought and how their sentimentality made them weak. 

He didn’t know there were rules about keeping lightsabers after leaving an order. 

To be fair, a sith never would have been given the chance. 

"Because you deserve it no longer," Jinn answered. "You shame it."

A flush spread over Xanatos' face. Jinn’s comment had hit him. Xanatos still cared what Jinn thought of him. 

Good. 

Maul could use that. 

He was stiff, and angry, then he relaxed, smiling. Maul tracked his emotions carefully. Weaknesses. Everyone had weaknesses. 

"I see you are still a hard man, Qui-Gon. Once that bothered me. Now it amuses me." Xanatos began to circle around him. "We were friends at the end, more than Master and apprentice."

"Yes," Jinn said, taking careful steps to keep up with Xanatos. Maul tensed when he turned so he could have seen him if he were looking. He didn’t. 

 "We were."

"All the more reason for you to betray me. To you, friendship is nothing. You enjoyed my suffering."

"The betrayal was yours. As was the enjoyment of suffering. That is what you discovered on Telos. Yoda had already seen it. And that is why he knew you would fail."

"Yoda!" Xanatos spat the word. "That knee-high troll! He thinks he has power. He hasn't dreamed of a tenth of the power I know!"

"You know?" Qui-Gon asked mildly. "How do you know such power, Xanatos? A mid-level manager of a corporation, sent to do the board's bidding?"

"I do no one's bidding but my own."

"Is that why you're here? Is Bandomeer a test of your abilities?" 

"I don't take tests," Xanatos snapped. "I make the rules. Bandomeer is mine. All I have to do is reach out my hand and take it."

He circled closer, his cloak swirling and brushing against Jinn. He was a viper waiting to strike, but his fangs weren’t out. Maul knew Xanatos’ words. He had heard the same himself. 

A Sith does not wait for opportunity. He makes opportunity, and then he reaches out and takes what is rightfully his! 

The lesson, like many, was accompanied by pain. Maul had limped for a week afterwards, but only where Sidious could not see it. 

Power. What did this wash out know of power? He hadn’t even made it to Jedi Knight. 

"It's a tiny planet. Galactically insignificant. Yet it pours forth wealth into my hands. If you would only lose the tiresome rules of the Jedi, it would do the same for you. But no, Qui-Gon is too good. He is not tempted. He is never tempted."

"Bandomeer is not yours to own! You were always overconfident. You have gone too far

this time."

"No." Xanatos drew his lightsaber. "Now I have gone too far."

Maul cocked his head. He could feel the Darkside swirling around him, brushing his skin, searching for its place inside him. His body was too small to house much of it yet, but it was not he who called it, merely he who had a true hold of it. He who was its child. 

“Those who accept the power of the dark side must also accept the challenge of holding on to it.” Maul startled. He didn’t recognize the voice of his memories. “By its very nature the dark side invites rivalry and strife. This is the greatest strength of the Sith: it culls the weak from our order. Yet this rivalry can also be our greatest weakness.”

Xanatos laughed again, breaking Maul away from his thoughts and the voice. 

"You destroyed everything I loved," he accused, his lightsaber barely missing Jinn’s shoulder, so close it singed the fabric of his tunic. "You destroyed me that day, Qui-Gon. Yet I was reborn. Stronger, wiser. I have surpassed you."

Maul snorted, and started to leave. He decided he didn’t care about the rest of the fight. He needed to find Kenobi and he actually had a lead. He would come back and finish cleaning up Xanatos’ mess later. 

Kill him, maybe. Offer Kenobi his head for recompense. 

Well. 

Maybe not that exactly. Kenobi could be squeamish, 

"And where is your new apprentice?" Xanatos sneered.

Maul didn’t stick around to hear the rest of it. He knew the answers already. A deep sea mine. There were only a few close enough to the shore for a control freak like Xanatos to send Obi Wa- Kenobi to. 

Maul did stop long enough to send the information to Jango. He figured he might like to know where he was going, and where Xanatos and Jinn currently were duking it out. 

Meanwhile Maul found a small transport to take him out to see. He knocked the owner out cold, stashed his body, and stole the ship. He kept it low to the waves. In the darkness of the night any guards would be hard pressed to see him approach. 

He wasn’t met with blasterfire when he stopped the transport underneath one of the high legs of the rig. Maul secured it and spidered up the sides until he was sneaking on board. His come flashed with an incoming message from Jango, one that he soundly ignored. 

When he reached the top of his rig Maul pulled out his (finally finished) weapon. 

Maul held what looked like a S-195 blaster pistol, with slightly longer than average barrels. 

They made a perfectly functional blaster, with only slightly weaker bolts than a regular one would have. 

Maul was still working on that.  

It would work for this. 

Carefully, he snuck into the mine. 

 He had to ride on top of the turbolift, out of sight of the hulking, but stupid guards. They would be easy to mind trick, but tricks only lasted so long and he had seen slave collars like the ones on the sentients he passed. Those would be rigged with explosives. He rather liked Kenobi with his head on his shoulders, thank you. 

Once he was further down he could feel it. 

Kenobi’s light. 

Something was keeping it dim, but still there. A suppressant? 

Xanatos was really getting annoying. Maul was killing him when they got back to the mainland. 

If Jango didn’t beat him to it. 

Maul should have answered him comm so he could call dibs. 

Too late now. 

He hopped off the turbolift when he reached the floor where Kenobi’s presence was the strongest. It was till a phantom thing compared to what it had been before, nevermind what it would be. 

Maul kept his hood drawn firmly and made his way further inside. 

Deep in the undersea caves the slaves were kept in bunks. There were no bars to keep them in place, for their collars and their emaciated state did that just fine by itself. Maul could tell at a glance that most of them were half starved, or more, and beaten on the regular. 

The collars around their throats stood out over standard, tattered jumpsuits. The guards were lax beings, and with a simple command the two playing dice outside the bunks fell asleep. 

Maul picked his way through the slaves. 

It reeked of unwashed beings, blood, and sickness. 

Maul found his way to Obi- Kenobi, who was resting uneasily beside a spindly limbed being. Phindian. Weak joints, and a particularly pronounced jugular. Maul considered fourteen ways to kill him before he turned to his target. 

Maul tapped Kenobi lightly on the shoulder with his boot, startling the little Jedi awake. Maul touched his mind lightly, minding the darkness inside of him and keeping it careful. Just enough that Kenobi recognized him in his frightened, sleep addled state. 

Blue eyes stared up at him, Kenobi’s mouth dropped open in shock. 

“Maul?” he asked quietly. Hope trembled in his voice and Maul’s stomach twisted unpleasantly. 

People weren’t supposed to feel hope around him. They were supposed to fear him! Maul scowled down at him and tossed his lightsaber at Kenobi’s gaping face. 

Kenobi caught it on reflex alone, the weapon calling to him. It had felt utterly wrong in Maul’s calloused hands, his anger not mixing with the righteous light and the burning hope that lived inside Kenobi’s crystal. 

Kenobi cradled it to his chest. 

“This weapon is my life…” he whispered, a sentiment that was shared between Jedi and Sith alike. 

“Then you can owe me twice,” Maul said derisively. “Let’s go. “

“I can’t!” Kenobi touched his collar. It was buzzing faintly with electricity. Maul scowled. 

“Can’t you use the Force to turn it off?” Maul asked irritably. 

Kenobi shook his head miserably. He was a sorry sight, his clothes tattered and, now that Maul was close enough to see, his back burned with familiar marks of electric whips. 

Maul had a veritable tapestry of those same scars across his own back. 

“They’ve cut me off. I can barely feel it anymore,” Kenobi’s voice cracked.  

Maul winced in unwanted sympathy. He knew the feeling well. It was one of his masters favorite punishments. 

Maul knelt before Kenobi and reached for his throat. The little Jedi twitched but didn’t fight against him. He tilted his chin to give Maul better access. 

The metal was sturdy, it would be hard to cut through without killing Kenobi along with it, and the electric charge was near to the tiny explosive. Not small enough to blow through a wall, but it would do plenty of damage to soft human skin. 

It would be easy to turn it off. Getting it off was another matter. 

Not to mention the rest of the slaves that lay around them. 

Maul looked down to find the phindian watching him through slitted eyes. 

“...You’re not going to let me leave the rest of them here, are you?” Maul asked, exasperated. 

Kenobi startled. “What?” 

Maul pulled his hands away and stood up to brush off his cloak. 

“Show me where they keep the spare parts for the equipment,” Maul ordered shortly. Kenobi frowned. 

“I don’t know where those are.” 

Maul gave him an unimpressed look. “Haven’t you ever escaped from a prison before?” 

Kenobi frowned at him. “Why would I have had to do that?” 

“... Jedi really don’t teach anything useful, do they?” 

“Hey!” 

“Obawan,” the phindian finally gave up his ruse and sat up. “Your friend will free us.” 

Maul quirked a brow. 

“Not so!” The phindian waved his long arms. “He will cause us trouble.” 

“I’ll definitely cause you trouble if you don’t quiet down. Who knows here where the spare parts are kept?” Maul demanded shortly. He pulled his hand back to reveal the blaster holstered at his side. The phindian paled and Kenobi smacked Maul on the leg. 

“Don’t threaten him! He’s my friend, Guerra!” 

Maul rolled his eyes. “Then he should be helping. I won’t ask again.” 

The phindian, Guerra, stood up reluctantly. He looked dead in the eyes. Yet, in the furthest depth, there was hope. 

Maul bit back the urge to stomp it out. He needed this being’s help, for the time. 

Guerra looked to the sleeping guards warily. Maul rolled his eyes. “They aren’t waking up soon. Get going.” 

Other slaves stirred around them. Eyes watched them through hooded darkness. Maul breathed in the despair and fortified himself. It was going to be a long night. 

Guerra lead him into the tunnels, down the hall to locked room of spare parts. It took Maul less than a minute to pick the locks. They were old school and not very advance to begin with. 

Once inside he found a power pack for one of the big drills they used in lower levels, a wire coil, and disemboweled the locking mechanism for the doors. The circuit boards were kept carefully intact while he fetched a small tool box, conveniently equipped with a soldering iron, and set to work.He attached his wire coil to the capacitor for the door, and connected that to the big battery. While he was at it he found a heavy magnetic coupling splitter. He wished for Daleen. She’d already have the whole place turned on its head electronically. 

With his girls, and his brothers, Maul could have done anything. 

He would get to them soon enough. 

“What are you doing?” Guerra asked nervously. “This is fun! Not so. I do not trust your friend, Obawan.” 

“I’m making an EMP generator,” Maul said shortly. 

Kenobi’s face split into a startled, hopeful smile. “You can do that? Where did you learn? Did Jango teach you?” 

“Hmm? No. Now hold still. The collar’s going to tingle and then all the lights will go out. Stay close to me. Humans have terrible vision.” 

“Hey!” 

Maul ignored Kenobi’s indignation and pushed the ‘lock’ button. The door fizzled, the battering flickered faintly with electricity, and everything went dark. 

Maul relished it. 

“Let’s go get your friends, Kenobi.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Obi Wan stayed close to Maul as they prowled through the darkness. 

He couldn’t understand how he could see so well, his gold eyes glowing faintly in the darkness like embers to an unseen fire. Maul was one mystery after another. 

Obi Wan had thought him to be a Mandalorian, like Jango, but he wore no armor and he didn’t speak with the same accent. He fought viciously and without mercy when it was needed. Kenobi could not forget the grim comfort he had taken during their fight with the draigon’s to have someone as skilled and determined at Maul at his back while they battled off their death. His every shot was perfect. 

Even before that, he’d felled two hutts in the span of a breath. 

Maul was unlike anyone Obi Wan had ever met before. 

Admittedly, he had mostly met Jedi. Obi Wan had never been out of the temple, and it showed sometimes now. In the temple he had never been hungry. In the temple he had never hurt so badly for so long. 

Obi Wan swallowed those thoughts and followed Maul in the darkness. He could sense him through the Force, his presence dense and heavy. There was a gravity to Maul, in his sharp teeth and gleaming gaze. His ferocity was frightening, but as Maul had said, he did not allow his anger to control him. 

He controlled it. 

Obi Wan could not say the same thing. 

It was his own temper that had resulted in him being sent away from the order, and his own impulsiveness that had lead him to leave behind the safety of Jango and Maul to investigate on his own. He just wanted so badly to impress Master Jinn he thought- 

They would have come with him, he realized now. 

Fett was a good man. Even if he was Mandalorian, and Obi Wan had only hear horror stories about them, he had held Obi Wan’s shoulder when he’d felt like he was drowning in his despair and spoke kindly to him when he didn’t have to. He offered to help with no chance of recompense. 

And here Maul was, guiding him through darkness. Saving him. 

Saving all of them. 

Shame welled up in Obi Wan’s chest. 

How could Obi Wan tell Maul that when he’d come to free him he’d been so relieved he barely thought of the other prisoners? He had thought only of the weight being lifted off himself, in the scant seconds before Maul brought up the idea of freeing everyone. How could he call himself a jedi when he was so self centered?

When he’d opened his eyes and found his friend looking down at him, half hidden in his familiar poncho, he’d been confused. But the Force whispered of Maul, of bright eyes and vicious determination, and he hadn’t been afraid for even a moment. 

Maul was comfortable, in the same way a nexu would be to those familiar with it. He was dangerous to be certain, but he’d never hurt Obi Wan. He’d only ever helped him, from the moment they had met on the Monument, when he’d been thrown into Mauls arms. 

Obi Wan grasped Maul’s poncho as he trailed after him. His other hand held his lightsaber. 

“If you throw up, I don’t have anything to clean your mouth with,” was the only warning Obi Wan got when they returned to the slave bunks. Maul pulled a knife from his boot, the movement something Obi Wan felt more than saw, and slit the guads throats. 

Obi Wan should have mourned their loss. Any good jedi would have. 

But his back stung, and Guerra’s haunted words whispered through his mind, and the pain of the miners and the death that permeated the air choked down any grief he would have for the slavers. Obi Wan was sickened to realize he would have killed them too if he could have. 

“The light, Little Jedi.” 

Obi Wan, somewhere between grief-sick and warm whenever Maul called his that, lifted his saber and ignited it. 

In the pale blue glow hallowed faces watched the three of them. 

“We’re leaving,” was all he said. 

“The collars,” started one slave, a human who had lost his eye fighting the other day. 

“They’re off,” Maul said shortly. “And if you’re that worried, here,” he held up something shaped vaguely like a wrench. Obi Wan stayed still when Maul reached for his collar again. The soft leather of his gloves ran across Obi Wan’s throat before the wrench found its way across a seam he hadn’t noticed. There was a click and the collar fell off in two pieces. 

Silence fell. Then, one by one, starting with Guerra, the rest of the slaves approached. Maul unlocked their collars. He set them all free. 

“What is your name?” One of them asked at last, their voice hoarse and rough. 

Obi Wan’s companion regarded him carefully. 

“...Maul,” he said at length. 

The word spread through the slaves in the whisper. Maul hunched his shoulders and shoved the wrench into a togruta’s hands. 

“It’s a magnet lock,” he said gruffly. “Fit it around the edges.” 

He stalked away, and was followed by the rest of the newly freed slaves. 

A young twi’lek women, one scarred across her face, stopped them. There were tears in her eyes. A single one fell from the left and she wiped it away before touching it to Maul’s cheek. Maul twitched away from her, his hand flying to his blaster, but he didn’t draw. 

“You have broken our chains,” she said quietly. “May water find you in the desert, and the sun find you in the snow.” 

Obi Wan didn’t understand, and the look on Maul’s shadowed face said that he didn’t either, but he inclined his head all the same. For someone who boiled with anger all the time he was remarkably patient. 

Obi Wan had never seen him take his temper out on someone who hadn’t wronged him first. 

They make their way through the darkness. More than once did Maul had Obi Wan extinguish his saber before guards rounded the corner. In the shadows he draw his knife and snuffed their lives out. He didn’t fire his blaster once. It would have made too much noise, and given away his position. 

Where had Maul come from, if Jango had not taught him these things? 

The finally reached the surface. The clear air of the night blanketed the newly freed sentients. 

There was no way to call for a ship to pick them up, but within an hour one came to investigate the silence from the mine. The Offworld insignia blazed on the side. 

Obi Wan helped Maul take the ship by force. Together he guarded Maul with his ‘saber while Maul blasted through their attackers. 

The climbed on boards. 

It was a good sized ship, and once they were further in Obi Wan understood why. 

The ship wasn’t just sent to investigate. It was sent to reinforce them. New slaves took up cages in the cargo hold, and across from them were exotic animals. There were monkey-lizards and glittering vulptex. He saw colorful kiros birds fluttering around one cage. Obi Wan found a tiny varactyl in a cage that squeaked at him when he came closer. It was no bigger than a tooka, and it payed through its cages, as if sensing safety from him. 

Obi Wan broke the lock and took out the little lizard to cradle in his palm. He turn to ask Maul when he thought and paused. 

Maul had stopped in front of a small crate where shadows moved within. 

It took Obi Wan a minute to realize that the shadows were three slim, young creatures that hummed with the Force. Tails lashed through the crate and tiny clawed paws lashed out. Maul growled, something low in the back of his throat. Obi Wan felt it then. The hair on the back of his neck prickled with anger, hurt, sorrow and grief. It swelled the room before reached a crescendo and falling again. 

The fighting from the animals was over. 

Maul opened the crate and three small vornskr, two males and female with a chopped ear and a crooked tail, went tumbling out. 

They circled Maul, rubbing their cheeks along his legs and chirping up at the startled looking boy. 

The moment was ruined when a human woman came back from the front of the ship. The togruta with the locking device followed after her.

“We’re going back to the mainland,” the human said. “You should buckled in.” 

“Thank you,” Obi Wan said with a short bow. 

She nodded once at him and left. 

Obi Wan looked Maul, who finally gave him a crooked, gap toothed grin. 

“Through victory our chains are broken,” he said, the words slow and solemn despite his smile. There was something familiar to them, and the Force hummed its agreement.

Maul had set him free.

[imaginethebeautifulworld]

prussia x reader: überwältigen

*

Policy.

It was a precarious path to tread, a tangled maze of backhand deals and blood oaths and promises made in dark rooms by darker hearts with only the darkest intentions.

It was no secret who the ultimate masterminds were, who among the seemingly dignified representations controlled the board.

There was a tumultuous ocean of bad blood between the seafarers, conflicts of custody and power and control of everything else a constant undercurrent of tension.

There were always disputes on the mainland, many of your neighbors trapped under someone else's boot heels, willing to make any deal to regain their freedom.

There were those birthed from centuries of bloodshed, cultivating the land and the politics and their borders at their own discretion.

There was some relief at knowing others remained mildly transparent, their intentions and ambitions calmly stated from the very beginning, revealing further with each and every step, a steady progression towards their endgames.

But in the midst of it all, one still remained, turning the tables at his whim, weaving a complex net of alliances and agreements ensuring his upper hand, always. Following his methodology was pointless; there was no clear uniformity to his strategy, tying himself even to those he opposed, seemingly always ending up the victor.

Steering clear of his attentions was equally pointless, both he and his leaders seeking your favor, your support, your cooperation, your loyalty. He offered you his protection, his resources, an equal position in his court.

It was a dance you had shared many times before, but now his hands were dripping with blood, and to acquiesce would be to forfeit your very name, to trust him with no reservations.

Had it just been you and him, two equals, two blazing spirits, two brilliant minds, two sojourners who had run the same streams and streets as you had grown- Had it just been him pledging himself to you, you would have readily agreed.

But you weren't human, and this dance was far more complicated the simple promise of an ironclad alliance. His leaders had been longing to control you for decades, and he-

You were no longer naive, nor were you oblivious to the unspoken terms of such a proposal, how powerful a weapon those unsaid words would prove to be.

As much as you yearned to consent, as much as your heart ached to call out to his retreating figure and return the scarcely audible words of affection-

Policy was a precarious path to tread, and you could never, would never, damn your people.

You were a fool to think his leaders would allow him to stop his pursuit. It was only a matter of time for his leaders'- for his- focus to turn to those of weaker wills, charming propositions tying together in a complex web that was beginning to trap you from all angles, gradually forcing you closer and closer to tripping into his snare. With each side-deal, each blood-encrusted oath, each unspoken understanding-

Even those you had once considered allies drove you directly into his trap, their loyalty swayed by his threats and honeyed promises. Everyone had a price; in the end, even the most faithfully loyal among them had been bought.

You stood alone in the face of your now enemy, chin sternly set, pride and recalcitrance unwavering even in the face of pending eventuality.

You couldn't submit.

You wouldn't.

As you adjusted the grip of your broken blade, held in the very same hand he had kissed so gently what felt like mere moments ago, you couldn't help but wonder if all this bloodshed, all this anguish, could have been avoided if you had yielded to the pleas he had first offered.

He seemed bemused by your resolve, arrogance on his face as he knelt before you, boots crunching on glass that had once belonged to your home. Now, there was naught but ruin, and the face of the Devil sneering in triumph.

You couldn't stand properly, such was the severity of your injuries, but you'd be damned if you'd give him the satisfaction of your submission.

His eyes, crimson as the flames destroying your forests, scarlet as the blood soaking your fields and soiling his uniform, captured yours, an overpowering sea of ascendency and wicked delight nearly drowning you, an involuntary shudder rattling your teeth.

His smile, feral, bloodied as his cape, did nothing to quell your defiance nor soothe your growing fear, instead sparking a cold, steel, bone-deep dread that clamped itself to your very soul. He was not known for his mercies, and to have even the tiniest shred of hope-

You knew it was over; you could feel his power siphoning your own. The complex web he had so meticulously woven through the past few years was knitting itself into you now, binding you to his will.

But your people-

You couldn't-

You wouldn't-!

You didn't have the strength to deny him as he gently helped you to your feet, couldn't resist the sway he now held over you. You wished you had the strength to keep fighting, wished you could bring yourself to protest his whispered apologies and hidden caresses, wished you had the physical capability to knock that heartbroken, contrite expression right off his thrice-damned face.

But your people had yielded, your leaders and his own drafting a tentative truce.

Everything you were, everything you would be, everything you had bled and lied and cried and killed for- It had all been annexed to Prussia.

With the final imprint of a golden seal, and a venomous kiss made of smoke and iron and tears, the Black Eagle finally claimed his prey.

*

[bellatrixobsessed1]

The Art Of Remembrance (Part 27)

She gives the other teams only until she can scope out the building for a second entrance to arrive. For now stealth and a smaller team will be better anyhow. She makes a second and third trek around the compound.

“Azula, I don’t think that there’s a secret or even a second entrance.” Zuko says. She resentfully must admit that she thinks he might be right. Though she does not say as much out loud, instead she mutters, “there has to be another way in.”

“Maybe we should wait for the other team and storm the place?” Sokka suggests.

Azula shakes her head. “If they know we’re here, they might destroy their notes.” Her face pales at the idea.

“So, what? We just break in and…” Zuko starts.

“I can take as many of them down as I have to.” She replies with a healthy dash of confidence. “Everyone tells me that I’m a prodigy.” She lets a small burst of fire wave in her palm. “And I like to think that you’ve got some skill, you are the Fire Lord afterall.”

“And I have a boomerang that I’m not afraid to use.” Sokka declares with the spunk she had hoped to induce in Zuko.

She puts a hand on his shoulder, “come on, Zuko.”

He gives an audible sigh before caving in. “Keep an eye out for the other teams.” He instructs the Imperial Firebenders.

The first sign that something is startlingly off comes when the door simply slides open with a grimace-inducingly loud groan. She slinks into the dark of the building building--her second sign that something is wrong. The last time she was here the place was decently lit by torch light. Even without the speculation that something isn’t right, Azula finds herself nearly overcome with dread. Just seeing these dismal halls again, feeling the heavy atmosphere of distress and hostility. She swallows hard and summons another blue flame.

“It’s abandoned.” She mumbles, her stomach sinking. This should relive her; they can’t re-capture her if they aren’t around to do so.

“Maybe they’re hiding?” Sokka asks.

Azula shakes her head. “There’s no benefit to hiding. Not when they have research to protect. Unless…” she trails off. She shines her flame over the walls, they are barren and seemingly endless.

“Unless what?” Sokka asks.

She slides her hands over the walls looking for something, anything out of place. A loose panel in the wall perhaps or a broken tile in the floor. “Why would they just leave their notes and instruments in plain sight?” She asks. “There has to be something else, some secret annex or a hidden entrance…”

“I thought that we said there weren’t any of those.” Zuko points out.

“On the outside, yes. But inside…” she pauses. “There might be something in here, a hidden entrance to a deeper part of the facility. Tell the Imperial Firebenders to get in here and help us look.

.oOo.

Azula lingers rather close to him. She is doing surprisingly well for being within the walls that constantly present themselves in her nightmares. He wonders if she is more anxious than she is letting on; with Zuko and the guards present he can’t imagine her expressing her stresses quite as openly. Her sheer closeness is confirmation enough. She doesn’t say it but she heavily implies that she doesn’t want him to stray too far from her. And when he tests the waters and does, she drifts closer to Zuko.

He is beginning to think that she is correct in her assumption that the place has been vacated. They haven’t been particularly quiet and not one personal has come to check out the ruckus.

“Sokka!”

He jolts at the abruptness of her call. It takes him a moment to register that there is no distress in her voice.

“I found something, give me a hand.”

He turns the corner to see the princess struggling to push aside a rather large badgermole statue. They line the entirety of this hall, “what’s so special about that one?”

“Just…” she huffs as she pushes all of her weight against the statue. “Help me move it.”

He watches her struggle for a moment longer, faintly amused by the dainty, petite princess trying to heave something at least twice her weight and height. “If I can’t move it, we might have to wait for Toph or Aang.” He notes as he adds his strength to her fight. It doesn’t give even an inch.

Azula gives another pant before wandering off, presumably to fetch more man power. It takes the entirety of their party to move the badgermole aside. It scrapes thunderously across the floor, if anyone remained in the compound they surely would have come to check things out.

With the statue out of the way, they can now see a yawning opening in the floor.

“So...who wants to go down first?” Sokka asks.

He doesn’t need to see it to know that Azula is rolling her eyes again. She lets the flame blaze brighter in her grasp and begins her descent.

.oOo.

The hidden staircase opens into another long and narrow hallway. Azula isn’t particularly fearful of tight spaces but something about the low ceiling and overall orientation of the hallway, has her feeling disoriented and uncomfortable. She, for once, is grateful that she lacks height. Even having such a slight and small build, she has to dip her head to keep it from colliding with the ceiling. Zuko and Sokka have to crouch and the tallest of the Imperial Firebenders have to crawl.

There are several rooms, shining her fire into them, she finds them mostly vacant save for a desk and a chair or some abandoned cleaning supplies. She is grateful that they hadn’t locked her in a room down here, she could only imagine the hellish images her mind could conjure from time in one of them.

She doesn’t have to imagine for much longer. The room at the very back of the hallway is not as empty as the others. It has only one perk; that she can rise to her full height in here. But that is as far as the comforts go. Everything else has her deciding that she would rather be out there again. Not that she will leave so soon, not when there are shelves to be searched.

Azula doesn’t quite get that far though. Her attention is captured by the metal table at the center of the room. Its leather straps are unbound and waiting for something to hug. Under the eerie blue light of her flame, it gleams menacingly, inviting her back into its clutches. Next to the table are various tools; she spies scalpels of various sizes, needles, and a set of carving chisels. Their wooden handles are stained with blood, despite efforts to clean them. They couldn’t get the blood out of the straps either.

Her belly flutters, she wonders how much of that blood is her own. How much of it had pooled on the floor of this room. She notices that there is, in fact, a rather liberal amount of it coagulated on the floor alongside clumps of vine and residue of vine sap.

She takes a reflexive step back. If she stares for too long, she can almost picture her prone body strapped onto the cold metal, limp and abused. Her mouth runs dry and she pries her eyes away from the scene.

Just as reflexively, she clutches Zuko’s hand. Sokka is on the other side of the room, opening and shutting drawer after drawer. She notices that she is shaking slightly. Undeniably, Zuko knows it too.

Though she no longer stares at the operating table, visions bombard her mind like pounding fists. They have the effect of fists. She had been awake, she knows it now. Fully aware when the scalpels carefully sliced her arms. Fully aware when those they dug those carving chisels, into her chi points and harvested them. Completely cognizant when they opened her belly and prodded her fire chakra.

She feels trapped. Visions of blood weeping from her arms and bubbling from her stomach and dripping down her sides and hips flash in her mind. The feeling of it seeping under her and wetting her back. Visions of vines wrapped like slimy crowns around her head. They hold her mouth open and force the vines in.

Azula thinks that these all might have been separate instances but they blend together in her mind.

She doesn’t know when she had done it, but she is squatting with her head gripped in her hands. Sokka hugs her tightly while Zuko rubs small circles on her back.  “You’re alright.” Sokka murmurs, “you’re alright.”

She takes a deep breath and pushes herself to her feet. “Yes, I am.” She replies. “I just...needed a moment.”

“Azula you were shaking…” Zuko starts. She cuts him a glare. “Azula.”

Sokka nudges him, “not in front of them.” He says quietly and nods towards the Imperial Firebenders.

“What happened back there?” Zuko asks when they make it back to the upper floor.

“I just... the memories of that room came back. A few of them anyways, there were too many at once.” She pauses. “Did you find anything?”

“No.” Sokka replies. “The drawers were all empty.”

“We’ll do a final sweep of this floor and then we’ll call it a failed mission and head back.” Azula replies.

Zuko and Sokka trade glances. “Azula, we can’t go back out there. Not until morning.” Zuko speaks.

She grits her teeth and holds her head high, “very well. I’ll see if I can find an adequate place to sleep while I do my second sweep.”

Sokka tags along as she makes her way down the hall. It is just as stressful to navigate as it had been on the day of her escape. They wander, occasionally finding that they have gone in a large circle.

Along the way, she pushes doors open looking for stray papers or any sort of bedding. She finds neither. She finds nothing at all of use or comfort and everything that puts her on edge. And then she comes upon something that runs her blood and soul colder than the world beyond the compound. She heaves another door open and enters a terrifyingly familiar room. A room where she had previously curled herself into a feeble ball time and time again. This room has not been cleansed; her blood still blemishes the white floor tiling.

The scars that plague her body tingle and twitch as though they have just been newly stitched. The room seems to tilt and spin, her head is dizzy and her stomach threatens to empty itself. Well out of earshot, she allows herself a small choking noise, something between a gasp and a cry. She drops to her knees as the memories come back on full; all of the tortured nights she’d spent naked and shivering on this very floor. The helplessness and that dreadful feeling that she is alive just to suffer and be picked apart.

“Come on, let's go somewhere else.” Sokka offers, his voice is distant in her mind. And it fades further until she is very much alone again. Alone and waiting for them to burst in and carry her off to the operating room. The scar on her tummy pulses violently.

She bunches herself up and wraps her arms protectively around her middle, as though her fire chakra hasn’t already been assaulted. She feels hands lifting her off the ground and she shouts. She brings the fire to her captor’s chest.

He gives a cry of his own and she seizes the opportunity to give him a hard shove and bolt. Her breathing is erratic as she frantically tries to recall which way will take her to the foyer. Which way will take her to freedom.

She hears footsteps behind her and makes an abrupt choice to go left. She is being pursued. She hears the footfalls behind her. She hears them in front of her too. They have her cornered. She hadn’t thought it through, she has managed to corner herself. Her breathing grows heavier as the sets of feet grow closer. “No.” She utters. “No, no.”

They surround her.

“Azula what’s going on? What did you do to Sokka?” The voice isn’t gruff nor angry but her mind distorts it in such a way that it may as well be.

They close in on her. She ignites her palms but there are too many of them. They take hold of her hands and one of them takes her around the middle. She continues to kick and struggle. She won’t let them strap her to that damn table again. She won’t!

Someone manages to seize her legs. Her mind and body can take no more stress. At least this time she won’t be awake when they rip into her.

[dominiodei]

Revelations: Dominion

(a transcription of syfy’s official dominion lore)

CHAPTER 8

LIFE IN NEW DELPHI

Throughout the Cradle, New Delphi is rumored to be an egalitarian utopia where 8-balls and humans live side-by-side in peace. While the city is founded upon progressive tenets such as equality and justice for all, Julian, the city’s Dyad leader, harbors a hidden agenda for ultimate power and revenge.

As a Dyad, Julian’s drive for revenge stems from both his human and angel sides. Before Julian (the human) was possessed by the spirit of Lyrae (the Higher Angel), he was an Air Force Captain stripped of his rank when he released an unguided missile, and unintentionally caused hundreds of civilian casualties. As a result of his error, Julian was removed from flight command in Iraq, and transferred to an administrative position at a North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) annex outside Jackson, Wyoming. At his core, Julian was a military man defined by his rank. When he was pulled from the front lines and forced into a lowly office job, Julian suffered a harsh demotion akin to that of Lyrae, whose excessive violence caused Archangel Michael to banish him to the outer sphere of disembodied lower angels.

When the Extermination War began, Lyrae possessed Julian’s body and the Dyad emerged to battle for divine vengeance against the upper echelon of angels: Archangels Michael and Gabriel and their higher angel comrades.

Occupying a former NORAD facility, Julian benefited from the remaining defenses and ammunition of the military bunker, but to adequately prepare for war, he needed manpower. A charismatic and natural leader, Julian was able to recruit several lost humans to live with him in the bunker, but in light of mankind’s near-decimation, amassing a large group of soldiers proved a considerable challenge. When Rhais, a Higher Angel, brutally attacked their enclave, a secret cadre of disillusioned 8-balls rescued the Dyad and the humans he led. It was then that Julian realized that the possessed were the true soldiers he needed. He united the surviving angels and humans to form the city of New Delphi: the perfect recruiting base for his army.

From Rhais, the keeper of God’s Wrath, Julian acquired the Amphora of Darkness, an exceptionally powerful weapon and essential tool in forming his army. Because he is part angel, Julian could unlock the Amphora, and forcibly possess humans by drawing lower spirits to this last bastion of God’s power on Earth. Since God’s departure, endless angel spirits were trapped in the ether, and with the Amphora he could pull them down, insert them into human bodies, and create his army.

To draw enough bodies to New Delphi, Julian needed to create an appealing façade to attract humans and 8-balls alike. To the human survivors and disgruntled 8-balls that wandered the wastelands, Julian offered a rare combination of protection and freedom. Instead of ascribing to Vega’s V-system, or the Archangels’ penal system, in New Delphi, the humans and 8-balls could exist as equals in a classless society based on trade, and regulated by the code of “an eye for an eye.”

Julian upholds New Delphi with a seemingly just system based on give and take—but what Julian gives is no match for what he takes. The dark secret of New Delphi is that some of its humans will lose their bodies and souls to possession, and even the 8-balls are destined to serve the Dyad’s passionate need for retribution. While life in New Delphi begins with freedom and equality, it ends in servitude; over time, all of New Delphi’s citizens are doomed to be slaves, fighting Julian’s war.

[thecomicsnexus]

Men of Shadow

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES #29 MARCH 1990 BY A. C. FARLEY

SYNOPSIS (FROM TURTLEPEDIA)

In this issue's prologue, we see a man seated in what appears to be a space craft, musing about his desire to be a hero... as his computer accesses files regarding the Necronomicon.

Meanwhile, the TMNT are apparently skirmishing with a gigantic turtle robot in the woods of Northampton as Master Splinter looks on. Suddenly the bot ceases its operations and comes crashing to the ground. The Turtles scramble to open the machine up, and Donatello pops out, explaining how he accidentally overloaded the onboard computer and with a few tweaks he'll have it ready to roll again.

In Arkham, Massachusetts we're introduced to two boys, named Max and Pervis. Max has just purchased an expensive back issue of a comic book and Pervis is warning him about his parents' reaction... which is sure to be very negative. Max explains that he's already in trouble and headed for summer school because he flunked math. The bad news only gets worse as the two lads are assailed by a group of bullies, led by a big fat kid named Barry. Barry grabs Max in a head lock and then tears up his comic before walking off, warning the comic fans that he'll be back later.

Cut to scene at the University of Massachusetts, where we learn that a group of armed men have taken control of the UMass library annex, called the Whately House. Swarms of police surround the building and the situation is dire and tense. Apparently the house had just been moved to the Amherst site from its original location of Arkham. Almost everyone managed to escape the criminals thanks to two heroic people inside, but those people are now being held captive... the heroic duo being April and Casey! The gunmen have sworn to destroy the museum and kill all inside rather than surrender.

In the Whatley House, April and Casey are tied up and are being held at gunpoint by three pointy eared men who are accompanied by a small horde of what appear to be zombies... zombies that have telltale bite marks on their necks, as if they'd been bitten by vampires. The three malefactors vow to blow up the museum rather than let the humans find physical evidence of their existence. The leader hands a detonator device to a zombie and tells him to hold the button down - if commanded, the underling is to release the button, which will detonate a huge stockpile of TNT and decimate the structure, including all inside.

As April and Casey discuss their predicament, the leader of the criminals, Mallet, snarls at them (revealing vampire teeth) and tells them that they're waiting for their Master Traquer to arrive. Mallet then radios a henchmen who is outside in a truck, surrounded by numerous police vehicles, and alerts him to the plan. Apparently the "brainless ones" will be used as a diversion that will allow the vampires to escape with some sort of mystic artifact that they've come here to retrieve.

Just then we see the TMNT crawling through an attic window located at the rear of the house. The Turtles walk downstairs and tell Mallet that they've only come for Casey and April, and if they're allowed to leave, there will be no trouble. This amuses Mallet and he tells the Turtles that they will die with their friends. Suddenly, the man from the prologue appears out of thin air and grabs Mallet. The Turtles leap into action. The mystery man informs our heroes that to rid themselves of their undead foes, they must pierce their hearts with wood or separate their head from their body. The Turtles are a bit freaked about the news that they're fighting zombies and vampires, but they waste no time in breaking up the furniture to make crude stakes. The zombies are dispatched easily, but the vampires turn into bats and fly out of a window. The mystery man has subdued the "neo-dead" slave holding the detonator, and he leaps from the window with the zombie and bomb in tow. As the man and monster fall, the dynamite explodes.

The vampire in the truck below takes this as a sign to flee, and so puts the peddle to the metal, scattering the police as he tears away. The TMNT spot him and Don throws a special tracking shuriken that imbeds itself into the back door of the vehicle, so the Turtles will be able to locate the vehicle later. The guys then untie Casey and April and everyone escapes while the police are distracted by the fleeing truck.

Meanwhile, Max and Pervis are out in a field. Max is standing with his arms spread wide, explaining to Pervis that his home is light years away, that he's a prince brought to Earth to escape assassination threats. As Max tells his tale (which Pervis isn't buying for a minute), he screams for his "family" to pick him up and return him to his home planet... and just then something crashes into the ground a few meters away!

Max rushes to investigate, and the mystery man crawls from the wreckage, a real mess his own self. Pervis takes off to get help for the injured fellow while Max helps him to a hidden underground chamber filled with incredibly advanced technological devices (and strange beasties, creatures with one giant eye and bat wings). The man climbs into a pod, telling the lad to stay put and not to touch anything.

As soon as the man is sealed in his pod, Max ignores the instructions and accesses the main computer. He finds the log files and we learn that the man is named Clark Ashton Allard, and he's being spied upon by the strange bug-eyed creatures that are locked up in the cages. Apparently the beasts are being sent by Master Traquer in effort to keep Allard out of Tracquer's affairs - which involve something in the Whatley House. Clark notes that the house should never have been removed from its original site, as it was protected by many powerful spells that were broken once it was moved... protective spells that kept the artifacts within the building safe from harming humanity. The Whatley family had safeguarded these artifiacts for generations, and Tracquer had spent that time deciphering what they were and how to utilize them. Allard writes that he has no idea what the vampire is up to, but he's sure it means great suffering for the world... so Clark vows to stop Tracquer and continue to fight for good, as he's done for aeons.

Meanwhile, the Turtles, Casey and Splinter have tracked the vampire truck to Arkham, Massachusetts, but right outside of city limits their jeep has broken down. Fortunately they've brought the giant Turtlebot with them, so everyone climbs on board and Don pilots the mechanical terrapin.

Back in Allard's secret underground chamber, Max is rudely interrupted from his reading as Master Traquer and three of his vampiric underlings arrive. Unfortunately Clark is still in his healing mechanism, so the monsters grab the boy and smash the glass on the pod to unceremoniously remove Allard, who is out cold.

Pervis hears noise back where he'd left his friends and returns to investigate. The boy sees Traquer dragging Max out of the chamber by his neck. Pervis tries to ride off to seek help, but he hits a rock and breaks the front wheel on his bicycle. As he laments his situation, he sees a loud and looming form emerging from the darkness... it's the Turtlebot!

"Hey, kid," Casey calls out, "We're kinda lost! Can ya give us some directions?!"

Innsmouth, Massachusetts - The vampires are in a hideout on the wharf, inside Allard and Max are tied. Fortunately, Clark has almost healed fully at this point. Traquer announces that they are going to summon a hideous monster called Dagon to destroy mankind. As the convocation begins, the TMNT crash through a wall and a huge battle ensues. Unfortunately, the ceremony was completed and Dagon arrives - a huge tentacled beast that immediately begins grabbing vampires and eating them. Don's robot is captured in tentacles but he blasts out of the machine before its swallowed. Casey is fighting Traquer but not doing very well... as the vampire master prepares to dine on Jones' neck, Max stabs the monster in the back with one of Casey's broken baseball bats and kills it.

Meanwhile, Allard is struggling with an artifact in the attempt to close the gateway that has allowed Dagon to enter our dimension. As he makes adjustments to the device, the beast grabs him. Clark tosses the artifact into the gaping maw, hoping to close the gateway from the other side. Suddenly a huge explosion rocks the building to its foundation and our heroes run for cover as the structure collapses. Once the dust has settled, Splinter sends his students to find Allard and the artifact, but there's no sign of either.

The next day we see Max and Pervis walking down the street. Once again Barry and his cronies show up. Barry states that they've got unfinished business from yesterday. Pervis tells Max to apologize, but Max refuses.

"No way!" Max shouts in defiance, "After last night, these guys are nothin'!"

So Barry punches Max in the eye, knocking him to the ground and giving him quite a shiner.

"Some thanks for saving the world!" Max bemoans.

Meanwhile, we see Casey phoning April and telling her that they'll be home as soon as they fix the truck.

Finally, we see Clark Ashton Allard in his healing pod.

REVIEW

I appreciate A. C. Farley’s intentions, and I did get his Lovecraft references... but... I cannot say it worked for me. There is just too much going on. Robots, vampires, extra-dimensional entities, an android... I know this is TMNT and anything can happen, but I don’t feel like any of these things worked in the end.

The art is also a bit weird, the Turtles look a bit like the Jim Henson version of them, but a little bit more lifeless (then in the other hand, they do look like Turtles).

I give this story a score of 5.

[itcameuponamidnightqueer]

56, 68, & 71!

56. What’s your favorite flavor Juice? there was a point in high school when i lived on dole’s orange strawberry banana juice, which i always had to drink with ice. there’s a point at which the ice melts and dilutes the juice JUST enough that it takes away a little bit of the tart without sacrificing how crisp it is. if i had a bigger fridge i’d start buying it again.

68. What is your opinion on second chances? generally a fan of giving them? i can’t think of a time when i haven’t, though i have been called a pushover more than once so maybe that’s just me.

71. Favorite Disney Movie? beauty and the beast, hands down. there’s a reason it was the only one nominated for best picture at the oscars before the advent of the best animated feature category. and the live action was better the second time around than the first! also it’s basically jane eyre: the disney movie, and we all know how i feel about that book, so. gold stars all around

[bountyofbeads]

Trump’s Choice: National Security or Political Obsession https://nyti.ms/2KhfkX5

Trump’s Choice: National Security or Political Obsession

The impeachment inquiry is the first to involve an issue of geopolitical gravity: Whether the president was undercutting American national interests — containing Russia — to bolster his campaign.

By David E. Sanger | Published Nov. 14, 2019 Updated 4:52 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted November 14, 2019 |

The last two impeachment investigations of the past half-century began with a third-rate burglary and an extramarital affair. They quickly expanded to question the credibility and ethics of the president, but never touched on America’s national interests in the weightiest geopolitical confrontations of their eras.

The sober, just-the-facts testimony of two previously little-known diplomats on Wednesday left no doubt that the investigation into President Trump’s actions is fundamentally different. Mr. Trump had a choice between executing his administration’s own strategy for containing Russia or pursuing a political obsession at home.

He chose the obsession.

In an otherwise divided Washington, one of the few issues of bipartisan agreement for the past six years has been countering the Russian president Vladimir V. Putin’s broad plan of disruption. That effort starts in Ukraine, where a hot war has been underway in the east for five years, and a cyberwar underway in the capital, Kiev.

It is exactly that policy that Mr. Trump appears to have been discarding when he made clear, in the haunting words attributed to Gordon D. Sondland, who parlayed political donations into the ambassadorship to the European Union, that “President Trump cares more about the investigation of Biden” than about Ukraine’s confrontation with Mr. Putin’s forces.

It was perhaps the most telling, and to some the most damning, line of the torrent of revelations in the past two months — the distillation of an internal argument inside the Trump administration that the president’s closest aides have endeavored to keep hidden.

That single line, relayed by William B. Taylor Jr., the avuncular, experienced diplomat sent back to Kiev in May by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, encapsulated the now obvious truth that Mr. Trump had little interest in the central national security strategy that his own administration published in late 2017.

That strategy ostensibly reoriented American diplomacy from an 18-year focus on counterterrorism to a new approach to the world’s two “revisionist powers,” Russia and China. Each poses very different challenges to the United States.

Mr. Taylor, a veteran — first of Vietnam and then of the Cold War and its messy aftermath — has devoted much of his career to building fragile democracies from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Those who know him say they do not know his politics. So it was no surprise when he cautioned the committee that he had no desire to take part in impeachment proceedings.

“I am not here to take one side or the other or to advocate for any particular outcome of these proceedings,” he said, a line that brought visible skepticism from those on the committee who believe he epitomizes the diplomatic “deep state.” Instead, Mr. Taylor, who served as ambassador to Ukraine under the George W. Bush administration, portrayed himself as a “fact witness” who had just returned from the Donbas, the eastern area of Ukraine where 14,000 people have already died.

But his facts led him to a pretty politically charged conclusion. “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Mr. Taylor said. When pressed what he meant, Mr. Taylor added that because “that security assistance was so important for Ukraine as well as our own national interests, to withhold that assistance for no good reason other than help with a political campaign made no sense.”

“It was counterproductive to all of what we had been trying to do,” he added. “It was illogical. It could not be explained. It was crazy.”

The issue is explained away by Mr. Taylor’s superiors in the State Department and the White House, who argue that the story of withheld aid is a political concoction. Ultimately, the funds were released. It was like paying your credit bill on the last day possible — in this case, the deadline was the end of the government’s fiscal year on Sept. 30.

No real harm, no impeachable foul, they contend, and did not President Barack Obama decline to provide the Ukrainians with Javelin antitank missiles? One of Mr. Trump’s senior advisers noted that Washington’s press corps was not writing several years ago that Mr. Obama was, in this official's words, leaving Ukrainians to die. In contrast, Mr. Trump offered them the Javelins. (Mr. Trump’s sale of those weapons prohibited the use of Javelins on the front lines, in an effort to cast them as deterrent weapons.)

But from where Mr. Taylor was sitting in Kiev, withholding the aid hardly seemed harmless. The power of his testimony lay in how starkly he laid out what amounted to an extortion scheme: that Mr. Trump was personally refusing to release the funds unless Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly announced two investigations.

One was into Burisma, the energy company in which the son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had taken a board seat and payments of as much as $50,000 a month. The other was an investigation into a completely discredited theory that Ukrainian hackers, not Russia’s military intelligence unit, may have been responsible for the 2016 breach of the Democratic National Committee. If that was true, the Justice Department might have to consider withdrawing its indictment of a dozen Russian intelligence officials for masterminding and executing one of the boldest hackings in American political history. The indictment was issued last year by Jeff Sessions, who was then serving as attorney general.

Of the many odd twists in the partisan noise around the impeachment, Mr. Trump’s effort to divert attention from suspicions about the intrusion away from Russia — implicit in his July 25 telephone conversation with Mr. Zelensky — may be the oddest. Ukraine has been Mr. Putin’s favorite cybertarget, the petri dish where the Russian leader has tried out many of the techniques he later turned on the United States, like influence operations, tinkering with voter systems and riddling the electric grid with malware.

As George P. Kent, the assistant secretary of state with responsibility for Ukraine, told the committee Wednesday, the funds appropriated by Congress, and withheld on Mr. Trump’s orders, were meant “to fight Russian aggression in the defense, energy, cyber and information spheres.”

It was clear from the testimony that Mr. Taylor and Mr. Kent have been pressing for — and carrying out — some version of that policy for several administrations, and deeply believe in it. But it has become more urgent. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 unified Republicans, Democrats and Western allies; they issued sanctions and threw Russia out of the Group of 8, where its presence had been intended to integrate the nation with Europe.

When the Senate voted in 2017 to extend sanctions on Russia, the vote was 98 to 2; only Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders voted against it. That veto-proof majority forced Mr. Trump to sign the legislation.

Still, the evidence this pressure is working is scant. Be it Syria or Libya, or elsewhere in Africa and Eastern Europe, Russia has stepped up its actions, and here in the United States, the big question is whether the United States is prepared to stave off Russian interference in next year’s presidential election.

All this made tightening the alliance with Ukraine more important, as a signal, and as a deterrent.

But Mr. Trump has never signed on to that strategy; the evidence now is that he sought to undercut it. In fact, it was an open secret in the White House that the president, who has little patience for long documents, never read the full national strategy published under his name, according to several of his former national security officials.

He has never repeated its main tenets, particularly its references to Russia, in public; instead, he makes vague mention of how it would be a good thing if Russia and the United States got along. His actions, as opposed to his strategy documents, have been a quilt of contradictions. He has pulled out of treaties with the Russians — most recently the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty — and invested in a new nuclear arms race. But he has also questioned why the United States needs to keep up the sanctions imposed on Moscow after the annexation of Crimea and the attacks on Ukraine, and, by pulling back from Syria, he has ceded territory that Mr. Putin coveted.

As it seeks to quash the impeachment parade, the State Department under Mr. Pompeo has added to the confusion by declining to answer questions about what happened this summer, as the aid was frozen. Mr. Pompeo himself has declined to be drawn into those discussions, saying simply that they are internal conversations that should be kept confidential.

That is now over: Mr. Taylor’s lengthy, calm recitation of each interaction over the summer with his colleagues back in Washington, based on his copious notes, gives a window into policymaking unmatched since the revelation in 2010 of the State Department’s internal cables by WikiLeaks.

But what Mr. Taylor’s and Mr. Kent’s accounts reveal is a department that was keeping its own diplomats in the dark. Mr. Taylor, sitting in the Kiev Embassy as a temporary successor to the mysteriously ousted Marie L. Yovanovitch, never received the formal notes from Mr. Trump’s conversation with Mr. Zelensky. He only heard by accident that military aid was frozen. He said he did not figure out how that was related to Mr. Trump’s demands until late in the summer.

The Cold War, too, was filled with incomprehensible moments and quid pro quos. President John F. Kennedy struck the most famous, secretly trading a Russian nuclear presence in Cuba for the withdrawal of American nuclear weapons in Turkey. The details were kept secret for years. But both the quid and the quo were rooted in some plausible definition of American national interest.

That is drastically different from what Mr. Trump sought: American military aid in return for dirt on his opponents.

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Pelosi Points to Possible Bribery Charge Against Trump

The day after the first public impeachment hearing, Speaker Nancy Pelosi used the word “bribery,” mentioned in the Constitution’s impeachment clause, to describe President Trump’s conduct.

By Nicholas Fandos | Published Nov. 14, 2019 Updated 1:47 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted November 14, 2019

WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi sharpened the focus of Democrats’ impeachment case against President Trump on Thursday, accusing the president of committing bribery when he withheld vital military assistance from Ukraine at the same time he was seeking its commitment to publicly investigate his political rivals.

The speaker’s explicit allegation of bribery, a misdeed identified in the Constitution as an impeachable offense, was significant. Even as Ms. Pelosi said that no final decision had been made on whether to impeach Mr. Trump, it suggested that Democrats are increasingly working to put a name to the president’s alleged wrongdoing, and moving toward a more specific set of charges that could be codified in articles of impeachment in the coming weeks.

“The devastating testimony corroborated evidence of bribery uncovered in the inquiry, and that the president abused his power and violated his oath by threatening to withhold military aid and a White House meeting in exchange for an investigation into his political rival — a clear attempt by the president to give himself an advantage in the 2020 election,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference in the Capitol.

Democrats have begun using the term “bribery” more freely in recent days to describe what a string of diplomats and career Trump administration officials have said was a highly unusual and inappropriate effort by Mr. Trump and a small group around him to extract a public promise from Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and a discredited theory about Democrats conspiring with Ukraine to interfere in the 2016 election.

The House Intelligence Committee convened the House’s first public impeachment hearing in two decades on Wednesday with testimony from William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, and George P. Kent, a senior State Department official responsible for policy toward the country.

They told the committee that Mr. Trump and his allies inside and outside of the government placed the president’s political objectives at the center of American policy toward Ukraine, using both $391 million in security assistance that Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s war with Russia as well as a White House meeting that was coveted by the country’s new leader as leverage.

Asked to clarify her remarks later, Ms. Pelosi said: “The bribe is to grant or withhold military assistance in return for a public statement of a fake investigation into the elections. That’s bribery.”

She added: “We have not even made a decision to impeach, that is what the inquiry is about.”

Ms. Pelosi said Mr. Trump should give Congress exculpatory evidence, if he has it, and said the president would be given an opportunity to defend himself. Republicans and the White House have accused Democrats of denying Mr. Trump a proper say in the proceedings.

Ms. Pelosi’s remarks on impeachment were the first time she discussed the growing inquiry at length with reporters since Congress recessed in late October. She provided other clues as to how she is thinking about the case.

Asked if Democrats were successfully bringing the public along with them, Ms. Pelosi conceded that the country was likely too polarized to ever support impeachment as overwhelmingly as it did when Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974. Public opinion polls now suggest a majority of Americans favor the impeachment inquiry, but only by a thin margin.

“Impeaching is a divisive thing in our country — it’s hard,” Ms. Pelosi said. “The place that our country is now, it’s not a time where you’ll go to 70 percent when President Nixon walked out of the White House.”

Indeed, there was no sign from congressional Republicans that the testimony had shaken their conviction that Mr. Trump is innocent.

Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, told reporters that the hearing had only confirmed that the accounts from Mr. Taylor, Mr. Kent and other witnesses who have offered damaging information about Mr. Trump are not firsthand, and therefore could not be trusted. And he pointed back to a July phone call between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.

“The call summary is still the most important piece of evidence we have, and it shows no pressure or even mention of conditionality between the two leaders,” Mr. McCarthy said.

The White House released a reconstructed transcript of the call in September that showed that after the Ukrainian leader thanked Mr. Trump for military assistance, the American president pivoted and asked Mr. Zelensky “to do us a favor, though.” Mr. Trump then asked Mr. Zelensky to investigate unsubstantiated corruption accusations against Mr. Biden and his son Hunter who worked for a Ukrainian energy firm, as well as a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered with the 2016 election to help Democrats.

The United States intelligence community has concluded that Russia interfered to help Mr. Trump.

🍁🍞🍂☕🍁🍞🍂☕🍁🍞🍂☕🍁🍞

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What other fandoms are you familiar enough with to use as an AU prompt? Pokemon Trainer AU? Homestuck AU (they'd still probably die but at least there are lots of ways to come back to life)?

I’m not that familiar with Homestuck, definitely not enough to do an AU.  I read the novelizations of the Pokemon show as a kid but never saw the show or played any of the video games.  I did play the super-obscure Pokemon board game, but most of my trading cards were printed in Japanese (I had a strange childhood), so my experience there is, uh, probably not quite overlapping with everyone else’s.

Anyway, if you want list of all my fandoms… Boy howdy.  I don’t think I can come up with them all.  However, I can list everything that comes to mind between now and ~20 minutes from now when I have to end my procrastination break and go back to dissertating.  So here it is, below the cut:

Okay, there is no way in hell I’ll be able to make an exhaustive list.  But off the top of my head, the fandoms I’m most familiar/comfortable with are as follows:

Authors (as in, I’ve read all or most of their books)

Patricia Briggs

Megan Whalen Turner

Michael Crichton

Marge Piercy

Stephenie Meyer

Dean Koontz

Stephen King

Neil Gaiman

K.A. Applegate

Ernest Hemingway

Tamora Pierce

Roald Dahl

Short Stories/Anthologies

A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor

The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

I Am Legend, Richard Matheson

Dubliners, James Joyce

Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes

Who Goes There? John W. Campbell

The Man Who Bridged the Mist, Kij Johnson

Flatland, Edwin Abbott

I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream, Harlan Ellison

To Build a Fire, Jack London

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bier

At the Mountains of Madness/Cthulu mythos, H.P. Lovecraft

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle

The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving

The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury

Close Range: Wyoming Stories, E. Annie Proulx

The Curious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson

Bartleby the Scrivener (and a bunch of others), Herman Melville

Books (Classics)

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neal Hurston

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Secret Garden, Francis Hodgson Burnett

Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

The Secret Annex, Anne Frank

Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

East of Eden, John Steinbeck

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

The Stranger, Albert Camus

The Call of the Wild, Jack London

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Lord of the Flies, William Golding

Atonement, Ian McEwan

1984, George Orwell

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith

The Iliad/The Odyssey, Homer

Metamorphoses, Ovid

Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne

The Time-Machine, H.G. Wells

The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Hamlet, MacBeth, Othello, and The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Thomas Stoppard

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

Books (YA SF)

Young Wizards series, Diane Duane

Redwall, Brian Jaques

The Dark is Rising sequence, Susan Cooper

The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Diana Wynne Jones

The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis

Abhorsen trilogy, Garth Nix

The Giver series, Lois Lowry

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

Uglies series, Scott Westerfeld

Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt

A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin

Song of the Lioness, Tamora Pierce

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle

Unwind, Neal Shusterman

The Maze Runner series, James Dashner

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Patricia C. Wrede

Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Louis Sachar

Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine

Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card

The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster

Coraline, Neil Gaiman

Among the Hidden, Margaret Peterson Haddix

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, Avi

Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice

Poppy series, Avi

The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

Tithe, Holly Black

Life as We Knew It, Susan Beth Pfeffer

Blood and Chocolate, Annette Curtis Klause

Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie

The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum

Haunted, Gregory Maguire

Weetzie Bat, Francesca Lia Block

Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White

East, Edith Pattou

Z for Zachariah, Robert C. O’Brien

The Looking-Glass Wars, Frank Beddor

The Egypt Game, Zilpha Keatley Snyder

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

Homecoming, Cynthia Voigt

Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

The Landry News, Andrew Clements

Fever 1793, Laurie Halse Anderson

Bloody Jack, L.A. Meyer

The Boxcar Children, Gertrude Chandler Warner

A Certain Slant of Light, Laura Whitcomb

Generation Dead, Daniel Waters

Pendragon series, D.J. MacHale

Silverwing, Kenneth Oppel

Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Define Normal, Julie Anne Peters

Hawksong, Ameila Atwater Rhodes

Heir Apparent, Vivian Vande Velde

Running Out of Time, Margaret Peterson Haddix

The Keys to the Kingdom series, Garth Nix

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken

The Seer and the Sword, Victoria Hanley

My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George

Daughters of the Moon series, Lynne Ewing

The Midwife’s Apprentice, Karen Cushman

Island of the Aunts, Eva Ibbotson

The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, Nancy Farmer

A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray

A School for Sorcery, E. Rose Sabin

The House with a Clock in Its Walls, John Bellairs

The Edge Chronicles, Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell

Hope was Here, Joan Bauer

Bunnicula, James Howe

Wise Child, Monica Furlong

Silent to the Bone, E.L. Konigsburg

The Twenty-One Balloons, William Pene du Bois

Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters, Gail Giles

The Supernaturalist, Eoin Colfer

Blue is for Nightmares, Laurie Faria Stolarz

Mystery of the Blue Gowned Ghost, Linda Wirkner

Wait Till Helen Comes, Mary Downing Hahn

I was a Teenage Fairy, Francesca Lia Block

City of the Beasts series, Isabelle Allende

Summerland, Michael Chabon

The Geography Club, Brent Hartinger

The Last Safe Place on Earth, Richard Peck

Liar, Justine Larbalestier

The Doll People, Ann M. Martin

The Lost Years of Merlin, T.A. Barron

Matilda Bone, Karen Cushman

Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger

The Tiger Rising, Kate DiCamillo

The Spiderwick Chronicles, Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi

In the Forests of the Night, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

My Teacher is an Alien, Bruce Coville

The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, Julie Andrews Edwards

Storytime, Edward Bloor

Magic Shop series, Bruce Coville

A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snicket

Veritas Project series, Frank Peretti

The Once and Future King, T.H. White

Raven’s Strike, Patricia Briggs

What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy, Gregory Maguire

The Wind Singer, William Nicholson

Sweetblood, Pete Hautman

The Trumpet of the Swan, E.B. White

Half Magic, Edward Eager

A Ring of Endless Light, Madeline L'Engle

The Heroes of Olympus, Rick Riordan

Maximum Ride series, James Patterson

The Edge on the Sword, Rebecca Tingle

World War Z, Max Brooks

Adaline Falling Star, Mary Pope Osborne

Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo

Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi

Parable of the Sower series, Octavia Butler

I, Robot, Isaac Asimov

Neuomancer, William Gibson

Dune, Frank Herbert

The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Emily M. Danforth

The Martian, Andy Weir

Skeleton Man, Joseph Bruchac

Comics/Manga

Marvel 616 (most of the major titles)

Marvel 1610/Ultimates

Persepolis

This One Summer

Nimona

Death Note

Ouran High School Host Club

Vampire Knight

Emily Carroll comics

Watchmen

Fun Home

From Hell

American Born Chinese

Smile

The Eternal Smile

The Sandman

Calvin and Hobbes

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For

TV Shows

Fullmetal Alchemist

Avatar the Last Airbender

Teen Titans (2003)

Luke Cage/Jessica Jones/Iron Fist/Defenders/Daredevil/The Punisher

Agents of SHIELD/Agent Carter

Supernatural

Sherlock

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Angel/Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Firefly

American Horror Story

Ouran High School Host Club

Orange is the New Black

Black Sails

Stranger Things

Westworld

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Movies

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Jurassic Park/Lost World/Jurassic World/Lost Park?

The Breakfast Club

Cloverfield/10 Cloverfield Lane/The Cloverfield Paradox

Attack the Block

The Prestige

Moon

Ferris Bueler’s Day Off

Django Unchained/Kill Bill/Inglourious Basterds/Hateful 8/Pulp Fiction/etcetera

Primer

THX 1138/Akira/How I Live Now/Lost World/[anything I’ve named a fic after]

Star Wars

The Meg

A Quiet Place

Baby Driver

Mother!

Alien/Aliens/Prometheus

X-Men (et al.)

10 Things I Hate About You

The Lost Boys

Teen Wolf

Juno

Pirates of the Caribbean (et al.)

Die Hard

Most Disney classics: Toy Story, Mulan, Treasure Planet, Emperor’s New Groove, etc.

Most Pixar classics: Up, Wall-E, The Incredibles

The Matrix

Dark Knight trilogy

Halloween

Friday the 13th

A Nightmare on Elm Street

The Descent

Ghostbusters

Ocean’s Eight/11/12/13

King Kong

The Conjuring

Fantastic Four

Minority Report/Blade Runner/Adjustment Bureau/Total Recall

Fight Club

Spirited Away

O

Disturbing Behavior

The Faculty

Poets

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Marge Piercy

Thomas Hardy

Sigfried Sassoon

W. B. Yeats

Edgar Allan Poe

Ogden Nash

Margaret Atwood

Maya Angelou

Emily Dickinson

Matthew Dickman

Karen Skolfield

Kwame Alexander

Ellen Hopkins

Shel Silverstein

Musicals/Stage Plays

Les Miserables

Repo: The Genetic Opera

The Lion King

The Phantom of the Opera

Rent

The Prince of Egypt

Pippin

Into the Woods

A Chorus Line

Hairspray

Evita

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Fiddler on the Roof

Annie

Fun Home

Spring Awakening

Chicago

Cabaret

The Miser

The Importance of Being Earnest

South Pacific

Godspell

Wicked

The Wiz

The Wizard of Oz

Man of La Mancha

The Sound of Music

West Side Story

Matilda

Sweeney Todd

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Nunsense

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown/Snoopy

1776

Something Rotten

A Very Potter Musical

Babes in Toyland

Carrie: The Musical

Amadeus

Annie Get Your Gun

25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

The Final Battle

Rock of Ages

Cinderella

Moulin Rouge

Honk

Labyrinth

The Secret Garden

Reefer Madness

Bang Bang You’re Dead

NSFW

War Horse

Peter Pan

Suessical

Sister Act

The Secret Annex

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Disclaimer 1: Like a lot of people who went to high school in the American South, my education in literature is pretty shamefully lacking in a lot of areas.  (As in, during our African American History unit in ninth grade we read To Kill a Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn… and that was it.  As in, our twelfth-grade US History class, I shit you not, covered Gone With the Wind.)  There were a lot of good teachers in with the *ahem* Less Woke ones (how I read Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Bluest Eye) and college definitely set me on the path to trying to find books written/published outside the WASP-ier parts of the U.S., but the overall list is still embarrassingly hegemonic.

Disclaimer 2: There are a crapton of errors — typos, misspelled names, misattributions, questionable genre classifications, etc. — in here.  If you genuinely have no idea what a title is supposed to be, ask me.  Otherwise, please don’t bother letting me know about my mistakes.

Disclaimer 3: I am not looking for recommendations.  My Goodreads “To Read” list is already a good 700 items long, and people telling me “if you like X, then you’ll love Y!” genuinely stresses me the fuck out.

Disclaimer 4: There are no unproblematic faves on this list.  I love Supernatural, and I know that Supernatural is hella misogynistic.  On the flip side: I don’t love The Lord of the Rings at all, partially because LOTR is hella misogynistic, but I also don’t think that should stop anyone else from loving LOTR if they’re willing to love it and also acknowledge its flaws. 

[rachelrogers11]

A SORT OF XMEN INSPIRED G.O.T. CROSSOVER THAT NO ONE ASKED FOR

One of my fanfic ideas from the SanSan closet.There’s really no dialogue, just a fanfic idea I had (for this fanfic I picture Peter Steele as Sandor), modern AU, maybe slight DubCon for a bit of mind manipulation.

A Peek at the story idea:

Sansa journeys to Kings Landing to join the secluded academy The Red Keep after she cannot restrain the strange dreams and powers plaguing her since she was a child. She is an Empath. She senses people’s distress and it all becomes a little too much for her to handle on her own especially those dreams of the Strange Man which leaves her weak and gasping from the sheer rage in them…

Excerpt:

In the rank depths of Flea Bottom annexing the glamourous and pristine city of Kings Landing, a secret meeting took place. In the dimness of the room, the Head Master of the Red Keep made a deal with the Stranger.

He would not be apprehended by the Red Keep Guard if he would turn away from his ragtag human gang and work under cover for the Red Keep. The Stranger was not amused. And he was in a particularly beatific rage since the Red Keep special retrieval team had brought him in.

Until the Keep’s Headmaster said he had her.

After that, the Stranger listened…

~

One week later

Sansa cautiously made her way down the winding corridor to the Head Master’s office.

Margaery had given her the heads up that the Head Master wanted her to power practice on a new Red Keep recruit. It’d been a while since Sansa had a power practice session and she was looking forward to the distraction it would give her from her obsessive contemplation on whether her Strange Man existed or not. She’d been having the dreams for as long as she could remember. It was what made her come to the Red Keep in the first place despite her parents’ caution. The old fashioned Northerners her family was did not totally trust the Red Keep, only known to those families with gifts, to keep their innocent tall little girl safe..

But after the first few rough months and despite the antagonism she’d faced from Cersei, the resident Red Keep queen bee who resented Sansa for becoming the Head Master’s favourite student, she had grown to like it here.

Except that the dreams hadn’t stopped.

The memory of the latest dream, just last night, assailed her again. She’d had yet another dream of the Strange Man, a dream filled with his anger and pain.

The Strange Man’s startling grey eye had been so clear, almost like silvered glass, his gaze piercing and sharp as if his rage was something that could leap out of his eyes and cut her. But the moment she reached out and touched his face as she always inevitably did, she felt that strong current of rage within him ebb away.

The moment she felt the warmth of his chiselled cheek, she’d wake up, hot and shivering under her heap of blankets.

Despite the confusing whirl of pain she felt whenever she dreamed of him, the idea that the Strange Man might be a figment of her imagination depressed her. Somehow the dreams, which had first affected her like nightmares, became something familiar that she had grown to expect. Like her favourite pair of pajamas she’d slip over her skin at night, she had begun to take a certain comfort in the dreams. She didn’t understand it. There was no doubt that she was using her power of calm in the dream, she was soothing the Strange Man in the only way she knew how but then why did she feel reassured as well?

Taking a deep breath, she came to a stop before the heavy gilded door that led to the Head Master’s suite of offices. She dismissed all memories of the dream and cautiously knocked.

The Head Master summoned her in.

As soon as she walked into the spacious office, she saw him.

Her dreams dissolved around her like torn bits of burned paper fluttering in the wind, the black and white static of those dreams in no way preparing her for the full Technicolor, thumping decibel of the Strange Man in the flesh.

In her dreams, she’d always seen his eyes but never the entirety of him.

The Strange Man wore a fierce frown and she could see only one of his silver eyes blazing down at her because one side of his face was half hidden behind the dark tangle of hair that skimmed down to his broad shoulders.

Sansa decided that he was at once the most beautiful and ugliest being she’d ever seen.

The giant man looming before her was the sculpted towering statue of the Warrior brought to life but it was the hate that shone bright in his silver eyes that made him ugly.

She could barely hear the Head Master’s banter as he introduced her to the Red Keep’s newest recruit. All she heard was his name.

Sandor Clegane was the Strange Man’s name

Sandor.

Despite encountering his rage in her dreams, she still did not feel prepared to face it, face him, in all his terrifying reality. He took a step towards her and it was only then she realized how much she had to crane her neck up to look at him.

She’d never had to do that before. To her everlasting chagrin, she’d always been taller than almost every male she’d encountered.

The Strange Man, well Sandor, looked her up and down, his frown etched even deeper now.

“Hope you’ve been warned, girl. You’ve got your bluidy work cut out for you. Think you can calm a killer?”

Sansa was startled at the deep sense of disappointment she felt when she realized he had no knowledge of their shared dreams.

Looking at the harsh skepticism displayed on the visible side of his face, she knew he wasn’t aware of the countless times she’d reached across time and space to do just that. To calm his rage.

A killer he said.

Despite the flutter of shock she felt, Sansa decided she would show him that he could not intimidate her, she would not let his festering anger deter her from what she did best.

“I’ve worked with killers before, sir.”

Many times during her training, she had been required to power practice on hardened criminals in the Black Cells, under heavy guard of course. None of tem had shown her as much resentment as this man did.

He doesn’t know of the dreams, she reminded herself as the Head Master directed them to sit opposite each other, only a narrow desk between them that was dwarfed by his large frame.

Sandor glared at her for a long moment and she unflinchingly met his stare until with a rather slow deliberate movement of one large hand, he moved the pitch-dark tangle of hair off his cheek and jaw.

Her mouth went dry as he revealed the gruesome scarring covering most of the right side of his face. The knotted flesh was pitted and gnarled and as vivid as a raw red wound.

He seemed to take a savage satisfaction in her horror, his slow smirk not revealing the pain she could sense brimming within him.

Tears stung and blurred her vision as she thought of the physical torment he must have endured to survive such a scar but she made every effort to blink them away. She averted her eyes, fearing she was staring too hard at his disfigurement then watched as he reached across the desk and held out huge callused hands towards her.

Even as he extended his palms, marked with scars different than those that covered his face, she could sense the mockery in him, just as Cersei and her entourage had mocked her when she first came to the Red Keep.

He fully expected her to flee, expected her to evade his touch.

Sansa reached out and took his hands in hers.

She felt his jolt of surprise and then her palms were drowned under the heaviness of his and that blast of fiery rage hit her again, even more intense than the dreams and there was turmoil there too and fear.

And there was also the effect of his flesh on hers, his hands in hers, the feel of his warm skin sent a jolt of her own through her as if her heart had stopped beating and then her entire body shocked back to life.

He didn’t really want to touch her!

No one had ever been so unwilling to touch her, not even Cersei who had succumbed to the calming power of her touch during one of her earlier power practices.

Sandor fought against her, fought like a drowning man against the current of her empathy. She cried out at the power of his rage beating against her.

He tore his hands out of her grasp, slamming to his feet with such violence that the heavy chairs the Head Master used in his office tumbled over like a light toy in his wake.

The Head Master leapt to his feet as fast as he could as well, moving immediately to stand beside him, a meaty hand on the towering man’s arm, whispering something fiercely that Sansa couldn’t hear. Sansa could only stare at how incongruous the Head Master of the Red Keep looked standing next to this giant.

Sandor.

As she sat there inhaling gulps of air, recovering from her tumultuous interaction with the giant man, she found it surreal that she now knew the name of the stranger who had been haunting her dreams for so long.

The giant man sat before her once again while the Head Master reclaimed his seat a few feet away. In an uncharacteristic gentle tone, he encouraged her to resume her power practice. Sansa glanced at the headmaster. He had always been kind to her where more often than not, he was blunt and no-nonsense with the rest of the Red Keep alumni.

With some caution, she glanced at him.

Sandor had cast his scars under their curtain of dark strands again, head bowed, hands laid out like an offering on the table between them but Sansa could sense that resentment again and how unwilling he was. She’d never had an unwilling participant in her practice before but the Head Master nodded encouragingly.

Taking a fortifying breath, she reached for Sandor’s fingers again. So warm. And then there was that jolt as their skin touched.

His hands were long, large and sturdy like he was. She could see the darker sheen of sweat on his massive chest under his simple dark green t-shirt even though the room was conditioned with cooling vents that kept the heat of Kings Landing at bay.

Sansa mentally prepared herself to feel his rage again, pulling at her inner reserves of calm to counteract his anger but to her utter surprise, she felt nothing as she held his hands.

That had never happened before.

It was then she realized with some shock that he had blocked her out. She had encountered mind blocks before in her power practice but she had always managed to weave her way around them. Like with Cersei. At first she’d blocked Sansa out quite willfully but she had overcome her block almost immediately.

No such luck with Sandor.

No matter how she tried, despite all the practice she’d had at surmounting blocks, she couldn’t get through to him. She closed her eyes tight in concentration feeling the burn of his gaze on her and the burn of his anger roiling in her mind.

An anger she couldn’t diffuse as she usually did! She did not like that for the first time since coming to the Red Keep that her power had failed. She’d taken more pride than she’d thought in how powerful her calming influence was. Her empathy had reached out to even the most stubborn of the Red Keep alumni. Even to the cruelest of the Black Cells prisoners!

Suddenly, she felt the caress of his fingertips against the sensitive underside of her palm. At first, she valiantly tried to ignore the tingles his caresses produced, tried to concentrate only on getting past his block. But then the caresses increased and he started making little circles that she could feel in other places besides her hands. Her eyes flew open. He was peering at her under the fall of his dark hair, icy eyes heated now.

Sansa was immediately flustered, breath caught in her throat until she saw that mocking smirk tilting one side of his unscarred lips not hidden by his hair. She was about to tell him to stop at once when the first sensations hit her.

Every erotic thought, every lewd desire he had ever had, that he ever sated, Sandor sent her way. To her complete and utter embarrassment, Sansa couldn’t contain her moan. She shifted against her seat, trying to fight him off now but he just kept pushing…

The Head Master intervened, moving to pull her hands from Sandor’s except Sansa shook her head violently. “No!”

She wasn’t going to allow Sandor to scare her away like some untried little girl. Sansa had advanced too much in her power to calm, had struggled too hard to prove herself amidst the unforgiving Red Keep alumni to be thrown into chaos by a new recruit...

[bladehymn]

N.B. this timeline works under the assumption that “2000 years ago” refers to 2000 years prior to the four continents of Eos adopting the same calendar system in 1 ME, rather than 2000 years prior to the fall of Insomnia in 756 ME.

Unknown day, March 2024 AE

Drago’s father, a hunter by trade, is killed in the field. 

28th March, 2024 AE

Adira learns her husband was killed when his dogtags and lance are returned to her. The lance is hidden away in storage, but serves as the basis for Liulfr Jeri in the future.

April 19th, 2024 AE.

Drago is born in Baloren.

2023 AE.

Gentiana Nox Fleuret is born in Tenebrae.

May, 2016 AE.

His younger brother, Uri, dies at age 5 from Starscourge. Drago begins, despite his mother’s wishes, to train as a warrior, spurred on by a sense it is his rightful place in the back of his mind.

2006, AE.

On completing his training, Drago creates Liulfr Jeri. He requests the help of a knowledgeable smith, but still assists in the forging of the weapon.

March 1999 AE.

The same compulsion that drove Drago to become a warrior returns, spurring him to travel to what would become the Gralean continent. He is driven by an insane desire, barely sleeping or eating as the urge grows louder, only quieting when he travels.

April 1999, AE.

The war god Bahamut descends on humanity and declares Gentiana Nox Fleuret to be the first Oracle, gifting her his trident and granting her the capacity to heal the Scourge through holy magic. At this time, he also declared Ardyn Izunia to be the first King of Lucis and chosen of the Crystal.

June, 1999 AE.

Drago arrives at a disused shrine, far to the southwest of Gralea. It is here the god Bahamut reveals himself to be the source of the compulsion, bestowing on him the blessing of the Bladekeeper and a facsimile of the Ultima Blade. Drago is then told it is his divine destiny to protect the First Oracle and that he should seek her out immediately, as is the will of Bahamut.

July, 1999 AE.

Gentiana Nox Fleuret announces she will undertake a pilgrimage to commune with the gods throughout Eos and the surrounding lands. As she cannot travel alone, she announces a three month long combat tournament to find the warrior most capable of protecting her. Their prize is to be the guard who will personally accompany her on her quest, as well as a gift of her own discretion.

October, 1999 AE.

Drago wins the tournament, besting all competitors as well as Gentiana’s house guard when she wishes to test him further. He is named the personal guard to the first Oracle and is given quarters on the Fenestala estate.

November, 1999 AE.

On their visit to Bahamut’s temple, first of the pilgrimage, it is revealed following an altercation with monsters and Bahamut’s own intercession into Gentiana’s communion that, like the Oracle, Drago was also blessed by an Astral. Her personal trust won for his courage and honesty, Gentiana gifts him with her eternal thanks and Orion, a trident styled after her own.

late January, 1998 AE.

Ardyn is rejected by the Crystal following the healings of the Scourge he has performed. Quick to seize on his brother’s failure, Judah Izunia, under the guise of ridding Lucis of true darkness and evil, had his brother executed as a public event, timed to the end of winter that the coming days of longer light would look to all the world that darkness had been extinguished. Following this, Judah renamed himself Somnus Lucis Caelum, the Founder King.

1998 AE.

Somnus and Gilgamesh join the pilgrimage. Drago is mistrustful of both, but more openly so towards Gilgamesh. Despite his misgivings towards Somnus and his rule, Drago is aware of his place in the world and so behaves civilly, if cooly, around Somnus.

July, 1998 AE.

The feelings Gentiana and Drago have been building over the course of their time together come to a head, and the two begin a relationship, keeping it secret from both Somnus and Gilgamesh.

1997 AE.

Somnus proves himself to the Astrals, and is granted the Crystal by Bahamut.

December, 1996 AE.

Bahamut comes to Gentiana and informs her she must bear a child to continue the line of the Oracle, one that will be able to withstand the power of gods and wield his trident. He possesses Drago and eventually impregnates her, ensuring the Nox Fleuret line will hold the strength needed to work in tandem with the Chosen King. Although both Drago and Gentiana remain unaware of it, it was for this reason Bahamut blessed Drago, that he might be able to serve as a vessel and allow Bahamut to act on his desire.

April 1995 AE.

Drago and Gentiana are married in a highly publicised event, to both raise Tenebraen morale and avoid the possibility of the Nox Fleuret heir being born out of wedlock. As well as rings, more personal gifts are exchanged; Drago gifts Gentiana a handmade necklace fashioned in traditional Baloren style and Gentiana gifts Rhongomiant, a ceremonial trident crafted from meteor metal and starlight drawn from her own magic. While Drago does not use it in battle, it is blessed by the might of the Oracle that it’s wielder always be victorious in combat.

September, 1995 AE.

Calliope Nox Fleuret is born, sole daughter of Gentiana and future Oracle.

January, 1977 AE.

Her health degenerating following her many years of healing the Scourge, blinded, near robbed of her voice, and unable to walk without aid, Gentiana commits suicide by stabbing herself with a dagger and walking into a half-frozen river by a Glacian temple. She takes only Somnus with her, leaving Drago at Fenestala. Her body is not found until the river is thawed.

late February, 1977 AE.

Gentiana’s body is found. Drago learns she was last seen with Somnus and, incorrectly assuming her injuries to be the result of murder, challenges Somnus in a fit of mourning rage. Blinded by emotion, he is no match for the Founder King and is impaled through the heart by his own spear. In a fit of jealousy toward their relationship, Somnus disobeys Gentiana’s last wishes to have her Sword interred with her on his death and has Drago buried in an unmarked grave, far away from the Oracle’s tomb.

April, 1977 AE.

All of Tenebrae mourns the loss of their Oracle, with Somnus erecting statues of her in the Lucian Citadel. Drago’s fate is unknown, with rumours ranging from it being him who was responsible for Gentiana’s death to him abandoning his post and leaving Tenebrae to never return. By Somnus’ order, all mention of Drago is struck from official records, erasing the Sword of the Oracle from history; the title remains only in unofficial stories, tales of the First Oracle spread by word of mouth, and rumours there was once a Sword to match the King’s Shield. Even these rumours do not portray Drago positively; although uncertain, it is suggested in them that the Sword went mad, or murderous, or both, and the title was erased that such a tragedy may never repeat itself again.

1 ME.

Niflheim, Lucis, Accordo, and Tenebrae all elect to use the same calendar system.

September 4th, 731 ME.

Lunafreya Nox Fleuret is born. Shiva, in the guise of Gentiana and posing as a High Messenger, moves into Fenestala Manor.

732 ME.

Rumours circulating about a ghost in Tenebrae reach an all time high. Many believe it to be the ghost of King Mors, or a soldier from the annexing of Tenebrae in 349 ME.

744 ME. 

Fenestala Manor is attacked by Niflheim forces. Queen Sylva Nox Fleuret is killed and Ravus and Lunafreya fall into imperial custody.

745 ME.

Shiva’s giantess form is killed by Niflheim forces in Ghorovas Rift.

748 ME.

Lunafreya becomes the youngest Oracle in recorded history at 16.

17th May, 756 ME.

Insomnia falls and Noctis Lucis Caelum becomes the 114th King of Lucis.

[galfridus1]

First of all, congratulations! You deserve it 😊! Can I request 6 for Monspiet and younger Estarossa please, thank you! 😃

Thank you! And thank you for the ask Kat! And thanks for all your own work on this pair. I hope you like this.

Monspeet was sure something fishy was up. He had been bored that day so had gone for a stroll through the palace grounds, listening to the soothing wails of the hydra and counting the windows of the Demon King’s castle. And there were exactly forty-eight of them on the first floor. This had surprised him. Last he had visited the building interior he had only counted forty-two from the inside. So where were the missing six?

Lips pursed, Monspeet took a step closer, trying to figure out the lie of the land. The ones on the end, at the very easternmost edge of the palace appeared to belong to a self-contained annex. The windows were blacked out but that was not necessarily suspicious of course; there were plenty of rooms that required total darkness at all times in the demon realm. But nonetheless Monspeet got the feeling something was wrong. He stared upwards, eyes fixed on the panes, wondering what the Demon King was keeping secret behind them.

Well, he had nothing better to do so why not find out? The others were always telling him he was too curious for his own good but this was too intriguing to pass up. The question was, how to do it? Entry from the outside would surely be noticed, so Monspeet would have to try and find the way in from the inside. There must be one. Mind made up, the soldier started on his way towards the castle, his senses on full alert to ensure he was left alone. The realm was full to the brim with spies; the Demon King did not trust his people, not even his own sons, both of whom were kept under constant surveillance, though Meliodas and Zeldris could fend for themselves of course.

With a nonchalant wave to the guards, Monspeet made his way inside the castle, taking the central staircase up to the first floor. There were some benefits to being in training to join the elite Ten Commandments; it was gruelling work, the missions were of questionable validity and Meliodas was a hard task master, but it did open doors. Quite literally in this case. It would not be long now before he received his decree and he occasionally wondered which one he would get.

Quietly, doing his best not to draw any suspicion, Monspeet examined the paintings on the wall, his eye running over generals of old. The fashions of the realm had changed considerably, and it took a while as he walked down the hallways until he arrived at the familiar high collars which were popular in the present. He passed a few guards on patrol along the way, but they paid him no heed. This was unsurprising. Commandments were the highest ranked soldiers in the realm, apart from the princes and their tutors, and were generally left to themselves by all and sundry. It did get lonely sometimes; Monspeet had been courting a woman, sister of a fellow trainee, but he had seen her enthusiasm wane as his power expended. She herself was not of the bloodthirsty ilk.

He reached the end of the corridor and stopped, checking he was alone before starting his investigations. Close examination of the stonework confirmed his suspicions; the eastern wall of the castle had been built recently, likely in the last one hundred years or so. Something was definitely being hidden behind it, he just needed to discover what.

With great care, Monspeet began to tap lightly on the stones, listening for a change in the timbre of his knocks. It was cleverly done - the wall was protected with a magical barrier - but Monspeet could feel where the weakness was. Fingers grazing lightly over the stones, he searched for the opening, his hearts soaring with triumph as he pressed on a hidden switch and a door swung open. Looking inside, Monspeet could not but help shiver slightly; the room within was pitch black and carried the notable tang of pain and despair. A torture chamber perhaps? He told himself that, if so, it would do no harm to investigate further. He would ideally want to know about the place so that he could threaten the enemy with incarceration in the no doubt gruesome chambers. But as he entered the room, the atmosphere freezing his skin, he knew that this was not somewhere he should be exploring.

Eyes adjusting to the gloom, Monspeet stilled his breathing, treading on light feet to make as little noise as possible. This had always been a skill of his, the ability to move in silence. He wrapped his cloak more tightly around his frame to ward off the cold; it was absolutely freezing, and if there had been light enough Monspeet was sure he would have been able to see the steam of his breath.

“Who’s there?” a small voice called from the gloom and Monspeet nearly jumped out of his skin with the shock. Just a torture victim he told himself, forcing his feet to continue their path. Nothing to worry about. Whoever it is will be behind bars, or worse… The thought caused another chill to slide down his spine as he stepped closer towards the source of the noise.

All at once, he was in a large, well-lit chamber and Monspeet squinted involuntarily against the sudden onslaught of light. Shielding his eyes, he tried to make out the interior of the room, noting rich fabrics and ornate furniture. The room was warm and clean, but smelled slightly musty, as if no fresh air had been permitted entrance for several years. It took some seconds for Monspeet’s vision to become up to the task, at which point they focused on a small boy in the centre of a massive bed, an oversized jacket draped round his shoulders.

“Who are you?” the boy quavered, fear evident in every word that he spoke. “Has Meliodas sent you?”

Monspeet bit his lip at this. If the prince was involved he was out of his depth. Brain working furiously, the soldier tried to think of how best to respond in a way that could extricate himself from this situation.

“No… and best not mention my visit to him,” Monspeet murmured, forcing himself to meet the boy’s eyes. They were the familiar coal black of the rest of his clan, but try as he might to sense it there was no sign of power. This was highly unusual; occasionally demons were born without magic or strength but it was extremely rare, and the children were invariably terminated at an early age for their own benefit. Weakness was not tolerated in the demon realm. “It was a mistake for me to come here, I merely took a wrong turn. If you will excuse me, I will trespass on your time no longer.”

The boy giggled, his face lighting up in an instant and Monspeet felt his chest squeeze. It was a gentle sound, one devoid of the usual cruelty, and it warmed his soul. “I know that’s tosh,” the boy blurted put through his laughter, “there rooms are really well hidden. No one wants…” The boy broke off, biting his lip and Monspeet suddenly felt an overwhelming pity swell in his breast.

“Please, stay for a bit,” the boy murmured. “Mel does his best but it’s really lonely here. He can’t see me that often, he’s so busy. He’s leading the war you know!” he finished proudly.

“Who are you?” Monspeet asked gently, moving closer to the boy, noting with shock the royal insignia on his clothing and his striking resemblance to his future leader. Even the hair was the same, two unruly strands sticking out of the top of his head. “You… you can’t be…”

“I’m Estarossa,” the boy said with a grin, “Meliodas’s younger brother. But I have to stay here,” he added regretfully. “I have no power you see, not yet, but I’m working on it!” he protested and Monspeet cursed himself. Obviously the horror he felt was showing plain on his face.

“Mel says once my power is awakened I can come out for real,” Estarossa continued, his eyes shining with his enthusiasm. “He takes me up to Britannia sometimes, but I’m not allowed out here. He says…” Estarossa halted, his eyes suddenly wary as he looked closely at Monspeet. “You’re not here to kill me are you?”

“N-no,” Monspeet stuttered, his hearts squeezing in his chest as the boy visibly relaxed. “But your brother is right,” he added thoughtfully, suddenly seeing the lie of the land. The boy was evidently shut up for his own protection. “You would likely be killed if you were found in the demon realm.”

“That’s what Mel said.” Estarossa sighed, his eyes cast down towards the velvet coverlet. “I knew he wasn’t lying. He never does.” Monspeet practically chewed his lip off at this; the one thing the General was known for was his ability to play fast and loose with the truth.

“I… I have to go, sorry,” Monspeet murmured, rushing on as Estarossa’s face fell, “we’ll both be in trouble if I’m found here.”

“You’ll come back and see me again?” Estarossa said timidly, his voice very small. “It really is lonely and you’ve been so nice.” Against his better judgement Monspeet managed a nod and a slight bow before taking his leave. Power or not this boy was part of the royal family, and was his liege by birth. He practically ran back through towards the castle, his breath coming quick in his haste; he no longer wanted to hide, he wanted to leave. Relief washed over him as the gloom subsided and the light of the castle came into view.

“Monspeet! What a pleasant surprise!” His hearts sank to his boots as he looked at the boy, so similar in features to the one he had just left. But this one was different, power rolling from him in waves, the mark of his accomplishment emblazoned on his forehead. He was done now; no way the General would permit this transgression to go unpunished.

Monspeet was just deciding whether to surrender or fight when Meliodas let out a bark of laughter. “You have found out my family’s secret. Now why would you do that? I told you that curiosity of yours would be your undoing.

“Well, you’re in real trouble this time,” Meliodas continued, his eyes narrowed to slits. “Father will not permit you to walk free with the knowledge of what you have seen. But don’t worry, your training is nearly complete. You are a valuable asset to the war, and I think I see a solution. I know a way to ensure your eternal silence.”

With that Monspeet allowed the prince to lead him away, fingers digging tightly into his elbow as they headed towards the Demon King’s throne room.