#those panels where she thanks him for calling out her husband on his behavior and we see the look on ryou's face. ugh.

[helmetjellyfish]

there wasn’t a convenient way to put this on my last post, but ryou notably refers to his mom as ママ (“mama”), as opposed to お母さん (“okaa-san”) or 母さん (“kaa-san”) which mahiro and koutarou use respectively when speaking to their mothers. it’s the same as what nagisa uses for nagiko and carries a more familiar/childish connotation.

[apocalypticgargoyle]

Dream smut or fluff where reader and him are high key mean to eachotjer despite having so many mutual friends, but then something (very vague i know I’m sorry) makes them have to get close and the develop feelings? Sorry I’m shit at requests but thank you!!!

i know this is shitty im sorry akjsdh bls forgive me

𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐕𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐑. ♘ 𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

± warnings: dream being a dick, slight slut shaming, toxic behavior, vulgar/suggestive mentions and language, sexual harassment on a bus (not by dream, you can breathe)

⋆ song recommendation: When the Night is Over by Lord Huron

You pulled a blanket beneath your chin, yawning slightly at whatever the tv was playing. You only had it on in an attempt to drown out the noises coming from your roommate's bedroom as she smoozed her date. You were honestly shocked the two hadn’t moved in together yet with all the time they spent wrapped up.

Her door opened, her eyes widening slightly at the sight of you sprawled out on the couch. He marched toward you quietly, hovering over your shoulder. You peered up at her hesitantly. “What are you watching?” She asked, voice barely above a whisper. You furrowed your brows, opening your mouth to speak but she hurriedly cut you off. “Do you mind watching it at Nick’s instead?”

You raised your eyebrows. “You’re kicking me out again?” She gave you an apologetic smile, making you roll your eyes as you stood up and pulled on your jacket. “This would hurt less if they also paid rent,” you mumbled, with a small glare.

She thanked you repeatedly, holding onto your arm as you gathered what little belongings you needed for the night. “I promise I’ll make it up to you,” she courted, opening the door for you. “Tomorrow, dinner’s on me okay?” You sent her a tired look and she apologized again. She stopped you as you stepped out into the cold night, leaning through the space between the door and the frame. “Maybe you can cozy up to that Clay guy? You guys have such a good vibe,” she mocked, making you chuckle lightly.

You shook your head, waving to her. “Enjoy your night. Please, for the love of God, clean the bathroom afterward,” you called, hearing her laugh at your statement.

The bus ride was quiet due to the time of night and the weather, both of which you didn’t mind. You knew Nick’s house would be warm and loud. Before you knew it, you found yourself in front of his apartment door, kicking at the concrete ground as you heard someone stumbling to let you inside. The door opened swiftly, Clay’s large frame blocking the light from the kitchen. He leaned against the doorframe mockingly as he looked at you.

He wet his lips. “Who’s the lucky guy tonight?” He joshed.

You rolled your eyes, brushing past his body to get out of the cold. “Whoever’s dick you’re not sucking, I guess,” you quipped back, making him laugh darkly. You kicked off your shoes as he shut the door. “Where’s Sapnap?” You asked, shrugging off your jacket. You’d texted him ahead of time to ask if you could stay over, which he readily agreed to.

Clay sent you a smug look. “You guys have a fun night planned?” He made a gesture with his hand to insinuate you were there to give Nick a handjob.

You bit back a chuckle. “Why? You wanna join?” You shot back. He bit his lip and moaned pornographically.

“Cut it out, Dream,” Nick grumbled as he walked into the room. He pulled on your arm to follow him.

Dream scoffed exasperatedly. “Me? I’m not the one who started it!” He called after the two of you.

As Nick pushed you out of the room, you turned your head. “You most certainly did!” You answered. You heard him chuckle at your words as Nick shut the door to his room. You plopped down on his bed as he sat in his chair, swiveling to look at you. “Why does Dream pick at me so much?” You mumbled, fishing in your pockets for your phone.

“He’s jealous,” Nick answered absent-mindedly. “What's the date look like tonight?” He asked, referring to the reason you were there in the first place. This wasn’t the first time or the last time your roommate had kicked you out. It was becoming a more frequent occurrence for you to end up on Nick’s couch or at their place in the middle of the day with your toothbrush and a change of clothes.

You moved to lean into his pillows. “I don’t know, it's the same granola fucker she’s been hanging around,” you answered.

He rubbed his chin with a slight smirk. “There’s a subtle justice to knowing she’s still with that asshat,” he commented, making you snort.

A week later, you were on your way back to your apartment after a lecture when someone felt you up. It was the straw on the camel’s back for you as you spin around to smack the guy, stirring up a few of the bystanders. You’d walked the rest of the way home, stepping through the door to be met with your roommate and her hookup twisted together in the kitchen.

You clamped your hand over your eyes, mumbling about how you just wanted to take a nap when you were once again sent to Nick’s. You let subtle tears fall as you trudged your way across the city, hoping to get out whatever darkness you had to your attitude. The last thing you wanted to do was confront Clay looking like you did. He was like the troll with the keys to the bridge. That was really the only reason the two of you ever talked, so you knew he’d be waiting to berate you before you could get to Nick.

As you walked into the building, you spotted Clay carrying a large box, his hair slightly disheveled and his hands dirty. You knew almost instantly that he was probably attempting to fix the kitchen sink and got a call because of the size of the package. That sink had been dripping since they’d moved in, making it Clay’s mission to futz around with it every Friday afternoon. You tried helping him one time, only ending up with a deflated sense of confidence and the second wave of your childhood anger issues.

He nodded at you as you held the elevator door open for him. “What’s up, babycakes?” He chirped, popping his gum. When you hesitated to answer, he looked at you fully, scoffing. “Damn, walk of shame gone sour?”

You crossed your arms over your chest, inhaling deeply to try and calm your nerves. “I’m not really in the mood today,” you muttered, tucking your hands between your back and the wall.

He snorted, setting the box down between his feet. “You’re always in the mood! Isn’t that like your thing,” he continued to jeer. “You look like you had a fun night though-”

“Clay, stop. I’m serious,” barked at him. His expression twisting at your use of his name.

He raised his hands in mock defense. “Sorry, I thought we had---like a bit thing, um-” he cut himself off, awkwardly shoving his fists in his pockets. After a beat of silence between the two of you, the elevator came to a sharp halt on the wrong floor, the light switching to red. The two of you shared a look, knowing that the landlord was probably flipping the wrong switches again. Clay texted Nick to see what was going on.

It began to grow colder in the elevator, as it usually did. When it was off, the cold from outside usually seeped in through the elevator shaft. There was one time you were stuck in the elevator for a few hours with one of your neighbors and Karl when he had come to visit. Back then, the three of you played Uno on the guy’s phone. It was also summer, so the chill creeping up your legs wasn’t as intolerable as it was now.

You rubbed the arms of your sweater in hopes of generating some kind of warmth. Clay watched you carefully, his hands moving to grip the bar behind him. “Do you want my sweatshirt?” He offered. You shook your head, sliding onto the ground and hugging your knees to your chest. He hesitantly slumped down beside you, kicking his long legs out towards the door. The red light filling the space made his features look softer.

He nudged your arm gently with his own. “I know I’m not Sapnap, but…” he chewed on the inside of his cheek, shrugging slightly, “I mean, we’re stuck in here. We can talk about it.”

You blinked away the tears threatening to spill once again, your eyes burning and tired. “I haven’t slept with him, you know?” You stated, turning to look at him briefly before moving to sit cross-legged, planning with your fingers. “I’ve never even kissed him. I’ve never kissed anyone,” you scoffed. Clay was silent, but out of the corner of your eye, you could see him watching you intently.

Being this close to him, you could smell the smoky vanilla undertones of his cologne. The scent reminded you of a masculine version of the candle your aunt always burned when she went out for a night to spite her ex-husband.

Clay leaned his head back against the wood paneling, his soft blond hair flattening in the back to spread against the wall. You swallowed, sighing slightly. “I haven’t even had my first kiss yet and I’m getting groped on the bus and kicked out of my damn apartment because my roommate and her fucking boyfriend have to hook up on every surface. Nothing is sacred.” You shook your head, wiping away some stray tears with the back of your hand and sniffling pathetically. “You can keep making slut jokes, I don’t care. But I swear to God, I haven’t done anything with Sapnap. Or Karl, or Quackity. No one.”

He chuckled softly. “I know. That’s why I used to make those jokes,” he mumbled. “It was like… ironic humor. And then it got so far that the only way I knew you’d talk back to me was if I was fucking around with you,” he admitted. You chuckled slightly at his words, taking a deep breath.

“Oh, Dream,” you sighed. “I would have hooked up with you if you weren’t such an ass,” you chided. His laugh made you feel better. He held his hand out to you, more for support than anything, but as you laced your fingers with his, your heart eased, feeling safe beside him.

After a beat of silence, he spoke up again. "I can ride the bus with you now... if you want..." He offered, a shyness that seemed so foreign to his character shown through his eyes. "I promise I won't grope you," he joshed, making you roll your eyes.

"That's really not something we should be joking about," you mumbled, wiping away the rest of your tears on your sleeve.

His thumb brushed against the back of your hand soothingly. "I mask my awkwardness around you in dark humor. I'm sorry."

[beautifulterriblequeen]

Impressions from TTM

Spoilers, spoilers everywhere. Just a big bulleted list of thoughts as I read through the graphic novel. Not a lot of detail included, so it’ll make a lot more sense if you’ve already read it yourself!

looks like Moonshadow elves cross the arms of the dead... when they have a body to bury

it’s nice to see that Rayla imagines Runaan with all his shirts, the way she last saw him

kinda looks like Rayla changed into her jammies right on her bed and dumped her clothes on that little table. maybe she’s afraid of letting the few things she actually possesses out of her sight

listen we get one little panel of Opeli in here and it’s great

Soren’s cape smacking Callum in the face, 10/10

Lujanne’s appearance out of nowhere, along with Allen’s is just adorable, she’s so sparkly. And also she can apparently just turn totally invisible with an illusion spell? Even at a new moon? Probably because of the Nexus I guess

Lujanne’s “Big strong man with big strong feelings.” She and Runaan have exactly the same type and I support them

Allen’s face when Lujanne says it aches to miss Phoe-Phoe

Callum eating off Rayla’s plate and wondering how Lujanne suspected they were a couple, hmmm

Soren and Allen bonding

Rayla warning Lujanne about hand disguises, as if that was something Runaan made very sure she knew

Rayla’s cute chaos grin when Callum’s Aspiro spell goes off is my favorite pic of her in this whole graphic novel

Lujanne’s “Oh.” afterward is my fave pic of her, too, she does not seem to handle reality well!

Bait’s tongue will never get old

Lujanne’s whole speech during Phoe-Phoe’s rebirth ritual is so touching and beautiful, my heart

Lujanne putting the newborn Moon Phoenix into Ezran’s hands, like she knows he’ll have the best connection with her

Callum’s tears as he reminds Rayla that Runaan killed Harrow, he’s trying to move on, but it hurts

Rayla’s self-soothing behavior when she has her second nightmare in the book--she must have these most every night :((((

the big symbol on the Moon Temple doors looks like a stylized Moon staff, like it’s a building for mages

Lujanne saying Rayla might not want or need the truth right after Callum mentions Runaan’s name to her, he sassily asks about her husbands and she turns it into a compliment

Callum’s big reaction to the moon opals is adorable. The only other one he’s seen was part of a pair of treasured gifts between long-time spouses, so it kinda looks like he’s all “uhh we just started dating”

also Ethari must’ve made cute metal swirly covers for the pair he and Runaan wore, since these two are undecorated--maybe he got his from Lujanne?

listen Lujanne is a hoot and all but she’s both an ally and an antagonist. Her actions are trustworthy but her advice is generally terrible. It’s an interesting parallel to how Runaan says a lot with his actions too, but he talks a lot less than Lujanne

Rayla yeeting herself into a fight just to ask Soren for a talk is 10/10 Moonshadow assassin goals

but her hood is up when she’s lurking in the trees--she might not have known where she’d find Soren and was anticipating something less fun on the feels-o-meter

Rayla in the mud again. Soren keeps making people fall in the mud

Allen’s grumpy squiggle

Callum, I love you, but you have no respect for moon opals. It’s like they wronged you in a previous life or something

that dancing elf has very long hair and shoulder pauldrons, and they start off dancing with six kneeling, watching, hooded elves around them--Moon Druids wore hoods even before they were assassins. Considering what Lujanne said about why the portal was sometimes opened, maybe those six kneeling elves are waiting under their emotion-hiding hoods to farewell a loved one who’s recently died?

can’t tell for sure but maybe the elf is dancing along the lines in the stone like they mark patterns for ritual dances, which would be the bomb

Soren and Rayla’s conversation is pretty wrenching. Seeing Soren have to struggle with what he did because it’s tangled up with Viren is rough because as a Crownguard it should just have been his duty to defend his king and he’d have nothing to feel weird about

Rayla dissociating herself from the term “assassins” and Soren dissociating from calling Viren “my father” in the same conversation is 10/10 excellent growth

Soren must know what happens to prisoners his dad gets a hold of, even if he doesn’t know the details :(((

“we captured him” and “Viren took him” seem to be talking about the Crownguard and Viren, not the brodigies and Viren

Rayla having a wooden sword at the end of the day bc she played swordfighting with Allen and Soren all day long

the panel where Rayla doesn’t say anything at all after telling Callum that she asked Soren about Runaan actually says so much, you can hear it

every time Lujanne’s white lies idea gets repeated, things get worse

Allen’s reading glasses, there must be one optician in the human village and he caters to soft kindly gentlemen of a certain age

in the moon phase montage, baby Phoe-Phoe is flying next to Ezran after one week at the Nexus. Maybe he’s paying her back by helping her learn to fly after she helped him teach Zym how to fly! Did they bond as tightly as Ezran did with Zym? I support Ezran just bonding with the most powerful flying creatures in all the land.

the irony of Callum using Lujanne’s tactics against her is amazing, but really the white lies thing is a giant ball of chaos in this story and it does not play favorites

Bait on the stone pillar during rebuilding

all the noises the Moonhenge makes are 10/10

Rayla dancing with Callum even though there’s almost no chance she’s ever done that dance before

Lujanne’s pupils going white, that is a cool effect, what’s it mean?

the black moon in the pink sky is so spooky! Is it just me or does the color scheme here kinda vibe like the space outside Aaravos’s library?

the smoky assassin squad, 10/10 creep factor, I love it

the lightning being a literal crack of doom with “CRAK-DOOM” as Katolis Castle appears, “echoes of thunder” indeed, very nice

Lujanne being mad but she can’t decide if it’s at Callum or herself

when she says pulling Rayla out now will leave her soul on one side and her body a husk. After the Insta live stream last night where we learned that soulfang serpents are Moon primal creatures, that’s... super interesting

smoky assassins go tssh in the rain like they’re still hot from being cremated, thanks I hate it

Andromeda finds Rayla first and seems closest/most aggressive so I wonder why she might hate Rayla more than the others

the assassins’ wrist bindings have gone red but they’re still attached and seem to trap the souls where they are. But all they need to be free is to perceive that Rayla completed their task, even though we know otherwise. So... would that work for killing any target? If you’re certain that you did it, does your binding fall off even if you’re wrong? eyes Pip

this must not be the actual afterlife since the spirits kind of mist up toward the moon and vanish, it’s more like a lobby, no one stays here unless they get stuck

portaling around just by shouting at villains, excellent

Rayla literally dropping a sword at the sight of the pod Viren’s in, yeah, it’s that creepy, I agree

Viren’s eyes are so black I think they’re Aaravos’s. I got a whole headcanon on Good Viren and Evil Viren for S4 now, wow

Phoe-Phoe pulling out a feather for Callum, awww my heart! This is why Ezran had to come, to bond with her so together they could save Callum and Rayla, it’s so sweet

so these humans are from the Storm Spire battle, bc that’s the Storm Spire behind Rayla and Callum on p108, with the rune-written arch. Did they die hating Rayla and Callum from the battle? Did they even know Rayla was up there? Or is pod Viren/Aaravos actually making them attack out of hatred for Viren’s death? One of these is definitely creepier and more awesome

Rayla’s confidence that Callum can and will boost her at the right moment with his magic, my heart, I love battle couples

that one panel that mirrors the Ghost Feather key art, hhhhhh

Rayla being the better swimmer, such precious irony, thanks Runaan

them holding hands and swimming upward together on the full-page panel is blessed

Lujanne pulling Rayla out of the lake with both arms gives me feels bc my grandma saved my life once

Lujanne being super soft over Rayllum, she is indeed a hopeless romantic

Rayla says “gone” about her parents and Runaan, and that’s the word Ethari used too, and I’m suddenly wondering if Ethari reached right into that pool and has always known that the lotus is half-submerged and if the sword he’s been making is for himself

I’m so glad Rayla told Callum what she saw of Viren

Rayla deceiving Callum and heading into danger alone because his life is more valuable to her than her own is exactly what Runaan did for her the night of the full moon in Katolis. I’m leaning toward her having thought this over and doing it on purpose bc she believes it’s a sign of deepest love--that Runaan’s actions and Lujanne’s words match up in her head, so she thinks it’s the right thing to do bc the mage and the assassin agree. Alas, Callum doesn’t understand the Moon arcanum yet, so he will have a different opinion. That mage and that assassin do not agree!

Rayla’s cloak has that Moon Temple symbol on its back. Is it Lujanne’s cloak? Any Moonshadow who sees it will probably know where she got it and who helped her. That could be fun!

[queenieschronicles]

Vide Cor Meum V

Thomas Shelby x Reader

Summary: What would a man do to protect his family, wealth, and business? Marry his daughter off to Birmingham’s most ambitious: Thomas Shelby.

Word Count: 906

Warnings: N/A

A/N: My work has always been for fun and it has been a release for me. I'm sorry for the hiatus and wait, but I hope you enjoy. 

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part VI

Light saturated the once dark room. Crystal shards, the pieces of a once beautiful vase, cast a rainbow on the wooden panels. This was the evidence of a night that would have rather been forgotten.

You groaned. Could time momentarily pause? A break is all you required. Perhaps, it could allot you just enough time to wake up refreshed. Perhaps, you could have just enough time to put your life back together.

Instead, you rolled over and took control of time yourself. You pulled a pillow over your head and squeezed your eyes shut.

The ahem of one Madame Mary caused you to lift your head.

"Ah, Mary, how can I assist you this morning?" You cast her a tart smile.

"I'm too clean up the glass, ma'am."

Short. You were almost a tad disappointed that Mary would not stoop to your exhausted pettiness. Very well, she could remain cordial and monotone.

 "Thank you, Mary. If you would be so kind, throw the shades over the window before you go." Your wrist rolled as you motioned to the window.

Before you could roll back over, Mary interjected," Mr.Shelby demands your presence in the dining room, madame. Breakfast is being served."

Relieving some of your sudden irritation with a sigh, you smiled," Right away. Thank you, Mary."

You took your time in the bathroom. You looked worn and brittle. It was off-putting. What would mother say?

You refreshed yourself with some makeup and a freshly pressed dress. It would take a lot more than last night to make you admit physical defeat in front of Thomas.

You burst into the dining area with exuberance. You wore a convincing smile that fell flat when you saw you were the only one in the room. So much for surprising the hell out of Thomas.

Once again, he'd drained the air from her balloon. She couldn't very well be smug and throw her "beauty sleep" in his face if he wasn't there. After all, she hadn't seen him since she left him in his study.

A maid flurried in to collect the remnants of Mr. Shelby's breakfast.

"Excuse me, where is Thomas?" You asked kindly.

The young lady jumped into position. She blushed,"Ma'am, Mr. Shelby is preparing the car to leave."

Leave? Where on earth could he be going?

"Shall I fetch you breakfast, Mrs.Shelby?" You dismissed her with a wave.

He stood next to his 1927 Bentley running discourse with a man you'd never seen. He was greying and had leathery skin. He had a distinct scar running down his brow that you could make out. 

Thomas dismissed him when he saw you appear from the house. You couldn't make the license plate of the car he drove, but you made sure to watch him as he faded away down the drive.

"Going on a trip, darling?" You were short and sour. You felt so out of control with him - hot and cold, unyielding to his stormy weather. All he had to do was apologize. Make amends. Come talk to you, it was as simple as that.

"Darling? I rather like that." He smirked. It was as if nothing rocked his composure. You had done it before, but you wished you didn't have to work so hard. He was a lot tougher than those preppy lads they bred in Highbury.

You tried not to betray your aggravation.

"I'll be back in due time. Do take care of yourself, love." He squeezed your shoulder gently. 

You looked in disbelief. You couldn't even utter your protests.

He fixed his hat on his head and slid onto the upholstery.

"Where are you going, Thomas?" You dropped your pride and haughty attitude. You'd just gotten married and your husband was leaving with nare a destination named.

Thomas began his vehicle and smiled at you calmly," I'll be back."

"When? What will I do if the doors are left open again? What if I see that man again?" You shot back rapdily.

His smile faltered. Confusion and then clarity crossed his face like the passing of a shadow. "You mean Elliot? And what rapidly.

You paused," The cellar doors.. That was how Elliot got in.. But no.." You looked around the yard suspiciously. " I saw something. A man perhaps when I saw Elliot off. I didn't really see -"

"So, you didn't see a man? Will you do everything to hinder me?" Thomas shook his head disconcertingly.

Immediately, your temper burst. "Must you always take me for a child, Thomas? Forget it. Leave. I don't care if you come back at all." You turned on your heels and stalked off.

"Remember - no more Elliot." He called after you. He calmed shortly thereafter. He hated that you brought the childish behavior out of him. He watched you with a heavy gaze.

You'd only press the issues more if he told you. Instead, he stepped out of his vehicle and lent a serious message to the stable boy.

You watched as Thomas Shelby drove away.

Everyday, you'd check back at the window to catch a glimpse of him. He never came.

One week.

Two weeks.

Three.

Finally, a car pulled into the drive.

You stood with a simper.

He met you at the door with a cavalier grin. "I told you that you'd forgive me."

You grabbed him by the hand," Elliot.. you know I could never be away from you for too long."

[a-winchester-fairytale]

Killing Christmas

Summary: The brothers pick up a case where 5 murders occurred in one night at a Christmas party.  The case turns personal when Dean and Y/N become victims of the supernatural and time is running out.

Word Count: 3,309

Warnings: Canon Violence, mention of murders and suicide, relationship fighting, anger, angst

A/N:  This was written for @katymacsupernatural Christmas Gone Wrong challenge.  I appreciate the extra time to get this finished.  I hope you enjoy how it turned out.  I also included a prompt in bold for @winchesterprincessbride "Jen Says What" Challenge.  As I was writing this story I thought the two of them fit perfect together.

Please feel free to let me know what you think.

“And you think this is a case?”  Dean asked Sam, pulling the laptop screen to face him.  Sam shrugged.

“We have looked into less.”  He answered simply.  Dean pursed his lips and looked through the article on the screen.  You let your hands slide down around his neck to the center of his chest as you bent down to read over his shoulder.

“Five girls killed their significant others at a Christmas party on the same night, and they can’t see any other connection between them?  If that isn’t a case of supernatural interference, it must have been one hell of a party.”  You teased, kissing Dean on the check before standing back up.

“Okay, let’s check it out.”  Dean agreed, shoving the computer back to his brother.

Four hours later, the three of you unloaded your bags into the Blue Elves Motel in Rockville, Minnesota. 

  “Why don’t you and Dean go talk to the home owner?  I’m going down to the sheriff’s office to see if I can get any more information from them.”  Sam suggested.

You and Dean pulled up to a two story home in a nice upscale neighborhood.  A police tape was still hanging over the edge of the front door, but workers were starting to resume their normal duties.  You followed Dean up to the house, noticing a van parked around the side of the property with Rockville Décor written on the side panel.

“Good afternoon.  My name is Dean Weston and this is my partner Y/N.”  Dean began, holding up his FBI badge for the maid to see.  “Can we please speak with the owner of the house?”

The maid nodded, stepping aside to allow the two of you access to the foyer.  Within moments a woman in her early 40’s stepped into the room and greeted you both.  You engaged Mrs. Follen in the details of the night of her annual Christmas party while Dean glanced around, keeping one ear open to what she was saying.

“It was just like any other night, until about 11:00 and then I heard screaming near the bar area.”  She began, leading you both into a den with an old mahogany bar in the far corner.  “When I came in, I saw our neighbor stabbing her husband in the chest with a serving knife over there.  Next to the patio doors, my husband work colleague had used a broken bottle to cut her fiancé’s throat.  There was blood everywhere and people were running away, practically trampling each other.  It was horrible.”  She continued, obviously shaken.

You watched as Dean looked around the end of the bar where the first victim was killed, running his hand along the edge of the wood and taking a mental inventory of the bottles behind the counter.

“I told the bartender to call 911, and by the time the police arrived, three more people were killed.  One was lying face down in the pool out back, drown.  Another was pushed down the stairs in the foyer and broke his neck.  The last was run over on the front lawn.”  Mrs. Follen told you, her hand pointing at the door and then falling weakly by her side.  She closed her eyes and shook her head like she was trying to remove the pictures from her mind, but you knew that she would be living with those images for a long time to come.

“I’m so sorry you have to go through this again.”  You offered, sympathetically touching her hand.  She took a deep breath and nodded.  “Can you remember anything else right before that happening?  Any strange behavior in any of the guests, strange smells, or cold spots where there shouldn’t be?”  You prompted.

“No, nothing comes to mind.  There were so many people here that night that I barely had a chance to stand still though.”

“What about the servants?”  Dean asked, coming closer to where the two of you stood.  “Did you hire outside help that would have had access to the food, drinks, etc that you wouldn’t normally have here?”

“Do you think this was poison?”  She asked instead of answering.

“We just want to be sure to cover all the bases.”  Dean replied.

“Well, I hire a catering company to help with the oeuvres and servers, but I have used that same company for years.”  She replied.  “I could get you their card if that would help.”

“Thank you.”  You answered.  Mrs. Follen went to the desk drawer and pulled out a business card from the top, handing it back to you.

“Mrs. Follen, we are almost ready for the tree.  Where would you like us to put your personal ornaments?”  A young man asked.

“Please excuse me for a moment.”  She said, following him back out into the foyer.

“You’re thinking witches, aren’t you?”  You asked when she was out of hearing range.  Dean shrugged, his brow scrunching up at the thought.

“It would make the most sense, but I haven’t found any hex bags anywhere.” He answered.  “I hate witches.”  He mumbled and you laughed.

“If there is a witch, I don’t think it is her.  She seems genuinely upset about the whole thing.”  You told him, glancing back over your shoulder when you heard footsteps approaching.

“Hey, check this out.”  Dean exclaimed, taking your hand and pulling you to him as he smiled and pointed up at the doorway.

You glanced up to see mistletoe hanging above and shook your head.  “Come on, Dean.  Be serious.”  You whispered.

“I am.  It’s supposed to be good luck, ya know.  I think we could all use a little good luck with this one.”  He added, leaning toward you.  With one more quick glance over your shoulder to make sure Mrs. Follen hadn’t returned, you smiled and kissed Dean.

“Only you would find this romantic.”  You teased him, giving him one more peck on the lips before stepping away, letting your hand gently slip out of his.  Dean just chuckled.

Within moments Mrs. Follen returned to join you both.  “I apologize.  The Rockville Décor company arrived just before you came to collect their Christmas decorations that they set up for the party.  I should have returned them yesterday, but the police wouldn’t allow anyone to move anything until they had finished taking pictures.” She rambled a bit.

“I understand.  We will let you get back to your work.”  You told her.  “This is my card if you think of anything else, please don’t hesitate to call.”

She followed you both to the door and thanked you again before the two of you walked back to the impala.

Sam adjusted the edges of his jacket before stepping into the station and asking to speak with the Sherriff.  A man 20 years his elder stepped out of the office as soon as he heard Sam introduce himself as FBI and waved Sam into the office.

“For once, I can honestly say I’m glad to see the FBI come in on a case.  I’m Sherriff Harper.  This one is a weird one.”  He began as he shuffled some papers away to make room for Sam to sit down.

“Oh, yeah?  How so?”

“Well, for starters, who kills their significant other at a Christmas party I ask you?”  The Sherriff said as Sam sat down across from his desk.  “We can’t make hide nor hair of it.  This kind of thing just doesn’t happen in Rockville.”

“The report I read said that you couldn’t find any connection between the victims.”  Sam lead the conversation and the Sherriff shook his head.  He took off his hat and laid it down on the desk, running a shaky hand through his hair.

“No sir.  Not a one.”  He replied.  “Two of the couples are in their 50’s, both married, but one lives here and the other lives about two hours away and didn’t know anyone except the host.  There was a coworker’s son, who brought his fiancé to the party, then there’s the neighbor’s teenage son who brought his girlfriend that he had been dating for a few months, and last we have the couple that apparently met at the party and didn’t know each other before that night.”  Sherriff Harper explained, laying out the folders for each of the victims in front of Sam as he did.

“And what about the women?  Did they say anything to you or the arresting officers?”

“No one said a word that I know of.  They just sat down next to the body and didn’t move until the officers came and put them in handcuffs.”  He said, once more shaking his head and brushing his hair back.

“I’d like to talk with them, just to see if I can get any further information from them.”  Sam replied after looking through the files. 

“Didn’t they tell you?”  Sherriff Harper asked, surprised.  Sam raised his eyebrows and tilted his head.

“Tell me what?”  He asked, hesitantly.

“They are all dead.”  Sherriff Harper stated bluntly.  “That’s the weirdest part of the whole thing.  It was like they combusted on the inside or something.  Coroner said their insides just burnt up.  I heard of being mad, but never so mad you set your insides ablaze.”

The three of you pored over the files and lore books you had brought with you to the motel room, but none of them had given any clues as to what could have caused this.  After describing what the Sherriff had told him, Sam left no doubt in either of you that he had been correct about this being a case.

Occasionally you and Dean would bicker about something to do with the case.  The longer the three of you did research, the more annoyed you got with everything Dean did or said.  Convinced it was just being cooped up and frustrated about not finding any answers, you finally declared you were taking a break to shower and change clothes for the night.

“Well, I knew the honeymoon phase couldn’t last forever.”  Sam mumbled.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, you two have be nauseatingly happy all the time.  Relationships just don’t work that way.  People bicker occasionally.”  Sam explained, to which Dean simply rolled his eyes.

“And what makes you the expert?”  He asked bitterly.

Sam just turned away and went back to his computer.  He knew Dean was only sulking and no amount of talking would change that.  The only thing that could fix his sour mood at this point was for the two of you to make up.

“I’m going to go get us some dinner and bring it back.  When she gets out of the shower, be nice.”  Sam warned him.  Dean rolled his eyes but threw his keys to Sam instead of flinging another sarcastic retort.

When Sam returned to the hotel, he was shocked to hear yelling coming from the hotel room the three of you rented.  He glanced around, grabbing his gun and headed toward the door.  When he heard a crashing sound, he burst through the door, his gun raised in defense. 

“Whoa!”  He heard Dean exclaim, holding up his hands as you lifted up a chair above you head to throw at him.  “What the hell has gotten into you?”

“Y/N?”  Sam said, putting his gun down and grabbing the chair from your hands just before you could swing at Dean.  He grabbed your arms and you struggled against Sam, yelling at him to let you go.  “Dean, what did you do?”  Sam asked, holding you down.

“I don’t know.  We were fine one minute and then we started bickering about stupid crap and she just started that.”  Dean said, anger and confusion in his voice.

“I want to throat-punch you so bad right now.”  You screamed at Dean over Sam’s shoulder. 

“Go ahead, Sweetheart.”  Dean challenged.

“Not helping.”  Sam told him.  “Just go for a drive or something, Dean.”

Dean scoffed, but jerked the keys out of Sam’s hand and stormed out of the door.  Sam turned, grabbing you by the shoulders and forcing you to sit down on the edge of the bed.  You tried to calm down, but your blood was still boiling and all you could think about was going after Dean.

“And, you….what is going on around here?”  Sam was asking you, trying to make you talk to him.

“I don’t, I don’t know.  I just can’t stop being angry.”  You stammered, your eyes pleading with Sam to help you as you looked up into his face.  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me Sam.  All I know is, and I can’t even believe I’m saying this, but I want to hurt him, like really physically hurt him.  I can’t make it stop.”

“Okay, you have to tell me what happened when the two of you went to that house.  Tell me everything.”  Sam insisted.

You took a deep breath and rubbed the tears from your eyes as your heart rate started to slow down.   You felt Sam timidly start to relax his hold on you, obviously unsure how much control you had over your actions. 

“She led us through the house to the bar room telling us what happened that night, pretty much the same stuff she told the police beforehand.  I kept asking her questions and Dean searched for hex bags or anything out of place.  That’s it.  There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary that we could find.”  You explained.

“Was anyone else there?”

“Just some people picking up the Christmas decorations – some company called…..Rockville Décor.”  You replied, slowly remembering the name painted on the side of the van.

“Can I trust you to stay here?”  Sam asked you.  You nodded.

Dean pulled up to the front of what looked like a storage facility and put the impala in park.  Sam climbed out of the passenger seat and Dean followed behind him.  The bell on the front door signaled their arrival and a teenage girl promptly appeared behind the counter to greet them.

“What can I do for you?”  She asked, her gum smacking as she looked them over.

“I’m Sam and this is my partner Dean.  We are with the FBI and we need to speak with the owner.”  Sam replied as they both flashed their badges.

“You’re going to need a lot more than that badge if you want to talk to the owner.”  She replied mildly sarcastic.

“Like what?”  Dean challenged.

“Like a Ouija board.”  She smarted back at him.  “She died, bout a month ago.”

“Son of a bitch.”  Dean muttered under his breath and Sam shot him a reprimanding look. 

“Mind if I ask how she died?” 

“Well….”  The girl began, glancing around to make sure no one else was inside before continuing.  “She locked herself and her husband’s lover in the house and set it on fire around them.” 

“Really.”  Sam stated thoughtfully.  ”That explains why the women died the way they did.”  He whispered to Dean.

“I always thought she was a little crazy to begin with, but I guess once she caught him kissing some other girl under the mistletoe she snapped.”  She added with a shrug.

“Sam, that’s it.”  Dean said, turning to face him.  “I kissed Y/N under the mistletoe at that house.  That has to be what’s going on.”  He added, forgetting that the teenager was there momentarily.

“We are going to need to see all the decorations that were used at the Follen house.  Can you get those for us?”  Sam asked.  The girl looked back and forth between them, debating whether to press the issue and then turned to go into the back room. 

A few moments later, she came out carrying a key.  “They just unloaded them all into storage locker B.  Its around the corner.  Do you need me to show you?”

“No, thanks.  I think we can manage.”  Sam replied with a smile, taking the key from her outstretched hand.

They drove the impala around the corner to the front of the storage unit and opened the trunk.  Armed with a shotgun full of rock salt and an iron club they proceeded to open the metal garage door to reveal a 10x10 room full of boxes. 

“This is going to take all day.” Dean grumbled, setting the iron club down in the doorway and pulling open the first box he came to.

After about an hour of combing through the boxes, they realized they were getting close when the ghost appeared shoving Dean backwards away from the box he was digging through.  Sam shot her with the rock salt and she disappeared.

“She’ll be back.”  He called out to Dean who lifted the box and dumped the contents on the floor in front of him.  He pushed away a few items and pulled out the mistletoe.

“Sam, look out!”  He yelled, pointing to where she had reappeared.  Sam spun around and once more blasted her away with the shotgun.

Dean pulled out his lighter and set the mistletoe on fire as Sam reloaded the shotgun to prepare for another attack.  They both heard her screams and turned to see her dissipate in a ball of fire along with the mistletoe that she had been attached to.

“You okay?”  Sam asked as they walked back out to the impala.  Dean nodded, but he didn’t seem as relieved as Sam thought he should have been.  Instead he was quiet and climbed into the driver’s seat with a worried look on his face.

“What if this didn’t work?”  Dean asked.  “Or worse, what if we are too late?”

Sam sighed, leaning back against the leather seat.  “Don’t worry.  If this didn’t put things back the way they were, we will figure something else out.  I won’t give up.”  Sam promised him.

“I can’t lose her, Sammy.  I just can’t.”  Dean replied, twirling his key ring between his fingers, refusing to look up at him.

“I know.”  Sam answered.  “It will be okay.”

Dean sniffed once and then let out a deep breath, reaching out and starting the impala to head back to the hotel.  He didn’t say much on the drive back, too lost in his own thoughts as the miles ticked by.  When they finally arrived at the motel and parked the car, Dean hesitated and Sam waited patiently.

“Think she still wants to kill me?”  Dean asked aloud, trying to make it sound like a joke.

“There’s only one way to find out.”  Sam played along, gesturing to the motel room door.  Dean huffed a chuckle and got out of the car.

As he did, the door to the motel room opened and you stepped outside.  Both of the brothers stood frozen, waiting to see what you would do. 

“Dean, I’m so sorry.”  You said and his shoulders relaxed.  “I don’t know what happened, I just couldn’t control it.”  You stammered.

“I know, sweetheart.  It’s okay.”  Dean said, stepping forward and wrapping you up into his arms.  He kissed your lips, relieved to have everything back to normal.

“Here we go again.”  Sam teased, rolling his eyes and walking past the two of you to gather his things from inside the motel room.

You laughed, but Dean just pretended not to hear him and squeezed you tighter.

“Let’s go home.”  He suggested. 

“Gladly.”  You replied.  “Besides, I wanted to decorate a little before Christmas gets here.  Maybe we can hang some mistletoe in the bunker like….”  You started to tease him.

“NO!”  Both of them shouted at the same time, cutting you off.

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[stunudo]

BAU Prep School AU

A Criminal Minds Fan-fiction

Dirty Laundry

Welcome to the Frederick Buchanan Institute located in scenic Quantico, Virginia, a senior high academy that shapes the best and brightest minds. Its motto is “Behavior, Analysis, Unity,” the mascot the Submariners, colloquially “the Unsubs”. The small school supports the most accomplished faculty from across the country. 

April 10, 2017 7:06pm

Emily Prentiss hated her required time on the Booster Club teacher’s panel, but at least she didn’t have to suffer alone. Elle was supposed to be here sharing in the cringe-worthy parents and regents. Apparently Emily wasn’t the only who noticed the empty seat beside her, Mr. Ryan was giving her quite the side-eye. The students were leading the meeting as it was the final one before the end of the year and the preparations for the Alumni Association Gala were kept under wraps so not to spoil the experience.

“Coach Jareau will be hosting a soccer tournament on campus at the end of the month, I have the volunteer sheets with me for various tables, concessions and items needed. Nurse Callahan leaves it posted outside of her office, since it is closest to the field house, during school hours.” Michel continued, cupping and wringing their hands as they read through their agenda enthusiastically.

“We are grateful for Coach Morgan and the football team for volunteering for most of the unskilled slots, but we would still like a few more parent volunteers,” Cissy added.

“That’s the 29th, Mr. Foyet?” Mr. Ryan asked over his reading glasses.

“Yes,” Cissy answered for her flustered friend. Michel shuddered at the title and gathered themselves quickly as Ms. Greenaway stormed in and plopped down at the staff table. Mr. Cruz and President Strauss shared a glance at the tardiness of the young teacher.

Emily couldn’t contain her cough as the aroma surrounding Elle filled her nose and mouth. She smelled like she had crawled out of an aging barrel.

“What’d I miss?” Elle asked, hanging her jacket off the back of the chair.

“Just current events,” Emily whispered, eyes still on the student table. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah, why?” Elle asked, slightly annoyed.

“Well, you’re late.” Emily scratched behind her ear. Elle rolled her eyes, and took out a folder with notes and fliers from Penelope. The meeting continued quickly, agenda very easily conveyed by the dedicated junior, Michel. The regents and parents didn’t have much to add as they had reached their threshold for questioning with the mess of the winter months.

“Staff? Anything to add?” President Strauss asked to cover all the bases.

“Yes, thanks.” Elle started then cracked a smile and had to stop herself from laughing at the look of impatient across the regents’ faces. “Ms. Garcia says that Chef Rossi and Mr. Anderson are well on their way to the most successful and elegant Alumni Gala yet. Invitations will be out within the next two weeks.”

“Penelope and Grant are working around the clock on this.” Emily added, watching Elle’s eyes droop as she exhaled dramatically after reading her note card. “Headmaster Hotchner hopes to raise enough for a staff retreat over the summer as well as a student leadership seminar in the fall.”

“Those are certainly ambitious goals,” Mr. Cruz added. “Does he have estimated costs for these outings?”

“He does,” Emily nodded, grabbing the proposals she received from Hotch and walking them over. Elle stood and followed her, adding some sheets from Penelope, nearly falling back into her seat.

“These look well planned out,” President Strauss added. “We’ll look over these and touch base after the totals are all in. Thank you, Ms. Prentiss and, uh-hm, Ms. Greenaway.”

“No prob.” Elle said lazily.

“I think that is everything we have,” Emily clasped her hands on top of her notes.

“Very well, if that is all current items. I move that we adjourn.” Mr. Cruz suggested.

“Seconded.” Mr. Ryan and Michel said simultaneously.

“So moved.” The gavel struck the sounding block, allowing Emily to grab Elle by the elbow and drag her into the side hallway off the Delaney Owens’ Memorial Library.

“What is your problem?!” Elle huffed.

“You tell me, Elle.” Emily stared down the younger woman and waited. Elle stuck out her chin and refused to break eye contact with the English teacher. Emily shook her head, “Fine, act like one of the students. But show up trashed to another school event and I go straight to Hotch.”

“Relax, I just needed some liquid courage before facing the three amigos in there.” Elle explained, offhandedly.

“Not the best idea.”

“Yeah, well, we were just fillers in there anyway. Hotch and Garcia were who they really want, but this stupid requirement makes us sub in anyway.”

“Because it’s fair this way, let them have a night off once in awhile.” Emily was really holding back.

“Aren’t you tired, Emily?”

“Not particularly.”

“That’s not what I meant. Aren’t you tired of being the leftovers?” Elle asked almost nervously. Emily wasn’t sure everything that was going on with her colleague, but it was obviously more than attending an arbitrary meeting.

“Let’s get you home, Greenaway, before I lose my better judgement.” Emily drove the woman home in near silence, her death metal a calm undercurrent to the ride.

April 13 3:20pm

“I heard it was heroin, I mean, look at the guy; he is so skinny!” Lizzie whispered not too discreetly to Hannah and Camille’s work table during the last few minutes of AP Physics. Her lab partner, rolling his eyes at her tactless gossiping.

“Come on, Liz, do you really thing your mom, would keep him on staff if he was on heroin?” Camille countered, keeping her head down while working on an equation.

“I don’t know, what if he is really good at hiding it?” Hannah pointed out.

“Okay, but doesn’t he have like a recluse mom or something? He has chess club and tutoring, he doesn’t even have time to date.” Camille was getting worked up and her friends noticed.

“Wow, Cam, you sure know the pipe cleaner’s schedule.” Hannah teased.

“Yeah, I mean, perhaps you could ask him about his drug problem. Since you know him so well?” Lizzie tucked her hair behind her ear, as her tone shifted.

“Shut up, Lizzie.” Camille turned beet red.

“Dr. Reid?” Lizzie’s hand shot in the air just as the final bell burst through the halls. Camille grabbed her friend’s arm and pulled it down, denying Lizzie to ask whatever embarrassing thing she was bound to follow with.

Dr. Reid turned and looked at the front of the class, confusion pulling at his brow.

“Never mind, Dr. Reid.” Camille replied, covering Lizzie’s mouth with her notebook.

“Have a good weekend!” Hannah added, helping to drag Lizzie away from the unsuspecting teacher.

“Enjoy your break, ladies.” Spencer Reid replied, confused as ever with the opposite gender.

April 26 7:28am

“Hiya Boy Wonder!” Penelope gushed as she came sauntering into his first period class mere moments before roll call.

“Ms. Garcia?” Dr. Reid was startled. “What do you need?”

“What makes you say that?”

“You use flattery to soften your victims before you get them to do your bidding.” Spencer smirked at the blonde as she started fiddling with things on his demonstration table. “Don’t touch that. Penelope!” His voice jumping in volume before she opened the gas line.

“So, uh, you have your tutoring group tonight, right?” She asked coyly as she slid an envelope across the table to him.

“Are you bribing me?” Spencer’s eyes shot around the room ensuring they weren’t being over heard.

“What? No!” Penelope motioned in the air as if to whisk away the idea. “Just give this to, uh, Coach Morgan for me?”

“Penelope, I’m not your mail carrier.” Dr. Reid held the letter in the air, meaning to return it.

“You’re a peach!” Penelope grinned and walked back out of the room. “Thanks!”

He was left with his entire Chemistry class staring back at him as he waved a not so secret love letter in the air.

“She’s not very stealth.” Lucas pointed out.

“Tell me about it,” the teacher agreed.

April 26 1:09pm

“Honestly, this was the shortest--,” Alex chuckled. “The shortest line, but he refused. REFUSED to get in it.”

“Where do you think your stubbornness comes from?” Dave teased, sauteing a divine dish as they spoke. “How was the game?”

“Too close, but they won.”

“Not going to be doing much of that this season.” The chef added haughtily. The brunette threw the chunk of bread she was picking at, towards her ex-husband’s face, he easily dodged the assault.

“Your Cubs have one season and you think it’s the rapture.”

“Your point?”

Hotch had been observing the pair bantering over baseball in the doorway. It was a level of intimacy that he didn’t want to intrude on, but his stomach had more primal ideas. The rolling of hunger pulled the couple’s eyes to the young Headmaster.

“Here he is!” Dave grinned, “Thought you forgot about little, ole me.”

“I may have, but can’t argue with basic needs.” Hotch smirked, patting his flat stomach.

“I’m glad you showed, he wasn’t going to let me have any until you arrived.” Alex Blake shrugged as she claimed a stool at an empty preparations counter.

“Says who?” Chef Rossi argued.

“I know what stalling looks like, Dave.” Alex held up her hands against the eye daggers shooting her way.

“Alright, you two.” Hotch cleared the comedic flirtations with his low voice.

“Order up.” The amused chef served the two ravenous educators, watching proudly as they dug into lunches. Alex hurried away with the class bell, leaving Hotch to help clear her spot.

April 28 9:40am

Erin Strauss didn’t know why she was nervous as she walked up the stairs to the second floor of the school that Friday morning. Sure, she was rarely in the building during school hours and the last few interactions with this particular teacher had been less than pleasant. But, she had somehow come to the conclusion that this conversation needed to take place, and she wasn’t one to back down when her mind had been set.

It was there in her shoulders, Erin could see it, the heaviness settled in on such a young body. Lizzie had private language tutors, which left Erin with only tertiary experience with the Spanish teacher. Perhaps it was her years of sobriety, accented by her years of motherhood, but she finally accepted that she was compelled to say something. She shifted her bag in her hands, knocking on the open frame before stepping inside the simple office.

“Adelante. Come in. Venien--” Elle paused as she acknowledged the visitor.

“Morning, Ms. Greenaway.” Erin Strauss offered gently. “Do you mind if we talk?”

April 29 6:22am

Jennifer Jareau expertly entered the field house with a tray of coffees in each hand. The meager early morning cheers she received from her volunteers would have to be her motivation for the day, unnecessarily swearing off caffeine during her pregnancy. She handed out the assorted drinks and pre-opening assignments in a blur.

Derek and the majority of the varsity football team arrived in packs, rolling in just before registration began. There were eight other schools attending the tournament, as hosting campus, FBI was not participating. This left JJ to facilitate to the best of her abilities and kept her out of the spotlight of the sidelines. Though her name was plastered over every flier and social media reminder for the event, she insisted on making it about the school and not about her celebrity.

Stephen and the pep band shuffled to the center of the basketball court, preparing for the national anthem. The bleachers were a patchwork of the masses, teenage girls in every colored jersey bunched together awaiting the first round of games. Line judges and referees were huddled near the first aid station, manned by the enthusiastic Nurse Callahan and her friend, Gary helping out, once again. JJ was pleased with the turn out and especially the good publicity the school was getting, eyeing the camera crews from some local station and internet sports broadcasts present.

After the general welcome, rules and the anthem was sung, JJ was free to slip back into the coordinator role. But not before a tall stranger approached her, “So who’s the lucky guy?”

“Excuse me? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” JJ eyed the man cautiously.

“Come one, JJ. You’re what, four months along by now?”

“Who are you?” JJ demanded, crossing her arms, wishing Derek or Heathridge were around to show this guy out, right about now.

“Just a fan,” He smiled easily, his almond eyes kind despite his pressing questions. “I covered your team at the World Cup in ‘07, but I don’t think you remember me.”

“You’re a reporter?” JJ glanced around for a hidden camera. “I don’t know what kind of story you think you’re getting, pal, but-”

“And my niece is one of your players?” He waved as an enthusiastic Hannah came running into his arms, he effortlessly lifted the teenager into the air.

“Weh-sukbu!” Hannah said, “I didn’t know you were in the country!”

“Which is what makes it a surprise.” The man hugged the girl and set her back down before they both turned to JJ. “I was just re-introducing myself to your coach.”

“Ugh, gross.” Hannah teased. “Sorry, Coach Jareau, my uncle thinks he’s funny. I hope he wasn’t being his pushy-self.”

“I’m not working today,” Matt Simmons casually hooked his thumbs in the belt loops on his fitted jeans. “But it was nice seeing you, Miss Jareau. Make sure this one does her laps, eh?”

The duo wandered off towards the concessions, the invading man messing up the girl’s hair mercilessly. JJ didn’t remember ever meeting the man before, but something about his approach left her on edge. Other than a few petty disagreements with the refs, the remaining tournament went off without a hitch. JJ’s back was killing her when she drove away from the school grounds late in the day, leaving Anderson and some groundskeepers with the last of the clean up. Between the parents’ comments and other coaches’ feedback; she knew they had done a great job, but hoped it was reflected in the funds raised.

April 30 11:12am Brunch

The waitress wasn’t sure why the man dressed like her grandfather was twitching nervously with his water glass until his companion walked in, clearly this woman was above of this guy’s comfort zone. She re-approached the table to refill his coffee.

“Anything for you, dear?” She casually asked the blonde woman.

“Water is fine, thanks.” Her smile didn’t quite meet her ice blue eyes. “How are you doing, Spence? It feels like ages since we talked.”

“It has been seven months and some change, since we have had a non-work related conversation, so ages isn’t too far off, I suppose.” Spencer scrunched his nose, trying to calm his racing heart. “But I am doing well, thanks. Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Are you well?”

“Oh, ha!” JJ smiled. “Yes, much better now that the tournament is behind me for the year.”

“That’s great! I know Derek was impressed with all the details such an endeavor requires.” Spencer glanced back at the menu, though the words were already safe in his mind.

“All day events are a strategic nightmare, but I had a lot of help.” JJ turned back to the menu. Spencer waited a cool four minutes and thirteen seconds before approaching the subject.

“Anything else new with you?” Spencer was horrible at small talk.

“No, not really.” JJ shook her head with a comical frown.

“JJ?” Spencer ducked down, trying to catch her eyes from hiding in the menu again. “JJ, its alright, I know.”

“You know?”

“About the baby. Elle told me.” Spencer shrugged, sliding his glass over one half inch. “I hope that’s alright.”

“Well, I shouldn’t be surprised, you two have been rather close.” JJ admitted. “Besides, it’s not like it isn’t obvious by now.

“No, that’s not what I-” Spencer stammered. “You look gr- gor. You’re beautiful.”

“Easy for you to say!” JJ laughed. “Spence, it’s okay. I don’t mind my bump.”

“Good, you shouldn’t. It suits you.”

“Ready to order?” The waitress broke the awkwardness by her sheer presence. After taking away their one distraction, the conversation inched forward.

“So how’s your mom?” JJ scratched her head, wishing she had come better prepared.

“Doing quite well, actually, her aide has been phenomenal. I really think she is on the right track, after so long.” Spencer pursed his lips, proud of Diana’s progress.

“That’s great! So is she going out yet or having people over more?”

“She has a group she meets with twice a week at a local clinic, which she hardly ever misses. If everything continues on her current trajectory, she should be able to be in an assisted living situation or a retirement facility by early next year.” Spencer’s excitement was palpable, allowing JJ to relax.

“That’s fantastic. I know you hadn’t seen improvement in quite sometime, I am really happy for you, for you both.” JJ dug into her Belgian waffles, letting the fluffy grids soak up the sugary goodness.

“JJ, I want you to know, if you need anything now or in the future; I am more than willing to step in to help.” Spencer blurted out as the waitress handed them their to go containers.

“Thanks?” JJ replied, confused.

“I mean it.” Spencer reached over and took her hand. “It isn’t fair to you to do this all on your own. I have seen firsthand the toll single parenthood takes. Let me help you, JJ.”

“Spencer! What are you doing?” JJ was floored. “I am not exactly helpless, you know.”

“I know you’re not, but a baby needs a lot.” Spencer sighed. “I don’t know what happened between you and Emily and it is none of my business. But if you need a partner in this,” he gestured toward her growing belly. “I am more than willing to be the father.”

“Oh, Spencer.” JJ’s eyes filled with hopeless tears. “You know I can’t do that.”

Very Special Thanks to Cassie @mentallydatingspencerreid,

Meg @imagicana , and Loki @ay-nako!!!

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[the-stories-in-my-head-95]

Hey, I’ve Got You- Chapter Eight

Tony Stark x enhanced! Reader

Summary -The reader was captured and experimented on and given the healing factor and she has claws that extend out from the bed of their nails. The people who are experiment on her cover her skeleton in vibranium. So the reader now has metal claws. They keep her locked away for a very long time. They rarely feed her or let her out because there is such a high chance of her escape now. Somehow the UN panel that is in charge of the accords finds out about the illegal experiments and send Iron Man in to shut down the operation. The reader is the only one there because the scientists had gotten word that they had been discovered. Tony finds the reader and takes her back to the compound.

Message- Here’s chapter eight!!! It’s kinda short,  but it’s kinda a filler chapter.  Sorry if it sucks!!

Warning- Reader is held captive and experimented on. Mentions of torture. Self-injurious behavior. 

Background  Chapter One  Chapter Two  Chapter Three  Chapter Four  Chapter Five  Chapter Six  Chapter Seven

Word Count- 815

Helen and Pepper convinced Bruce, Natasha and Strange to not tell anyone what they saw. They promised that you and Tony would explain it all later. Natasha and Strange left, but Bruce stayed, staring at you, Tony and Teddy through the glass wall.

“Got a problem, Dr. Banner?” Helen hisses.

“No, it’s just weird.” Bruce responds

“What? Seeing him with a family? Her abilities? Because that seems like a pot calling the kettle black kind of situation.” Pepper says.

“No, seeing him happy. He seems almost lighter when he’s with them, like the world isn’t resting on his shoulders anymore.” Bruce murmurs. Both Helen and Pepper nod in agreement.

***

Tony decides that it would be best to keep everything informal when introducing the team to Teddy. So he ordered a bunch of pizza and put it out in the common room for dinner. You and Tony waited in the lab until everyone was there, and Tony took Teddy from your arms and the two of you walked down the hall to the common room.

“Hey, guys sorry we’re a little late.” Tony says as you both enter the room. Most of their backs are to you, so they don’t see Teddy yet.

“It’s no problem Tony! Thanks for ordering the piz-.” Steve starts to say as he turns around but then he notices Teddy and he stops talking midsentence. “Uh, who’s that?” When he says that everyone else turn to look at the three of you.

“Teddy, our son.” Tony says. There’s a heartbeat of silence and then everyone starts to shout. Everyone who already knew was sitting around awkwardly trying to figure out what they should be doing.

“Well, at least we know why Tony married his sugar baby, didn’t want his son to be a basta-.” At that you grab Clint by the neck, and shove him against the wall, you let your claws extend out a bit so they scratch against his skin.

“Do not presume to know anything about me, my son or my husband. You don’t know me. I have tolerated your comments towards me and Tony, but say one rude thing about my son and I will rip your fucking throat out.” You growl into his ear. “Understand?” you say as you give his throat a little squeeze, he nods but you make no move to let him go.

“Darling, I think he gets it. Why don’t you put Clint down so we can eat?” You nod and let him go, then you let him go and you walk towards Tony.

“Do you have claws!?!” Clint yells as he touches his neck.

“Yes.” You say as you give him a little wave, with your claws fully extended.

“I think we have much to discuss.” T’Challa says looking at you. After you get situated you explain everything to them. You tell them about the cutting and the experiments, you explain the claws and when you mention what they are made of, T’Challa gives you a surprised look. Then you explain that the Accords were the reason you are here now. That without them Tony never would have found you and you would still be locked in that room. By the time you are done explaining everything, everyone is done eating.

“I’m kinda tired after everything that has happened today, do you mind going home now?” You ask Tony, before anyone can start asking you question.

“Of course, my love. Let’s go.” Tony says as he hands you Teddy. The two of you stand up and say goodbye to everyone and then you leave the room. “Well, that wasn’t so bad. Right?”

“I think they are all in shock, I’m sure they will come to us with question tomorrow.” You sigh as you put Teddy into the car seat. Then you move to the front of the car and you get in.

“Maybe we should go on a long vacation? I’m thinking a remote cabin somewhere where no one will find us. I own a couple farm houses all over the country we could go to one of those, or maybe my private island?” Tony says giving you a half smile.

“That’s tempting but we would still have to face everyone again at some point.” You murmur.

“Well, the offer still stands, just say the word and we’ll be on the private jet in less than an hour.” Tony says and you lean over and kiss him.

“I love you.” You whisper as you break the kiss.

“I know.” Tony says as he gives you a shit-eating grin.

“Who’s Han Soloing who now?” you giggle as you kiss Tony again.

“Han Solo wishes he was as cool as me!” Tony says and that makes you laugh more. Tony then starts to drive the three of you home and on the way you let sleep take over your body.

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[mastcomm]

Trump Threw Weighty Refugee Decisions to Local Government, With Painful Results

EAST LONGMEADOW, Mass. — In a gray-walled, institutional hall usually reserved for prosaic debates over traffic and town budgets, Mohamoud Abdirahman rose from the audience last month and approached a panel of five town councilmen sitting in judgment.

Civil war had forced his family to flee their native Somalia in 1991, when he was a child. The Abdirahmans traveled for two days by cargo ship to Kenya, where they stayed for a year and a half before securing refuge in the United States. Now, it was his turn to fight for those trying to follow his footsteps to this town abutting Springfield and the Connecticut border.

“A lot of people like me just want a second chance at life,” an emotional Mr. Abdirahman pleaded.

A similar refrain is echoing across the country in town councils, county commissions, mayors’ offices and governors’ mansions after an executive order signed by President Trump in September granted local politicians a veto over the placement of refugees in their communities.

That order has carried the national tension over the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration agenda from the halls of Washington and detention camps along the southwestern border to places like East Longmeadow, population 16,000, and turned refugees and those who work to resettle them into lobbyists of sorts.

The anxiety among resettlement officials here has grown in recent weeks after the mayor of neighboring Springfield, one of the largest cities in Western Massachusetts, became one of the first politicians in the country to announce that he would not allow refugee resettlement. That was amplified by the decision of Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas last month to block resettlement for the entire state, which has welcomed more refugees than any other state in the past five years. And on Friday, Mr. Trump put refugees who have lived in Western Massachusetts for years at risk of continuing to stay separated from their relatives abroad when he added Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan and Tanzania to a list of countries facing stringent travel restrictions.

“This goes against everything we know,” said Maxine Stein, the chief executive of the Jewish Family Service of Western Massachusetts, a refugee resettlement agency.

The vetoes issued so far in Texas, Springfield and counties in Minnesota and Virginia were suspended in recent weeks by a federal judge who issued a temporary injunction against the executive order. The ruling delayed a Jan. 21 deadline for resettlement agencies to submit funding requests — along with letters of consent from governors and local officials — to the State Department.

But the resettlement agencies say there is still an urgent need for the resettlement approvals. Judges issued similar temporary injunctions for Mr. Trump’s other immigration polices, only to have the Supreme Court side with the administration.

It is also, the resettlement agencies say, about education. Some local officials were wholly unfamiliar with refugee policy before Mr. Trump tasked them with deciding whether resettlement should continue in their communities. Under the executive order, if a town board, county official or mayor declines — or neglects — to make a decision, silence equates to a veto.

“What we’ve seen in the courts is that the deadline may be pushed back, but it often doesn’t go away,” said Sara Bedford, who works with refugee families for the Jewish Family Service. “As long as the Springfield mayor doesn’t opt in, I think refugee communities will feel just a little bit less welcome.”

The vague wording of the executive order also caused confusion among refugee resettlement officials, who questioned which local official had the power to consent to the State Department.

Under the order, consent is required from governors and “localities,” which in many places was interpreted as the county leadership. But some Western Massachusetts towns are not represented by a county government, so the decision in Springfield fell to Domenic J. Sarno, the son of Italian immigrants and the longest-serving mayor of one of the poorest cities in the state.

Mr. Sarno, a Democrat, issued his veto even after Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts formally consented to allow refugees into the state and the Springfield City Council unanimously voted to allow them into the city.

“You cannot continue to concentrate poverty on top of poverty,” Mr. Sarno wrote in Springfield’s newspaper, The Republican. He demanded that more affluent communities “step up to the plate and put their money where their mouth is — to take on their fair share of social justice responsibilities.”

Mr. Sarno’s words echoed those of Mr. Trump, who has said the country is “full” and has threatened to send immigrants by the busload to Democratic cities and towns that have denounced his policies. Michael A. Fenton, the Springfield councilman who introduced the resolution to welcome refugees, said he had been fielding calls from residents demanding the city “let them go to the suburbs.” Mr. Abbott argued, “Texas has carried more than its share.”

But most government officials who responded to the executive order have decided to accept refugees into their states and counties, including those dominated by Republicans. At least 42 governors and more than 110 local governments have consented.

They include Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas and former under secretary of homeland security, who in 2015 opposed allowing Syrian refugees into the state, citing security concerns. Last month, Mr. Hutchinson testified before his State Legislature to defend allowing refugees into Arkansas, taking with him a Congolese business owner and an Afghan refugee who assisted the American military.

Gary Stubblefield, an Arkansas state senator, pressed his fellow Republican, lamenting, “Every morning when I wake up and turn on the national news, sometimes I ask myself a question: ‘Am I still in the United States of America?’”

Mr. Hutchinson held his ground: “You’ve got a choice to make. You can create fear, or you can help resolve fear. I challenge you to help resolve fear.”

In a twist, Mr. Hutchinson said in an interview that he was encouraged to allow refugees into Arkansas since a limited number would most likely be resettled in the state after Mr. Trump capped the number for 2020 at 18,000, down from 30,000 in the previous year. President Barack Obama set the cap at 110,000 his last year in office.

Still, Mr. Hutchinson’s staff spent the first days after his decision fielding angry calls from constituents, an uncomfortable task that Mr. Fenton in Springfield knows well. By signing the executive order, Mr. Trump has put municipal leaders in an unfair position, Mr. Fenton said.

“Municipal officials in the Northeast, we deal with snow, we deal with potholes, we deal with property taxes, trash pickup,” he said. “We do not deal with the complications associated with refugee immigration policy.”

He worries that the mayor’s decision will have a lasting effect on Springfield’s reputation.

“Those active and contributing members of our society don’t feel good about themselves in the place that they live when people say they’re not welcome,” Mr. Fenton said.

Mr. Sarno’s rejection of refugees surprised Fikiri Amisi and Jacqueline Asumani, Congolese immigrants who came to Springfield last year after spending more than 12 years in a refugee camp in Zimbabwe. When he first came to Springfield, Mr. Amisi said, it felt as though he had been saved. Both work full time, Ms. Asumani at a hotel and Mr. Amisi at a factory that manufactures medical supplies. Mr. Amisi is also studying for his associate degree. They have three children and plan to buy a house next year.

The couple wonders what they have done wrong.

“They don’t want more refugees here,” Ms. Asumani told her husband. “It shows they don’t love us.”

On a recent afternoon, Mr. Amisi looked through a photo album and stopped at an image showing the refugee camp where he used to wait in limbo. A friend called him to express concern over the mayor’s decision. He has been waiting for a ticket to the United States for four years, though long ago he cleared the refugee screening process.

The resettlement officials at Jewish Family Service have tried to meet with officials on a near daily basis. Municipal leaders often ask about costs to the school system and whether the local government will need to provide housing for the refugees. The staff reassures them that the onus is on the resettlement agency, which helps families find work and pay for the first three months of housing.

While a veto by a local official cannot prevent a refugee from moving to a city from within the United States, it prohibits the resettlement organizations from providing that initial financial support and could harm their overall funding, according to Ms. Stein.

“When you’re sleeping on relatives’ floors or extra beds, and you’re all jammed into the kitchen, and it’s chaotic in the morning to get to school so you just don’t get to school, it’s just not a good scene,” Ms. Stein said.

She made that case to the East Longmeadow Town Council, hoping councilors would open the door to refugees shut out of Springfield. Some seemed moved by the testimonies, including the story of Mr. Abdirahman, who now holds a master’s degree and works as the assistant director of behavioral health services at Jewish Family Service.

“To our residents who took the time to speak from your heart, thank you for doing that,” said Kathleen G. Hill, the Town Council president. “And come visit anytime.”

But the Council already voted to take no action on Mr. Trump’s executive order in November, weeks after it was signed. Local government rules stipulated that they could not take the matter up for another six months.

Their hands were tied. And under Mr. Trump’s policy, doing nothing meant turning the refugees away.

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[anothergirlrecovering]

Lynn 113

My last session with Lynn before treatment was honestly probably the best possible session we could have had together. Lynn was so kind and it just went really well. I got there and sat down and I said that I really liked her hair because she had gotten a haircut and she was like oh thank you so much I got it cut and I was like it looks really good and she was like I always forget that I should be actually cutting my hair every so often. She said so you’re going and I said yeah and she said I talk to Peggy over the weekend and I said oh yeah? And she said yeah how are you feeling and I said well I don’t know I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m living the dream right now. She asked how I’ve been handling things with work and we talked about how hard it’s been leaving everyone but that ultimately I need to take care of myself and it’s OK and it’s going to be OK and we talked about two in particular that would be harder but it’s going to be Ok. I mention my parents coming this weekend and she asked when they would be here and I explained when and we talked about how that was going to go and I said essentially that I can go a couple different ways and I’m not really sure but I don’t really see any of them being super positive and I’m hoping to tell them that night before they leave and she was like honestly is it possible they’re going to comment on your weight loss though and I was like it’s certainly possible but I don’t know because there have been times when I’ve lost weight before and they’ve just sort of always ignored it and so it’s hard to know how they will actually react. I told her about how hard things have been for my husband and how it’s been really sad and difficult because this all really affects him and she said she strongly recommends that when we get back we do couples therapy and of course she would love it if my husband did his own therapy to work through his trauma and I was like I mean hopefully with family therapy at treatment he will have a positive experience and be more likely to do that work and I said I might be able to get him to do some of it by suggesting that he do trauma therapy to work through the memories of me being sick because he definitely will acknowledge that this has been traumatizing for him. We talked about the after treatment plan and she said that she would see me and she was like what are your thoughts on all of that and she was like because will you be calling me to schedule after and I was like as long as you are still willing to see me and she was like of course absolutely I want to see you and I was like wow I didn’t know and she was like I already talk to Peggy and I’m not sure what Peggy you think about all this because you know I want to make sure that you are definitely getting the right care that you need and then I started talking really fast and I was like I mean I’ll do whatever I have to do but I just don’t think it would be really helpful to have to get out of treatment and then try to start over with a new therapist while adjusting to normal life again as a post to coming back and seeing her when I know that I feel really comfortable and safe with her and I mean if there’s behaviors then obviously I see her point but what if there’s not any behaviors then there’s not really a need that seems sort of therapist because the only reason that you need to see meetings or Therapist’s because they’re going to make sure that they areI mean if there’s behaviors then obviously I see her point but what if there’s not any behaviors then there’s not really a need to have seen any sort of therapist because the only reason that you need to see an eating disorderor therapist is because they’re going to make sure that they are Making sure you aren’t using behaviors and if I’m not using babies and I don’t really need to be seeing one and literally it would be the equivalent of if you ask me every week am I following my meal plan but realistically Peggy would be continuing to wake me so she would know if I started to get off track and you and I both know that I’m always honest I’m not gonna lie and try to hide behaviors from anybody so if it wasn’t an issue then fine I’ll go see somebody and Lynn totally cut me off and was like breathe. Please breathe LOL she was like that’s OK and I completely understand what you are saying and I absolutely want to work with you when you get back talk to Peggy and see what she says about all of it but either way I will see you as soon as you get out and we can figure out the rest from there. She said she wanted me to ask the treatment center about EMDR for eds and I said honestly there’s just not a whole lot of research done with it at this point and last year at the conference the main thing was essentially that they were looking at using future template planning for fear foods and using regular processing to deal with food related bad memories or bad body image related memories which is essentially what I end up doing for people once they’re stable and she was like I was thinking more in terms of attachment issues because we both know that that’s a big component of all of this. I told Lynn that it was like honestly my biggest fear that she wasn’t going to work with me anymore after I got out of treatment and she looked confused but I was like well because Peggy acted like it was super adamant that I had to work with and eating disorder therapist and I was like maybe she didn’t really say that to you because maybe she thought about it because I literally had sat there in her office crying the whole time she talked about it. Lynn kind of laughed and was like OK well that’s not how this is going to go. I was like OK thanks. I was like speaking of attachment that I tell you about talking to Dixie.? She said no and so I told her about how it went when I told Dixie and how I had realized that there wasn’t going to ever be this moment of corrective experience that would really fix the damage that my parents had done and that essentially like it’s up to me to fix myself and I have to be the one to do it. She said she thought that was huge and such good insight for me to have and with going to treatment she was like that’s really great for you to have recognize that because that might help you to really move on from some of this and I was like yeah because I don’t feel like I’m going to keep hanging onto this moment of wanting somebody else to sort of save me and you know I think if there was ever a moment when that should’ve happened that would’ve been it because Dixie really did handle it perfectly and if that didn’t fix it then there’s not going to be that moment so I just have to fix myself. She started talking about I gaze with EMDR And that there are some training on it and to look into it but basically where you hold like prolonged I contact and she was like I feel like we are both pretty comfortable with each other and I would do it with you and it has to do with healing attachment injuries with the trauma treatment and I was like that’s really interesting and I could see that and I explained about how I contact helps prevent suicide as well. She said she thought that was really interesting but definitely made sense and aligned with what she had learned in the training. She said we have to work through that attachment stuff because it’s keeping me sick and I agreed. I said that I just wish that regarding all of that stuff that like mattering to people with something that stuck because even like with telling people that I’m going to treatment and I told her about how I told Juliana and how she had cried and howling with Dixie crying words like I’ve had several of these moments where I tell somebody and there’s no way that I can logically bullshit and excuses for them thinking that they care about me like there’s no arguing that they genuinely care about me but it’s like that never sticks and I’m always so dumbfounded by those moments where Chris is like why are you surprised that people care and that you matter to them and I’m like I don’t know but it’s always surprising to me and Lynn was like it’s because that earlier attachment system was broken from a young age and it’s OK we’re going to work on that and fix it. We also randomly talked about insurance reimbursement for work and she told me to get on arenas panel because they. Reimburse well and are easy to work with. We talked about how an insurance company raised their fee and I can bill sixty minutes, which is nice because no one ever just doesna 45 minute session. At the beginning of session she also told me the med provider will schedule with me when I get out as well. She said her obsessive stuff is tough and she’s experienced it in high stress. She said they’ve already talked and will schedule for after and left the treatment center initially handle that. We talked about actually going and having a release of info on file. She joked about being disorganized and not able to find it and was like hm primary care doctor, I was like Lynn just cross out pcp and use that and she had that moment of oh duh and did that. I joked about not suing her if she didn’t have one but I totally understood the anxiety. She said she always had a lot of anxiety about the legal stuff so we filled it out and I paid her for my session. When I got up to leave she opened her arms for a hug and she told me that she was so proud of me and then I could do this and to work hard and that she loved me. She said I would get through this and that she would be here when I’m back.

[theconservativebrief]

If you want to know why women don’t come forward with allegations of sexual assault, today’s Senate hearings offered a clue.

In the morning, an all-male panel of Republican senators hired an outside prosecutor to try to pick apart Christine Blasey Ford’s credibility live on national television. They refused to subpoena Mark Judge, the key witness, or launch the FBI investigation Ford asked for. And after hearing her testimony, and judging it credible, they simply ignored it.

In the afternoon, those same senators feted Brett Kavanaugh, the man Ford accused of attacking her. They cut off the prosecutor they hired in order to give speech after speech lamenting the way he and his family have suffered. They said they had no doubt Ford’s assault was real, but that her memory was flawed; whoever had assaulted her, it wasn’t Kavanaugh. But Kavanaugh’s memory was beyond reproach. After calling in professional help to cross-examine Ford, they repeatedly apologized for troubling Kavanaugh.

Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, delivered an unforgettable performance. He was silent during Ford’s testimony, freely yielding his time to prosecutor Rachel Mitchell. During Kavanaugh’s testimony, however, Graham buoyed the witness and ripped into the Democrats. “This is hell,” he told Kavanaugh. The hearings were “the most unethical sham” he’d seen in his decades-long political career.

Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) during his time to question Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Win McNamee/Getty Images

“To my Republican colleagues,” Graham spat, “if you vote no, you’re legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics.”

But the Ford-Kavanaugh hearings played out in a larger context. Since the dawn of the MeToo movement, the question has been when the backlash would come, and what form it would take. This week, you could feel it building. The media was reverberating after Ian Buruma, the editor of the New York Review of Books, was fired for overruling his staff and publishing a Jian Ghomeshi essay about how dozens of allegations of sexual assault and harassment against him had unfairly derailed his career. Harpers published a similar essay at around the same time, and was also pounded for it. The terror that women’s accusations were unfairly ending men’s careers — and that there was nothing men could do about it — was boiling over. But someone needed to take a stand, and be backed up by enough power to survive that stand.

In retrospect, it makes perfect sense that President Donald Trump would be the one who would provide the playbook. After all, he’s been the great scourge of the MeToo moment, the one whose misdeeds have never hurt him.

On Wednesday, Trump gave a press conference where he took direct aim at MeToo. “When you are guilty until proven innocent, it’s just not supposed to be that way,” Trump said. “That’s a very dangerous standard for the country.” That night, CNN reported that a concerned Trump had told Kavanaugh that the time for calm denials was over: he needed to go on offense.

So he did. It was the moment the MeToo backlash truly took shape.

If Ford and her husband had never remodeled their house, Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination would have sailed through the Senate.

According to Ford’s testimony, she had never told anyone of her sexual assault in detail. That changed in 2012, when she and her husband were redoing their home and she insisted on having a second front door — a second way out of the house. Her husband couldn’t understand; the request seemed ridiculous. Why does a house need two ways out?

During a session with their couples’ therapist, Ford explained, it all spilled out. Ford had been assaulted as a teenager. She was pushed into a room and nearly raped. Her attacker, who she recalled then and now as Kavanaugh, clapped his hand across her mouth when she screamed, pushing down so tightly she couldn’t breathe, so tightly she thought he might kill her by accident.

AFP/Getty Images

He was laughing. His friend, Mark Judge, was laughing. That’s what she remembers most of all, she says, the laughter. At some point, they tumbled off the bed, and she fled the room, locking herself in a bathroom until she heard them go back downstairs and their voices receded. Then she ran from the house, terrified she’d run into them on the way out and the attack would begin again.

That’s why she needed a second door in her house, she explained. Because in a moment of trauma, she had needed another way out, and 30 years later, there was still a part of her that couldn’t be comfortable, that couldn’t feel safe, without another way out. That’s why there’s a record from 2012, when her therapist wrote down what Ford said; when her husband first heard Kavanaugh’s name. That’s why her allegation was taken seriously.

That’s the story, through tears, she told the Senate and the country, on Thursday.

“I am here today not because I want to be,” she said. “I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me with Brett.”

Ford’s testimony was — by wide acclaim — powerful, specific, and gutting. She was a friendly witness, trying to answer questions, asking repeatedly for an investigation to help clear the holes in her own memory, thanking the committee for the consideration they gave her. Her expertise as a professor of clinical psychology kept shining through, as she offered clear, powerful explanations of how trauma worked on the brain, how it had worked on her brain.

Mitchell, the prosecutor, largely abandoned the task of questioning the core of Ford’s account. She ended up harassing Ford on points that even Republicans thought minor, like why her fear of flying hadn’t prevented her from taking past vacations, and who paid for a $200 polygraph test.

Ford was such a strong witness, in fact, that the fear was she had set an unreachable standard. “Through no fault of her own, she has also reinforced the incredibly high bar of believability,” wrote BuzzFeed’s Anne-Helen Peterson.

Ford is white, upper-middle class, married, and highly educated. She is calm but demure. She is visibly shaken yet steady. She could afford the therapy that helped document her psychological past. She has a support system and the means to hire a lawyer. Imagine if you lack even one of these qualities. Imagine if your behavior, or your voice, or your face, or the life you’ve lived doesn’t perfectly match what is demanded of the ideal victim. Would you be believed?

“Were men out there brought to tears or shaking visceral response by that?” Asked New York Magazine’s Rebecca Traister. “Because the messages I have from women, and what’s happening in my own apartment, suggest that many many women were.”

Even Fox News was impressed. “This is a disaster for the Republicans,” said Fox News’s Chris Wallace.

And then it was Kavanaugh’s turn.

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If Ford did everything — and more — that could be asked of a witness, Kavanaugh did something near the opposite. He entered the hearing with his jaw set and his face flushed. His voice a near-shout, he read a long, angry, unflinching, and notably Trumpish statement.

“This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit,” he raged, “fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record. Revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups. This is a circus.”

Kavanaugh’s anger worked. Just as Ford fit society’s expectations for a victim, Kavanaugh looked like a man falsely accused: furious, fearful, tearing up when he mentioned his parents or daughters. He laced into his tormentors, determined to clear his name. He gave no ground. He badgered and interrupted the Democrats questioning him.

Supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27, 2018. Melina Mara-POOL/AFP/Getty Images

And in his pain, his outrage, the assembled Republican senators found their voice. Initially, they left their questioning — as they had with Ford — to Mitchell, the outside prosecutor. But after Graham refused to yield his time, choosing instead to apologize to Kavanaugh and cut into the Democrats, so too did every Republican after him. And one after the other, they apologized to Kavanaugh.

“Judge, I can’t think of a more embarrassing scandal for the United States Senate since the McCarthy hearings,” said Senator John Cornyn.

The Democrats “have brought us to our worst in our politics,” apologized Senator Orrin Hatch. “It’s certainly brought us no closer to the truth.”

“This could have been handled in such a way that didn’t turn this into a circus, one that has turned your life update down and your family and the life of Dr. Ford upside down,” said Senator Mike Lee. “I consider this most unfortunate.”

But it was Senator John Kennedy, the final questioner, who laid everything truly bare.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., listens to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as he testifies. Tom Williams/Pool Image via AP

“I’m sorry, Judge, for what you and your family have been through and I’m sorry for what Dr. Ford and her family have been through,” he said. “It could have been avoided.” And then he asked: “Do you believe in God?”

Kavanaugh said that he did.

“I’m going to give you a last opportunity right here, right in front of God and country,” Kennedy said. “I want you to look me in the eye. Are Dr. Ford’s allegations true?”

Kavanaugh looked him in the eye. “They’re not accurate as to me. I have not questioned that she might have been sexually assaulted at some point in her life by someone someplace. But as to me, I’ve never done this.”

“None of these allegations are true?” Kennedy asked.

“Correct,” Kavanaugh said.

“No doubt in your mind?”

“Zero. 100 percent certain.”

“Not even a scintilla?”

“Not a scintilla. 100 percent certain, Senator.”

“Do you swear to God?”

“I swear to God.”

“That’s all I have, Judge,” Kennedy said. And, with that, the hearing was over.

Trump was thrilled. “Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him,” he tweeted shortly after the hearing ended. “The Senate must vote!”

The day played out like a set piece. In the morning, Ford showed how high the bar was to even have a chance of being believed. Her story is specific, credible, serious. She’s told it to multiple people over the years. She tried to tell it to Congress before Kavanaugh was nominated. She places Kavanaugh in the town he lived, at the house of a person he knew, in a room with one of his best friends. She tried her best to be polite to the senators, to avoid offense, to show gratitude to the committee for listening to her. She took a polygraph, begged for an FBI investigation. She says she’s 100 percent sure it was Kavanaugh who attacked her.

In the afternoon, Kavanaugh simply denied all charges. He denied ever being blackout drunk. He denied ever forgetting anything of importance. He denied the possibility he was wrong, that it might be useful for his alleged accomplice, Mark Judge, to testify or the FBI to investigate. He said Ford’s memory had failed her, but was incredulous at the idea that his recall could deliver similar error.

And he fought back. He slammed his accusers, he made clear his pain, he made clear his rage. If Ford was grateful for the opportunity to be heard, Kavanaugh was incredulous that she was being given that opportunity, that it was taking this long, that it could possibly take longer.

Asked why the committee couldn’t take another week to investigate the claims more thoroughly, he shot back, “Every day has been a lifetime.” His suffering was immense, unfair, unforgivable. “I’m never going to get my reputation back,” he said. “My life is totally and permanently altered.”

The suffering of his accusers, women who say they’ve been living with the trauma of what he did for decades? They were mistaken, and their claims could be, should be, for the good of the county had to be, dismissed. “This grotesque character assassination will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions from serving our country,” he said.

The feminist philosopher Kate Manne coined the term “himpathy” to describe the “tendency to dismiss the female perspective altogether, to empathize with the powerful man over his less powerful alleged female victim.” What Kavanaugh did today was activate the Republican Party’s powerful sense of himpathy: His suffering was the question, and Ford’s suffering, to say nothing of any further search for the truth, slipped soundlessly beneath the water.

We ended the day in much the same place we started. His word against hers. But even as everyone agreed Ford’s word was credible, it didn’t matter. There was still Kavanaugh’s word. And it appeared, for Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, that that was enough. She was 100 percent sure and he was 100 percent sure, but it was his 100 percent sure that mattered.

On this, Trump was right. What Kavanaugh had needed to do was go on the offensive. He needed to remind the all-male Republican panel that he was the victim here, that any of them could be victims, that moving his nomination forward would be a show of strength, a message sent to the Democrats and their allies, a statement that these tactics end here and they end now. This is how you fight MeToo: by focusing on the pain it’s causing men, by centering their suffering.

All of this was, perhaps, predictable. On Wednesday, a new NPR/Marist poll found that while large majorities of Democrats and independents believed Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination should be rejected if Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations are true, a majority of Republicans believed Kavanaugh should be confirmed even if Ford’s allegations are true. If Thursday’s hearing didn’t ultimately seem to be about the truth at all, well, perhaps that’s why: The truth was never really what the Senate’s Republicans were after.

Original Source -> The Ford-Kavanaugh sexual assault hearings, explained

via The Conservative Brief

[rubybluewrites-blog]

chapter vi. the rescue

“She lied! She lied to us!” Tarkin exclaims. He seems genuinely surprised, but Vader is not shocked at the news.

Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader are standing in the conference room on the Death Star. Tarkin has just been informed by an officer that only an abandoned base was found on Dantooine, and that the rebels are no longer present there.

“I told you she would never consciously betray the Rebellion.” It’s Vader own way of saying, ‘I told you so.’ With the way the princess resisted his interrogation methods, it should have been quite obvious that she would not break. Still, it is rather impressive that she allowed her planet to be destroyed in favor of the Rebellion’s safety.

Tarkin scowls at him. “And why can’t we terminate her? She should die for lying to us, Vader.”

“You achieved your objective, Tarkin,” Vader tells him coolly. “The Death Star’s power has now been demonstrated. And we will never know the location of the rebel base if we kill her now.”

The Grand Moff sighs in frustration and defeat. Vader can see the vexation on his face; Tarkin would love nothing more than for Princess Leia to die, but Vader can’t allow that.

“I suppose you are right,” he gives in. “But what is the true reason you want the princess alive, Vader? You seem very adamant about ensuring her life.”

“Do you question my intentions?” Vader inquires harshly. He doesn’t like to be regulated; only the Emperor himself has the power to truly give him orders.

“Your behavior lately is just strange,” Tarkin shrugs. “Does it have to do with Amidala? Is that why you seem to be protecting the princess?” The Grand Moff is careful with his words, but his tone is definitely more accusatory than curious. Vader can sense his suspicion as well, and he doesn’t take kindly to it. He supposes that his behavior is odd, and it isn't much of a surprise that Tarkin has caught on. It is quite strange, after all, to keep a 'prisoner' in a room rather than a cell, and to not use a torture device on them. But it angers him nevertheless; Tarkin should know better than to question his authority.

When Vader does not answer quickly enough, Tarkin continues. “Did Amidala ask you to keep the princess alive? They were captured together; their relationship may be stronger than she has let on.”

“Amidala is none of your concern,” Vader replies sharply. He hopes that Tarkin will stop there, but to his dismay, he doesn’t.

“Just remember where your loyalties should lie,” says Tarkin, his pale eyes narrowed.

Vader would have snapped his neck if he wasn’t such a highly ranked Imperial. The Emperor would surely punish him if he killed Tarkin; that is the only reason Vader is able to behave himself. In all nineteen of his years as Darth Vader, no one had ever questioned his loyalty to the Empire. Not even the Emperor himself.

“My loyalty,”  Vader snarls. “Is to the Empire. It is not your place to question that.”

Now the Grand Moff is glaring at him with icy eyes. “Just don’t let your personal feelings get in the way of your responsibility to the Empire.” Tarkin chastises him like a child, and Vader will not tolerate such things. He hasn’t been spoken to like this since he was a Jedi.

“I’m not,” insists Vader. “Why don’t you mind yourself, Tarkin, rather than scrutinize my every move? I assure you, none of my actions will negatively impact the Empire.”

Before Tarkin can argue any further, the intercom on the conference table buzzes. “Yes?” Tarkin answers.

“We’ve captured a freighter entering the remains of the Alderaan system. It’s markings match those that blasted its way out of Mos Eisley,” a man on the other end of the intercom informs Tarkin.

Mos Eisley—Tatooine. That was where the princess had sent the Death Star plans, and it could be no coincidence that the same ship was now trying to visit Alderaan, Princess Leia’s home planet.

“They must be trying to return the stolen plans to the princess. See, Tarkin? She can still be useful to us.” Vader sounds rather smug as he speaks, and satisfaction swells within him as he sees the irritation flicker over Tarkin’s features.

“Just go oversee the investigation of the ship, Vader,” sighs Tarkin.

Vader doesn’t say anything more. He just turns and leaves to head down to the docking bay where the freighter ship is held.

As much as Padme wants to redeem her husband, as much as she wants to believe in him, she has her doubts. She knows that she cannot put her faith in Vader to truly protect Leia. He would keep her alive, perhaps, but what kind of life would Leia be living if she were kept a prisoner? Vader would never release her; she’d just be wasting away in a cell.

If Leia conveniently escaped, Darth Vader would immediately trace it back to Padme. But what could he really do to her? Vader won’t hurt her—she’s sure of that. Perhaps she would be confined to her room and be barred from exploring the ship with Vader, but Padme could live with that.

She’s been contemplating deeply in her room ever since Vader left her alone. Padme still isn’t sure how exactly she would free Leia, but she supposes she could use her credentials as Vader’s companion to get her through Death Star security. The trouble with that is Padme isn’t sure of how far word has spread, and how much most Imperial men would be aware of.

And there would certainly be grave consequences if she failed to free Leia. Vader may call off their deal altogether and try to kill their daughter, in which case, Padme would be forced to tell him that he is her father. She desperately hopes that it will not come to that.

Padme decides to take the risk. She believes that she can succeed; she has rarely ever failed a mission in her time as both a Senator of the Republic and a general of the Rebel Alliance.

There would be guards stationed outside of her room, no doubt. She had seen them when Vader escorted her out of her room and back. Perhaps, if Padme told them that she is allowed to leave and that they must accompany her, they would believe her. And with a pair of Imperial guards at her side, she may not be questioned upon entering the Detention Center. She just had to sell her lie, and using their fear of Darth Vader against them should do the trick.

Padme is still dressed in her deep navy senatorial gown as she was earlier in the day. She is well put together, with her elegant dress and her hair, which is held neatly in place with her gold headband, tumbling down her back. Her appearance perpetuates an air of sophistication and authority—exactly what she is going for.

Her heart is pounding in her chest when she presses the button to open the doors. She exits her room, a nonchalant expression on her face. The two guards turn to look at her, confusion painted across their faces.

“My… my lady?” one of them, the guard on the right, questions tentatively.

“I have permission from Lord Vader to visit Princess Leia in the Detention Center,” Padme tells them as a matter of factly. She maintains a very serious, tranquil expression, careful not to betray her nervousness.

“What? He never informed us of this,” the other guard says. His tone is skeptical, but also respectful. She highly doubts the guards would ever intend to show her anything but respect; they must certainly be aware of the consequences if they didn’t.

“Lord Vader informed me that all I would have to do is ask the two of you to escort me to the Detention Center,” Padme lies.

“Where… where is Lord Vader?” the guard to Padme’s left inquires. They both seem rather uneasy and unsure; all they would need was a little more of a push, and they would surely oblige to Padme’s request.

“He is in a conference with Grand Moff Tarkin,” replies Padme.

She bats her eyes innocently, and then narrows them. “Surely, you would not want to upset Lord Vader,” Padme says. “I am sure he would not be pleased if you denied me a visit to the princess. She is a very dear friend of mine, and Lord Vader promised me a visit to her today.”

The guards look at each other skeptically. One of them says to the other, “Vader would be upset, you know. She’s important to him.”

Padme’s heart convulses—she is important to him, they had said. If even an Imperial guard could see that… no, she shouldn’t get her hopes up like that. Although she wants to believe otherwise, Padme is still unsure of Vader’s emotional state, especially when it comes to her. She may be important to him, but in what way? The fear that he might not truly love her is consuming, but Padme tries to contain herself in front of the guards.

“You’re right,” the guard replies to his partner. They both then turn to Padme. “Alright, my lady, we will escort you to the Detention Center.”

She smiles cordially. “Thank you.”

The elevator opens to the Detention Center. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo are dressed in Stormtrooper uniforms, with Chewbacca in tow. They have placed handcuffs around the Wookie’s wrists to give the impression that he is a prisoner, allowing them easy access to the Detention Center.

When the Millennium Falcon was pulled in by the Death Star’s tractor beam, Luke had no clue they would be commencing a rescue mission. He knows he’s in way over his head, not that he would ever admit that out loud. But after watching the princess’s message to Ben, he couldn’t just leave her with the Empire. Luke knows enough about the Empire to be fully aware that they wouldn’t keep the princess alive for long. The Empire does not like to keep their prisoners.

By not saving the princess, he’d be possibly damning the galaxy to an eternal Imperial reign.

Luke, Han, and Chewie step out of the elevator together. They both have blasters on their belts, prepared to attack at any moment. Luke knew they were heading into a fight when they made this rescue plan, and he is willing to follow through with it—even if it means that he has to kill the Imperials in the Detention Center.

The man at the circular control panel of the Detention Center stops what he was doing and looks at them, confusion written all over his face. He takes a step forward and clasps his hands behind his back.

“Where are you taking this… thing?” he asks suspiciously, his eyes narrowed.

“Prisoner transfer from cell block 1138,” Luke answers quickly, making up a random cell number in his head.

But the officer before them doesn’t seem to buy it. “I wasn’t notified…” he trails off when another officer approaches him.

“Sir, I thought we were expecting Amidala? Not… a Wookie prisoner.” He tries to keep his voice hushed, but he is still within earshot of Luke.

So, someone else was scheduled… Luke knows that is not good news. He turns to Han and nods—they would need to act soon if they were going to pull this plan off.

The officer just shrugs in response to his comrade. “I’ll have to clear it,” he says simply. He turns to his console and punches a few buttons, and the other office who questioned him begins to walk back to his post.

While both officers are occupied, Han unfastens Chewbacca’s bindings, and the Wookie lets out a great roar.

“Look out, it’s loose!” yells an Imperial.

Luke quickly hands Chewbacca an extra blaster. The Wookie runs forward, charging the officer at the console, and Han and Luke begin to fire their blasters at the guards in the room. A few Imperials go down, and the two young men dodge several blaster shots. They knock into one another, and Han elbows Luke in the ribcage. Luckily, though, he was protected by armor.

“Kid! Watch where you’re going!” Han shouts, and continues to fire at the remaining guards.

While Han handles the rest of the Imperials, Luke locates the cameras in the room and shoots them down. Most likely, though, the Death Star’s surveillance team has already seen them in the Detention Center. They don’t have much time, Luke realizes.

Another Imperial officer begins to charge at them from the hallway that leads to the cells, but Luke exclaims, “Look out!” and Han fires at him before he can do any damage. The man falls to the floor and tumbles down the stairs.

Once the chaos has been resolved and only Luke, Han, and Chewbacca are left standing, Han and Luke rush to the console. Han pushes the body of an Imperial officer off of the console, revealing a blinking communicator.

“We’ve got to find out which cell this princess of yours is in,” Han says, punching in commands into the computer at the console. “Here it is… cell 2187, you go get her. I’ll hold them here.”

Luke nods and runs off into the corridor. He quickly scans the numbers on the cells as he rushes by. 2160, 2166, 2175, 2183…

He stops dead in his tracks when he finally spots cell 2187. Just as he is about to press the button to open the cell, Han yells down the hallway, “Luke! We’re gonna have company!”

Luke’s heart jolts in his chest. They must be sending a squad up to investigate, he thinks. Shit, shit, shit, this is not good. This was a terrible plan.

He punches the button of the princess’s cell and the doors slide open, revealing a small woman in a white dress, laying on a metal bench. She looks just as she did in the hologram she sent, beautiful, young, and of course, with the double buns on either side of her hair.

Princess Leia groggily opens her eyes and holds herself up by one elbow, raising an eyebrow at Luke. He stares at her for a moment, dumbfounded by her beauty.

“Aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper?” she remarks.

“Huh?” Luke exclaims. But then he realizes—of course, he’s still wearing his disguise. “Oh, the uniform,” he says, removing his helmet to reveal his face and blonde hair. “I’m Luke Skywalker, I’m here to rescue you,” Luke tells the princess, dropping his helmet on the ground.

“You’re who?” inquires Princess Leia, who now stands up from her seat on the bench.

“I’m here to rescue you,” Luke says with more urgency in his voice. They would have to hurry, before it was too late, and he needs to get the princess to come with him now. There isn’t much time for questions. “I’ve got your R2 unit, I’m here with Ben Kenobi,” he explains further, hoping that will suffice for evidence to the princess that he is an ally, not an enemy.

“Ben Kenobi!” she repeats, her eyes lighting up with hope. “Where is he?”

“Come on!” Luke nods his head to the door, and the two of them run outside. Just as they are heading down the hallway, Princess Leia stops.

There is a pained expression on her face, and she turns and looks at Luke with worry. He stops beside her, wondering why she has stopped.

“Wait,” she gasps. “Padmé… we have to get Padmé.”

“Who?”

“Padmé! She was captured with me,” Leia explains. “I can’t leave her behind.”

“Okay, okay,” agrees Luke, not wanting to put them at risk and wait any longer. “We’ll—we’ll figure out a plan to save her, just… let’s focus on getting out of her for now.”

Leia nods, but Luke sees a twinkle of reluctance in her eyes.

The two of them emerge from the hallway to meet Han and Chewbacca back at the console.

“Princess,” Han greets Leia with a quick nod. “Let’s get the hell out of here before the squad of troopers they’re sending arrives.”

“We need to go somewhere we can look up the location of other prisoners,” says Leia. “We’ve got to find Padmé, but Vader took her somewhere else. I know she’s here, but I just don’t know exactly where. There’s so many different Detention Centers…”

“How do you know she’s even on the Death Star?” Luke asks her. If they were separated, this Padmé that Leia is searching for could have easily been sent to an Imperial prison on a planet. For Leia’s sake, though, and for theirs, he hoped that Padmé is here, and that they would be able to find her.

Leia shakes her head and sighs. “I can’t explain it, but I just know,” she tells him.

“Is she part of the Rebellion or something?” Han asks, crossing his arms. Luke can already tell by the sour look on his face that he isn’t pleased about the princess suggesting they rescue yet another prisoner.

“Yes, she’s a General, and she’s my friend,” says Leia, placing her hands on her hips. “I’m not going anywhere without her.”

“We could just leave you and her behind,” Han suggests, but Luke knows he isn’t serious. As much as Han likes to appear like he has a heart of stone, Luke doesn’t truly think he would let Leia die here, especially after going through so much trouble to rescue her.

“I’m going to save Padmé, or I’ll die trying,” declares Leia defiantly. She seems very set on this new course of action, and Luke doesn’t dare argue. Besides, if he were Leia, he would want to save his friend, too.

“Yeah well you might just kill us all in the process!” snaps Han. “I don’t want—”

He is interrupted by the sound of the elevator opening. The four of them whirl around and Han, Luke, and Chewie raise their weapons, expecting to be met with a group of Stormtroopers. However, instead, they come face to face with a woman and a pair of guards.

The woman is dressed far better than anyone Luke has seen on the Death Star. If he didn’t have better senses, if they weren’t in a life or death situation right now, he would have stood there in awe; she was extraordinarily beautiful, even more so than Princess Leia. She must be years older than the princess, however, perhaps closer to Han’s age, late twenties or early thirties.

She wears a regal navy-blue gown that pools around her on the floor. As she takes a tentative step forward, her dress ripples smoothly, like dark water. Her dark hair is long and falls past her shoulders in loose, elegant curls. And she has eyes like the princess’s, dark, kind, but also full of steel and strength.

Her facial features are very feminine, almost delicate in some ways, and elegant, with soft, straight brows, a thin nose, and an angular jawline with defined cheekbones.

Luke realizes he is staring, because the woman is looking right back at him. She seems almost as stunned as he is, and he quickly looks away to hide his embarrassment. He knows it can be perceived as rude to stare at someone, but he was just surprised to see someone dressed like a queen in a Death Star.

The guards beside her scan the room, eyeing the several dead Imperials on the floor. They raise their blasters, one at Han and the other at Luke.

Before either of them can shoot, the woman steps in front of them.

“My lady, please move out of the way,” the guard tells her.

“'My lady?’” Han repeats. He turns to Leia, his face screwed up in suspicion. “I thought you said she was a prisoner!”

“Don’t shoot, them, please,” the woman tells the guards. “Let them… explain. There might be more to the story here.”

“But, my lady, if Vader finds out we didn’t shoot intruders who were obviously freeing the princess—” one of the guard starts, but Padmé cuts him off.

“I promise you…” she casts a brief glance at Leia, who nods to her. They seem to be communicating silently, because Leia then lightly elbows Han to get his attention. Leia gestures with a short nod of her head to the pair of guards, and Han seems to get the message. So does Luke.

Oh, Luke thinks. She’s buying us time to shoot them. Does that mean that this woman was on their side, even if Imperials referred to her as ‘my lady?’ He isn’t completely sure of what to think of her, but she seems to be trying to save them, not get them killed. And if Luke denies her help, he is sure he’d end up dead for it.

“I won’t allow Vader to harm either of you. If I tell him you were just doing your job and protecting me, nothing bad will happen to you,” the woman tells the two guards. Luke furrows his brow—they’re her security detail. They are her guards, assigned to her by Darth Vader himself. What would a prisoner be doing with Imperial guards of her own?

He doesn’t have time to contemplate that too deeply right now. So, instead, he and Han do what they’re supposed to, and fire at the two guards simultaneously. They both drop to the floor, blaster holes in their head.

The woman turns to them with a solemn sigh. “Unfortunately, their deaths were necessary,” she says. “They never would have let me go.”

“Padmé, Mother of Moons!” Leia exclaims. The princess runs forward and throws her arms around the woman. She returns the princess’s embrace, wrapping her arms protectively around Leia, as if she is a small child.

“I thought… I was so afraid I would never see you again,” says Leia once she pulls away from Padmé. It is a heart-warming scene, and Luke smiles to himself, glad that the princess was able to be reunited with her friend.

“I’m alright. I’m glad you’re okay, as well, I was just coming down here to break you out…”

So that’s why they suddenly ran into Leia’s friend. But still, the circumstances were odd. Leia had told them she was a General of the Rebellion, but she had Imperial guards. But he supposes they would have time for those questions later—still, he can’t help his mind from wandering.

“Alright, alright, that’s a nice reunion and all, but we’ve gotta get going, sisters,” Han interrupts them. He then points to Leia accusingly. “You better explain what the hell is going on, though, sweetheart—but we don’t have time for that right now.”

“Padmé, right?” Luke says. Padmé nods and smiles weakly, almost sheepishly, at him. “I’m Luke Skywalker, and the rude one there is Han Solo. The Wookie’s name is Chewie. We—"

“The squad of troopers they’re sending will be here any minute now,” interjects Han. He looks at Padmé with narrowed eyes. “Since you’re so close with the Imps, do you know a way out of here?”

“There’s only one way—through the elevator,” says Padmé, pursing her lips with vexation. Luke is sure she doesn’t appreciate Han’s comment, but she doesn’t say anything for now. Instead, she crouches to the floor and grabs a pair of metal orbs that were attached to each of the guards’ belts.

“These should help,” she tells them, rising back up from the floor. Padmé shows them what she has, and Luke widens his eyes in shock. They were grenades—could they really trust a woman they don’t know with such dangerous weapons? And why were her guards so heavily armed?

“They had grenades?” Leia says. She seems to be thinking the same thing as Luke, because even she looks skeptical now. “Those were assassin class guards?”

Luke isn’t entirely sure what that means, as he doesn’t know the Imperial military like Leia does, but he can assume that the guards were specially trained.

“So, you’re gonna throw grenades while wearing that fancy dress and save our skins, huh?” snarks Han, putting his hands on his hips skeptically. “You’re not exactly dressed for action, sister.”

Padmé furrows her brow at Han. “I’m quite functional no matter my attire,” she retorts. “Besides, I’m wearing something else underneath this. I thought I might encounter some action while trying to save Leia, but I couldn’t leave my room in combat clothing, or my guards would have been suspicious.”

Her room, her guards—Luke is fairly certain as this point that Padmé was not truly a prisoner aboard the Death Star. If she hadn’t been given a cell like Leia, then she was more of a guest than anything. She doesn’t even try to hide it; she must know that this was very obvious the moment her guards referred to her as ‘my lady.’

“Now, if we’re done scrutinizing my fashion choices, let’s go,” Padmé orders. Han’s face turns bitter again and he mutters something to Chewbacca, who gargles incomprehensibly. Luke chuckles under his breath; Padmé is admirably bold, and he appreciates her sass towards Han. He deserves it, in Luke’s opinion.

Suddenly, smoke erupts into the air as a gaping hole is blasted through the wall of the Detention Center. Several Stormtroopers emerge from the opening and begin firing at the five of them. They retreat into the hallway for cover, and Han shouts frantically, “Get behind me, get behind me!”

Leia and Padmé are both unarmed, save for the grenades that Padmé has, so Han, Luke, and Chewbacca are the ones who fire in return at the Stormtroopers. They manage to take several of them down, but it is not enough. Luke’s heart is hammering away in his chest, and his breathing has become quick and uneven. He knows there’s a possibility they might die here, and that thought terrifies him. But he doesn’t allow that fear to consume him, and instead continues to bravely defend himself and his comrades.

He hears Padmé say to Leia behind him, “Hold these.” A few moments pass by—Luke, Han, and Chewie are still firing at the Stormtroopers—and then Padmé says, “Everyone, stand back.” Blaster fire flashes towards them, but none of it reaches them; they stay pressed against the walls to avoid it.

Luke looks to Padmé, who now wears a white bodysuit with beige boots and a belt to match. There’s fabric tied around her waist, too, of the same beige color of her boots and belt—it must be a cape or a hood of some sort. Her blue gown is on the floor, and Luke realizes now what she meant when she said she was wearing something more suitable for combat underneath her dress. She must have been wearing the boots the entire time, though.

She holds the pair of grenades in her hand. Padmé glances at both Luke and Leia, and then presses the button to detonate the grenade. It begins to beep, and Padmé quickly throws it into the horde of Stormtroopers.

[tlcrescuepa]

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New Post has been published on https://tlcrescuepa.com/week-end-update-welcome-fall/

Week-End Update: Welcome Fall?

After last week’s cooler temps we managed to welcome Fall with enough heat to confuse the vegetable garden and make more than 1 family regret closing down their pool for the season. We’re hoping for the same dry weather next week-end but are also wishing for slightly cooler temperatures for our Miles For Mutts 5K & 1-Mile Fun Walk but we’ll be prepared to help keep everyone well hydrated with the Concordville Nissan water station and will have a sunscreen check point to make sure those of you who forgot to put on sunscreen can protect yourselves.

On to adoptions because enquiring minds are most interested in who celebrated their gotcha day this week! Monique’s life being used for breeding purposes is now a distant memory as this sweet Poodle started the next chapter of her happy tail & changing her name to Mimosa earlier this week! Also adopted were Carabelle, Chief (now Diesel), Daisy, Demyx, Lady Jaymes, Kilo, Monkey, Opal & Shortie.

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Carabelle

Chief now Diesel

Daisy

Jaymes

Kilo

Monkey

Opal

Shortie

Monique now Mimosa

  We also have some updates to share

Lily FKA Autumn

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“1 year ago today I adopted Lily (fka Autumn). She definitely rescued me just as much as I rescued her. Can’t imagine life without her. I love spoiling her with love. She goes to doggy day care several times a week where she is the life of the party and friends with everyone. She is so energetic and loves going to parks and playing in the stream. She also loves curling up on the couch with me. She has come such a long way this year and has gained so much confidence. Thank you TLC for helping to bring Lily into my life! So many pictures to choose from but here are a few from our first year together”

  Kali FKA Daneel (special appearance by Louie FKA Quinn)

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Kali

Louie

“Happy 3 year “gotcha day” Kali ❤. You bring so much love and laughter to our family”

   Snowball

Snowball

“Today Snowball celebrated his birthday! . It’s his fourth, but his very first with us . And he wanted to make sure that everyone got to see how cool he looked in his birthday hat! ( oh, the things pet owners will buy for entertainment. Lol). I couldn’t help but think today about how one year ago at this time he was unwanted and in a shelter in West Virginia. But then, To Love a Canine changed his destiny.

For anyone considering getting a new pet, please please please don’t be afraid to open your home and heart to a rescue pet.. It’ll be the one of best decisions you ll ever make. Birthday hat not included”

  Frank

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“Frankie is doing great!  He’s growing and learning more every week.  He’s very well behaved minus a few puppy moments as to be expected.  Truly a sweetie and we’re falling more in love with him everyday!

Question:  I took care of his license application, bought pet insurance, finished his vaccines, established a relationship with the vet and ordered him new tags.  1) do I need to do anything with the microchip or was that updated when we adopted him? 2) is there anything I’m missing?”

  Editor’s note: we register the microchip to the adopter during the adoption visit so there is no need to contact the chip manufacturer unless you move, your contact info changes or the dog escapes.

  Max

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“Hello! Max is doing great! He seems to be getting more settled in to our routine and is less anxious. We are signing up for Jeri Wagner’s group class. I just took him to the vet and there are no problems- I had bloodwork done and it came back perfect! We will be bringing Max and our other dog Blue to the walk at Warwick park in a few weeks”

  “Razberry is doing very well in our home. She loves her siblings (2 and 4 legged). She had been doing great on the leash for short walks but she really loves sitting on laps. She has been eating well and has had no accidents in the house! We absolutely love her and we’re so happy we found her! Here is a picture of her taking care of my daughter who just had a minor arm surgery. Razberry stayed by her side all day long and my daughter had less pain when she was petting her. We already have an appointment for her first “spa day” at our groomer. I’d be happy to send more pics when we get them.”

  Cosmo FKA Moses

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“Cosmo, new name, is settling in well. We are all head over heals in love with him. He and I are working on a morning routine that works for us, which needs to be adjusted for his poop schedule. Trying something different tomorrow. He sleeps in his crate all night, loves playing ball, and enjoys my grandchildren. 

My daughter’s cat loves him and we are working on his chase game with her. The cat wants to play, but hates being chased. He has made himself quite at home here. 

Attached are 2 pictures. I will follow up with the vet next week. 

Thanks so much TLC. “

  Finnegan FKA William

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“”We are loving the new addition to our family, he is fitting in perfectly. We did change Williams name to Finnegan, which goes nicely with out other dog Bailey. Finnegan has his vet appointment this Thursday and we will make sure to bring a copy of his records with us. As we speak my husband is changing his name on his microchip ID. We have been working on training him with the assistance of our neighbor and recall from our older dog. With that said, we do plan on completing formal training to work on some of his behaviors and plan on calling to chat with Deb Murray for some suggestions. Finnegan is a lovable, easy going pup who loves to cuddle and nap in the grass. Here are a couple pictures for you. Thank you for checking.”

  Calvin FKA Kalvin

“Thank you for this follow up! Calvin is settling in very well at our home. We are in love! As you can see we did decide to keep the name but we are spelling it with a ‘C’ rather that a ‘K.’ He’s growing so fast, so we will be sure to pass on pictures soon. Thank you so much for your service. We feel so blessed to be a part of this community.”

  Brooke

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“Thanks for checking in on Brooke! She is doing great and is such a sweet pup! She seems to be having a great time here and is well adjusted! She loves to go for walks and especially hikes down by the river. She’s also great at sniffing out little critters in the yard:) We really are so happy we have her as part of our family! Thank you all for making it possible!”

  Blodwynn FKA Pizzelle (Willow FKA Bindi’s pup)

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 Blodwynn’s mom sent us her Wisdom Panel results – we’re a little perplexed by the amount of Lab coming from both of her parents, since her mom’s Wisdom Panel didn’t show Lab . . .

  We hope you have a great week and hope to see you at Miles For Mutts next Sunday!

[mastcomm]

Trump Threw Weighty Refugee Decisions to Local Government, With Painful Results

EAST LONGMEADOW, Mass. — In a gray-walled, institutional hall usually reserved for prosaic debates over traffic and town budgets, Mohamoud Abdirahman rose from the audience last month and approached a panel of five town councilmen sitting in judgment.

Civil war had forced his family to flee their native Somalia in 1991, when he was a child. The Abdirahmans traveled for two days by cargo ship to Kenya, where they stayed for a year and a half before securing refuge in the United States. Now, it was his turn to fight for those trying to follow his footsteps to this town abutting Springfield and the Connecticut border.

“A lot of people like me just want a second chance at life,” an emotional Mr. Abdirahman pleaded.

A similar refrain is echoing across the country in town councils, county commissions, mayors’ offices and governors’ mansions after an executive order signed by President Trump in September granted local politicians a veto over the placement of refugees in their communities.

That order has carried the national tension over the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration agenda from the halls of Washington and detention camps along the southwestern border to places like East Longmeadow, population 16,000, and turned refugees and those who work to resettle them into lobbyists of sorts.

The anxiety among resettlement officials here has grown in recent weeks after the mayor of neighboring Springfield, one of the largest cities in Western Massachusetts, became one of the first politicians in the country to announce that he would not allow refugee resettlement. That was amplified by the decision of Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas last month to block resettlement for the entire state, which has welcomed more refugees than any other state in the past five years. And on Friday, Mr. Trump put refugees who have lived in Western Massachusetts for years at risk of continuing to stay separated from their relatives abroad when he added Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan and Tanzania to a list of countries facing stringent travel restrictions.

“This goes against everything we know,” said Maxine Stein, the chief executive of the Jewish Family Service of Western Massachusetts, a refugee resettlement agency.

The vetoes issued so far in Texas, Springfield and counties in Minnesota and Virginia were suspended in recent weeks by a federal judge who issued a temporary injunction against the executive order. The ruling delayed a Jan. 21 deadline for resettlement agencies to submit funding requests — along with letters of consent from governors and local officials — to the State Department.

But the resettlement agencies say there is still an urgent need for the resettlement approvals. Judges issued similar temporary injunctions for Mr. Trump’s other immigration polices, only to have the Supreme Court side with the administration.

It is also, the resettlement agencies say, about education. Some local officials were wholly unfamiliar with refugee policy before Mr. Trump tasked them with deciding whether resettlement should continue in their communities. Under the executive order, if a town board, county official or mayor declines — or neglects — to make a decision, silence equates to a veto.

“What we’ve seen in the courts is that the deadline may be pushed back, but it often doesn’t go away,” said Sara Bedford, who works with refugee families for the Jewish Family Service. “As long as the Springfield mayor doesn’t opt in, I think refugee communities will feel just a little bit less welcome.”

The vague wording of the executive order also caused confusion among refugee resettlement officials, who questioned which local official had the power to consent to the State Department.

Under the order, consent is required from governors and “localities,” which in many places was interpreted as the county leadership. But some Western Massachusetts towns are not represented by a county government, so the decision in Springfield fell to Domenic J. Sarno, the son of Italian immigrants and the longest-serving mayor of one of the poorest cities in the state.

Mr. Sarno, a Democrat, issued his veto even after Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts formally consented to allow refugees into the state and the Springfield City Council unanimously voted to allow them into the city.

“You cannot continue to concentrate poverty on top of poverty,” Mr. Sarno wrote in Springfield’s newspaper, The Republican. He demanded that more affluent communities “step up to the plate and put their money where their mouth is — to take on their fair share of social justice responsibilities.”

Mr. Sarno’s words echoed those of Mr. Trump, who has said the country is “full” and has threatened to send immigrants by the busload to Democratic cities and towns that have denounced his policies. Michael A. Fenton, the Springfield councilman who introduced the resolution to welcome refugees, said he had been fielding calls from residents demanding the city “let them go to the suburbs.” Mr. Abbott argued, “Texas has carried more than its share.”

But most government officials who responded to the executive order have decided to accept refugees into their states and counties, including those dominated by Republicans. At least 42 governors and more than 110 local governments have consented.

They include Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas and former under secretary of homeland security, who in 2015 opposed allowing Syrian refugees into the state, citing security concerns. Last month, Mr. Hutchinson testified before his State Legislature to defend allowing refugees into Arkansas, taking with him a Congolese business owner and an Afghan refugee who assisted the American military.

Gary Stubblefield, an Arkansas state senator, pressed his fellow Republican, lamenting, “Every morning when I wake up and turn on the national news, sometimes I ask myself a question: ‘Am I still in the United States of America?’”

Mr. Hutchinson held his ground: “You’ve got a choice to make. You can create fear, or you can help resolve fear. I challenge you to help resolve fear.”

In a twist, Mr. Hutchinson said in an interview that he was encouraged to allow refugees into Arkansas since a limited number would most likely be resettled in the state after Mr. Trump capped the number for 2020 at 18,000, down from 30,000 in the previous year. President Barack Obama set the cap at 110,000 his last year in office.

Still, Mr. Hutchinson’s staff spent the first days after his decision fielding angry calls from constituents, an uncomfortable task that Mr. Fenton in Springfield knows well. By signing the executive order, Mr. Trump has put municipal leaders in an unfair position, Mr. Fenton said.

“Municipal officials in the Northeast, we deal with snow, we deal with potholes, we deal with property taxes, trash pickup,” he said. “We do not deal with the complications associated with refugee immigration policy.”

He worries that the mayor’s decision will have a lasting effect on Springfield’s reputation.

“Those active and contributing members of our society don’t feel good about themselves in the place that they live when people say they’re not welcome,” Mr. Fenton said.

Mr. Sarno’s rejection of refugees surprised Fikiri Amisi and Jacqueline Asumani, Congolese immigrants who came to Springfield last year after spending more than 12 years in a refugee camp in Zimbabwe. When he first came to Springfield, Mr. Amisi said, it felt as though he had been saved. Both work full time, Ms. Asumani at a hotel and Mr. Amisi at a factory that manufactures medical supplies. Mr. Amisi is also studying for his associate degree. They have three children and plan to buy a house next year.

The couple wonders what they have done wrong.

“They don’t want more refugees here,” Ms. Asumani told her husband. “It shows they don’t love us.”

On a recent afternoon, Mr. Amisi looked through a photo album and stopped at an image showing the refugee camp where he used to wait in limbo. A friend called him to express concern over the mayor’s decision. He has been waiting for a ticket to the United States for four years, though long ago he cleared the refugee screening process.

The resettlement officials at Jewish Family Service have tried to meet with officials on a near daily basis. Municipal leaders often ask about costs to the school system and whether the local government will need to provide housing for the refugees. The staff reassures them that the onus is on the resettlement agency, which helps families find work and pay for the first three months of housing.

While a veto by a local official cannot prevent a refugee from moving to a city from within the United States, it prohibits the resettlement organizations from providing that initial financial support and could harm their overall funding, according to Ms. Stein.

“When you’re sleeping on relatives’ floors or extra beds, and you’re all jammed into the kitchen, and it’s chaotic in the morning to get to school so you just don’t get to school, it’s just not a good scene,” Ms. Stein said.

She made that case to the East Longmeadow Town Council, hoping councilors would open the door to refugees shut out of Springfield. Some seemed moved by the testimonies, including the story of Mr. Abdirahman, who now holds a master’s degree and works as the assistant director of behavioral health services at Jewish Family Service.

“To our residents who took the time to speak from your heart, thank you for doing that,” said Kathleen G. Hill, the Town Council president. “And come visit anytime.”

But the Council already voted to take no action on Mr. Trump’s executive order in November, weeks after it was signed. Local government rules stipulated that they could not take the matter up for another six months.

Their hands were tied. And under Mr. Trump’s policy, doing nothing meant turning the refugees away.

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