#tw war/violence mention

[nazukisser]

SYNOPSIS | what a man by the name of shiina niki could give you that the heavens could not

TAGS | blood mention, food mention, war/violence mention, deity!reader & human chef!niki

READER | gender neutral

For the record, being a deity wasn’t fun. You had much more than humans, but it was long past the point where it was too much. There was always a duty, a duty to fight for whatever side you were born in. At least the humans gave themselves the ability to choose for themselves about what they wanted to do. To fight, fight, fight, again and again. You had the powers, but what was its use if you didn’t want to use them? It was fatiguing, fighting for a purpose you didn’t even have to agree with. Oftentimes, nobody really agreed with it, except for the ones who’d ordered it.

Despite mortal misconception, you could get tired, your arms could hurt, your wounds would not heal. There were times that, you too, wished for rest, where your sense of self had long disappeared. Even if there were creations of your figure on the temples and shrines the people had created, they were barely you. They worshipped you in name, yet what they really held in high regard was what you stood for to them. Nothing more, nothing less.

However, occasionally, there were those who touched your heart. There were those who truly believed that it was not a symbol they regarded in such high respect, but a being, alive like them. 

Your first meeting with him was unintentional. It was surprisingly few years ago, one night. It wasn’t often that you went to the shrine dedicated to you. Despite it being for “you”, it was really for the use of the people, doing stuff in your name, giving “you” things, but you never really took them. After all, it would cause a huge fuss if you appeared to them. Big name deities did that regularly, and while they were showered with praise, one mistake could lead to their downfall. Taking a risk like that was too big. 

Yet, you’d never smelled food like that before. You’d never seen such an alluring meal offered to you. They often thought that, somehow, raw sacrifices would work, but who’d want to eat such a thing? You didn’t even ask for it, and they’re giving you something you have to cook yourself. Either give something thoughtful or give nothing at all. 

Perhaps it was because you’d just come from battle that you were hungry (the food up there wasn’t even good in the slightest, until you were able to afford a meal from one of the deities of cooking up there, whether it be cooking in general, baking, breads, cakes, barbequed meats, stews, and whoever else was up there. They didn’t even have to fight. All they had to do was cook, and everyone was happy. Heck, they even used their cooking as a currency, even though it was technically not allowed to create your own. 

Sometimes, it was so easy to wish that you were one of them, probably living a much better life- useful and in demand, all the time, loved by everyone, instead of being a simple pawn- like the one in chess, if you would.

But somehow, even when someone was kind enough to bring proper food for the offerings, it was never enough to pique your interest. Soups, meats, breads- all simple foods that were never worth the risk of showing yourself. Maybe, if you were discreet enough, you could, and, say, an animal stole it, what could they do, right? Plus, they just let it go bad too… if only they understood.

It was only when a young chef, his hair tied into a low ponytail resting on his shoulder, had entered “your kitchen”. It was more like his kitchen than yours, though. After all, he was the one in it, using it. You’d only ever used it once, and someone got blamed for it. It was hard not to feel bad. 

But in his case, he used it and used it and used it, and it was only then that you’d come out from your hiding spot, food laid out on the table. He introduced himself as nothing more than a “decent chef”. He said that he thought it’d make you happy to get some good food. He’d always noticed that they gave you things that nobody would eat. It was a bit of a game, you supposed. Although it was hard to expect anyone to find it and play- and he’d played it perfectly.

You laughed. That was the most consideration any mortal had ever given you in the hundreds of years you’d existed. It was funny, but largely adorable, the way he acted. He asked what was funny; the only answer that came to your mind was that he was just so cute. 

And so, he came back again and again, and you did too, every time you caught the aroma of the food he’d come to make for you. It was better than the luxury foods that the deities above made; perhaps that was because he’d made it for you, with such love. 

And so, even today, he greeted you with a “Evenin’~ do ya like what I have today?” and his signature smile. You laughed, and said yes, you do. Even with your bloody body, incurable wounds, unerasable memories of war and pain, at least there were moments like these- being with someone you love, in your own home, even if it really wasn’t made for you. 

WORD COUNT | 904 words

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[stuhde]

i had shared what is happening in sudan on a long facebook post last night, but it virtually received almost little to no engagement or shares from the nearly 600 “friends” i have on the site.

this morning, my great-aunt was shot by the soldiers fighting for power, and God forbid, i lose more of my family members before eid this friday.

please read below to understand what is happening and how you can help my country. i hope the tumblr community can show more kindness than the lack of support and advocacy i’ve seen elsewhere.

يا رب اجعل هذا البلد آمناً 🇸🇩

the lack of awareness and advocacy from the African, Arab, and Muslim diaspora and the human rights community has been painful.

while Western media has done little to no coverage of the ongoing conflict in the capital city of my motherland, Sudan, it appears that the rest of the world also partakes in normalizing crimes and violence against SWANA people.

violence and war hurting the SWANA region are NOT ordinary occurrences — no one, regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, religion, and gender, should experience the unprecedented amount of violence that harms my two living grandmothers, aunts and uncles, and baby cousins who live in Khartoum.

your decision to ignore reading or educating and discussing with others about what is likely to be a civil war is complicity in viewing SWANA people as individuals who regularly experience conflict and are undeserving of help.

the silence is damaging, and it is up to us as privileged members of the diaspora (or individuals living in the Western world committed to human rights) to support the people of my country and their dream for a stable, democratically elected government.

what is happening in Sudan is a fight that started on April 15 between two competing forces for power — the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — neither groups are representative of the needs of our people. The Sudan Army is loyal to the dictator, Omar Al-Bashir, and the RSF is responsible for the genocide in Darfur.

with both power struggles backed by different Arab and Gulf nations, the two parties have been fighting for power for the last few years. While they worked together to try and end the people’s revolution, they lost. however, they are now in a constant power play of who will get to rule the nation.

this all means that war is NOT a reflection of my country — violence does not represent the SWANA people. Sudan is a nation of beautiful culture, strong women, intellectual and influential Islamic scholars, poets, and youth at the front lines of the revolution. we are a people committed to a region of peace for ourselves and the rest of the Ummah.

my family and the rest of Sudan’s innocent civilians are at the most risk, with many currently without drinking water, food to eat, electricity, and complete blockage to any mosques during the final nights of Ramadan, our holiest month of the year.

i ask that you please keep Sudan and our people in your prayers — donate to the Sudan Red Crescent or a mutual aid GoFund Me, email your representatives if you live in a country that can put pressure on either competing force of power, discuss this with your family and friends, and please do not forget to think about SWANA people — our brothers and sisters in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and many others need our love and support.

الردة_مستحيلة ✊🏾

#KeepEyesOnSudan

[balkanradfem]

Debunking the 'males follow reason, women follow emotions' myth

A woman makes a rational demand to a male, he denies her. She gets frustrated and upset, he accuses her of being overly emotional, and the reason why women can't make good decisions. It's a situation we've seen repeat over and over again, and we've gotten convinced. After all, m*n don't get emotional, they make rational decisions, they don't have that annoying trait of having to cry or care too much, they just do what is right in any situation, while a woman could never stand in their place.

Historically, m*n have been making a lot of these, rational, non-emotional decisions, so let's analyze how they've been doing. Historically, a lot of m*n have both started, and fought in wars. According to them, this is a logical, hard factual decision they've made, and they're proud of it, wars are integral to humanity, we have to fight if we want peace, and so on. So rationally, what do wars achieve for humanity? Mass destruction, mass murder, terrorism, mass rape, mass famine, intense trauma, destruction of environment, destruction of animals, destruction of culture and property, sea of corpses. But, m*n have decided that this is reasonable, because to the country that's been doing it, it can bring new assets, colonization of land mass, new natural resources to exploit. Massive damage to one part of the population for the benefit of another part, this they say, is rational.

If you're a male, it's rational for you to cause damage to countless individuals if there is some sort of benefit to you in doing it. This is presented to us as a reasonable, human and rational thinking. They've not only indoctrinated us to believe this, but put this into their laws. They've created laws that allow them to commit murder under the circumstances of war. They've made sure to give themselves a way to commit murder to get what they want, and not be punished. Again, this is presented as inevitable, cold hard factual thinking.

I would argue that the emotions followed here are greed, sadism, pride, and deep sense of egotism. Deluding themselves into believing that the entire world is turning around their personal needs and wants, and any amount of damage made for this cause is irrelevant. This isn't rational thinking, this is selfish, valuing themselves to the point where other human lives have zero value to them; it's irrational. A woman who puts herself before others is immediately informed that she is objectively selfish, irrational, unrealistic, self-centered, and deserves any kind of harm going her way. M*n have been operating like this from the beginnng of human life, and expect to be praised as 'rational and objective', by these same women they call selfish for not acting as free servants for a second.

Let's look at another 'rational' concept males have created and developed: capitalism. Cold hard logic is – if you can exploit other people to the very maximum, and take the value of their labour for yourself, you should get to do it, and if you can't, work until your health gives out and you die in pain. Again, a group of people gets power to exploit another, resources are given to those with financial power; those who do not have it, have to fight to survive. We know at this point it's caused deaths, sicknesses, mental illness, hunger and low quality of life to the majority of the population, we also know it's caused massive environmental damage, to the point where the climate of the planet is threatened, and animals under mass extinction. Was this a logical move? Was it a normal, rational system to build? Yes according to m*n, because they get to use their financial power to rape women they wouldn't otherwise get to rape.

I would argue again, that the emotions followed in this case are selfishenss, cruelty and greed. When a woman tries to exploit people around her for her own benefit, she is called the worst slurs and names imaginable, and no punishment is too cruel to inflict on her. While m*n have been doing this for centuries and apparently we need to acknowledge that this is in fact, smart, rational and reasonable way to live, and also inevitable.

So let's see what women have been doing on earth at the same time while m*n were busy murdering people in wars and inventing financial systems that bring destruction; women were creating the human population. We were making sure that everyone alive gets to eat, drink, clean clothing, care. We were putting our labour and our minds in taking care of our family members, and fighting for our human rights whenever the situation, or the information we got allowed for it. We struggled to stand up to power-hungry m*n in our life who would exploit us, we studied and invented, we found our ways in every trade, every school, every cultural institution that did good to the planet, and we outpreformed m*n almost immediately after we got in. We gave our lives to make sure the human race isn't erased by the amount of murder and terrorism going on. We put our efforts into protecting the environment, we figured out medicine and then got destroyed for it, we lost countless of our own to murder, rape and torture, we tried to keep safe the ones who got hurt.

While m*n 'rational' and 'logical' thinking lead us closer to destruction, we've been fighting to preserve life.

Having the creatures in charge who believe themselves more rational, but function out of a place of empty pride, absolute ignorance, endless hunger for power, endless greed and insatiable sadism, is not a reasonable way to lead the civilization. In fact, it's been proven over and over again, that this causes low quality of life for everyone, creates practices that allow and support cruelty and destruction, and deals massive trauma and pain to the most of the living humans.

What is 'reasonable' to them, is for them to ignore everyone else's emotions, well being, safety, even the right to exist, and follow only their own. The reasoning they follow has nothing to do with being rational, it has to do with being selfish, proud, ignorant, and I can't stress this enough, being incredibly and utterly stupid. They're destroying the land they depend on to live, and feeling proud and rational to do so, while calling women stupid and selfish for wanting human rights.

It's been enough of this. A rational male has not been born or seen on this planet. We need to assume that every time a m*n says something, he has absolutely no clue what he's talking about, and is likely attempting to cause some damage for his own benefit – in all cases we will be right. We cannot let someone with a track record like this to be in the charge of decision making, nor should we respect their decisions. They couldn't even make laws that protect human lives. They couldn't even base their own accomplishments on the things they achieved – they had to take credit for our achievements over and over again. They are irrational, power hungry creatures that stop at nothing, humanity means nothing to them, human lives have no meaning to them. But they do to us.

We can make decision that make sense, specifically because we care about not destroying lives or the environment. We are capable of making the 'tough calls' because we will make the call that will not result in mass destruction! The only thing they keep holding over our head is that we don't have experience – but we can get it. And experience never helped them make less destructive, less stupid choices.

Male emotions are based on self-delusions. They refuse to see any consequence of their action, and play ignorant to the very end. Their empty pride, empty self-importance, empty confidence and empty arrogance is based on nothing but the lies they've told to themselves. Even slight factual analysis and statistics that come from male decisions, make their reasoning crumble into pieces.

Women's emotions are substantiated by facts. In every case when a woman has been told off for being emotional, she's getting gaslit and turned away from the cause of her emotion, which is always factual. It is reasonable to be upset at being treated as less than a human being. It is reasonable to care about the lives of other human beings. It is reasonable to care about the state of the world, state of the environment. It is reasonable to stand against destruction and loss of human lives. And yet we get told off for having the most substantiated, reasonable responses to male violence and terrorism.

And then there's one emotions males love to use to pretend they're not emotional: anger. It provides them with enough threat to stop women from analyzing and pointing out the failure of males, it works to protect them from the realization of how useless, harmful and destructive they've been. Making horrid, harmful and selfish decisions and exploding in anger if anyone comes close to pointing it out, coupled with blaming everyone else for having an emotional reaction to being harmed, is their primary 'reasonable' way of managing life. And this is what we have in charge on earth. A creature who causes damage, and then uses emotion to hide the damage they've done, while pretending to be an ignorant little baby, blissfully unaware of anything he does having any consequences.

We're done believing their lies.

[adragonsfriend]

Padme was not a Witness

I will never join the “Padmé was stupid to go to Mustafar” parade—she had valid reason to believe in the possibility of Anakin’s redemption—but there’s something awful in the fact that she didn’t have to witness either of his massacres.

Obi-Wan and Yoda walk past the bodies of their people—of their people’s children. Bail Organa goes to the temple and sees a kid get shot down trying to escape (more clones than Anakin, but still).

Padme hears about the second massacre after sitting in her apartment while the Temple was on fire. She’s told about them in vague terms. “I killed them like animals,” “he killed younglings,” She has a touch of denial when she goes to Mustafar partly because of her belief in Anakin, but partly because—I think—the Tuskan Massacre was never fully real to her. She understands it intellectually of course, but violence on that scale is difficult to conceptualise without seeing it, especially if it’s easier to just let it go. If she’d seen the bodies? Or seen Anakin kill them? She watched that one refugee kid die slowly, not at all violently, when she was working with the refugee organisation, and it affected her for the rest of her life. It is not a lack of caring on Padmé’s part that’s the problem.

Imagine being Obi-Wan listening to Padme saying “there’s still good in him,” after walking through the Temple, seeing the lightsaber marks on knights and children alike—not even to mention seeing her get strangled. It sounds not only wild, but honestly deeply offensive on more levels than one (besides the obvious issues it’s another, “train the boy,” prioritise Anakin over everything moment, except this time Obi-wan’s entire world has been torn apart, rather than just losing his Master)

If Padmé had actually been a witness to Anakin’s violence? If it was made present and visceral to her?

I think her opinions and her actions would’ve been different.

Thematically, it is crucial that when Luke goes to the second Death Star, he is under no illusions about who Anakin is or what he’s done, and in his most desperate moment he chooses to ask Anakin for help anyway. Padmé goes to him still a bit in denial, still a bit convinced things can return to how they once were. When she starts to push at the illusion, Anakin accuses her of betraying him and strangles her to shut her up, attempting to preserve the illusion (the difference between Anakin’s state at the time of his confrontations with Padmé and Luke is a whole other, very important topic). In part, her illusion allows Anakin to believe he can preserve the past (to be clear—he is the only one responsible for the choice to strangle her; Padme being imperfect is not an excuse for domestic abuse).

Side note, but if anyone is not sufficiently freaked out by Anakin strangling Padmé, it's important to know that strangulation is one of the flashing red warnings that physical abuse is doing to turn deadly, very, very quickly.

Luke’s complete and honest knowledge of Anakin’s worst self means there is nothing for Anakin to lose except his son, exactly as he is. No illusions, no wonderful past, not even any good memories together. Just his son.

To me, that’s one of several reasons (both thematic and logistical) why Padmé’s plea fails where Luke’s succeeds. None of those reasons has anything to do with her being stupid to go in the first place.

(There are some wonderful fanfics out there that show Padmé actually making her disapproval about the Tuskan massacre—both despite and because of her love—actively known during their marriage, and I think that interpretation of her is a stronger character than ROTS gives us, and more in line with what we’re shown in the first movie)

[kurithedweeb]

I know we always talk about Garroth ending up looking exactly like his father, but what about Dante growing up to look eerily like Gene.

When he joins up with Phoenix Drop, he's still young. He's a little on the short side, still a bit too thin from life in the wild and imprisonment, and he's a little anxious and shaky around so many people after having grown unused to living in a village. The smiling faces of the citizens remind you of your old home, of clamoring crowds and standing frozen in the plaza as your brother . . .

Anyway, it's good here. It's easy to fit in. The guards joke around with you and make sure you're healthy. They don't know a thing about dual wielding, but you get plenty of sparring partners out of helping the local baker practice her magick, and you maybe make a friend too. You're not too sure how you feel about the Lord, but she's a kind soul and does her best to make sure you're comfortable here in town, and her kids are great. Babysitting the boys is easily your favorite duty. Yeah, it's good here. For the first time in a long while, you feel like you're doing good.

Then the war comes. The children and non-combatants are sent away. The jovial atmosphere of the guard tower has soured into solemn silence as you make your final preparations. In the morning, you step into the battlefield and you go to war for the first time in your life. You have a horrible feeling in your gut that it won’t be the last.

You, Sir Laurance and Sir Garroth make a good team. It makes you sick. The three of you cross the battlefield at a slow and inevitable pace, cutting down any soldier that dares stray too close, and together you cleave the enemy forces in half, scattering them. The killing comes easy to you. You had hoped that in this peaceful new village, with time, you would become unfamiliar to how easily you were once able to take a life, but right then you’re glad your body never forgot the motions of death. Glad for the blood that stains your hands—how can you be glad?

You can’t remember how long you fought for. Days, weeks? Surely not months, or so you think. Yours is a small force, and though Miss Lucinda is a good healer, she grows tired while the other army’s numbers are replenished time and again. You remember the bags under her eyes as she tipped a potion sip by sip into your mouth the time you were shot through the face.

You remember sneaking into the enemy camp in the dead of night, skirting around the edges of it to the back line where the archers rested. You quietly slit five of their throats before you were noticed, and managed to slash another across the belly before the arrow caught you in the side of the face, in one cheek and out the other. The wood of the shaft cracked when you bit down. It was everything you could do not to scream as you fled. Dale thought you were a fiend when you first stepped out of the shadows, face obscured in blood and cradling your jaw as you cupped a hand beneath your mouth in an effort to catch more blood before it left a trail. Laurance held you while Garroth split the arrowhead from the rest of it with a knife and pulled the shaft out the other side of your face, your jaw gripped tight in one hand to keep you from struggling. It took hours to pull the splinters from your cheeks and tongue before they sent you to wake the healer. The whole ordeal had been excruciating. You might have cried. You remember that a lot more clearly than most other times at war. After a while, it’s hard to tell which side spills more blood when so much is shed that red squishes out of the earth wherever you step.

Every day, you fought dawn to dusk. And then one day you won. By Nicole literally knocking some sense into her father, of all things! You find a quiet corner to throw up in and for a beautiful moment, you think life in this little town you’ve started thinking of as home will go back to being good. Until your Lord tells you to guard the village as she races past the gates, and she doesn’t come back. None who followed her do either.

For days, you stand waiting at the gates. You don’t eat, you don’t sleep. O’khasis is gone, Scaleswind has made a refuge of the plaza, and still there is no sign of your Lord or your brothers-in-arms. You won’t even leave to have your wounds seen to. Nicole has to drag a doctor to the gates to treat you, and the entire time you watch the forest hoping that any moment they will reappear. You only step away when someone brings you news that the ship that took the children away has returned. You should be the one to tell them.

Zoey knows something is wrong the moment she sees you. Levin and Malachi smile and ask where their mother is—they call you ‘uncle’ while they do. You get down on your knees before them, and you gather them close in your arms, and you cry as you tell them their mother has been missing since the day the war ended. You’re still holding them when the exhaustion catches up with you.

Zoey is with you when you wake. She tells you you’ve been out nearly two days. She fusses over you, and you know you’ve worried her because that’s what she does when she’s worried. You’re a mess anyway, so you let her fuss. You drink the broth she makes you, you change into the clothes she provides, you sit still while she cuts the unruly mats of your hair and shaves your face. You used to cut yourself shaving all the time, no one ever taught you how and you were only six or so when Gene was learning to; you don’t remember now how he showed you each step or the laugh in his voice at the face of disgust you made when you slapped a little hand into the lather on his face and left behind a tiny palmprint. Zoey doesn’t cut you once. When she’s done with you, she takes you by the arm and guides you back into civilization, where everyone who remained has decided already on search parties to go out looking for your missing friends.

You head each expedition. Dale brings himself out of retirement to watch over the town while you’re gone, and asks only that you also look for his son. Does he know you used to be a tracker, used to spend days in the woods trailing coyotes and runaways for enough coin to carry you through the cold months? You try for him, but the ground is soft still and every step anyone takes leaves a print, all overlapping and muddled. You keep an eye out as you circle the same stretches of woods for days, but you find nothing. Your group goes further and faster than any other, the first to find and dismantle bandit camps and dens of fiends, but no matter how far you go you find not a sign of anyone who has disappeared that day. It’s as though they vanished into thin air. Every time you return home, Dale looks at you with hopeful eyes, and every time you must take him aside and break his heart a little more. Eventually, he stops asking.

For a year, you search. The area has never been safer. You have never felt so alone as when people start to suggest that a funeral may be in order.

You feel like a monster for the rage in your voice when you denounce these people. You know they aren’t dead—you would have felt such a thing, you know, you would have felt pieces of yourself snapping like wire pulled too taut, you would have felt the sharp edges tangling inside you—it would have felt like it did when the brother you killed rose from the grave to slit your throat and cut your very existence from the memory of Boboros. You hear white noise rumbling in your ears when the first brave soul says Sir Dante, there’s been no sign for a year now, and your blood is boiling when you slap their comforting hand off your shoulder. You spit that you’re not giving up just because everyone else has taken no evidence of life to mean the surety of death, and with their pitying looks burning into your back to return to the woods. You scream into the trees until you can’t anymore. When it doesn’t help, you use your considerable tracking skills to hunt something, anything, until you feel human again.

You crawl back home the day before the funeral with your cape stained with blood; they held it back so you could attend. You polish your armor and swords until they shine, and the warped reflection of your own face makes you feel sick the way waging war did. You stand at attention the entire ceremony without moving a muscle. When Dale reads the names of the deceased at the end, offering their souls into the embrace of the Matron, you salute, and the clatter of your armor silences the crowd.

Everyone who fought in the war salutes with you. So do your Lord’s sons. You’re too tired to cry. You hold your salute long after everyone else has left.

The remaining forces of Scaleswind return home. One by one, family by family, the streets of your home empty. Without your Lord, without your guard, the citizens trickle out the front gates and never turn back. Some apologize to you as they say their goodbyes, and some of them you actually believe. You close the gate behind each of them until all that remains is you, Zoey, and your Lord’s sons. Then Zoey tells you she’s taking the boys to the Yggdrasil Forest. She holds you tight for too long and kisses your brow when you show them to the gate for the last time.

You can’t believe you ever thought you knew what loneliness was before this.

For five years, you are completely and utterly alone. You search and you patrol and you do your best to maintain the village. You don’t believe in Irene, but every day before dawn you stand before her statue and look down down down over the cliff’s edge and pray that this won’t be the rest of your life. That you haven’t deluded yourself into believing a fantasy, that you haven’t made such an incredible fool of yourself that people can’t bear to be around you, that you haven’t been forgotten. For five years, you pray that someone, somewhere, remembers that you exist. You look down down down over the cliff’s edge and have the terrible thought that you don’t know what you’d do if you were forgotten again.

The gate is falling apart. You don’t know how to repair the damage the weather’s done to it, you tried to patch the cracks but it never holds. With each year, you’ve been pushed further and further outtowards the coast. The only places you have the energy to maintain anymore are the guard tower and your Lord’s home. You blockaded the gates when the mechanism broke, you check it on occasion to be sure no bandits get in, and one day you hear voices from the other side. Familiar voices. You scramble up the wall and look over the other side at a boy you don’t recognize looking back up at you. He says, Is that Uncle Dante? and you climb down as fast as you can to embrace Malachi.

He’s nearly the age you were when you first met his mother. He’s grown tall, and strong enough to carry his brother on his back. Levin is fevered when you first see him, flush and hurting even as he dozes, and Malachi tells you he can’t walk from how bad he hurts. You remember how Zoey fretted over him when he was young, how sometimes he’d scream for seemingly no reason, and once you show them to their mother’s home Malachi refuses to leave his bedside.

You sit with them and ask where Zoey is. Malachi tells you of her obsession, and the relief that you are not alone in the belief that those who disappeared are alive feels like a hint of betrayal. You’re relieved that she’s driving herself into a downward spiral because of what? Because it makes you feel like you were reasonable to fight not to let their souls be put to rest?

You wait for her at the gates deep into the night and take her to her boys when she bursts from the woods, frantic that she’d lost them, and safe if your Lord’s home she holds you so tight your ribs hurt from the force of her grip. After so long, you’re not alone anymore.

You wake before dawn and strap your swords to your back. For the first time in a long time, you feel safe enough to go without your armor. You hike up the steep cliff to the Irene statue. You kneel before her to offer your thanks. You look into the pool at her feet and fear grips you by the throat.

Your brother’s face looks back at you.

You wear your swords the way he did. Your hair falls like his, dark in the shadow of Irene. Your face is gaunt and pale from old habits, eating only enough to sustain yourself so rations will stretch long enough for you to find more—do you remember how they starved Gene before they killed him? How they weakened him so he wouldn’t have the energy to fight? How pale and gaunt he was, dirt streaking over the side of his face, blood and grime drying in his hair, shaking and sweaty with how hard he fought back? Do you remember the scar that twisted around his throat when he returned from the dead to get his vengeance? Your collar is open over the scar he left twisting across your own, and it matches his own so very well. In the shadows of your eyes, you see his own staring back.

You think of the war. You think of how easy the killing was. You think of how easily Gene cut through the guards, the Lord, the memories of Boboros. The rage in his voice when he denounced you as his brother, the twist of his smile when he told you he would leave you to rot, Dante. No one will ever remember you. You can see that twist in the corners of your own smile, pushed into shape by the deep scars on your cheeks. You and your brother are the same.

You’re shaking too much to stand. You never go without your armor again.

[claratcssthings]

Dude, I'm not okay.

I recently read a Solarballs fanfic on the AO3 website (Archive Of Our Own), and I came across one called "Behind his Mask", I decided to read it, because I was curious. After reading everything, I kind of focused... Traumatized. All those deaths... Everything Mercury was capable of doing... I felt like I was Anne Frank herself writing down the tragedies during World War II in her hiding place in Netherlands, or a young civillian being a witness of one or more of the attacks to the jews. When I went to sleep, I dreamed about the fanfic again, I woke up almost crying with fear, but I immediately hugged a teddy bear and managed to calm myself down with some much better thoughts.

I swear... I feel like Solarballs fans just love death and suffering....

[sudriantraveler]

Traintober 2024 Day 30: Oncoming Storm

1943

Storm clouds swirled and darkened the sky, as an engine and its train puffed slowly through the English countryside.

The engine was a strange, boxy sort. One of Oliver Bulleid’s Q1 goods engines built with austerity in mind.

Despite being barely a year old, wartime service had taken a toll on him. His matte black paint, hardly a handsome look even when new, was covered in soot and grime, and a hoarse, tired panting sound emerged from his funnel.

The rain pelted down, and a distant roar of thunder shook the air.

The engine shuddered, and glanced nervously up at the angry sky.

Air-raids were an ever-present danger, which might loom behind every cloud.

"But surely..." the engine thought, "No aircraft, friend or enemy, would dare to fly in this stuff".

So despite the weather, he almost allowed himself to feel relieved.

At least there would be nothing more than rain.

That relief was soon gone however.

A chill ran through the engine's boiler, as through the storm the unmistakable drone of an aircraft rumbled overhead.

Its yellow nose emerged from the clouds, followed by a sinister gray body.

The black crosses on its wings boldly marked it an agent of death.

The engine saw it circle overhead, buffeted by wind and rain as it did so.

Slowly, painfully slowly, like a predator stalking its prey, it turned.

Then, it dipped its wings and dived towards the train.

The engine roared in fright, smoke poured from his funnel as he dragged the heavy train faster and faster.

He wanted to break the couplings all together, drop the train and run. But the couplings held, the rails curved up a steep hill, and his escape was painfully slow.

The aircraft's guns pointed out from its yellow nose, its sights aimed directly at the fleeing engine.

With great relief the engine crested the top of the hill.

The trucks, equally terrified at the prospect of being left behind, pushed forward, and with their surging weight the train rocketed down the hill, just as the aircraft guns flashed into life.

The crew ducked for cover as tracers blazed past their engine's boiler, burying into the ground and ricocheting off the rails.

Too close, Too Close, TOO CLOSE!

The engine whistled in terror as the winged beast zoomed overhead.

He could only watch, horrified, as it pulled up into a climbing turn, readying itself for another shot.

It was like it was toying with him.

Whistling fit to bust, the train raced down the line. Green fields gave way to houses, and air-raid sirens blared as the nearby town awoke to the ongoing attack.

The engine screamed through the station, feeling little relief even as searchlights and flak burst pierced the stormy sky.

The plane flew doggedly on, dodging ground-fire with almost unnatural swiftness and ease.

Diving in for another pass, it fired again. Metal punctured and tore, and the engine yelped as red hot pain reverberated through his side.

Cold wind blew through the newly opened gaps in his boiler cladding, and steam hissed from the bullet holes piercing his cylinder block.

He desperately tried to fight the pain and keep going. But his vision blurred, and his speed grew slower and slower.

He was a sitting duck.

Again the aircraft rose up, climbing and turning into position for what would surely be the final time.

The engine watched as the plane flew in towards him again, head on.

Its yellow nose grew larger and larger, the cannon mounted in its center bloomed as a black flower of death.

For both machines, the world narrowed into that single weapon.

The aircraft had just put its sights on target, when a searchlight beamed directly onto it.

It fired blindly, only barely missing its mark, as the dazzling light was followed by a flak burst striking clean into its cockpit.

The aircraft shook violently from the impact. Blood and oil sprayed out into its prop-wash, trailing behind in a fine mist which fell down over its would-be victim as it roared mere feet overhead.

Out of control, its dead pilot's hands limp on the stick, the wounded bird slowly pulled away into an unsteady climb.

Searchlights and ground-fire pursued it all the while, until it disappeared back into the storm clouds, and in a flash of lightning it vanished from the world of the living.

The rain continued to pour down, as back on the ground the engine and its train wheezed slowly to a halt.

His crew jumped down from the cab to inspect the damage, as he groaned and cried through escaping steam.

As the engine faded in and out of consciousness, fighting exhaustion and pain, he could only barely register that he was somehow still alive.

[justheretoposttrash]

day 5 of meandering about endeavor (and briefly hawks)--(taking a more meta-look at the fandom with this one):

i find it fascinating and honestly sorta cool that the fandom is so divided on endeavor in a way that lines up well with how people are divided on his character within the text itself.

the responses are certainly not black-and-white or binary, but it's easiest for me to give the examples of hawks and natsuo as sorta opposite ends of the spectrum. many endeavor fans are similar to hawks--enjoying his cooler moments while also greatly appreciating how much he puts himself through in his efforts to change for the better (as an aside, i do find it hilarious how many endeavor fans enjoy seeing that man beat the shit out of and actively suffering. kinky lol). endeavor haters, on the other hand, generally want nothing to do with his character (while some even say that they want him to die, when it comes to fictional people in a story, that's basically the equivalent of "keep this guy far away from me"). the need for unequivocal and complete separation from his character is similar to what natsuo wants and sticks with in the story (although he does have his moments of sensitivity regarding his father, in spite of this).

i think that the reasoning behind irl fans and the characters also often align. for hawks, it's incredibly inspiring and gratifying to see that someone is willing to put in the work to change, even if doing so will be difficult and often unrewarding. the worse the actions are, the more painful the upward climb becomes, but also the more crazy it is that the person in question is willing to make that climb in the first place. i've noticed a lot of endhawks fans in particular really finding a lot of personal healing through exploring these ideas, whether they want to change for the better themselves, or they wish those in their life who'd hurt them would be willing to grow as people the way endeavor's character does. sure, there are some people who gloss over the terrible things that he's done, but many seem to enjoy actively engaging with what he's done and working through what it means for them.

for natsuo, it's not just about it being "too little, too late", though that's definitely a big part--but also that he as a person cannot have a relationship with his father while keeping himself safe and healthy. a lot of real-life relationships end up this way, especially between parent and child once the child reaches adulthood, and it's a very healthy boundary to set. for irl people engaging with fiction that triggers similar emotions, this looks more like ignoring, not engaging with, or wishing for the removal of the character activating them---and if that "boundary"-esque wall can't be drawn, if they repeatedly are unable to avoid the character's presence, this often wells up as anger and turns into venting, which is only natural if you're being bombarded with a stimulus that you feel unable to control. (sure, blocking and filtering tags is available, but algorithms can be incredibly confounding/unavoidable, not everyone remembers to tag their stuff perfectly every time, and in this case, the maligned character plays an incredibly crucial and central role in the canon material itself--so if you want to consume, y'know, mha, you have to grapple with a text that at best isn't always for you, or at worst occasionally betrays you.)

i don't mean to overstate my case--a lotta ppl like stuff or hate stuff without questioning it--but i think in the case of this one particular character, a lot of nuance tends to emerge, and there's a lot of potential there for analysis/learning. I also think that some conflict and friction becomes inevitable between disagreeing fans regarding endeavor's character. naturally, your average person getting crushed in the gears of day-to-day life is going to feel hurt when they're accused of not engaging with the thing that brings them much-needed comfort in the "correct" way, especially if they have indeed been putting a lot of work into thoughtfully engaging with it behind-the-scenes. it's also difficult to give people you disagree with the benefit of the doubt, bc honestly there are plenty of wild takes or arguments made in bad faith out there--and very few ppl want to wade through a bunch of cortisol-spiking statements just to find one that is reasonable enough but that still might be disagreeable to them.

it's likewise interesting to see the reactions of people either calling hawks a murderer and hating on his character, or claiming he did nothing wrong and that twice shouldn't have fought/deserved to die (and while i can understand wanting to defend silly bbygirl birdman, man oh man would hawks not be happy with the latter take if he were a Real Boy). i don't believe either group comprises the majority of mha fans by a longshot, but there's still enough that i've noticed these little trends in one pocket of the internet or amother. i got nothin prescriptive here, i just find it all interesting to talk about.

lastly, i wanna say that, while telling stories from the POV of an abuser and trying to give them sympathy at the same time is so often a gross and very Bad Move, crazily enough i think mha is one of the best executions of this that i've seen. aside from the nuanced way endeavor gets treated by other characters (some supportive, some rightfully angry, some rightfully hateful), what stands out to me is that, by having us see through his pov, the story actually shows what anyone could realistically expect as a best-case-scenario of an abuser starting to atone. we don't have to question if he's sorry, don't have to question if he understands what he did as wrong, don't have to question that he's doing actionable things to make progress, etc., because we spend so much time with his thoughts. and it's not perfectly linear and it does come way too late, but it is kind of wild to see this kind of best-case evolution unfold bit by bit. of course, the flipside to this is that real life doesn't work this way and you can never have absolute certainty that an abuser genuinely understands/won't go on to abuse again. still, being able to see a direct model for what accountability and working towards atonement looks like is refreshing, when by comparison so many other character arcs in other stories 1) end in redemption through death, 2) have the character barely do any internal work/stay an absolute asshole, or 3) resolve a past "sin" that actually wasn't that bad to begin with. when all three tropes are avoided, when someone did something unforgivable but is veritably changing for the better but is still alive, what the heck happens next? what the hell do you do? what does anyone do? some options are explored in mha in a pretty neat way--natsuo never wants to see enji, and enji agrees. touya wants to see enji every day (at least implicitly so) and enji makes that his vow. so many flawed parents irl are unable to respect their childrens' wishes when it comes to letting them completely go so they can live their lives, or when it comes to staying ever-present and showing them genuine care, and yet enji becomes a parent capable of doing both opposite-seeming things at once, finally willing to do and become what his children ask of him. the todoroki saga is certainly not perfect---i for one have *thoughts* about how the very end of rei's arc has been handled---but i think it's unique for how it benefits from providing so much of endeavor's pov, whereas other stories from an abuser's pov might have slapped on shitty apologia or only provided an "explanation" for why that character is so nasty without going too much further than that. while this choice may force some fans to have a level of closeness with a character whose presence begets feelings of hurt and hopelessness, it also makes sense why this choice has captivated other fans and provided, oddly enough, a sense of inspiration and hope.

[icantthinkofagoodnameoranything]

I like to think that the solders who die in the magic forest are kinda trapped there as punishment after death. Like, because of the slaughter they at least allowed to happen, their spirits can’t move on.

And that bears who spread the propaganda about unicorns, were in command or actively trained soldiers (think like, Padre or Caricias) can sometimes feel the pain of their wounds…

…So think of the absolute AGONY someone like Azulin, who *burned the forest down* would feel the moment he died.

[ricardian-werewolf]

When I am king, you will be first against the wall

an original novel of nuclear winter, fae romance and intrigue.

1. Now is the winter of our discontent.

Summary:

40 years after nuclear war broke England's societal fabric, the North of England has come together in a medieval-esque form of feudalism that embraces religious theology and rejection of modernity. For 5 years, 21 year old Princess Cecily-Anne has endured tourney after tourney for her hand with no end in sight. However, a last-minute addition to the lists changes all of that.

TWs: Violence - this a tourney to the death, it's not pretty.

wordcount: 6,204.

Taglist: @lordbettany, @dreadbirate, @malkaleh, @calamitous-magpie, @rmelster

@portiaadams, @nealsneen, @theboarsbride, @keptalivebymagic, @rovinglemon

Tag me if you want to be added!

Middleham Castle, 41 AD. (After the Devastation)

Winter had come early that year. Earlier, than most years, in fact. While the coldness and harshness of this eternal chill had become normal over the past 40 years, the fact that the winters - which had been steadily lasting for more and more of the liturgical year - were now beginning just after Michaelmas, was a cause of alarm. 

But those were for the priests and clergy to fuss and cluck over, buried away in their monasteries. They were of no concern to the nobility who had eked out survival by retreating into the ruins of their castles and sent out their knights and stewards to make order from chaos. To them, as long as there was wine and plenty of good food, they could turn their minds to the simple pleasures of hunkering down for the long, dark months. 

And that was no truer the case than in the castle that loomed over the small northern village of Middleham, and its surrounding, scattered kin. For up in the high keep with its richly adorned curtains of heavy velvets and brocades which chased away the chill, there were more serious matters at hand. Namely, that of the eldest daughter of the Lord of the North. A mere scant month ago, a tourney had been announced for her hand.

A tourney had been called for her hand for the past 5 years, and yet no noble suitor had made it from the field of victory to the marital bed. Tongues wagged on the why of this happening, but again, no one was much concerned. Behind gloved hands and over crystal wine glasses, the more opportune piece of gossip was the Lord of the North’s sickly only legitimate son. It was a shame, the hapless nobles murmured, that god had given such misfavor to such a bright boy. With his legs encased in iron rings held up with calves leather splints, he was not at all much of a ruler.

Those wagging tongues were swiftly silenced of course, when the boy’s father happened to glance in the gossiper’s direction with eyes burning with hellfire and cold, tundra-chilled fury. Even if he, publicly, did acknowledge him as his heir, no one could quite ignore the look of shame in Richard Plantagenet's eyes when faced with what many and he himself saw as a sign of God's misfortune with his House.

But, all of that was set aside swiftly for the tourney happening on that morning. For, in Middleham Castle’s tower room given solely to his daughter, Cecily-Anne awoke to the sight of her maids banking the fire roaring in the hearth and setting out her toilette. Partitioned by screens of what had once been theatre curtains led to a tiled bathing chamber with a window seat stacked high with cushions. Those were fraying a little here and there, as did the curtains showing the beginnings of mould from the chill, but they were expensive fabrics and that was what mattered. Prestige and nobility over quality and care. Besides, why would one wish to be picky when these pieces were coming from the poor souls made into hapless scavengers, blind and half contorted from the ravages of radiation sickness? They had barely eyes to see let alone know taste!

Cecily-Anne stood, shivering in her smock, and padded toward the bathing chamber. Once free of it, she allowed the maid present - a once sickly girl named Anise, to pour warm water over her hair and body. A sponge was handed to her, along with a fine bar of pre-devastation soap. Her mother, Lady Anne, had paid a fine fortune in pennies to ensure the household was able to be clean and presentable, from the lowliest scullery maid to Richard himself. It had cost her a fortune, but was well worth it. The fact that they were able to have enough wood on hand to heat the several castle’s furnaces, hearths and so forth was a testament to their wealth more than anything else. In this day and age, a show of heat and cleanliness outstripped martial prowess or the number of indentured peasants one had in their employ.

“Any news from the field?” Cecily asked as she scrubbed at her arms and tsked over the flakes of skin that fell into the soapy water. She hated to wash herself, but days of grease buildup in her hair was worse than anything - except having her nails trimmed down to the pink bits and being asked to touch anything more dry than velvet. She winced, and cast a raised brow to Anise’s sister, Beatrice.

“The suitors are arriving en masse, My Lady. Many come with a retinue one can expect. Squires, footmen, and so forth. I have with me the list.” Beatrice reached into the belt of her gown and pulled out a pen and slate. She had only a servant’s education in the source of a dame school in her village, but it had taught her letters and numbers, and most importantly her prayers. With the cold winters and shorter seasons of planting, education in the North especially became a way forward for a way out of the life of a Scavenger.

“Lord Bembridge, of Lincolnshire,” Beatrice replied, trailing a finger down the list. “Sir Rupert of Derbyshire, Horace of Rutland…” Some of the ladies tsked at Horace’s name being on the lists. He was a brute according to his own peasants, a man much inclined toward forcing them to work in planting and harvesting before and after the year’s thaws and freezing. Beatings were much a favourite of his. Sir Rupert was a notorious womaniser, but apparently holding some form of degree from Knight’s college in Brighton. Bembridge Marlborough of Lincolnshire was in no way inclined towards Cecily’s hand. She and her ladies much suspected that he was here to try for another knight instead. She didn’t fault him one jot, and he was something of a friend to her, as much of these men could be.

“Anyone else?” Cecily raised a dripping arm and took her cup of tea from Anise’s other sister Lisa. The three sisters and their cousin Lillian constituted her maidservants. Hailing from Scarborough, they four had been living a rough life of being scavengers for the lord of South Yorkshire, Lord Percy. He had been a cruel man and died a few years after the devastation in his solar. Poisoned wine was the reason, according to what Cecily had heard from behind her father’s solar door. His sickly and frail son, a sweet boy named Robert, had tried for Cecily’s hand when she’d been 15. He’d been forced to withdraw when a riot sprang up against his mother, the Lady Percy.

“Lord Percy the younger is trying again. Oh, and Ronald of Lancashire. His first wife died. Poisoning?” She cast a gaze to Lillian, who shrugged helplessly. So many wives died of poisonings or their husbands were pushed from the battlements and drowned in the moors that the lists of who owed their fealty to Cecily’s father were constantly being shifted around. With the shires of the North: Yorkshire - once divided into the Three Ridings and then split in half - her father ruled North Yorkshire while the Percys once more continued to throttle South Yorkshire. Neighbouring Lancashire, was as Beatrice mentioned, in the hand of Ronald of Lancashire. Northumberland and Cumberland had merged due to their closeness to the Scottish border. Those lands were being overseen by Cecily’s brother Johnny, which reminded her…

“Will Johnny be here for the tourney?”

“Not as we yet know, my Lady.” Beatrice replied, gesturing to one of the younger maids for Cecily’s towel. The water was going cold, and no one wanted her to catch her death of chill on such a day! Cecily let herself be wrapped in the towel and her hair combed out before the roaring fire. She continued to go down the long list of lesser and lesser knights, before her finger stopped on a name.

Sir Henry Marchwood.

“Who’s he?” She asked Beatrice. 

“Some lesser Knight, My Lady. A former squire, I believe.” 

She turned to fussing over Cecily’s gowns finely embroidered hem. While Beatrice and her kin were Cecily’s maids, through her own stubbornness, they were also her ladies and companions. Under her mother’s close tutelage, they dressed not as maids but as ladies of status, and both Lillian and Anise were married to knights of Richard’s household. They wore their husbands’s heraldry on their gowns with pride, and their colours too, segmented with Cecily’s emerald green and White Hart. 

Cecily let herself be dressed in her smock and kirtle, then the heavy, satin and velvet gown of hunter green draped over her. The deep and wide collar was edged in ermine fur, and the cuffs, hem all matched. Spilling across the skirt’s front was a massive embroidered visage of the white Hart in rampart. Its gold antlers stretched across her stomach and curved up to brush the bottom of her finely embroidered belt, with its ring for her purse and rosary. Cecily watched in the hand mirror that Lisa handed her as Beatrice and Lillian brushed and parted her hair. Lisa turned to applying delicate perfumes of rosewater and lily to Cecily’s neck and wrists. 

“What style would you like, My Lady?”

Cecily glanced at herself again, and sucked at her teeth. She would need to wear a piece that could very easily be undone by a man’s hands, whether rough or gentle. But something to cover her hair would be needed also. She glanced around the room and sighed. 

“Could you undress me?” She asked, knowing they would assent without a word of protest. The heavy skirts made her feel uncomfortable, and the low neckline would cause a draft while she was stuck in that box. 

A shudder ran through her, but it was not the cold. As she was laced out of the gown and another one bearing her device was slid over her head, Cecily breathed a sigh of relief. She could have her hair merely braided and looped up, then a wimple and veil placed over it. The small fluttering veil adornments on her arms would go fetchingly, dyed in their customary black. The fur edging of this gown was black, wolves fur, and the black buttons that stretched from the neck to the navel offset the green, white and gold of her heraldry. Thick woollen stockings (ones knitted by her sister Kathyrn) encased her legs, and fine shoes of expensive leather not rotted or corroded by the elements outside slid over her feet. She allowed her waist to be belted in and once more her purse and rosary were on her person.

With that completed, Cecily let her ladies whisk her from her bedchamber and to the tourney field set up just outside the castle’s high walls.

With the air as cold as ever, Cecily drew the hood of her cloak up over her face and glared at the heavy cloud cover which cast a pallor over everything. She had hoped for some sun to-day, yet remembering the sight of so many workers bearing cataracts and malformations from the bright orb suspended in space, she dashed that hope. The heavy wolf’s fur of her cloak’s edge and lining kept the wind from biting too much at her exposed face. She reached for one of her ladies hands, and let herself be led up the worn and well-sanded wooden steps to her box. The path was familiar, and she was pleased that the steps leading not only to her box but to the lower benches had been swept clean. 

The tourney seats were packed. Even though this had been the fifth year in a row of such an event for Cecily, the people still clamoured for the courtly ceremonies of centuries past. Other boxes, made of fine woods embellished with the house sigils of the major northern houses, surrounded each side of the tourney’s field. The stands were arranged in a circle with two rounded gates at each end, which behind, the knights of the day’s fight waited. The suitors, numbering originally in the triple digits since it had been a country-wide call, had been shaved down to a scant 15. Cecily had discussed many with them already, but her gaze cast to the scoreboard that was set into the opposite wall from the royal box. Bearing the sigils of the major houses participating, a servant or the herald would remove the sigil card when one fell in the fights to come. 

Eventually, only one would remain. 

Cecily cast her gaze to her box’s detailing with its lattice wood screen and the curling woodwork above it, which displayed in delicate gold her sigil: The white Hart in rampart, its antlers stretching skywards. Below the golden hooves were the words: Sic Semper Tyrannis.

Thus Always to Tyrants.

Tugging back her hood, the crowd erupted in a mad frenzy of cheers and much delighted cries. The clapping of their hands and calls of Princess Cecily! Over and over made her pulse race. Not only did the tourney bring great pride (and admittedly frustration) to her father, it was also one of the instances where they were able to show off their wealth and ingenuity to the masses for who owed their fealty and existence to the house of Gloucester-Neville. Cecily curtsied to her parents in their box, and gave her brother Edward a wave. Above their heads was the Neville Bear with the Ragged Staff and the Whyte Boar in Gloucester, both in Rampart. Richard’s own motto was inscribed under the boar: Loyaulté Me Lie, and Anne’s, Alea Iacta Est:

Loyalty Binds Me, and The Die is Cast. 

Fitting words for the two people wholly responsible for the saving of the North from the horrors of this endless winter. Cecily shook her head and swept into the box. She stripped off her cloak, since there was a brazier already burning hot and she would rather be warm than shivering. She took her seat on a finely cushioned chair and turned her head to a maidservant standing quietly in the shadows. At her side, Lisa and her kin sat in a flutter of their richly adorned skirts and furs, casting aside their own cloaks and veils. Sweating through their fine garments did nothing favourable to their image.

“Are your husbands here to-day?” Cecily asked Lillian and Anise, who nodded. 

“Alfred is with your lord father’s retinue-” Anise pointed to her husband who stood amongst the brightly adorned knights of Richard’s household guard. He wore the white with the black lions of  William Catesby, while Lillian’s husband wore the wolf of Francis Lovell. Despite being part of Richard’s retinue, they were really in the service of Lovell and Catesby for the winter period. It allowed them time away from Middleham and to be in service in more desperate regions of England. Yet, they still wore upon their cloaks the Whyte Boar.

The sound of the herald blasting the horn beginning the start of the tourney rang out, and the maidservants present hastened to pull back the heavy velvet drapes that covered the side of the box closest to Richard and Anne’s. Turning her head, Cecily reached for her goblet of wine and smirked.

“My Lords and Ladies,” Richard got to his feet. Age had given her father strength and many gray hairs, but it had not made him weak in any sense. His health had not failed at all alarmingly, something that could not be said for the noble lords and ladies who crowded the other boxes to regard their Lord. Some were gormless with excess or sins, while others were nothing more than ghosts in clothes that hung limply on their forms. The sinful nature of the darkness that had blotted their sun from the sky and swept the world with fire took more than waistlines and eyesight.

It killed in masses. Cecily sipped her wine again. She knew her father’s tale by heart, for it had been the same at every tourney these past five years. 40 years ere this one, men had been driven to warfare with weapons no person of Cecily’s generation could imagine being wielded. They had brought about tongues of fire and the ash from those world-ending flames had travelled upwards past the heavens until the very sun had become blotted out. The first few years had been a groping darkness filled with discontent and madness. Millions died of hunger and petty illnesses left untreatable. Her teachers of nuns and priests called the world-ending event The Fourteen Days of Fire. However, even though histories had said that the days of fire had been maybe a mere two, the old pamphlets had advised in the event of an attack to stay indoors for fourteen days maximum. One year had turned into two, and then ten and suddenly, men began to finally organise into bands, then tribes, and finally reclaim the wreckage of their villages. Their histories had been destroyed in the fires, so once these villages began to cease killing one another for resources, they banded together once more to create towns. 

Within these towns, priests and nuns who had survived the cataclysmic event crept from their houses of worship, and with the knowledge of God they had sustained through the fires, began to work to educate the masses. Some wealthier nobles who could afford to prepare their homes against the fires emerged around this time - they became the first leaders of towns that often took their old place names and adjusted them for a dialect that had slid from discernable English toward Middle once more.

As Richard finished his speech, the knights clad in their heraldic tunics rode out onto the field and Cecily searched vainly for this supposed Henry Marchwood. She spotted him finally amongst a pack of lesser knights, and her heart shuddered in her chest.

The lattice screen of her box allowed her to see out but no knight to see in and view her until she was presented to the victor. But Sir Marchwood’s gaze cut from her father’s herald, past her parents, and locked right onto her stiff, wide-eyed gaze. His eyes were a deep, mesmerising shade of emerald, and Cecily’s fingers tightened around her goblet hard enough to dig the metal into her fingers.

She winced, and Henry’s gaze swung back to be upon her father.

“My lords, I know you fight for splendour and for the hand of my daughter. 5 years worth of men have come before you, who have stood in your places and fallen before. Some of you have returned, eager once more.” Richard’s gaze shifted to one of the men up near the scoreboard who held a red and green flag in one hand each. He opened his mouth again and Cecily noted the maids ready to drop her box’s heavy curtains.

“May the best man win!”

With a swoosh, Cecily’s box’s curtains dropped and the room darkened. Whistle blasts sounded as the man by the scoreboard dropped the green flag and the crowd let out a resounding, teeth grinding cheer of joy. 

The tourney was off to a smashing start. 

With Luck, I’ll have a husband by teatime. 

Below her, she kept her gaze locked sharply on Henry Marchwood, even putting down an exorbitant 50 crown sum on his head. Lisa and Beatrice tsked over her choice, but said nothing. Cecily’s gaze snapped to them, and she shrugged.

“He is a knight-errant, but he is a good fighter too!” She pointed her fan’s bladed tip at the screen. Through it, Henry was leading his team’s side against the opposing knights and they were brutally slaughtering one another. While tourneys of the Middle Ages were for jests and victories, these ones were about brutal martial prowess.

Knights and sons of noble houses would kill and die for Cecily’s hand. When Ned was old enough, and if he had been born stronger, he would too. Johnny was already riding the length and width of the wasted Midlands to train his skills. Even if he was a bastard, he still carried Richard’s name and banner. His proficiency and skill on the battlefield would assist him in winning the hand of any woman he chose. Even if the fact that so many noble sons were dying in these tourneys, bastardry no longer carried the scornful edge it once did - any children were valuable. 

Sickly children were killed or sent south. Only Anne’s protests had kept Edward from being one of them.

Cecily cast her gaze once more back to the field and pressed her knuckles to her chin. Beatrice’s reedy, musical voice lilted as she pressed her cheek to Cecily’s temple. The older woman flinched and tensed instantly. 

Stop touching me. She thought, clamping down on her tongue to silence her cruel words. If she said them aloud, her ladies would call her a babe. Spoiled, touchy. Cecily sighed, and tilted her head toward Beatrice’s.

“Hmm?”

“Thinking about your blessed knight?” She asked, noting as Henry skewered two men at once with a lance, then seemingly made a rapier appear from nowhere and drove it through the knight behind him’s exposed neck. Blood splattered his face and hands.

As his helm shifted and he pulled down the visor, Cecily again saw his eye colour turn from muddy, rotting brown to that wicked emerald. She bit her lip and flapped her fan in front of her cheeks. 

“Maybe.” Cecily replied noncommittally, and took a note from a maidservant. Her head snapped up to stare at the score-board. Of the 15 knights, 10 were already out! The impact of the choices for this year’s fight were going swifter than ever before. Forget teatime, she’d be ravished and wedded before Luncheon!

“Why s-such a brutal culling?” She whispered, and got to her feet. 

“Lower the lattice, please.” She turned to her maidservants, who blanched. The lattice screen could be rolled up or down at Cecily’s command, but not once for the past five years had she done it. Her glare silenced any opportunity of dissent, and the screen was rolled down. As the tourney field came into focus, a wind whipped up, tearing Cecily's hair from its coiffure and extinguishing the brazier’s flames. The score-board in front of her was down to five names:

Robert Percy - 7 kills

Henry Marchwood - 5 kills

Bembridge Marlborough - 2 kills.

Ronald of Lancashire - 1 kill

Horace of Rutland -

As Horace’s kill count was being written into the board, Bembridge shot the man through the eye with an arrow, and then took down Ronald with a second arrow. Robert’s sword whizzed through the air as he drove it into Henry’s arm, but he merely shook the gaping wound off.

“What-” Richard’s voice floated through the air as the lattice screen on her parent’s box was lowered and they too came face to face with the field of carnage before them. The second sons waiting behind the gates to take on any victor of the first round looked uneasy. Even if only three men were left on the field, they all had to attempt to kill one another. The loss of such life was part of the reason for Richard’s frustration - this machine of killing was stripping the knights from the households and wrecking bloodlines. 

“Hold it!” 

The three men did not pause, the blood and guts still dribbling from their weapons. Henry raised his visor and turned his gaze to the box, while Bembridge and Robert circled one another like feral, starved animals. Bembridge lunged, driving his sword’s blade toward Robert’s shoulder. However, it never made contact, and Bembridge fell against Robert with a dull thud. Both men hit the icy ground with a bone-breaking crash, their armour clunking and clinking from the suddenness of the fall. Henry snapped his visor down and dragged the two men apart from one another, his low, deep tones spitting out:

“Will you not listen to your king, you weak, wretched boys?!”

The wind seemed to shift as he spoke, and a bolt of pure adrenaline ran the length of Cecily’s spine. She straightened instinctively, feeling the air grow heavier with the onset of something like the blizzards that pummeled Middleham each winter season. She nervously cast her gaze heavenwards again.

“Be Still!” Anne cried, surging to her feet in a dark blot of sapphire velvet with fox-fur edging. She leaned over the edge of the royal box, her voice carrying across the field. The miasmatic heaviness of Henry’s words lifted, and his gaze snapped upwards. Both Bembridge and Robert ceased their scuffling, and raised their gazes too. 

“You all have fought bravely.” Richard spoke finally, clearing his throat. “However, this loss of life in such a short span of time is sudden-” His voice cut off as Robert screamed. Bembridge had driven his blade through the other’s chest and with a sickening, wet thrust, pulled clean. Bembridge, ignoring Richard’s cry to stop!, rushed for Henry.

In a moment, Henry Marchwood moved from being unarmed to brandishing two rapiers. Up until this point, he had fought with the traditional weapons of a knight errant, but now, he moved forward with the grace of something not entirely human. 

“Stop this madness at once!” Richard yelled, but neither man chose to heed him. Henry kicked out with his left leg, and tripped Bembridge up. He went down with another thud, flailing like an upturned bug on the ice-sheet of the muddy field. 

“Stop-” Bembridge screamed as Henry’s hands thrust down, expecting to be decapitated. The blades crossed just against his shuddering Adam's apple. His pupils dilated, and the crowd gasped as Henry effortlessly shifted his second blade to his left hand and yanked off his helmet.

A whole head of golden blonde curls lay under the dented and scratched helmet, and Henry - or whoever his name was! - tossed it aside. His armoured foot dug into Bembridge’s chest. Pressing down hard on the man’s chestplate, Bembridge’s face drained of colour as Henry loomed closer, and tilted the knight’s chin up.

“You killed Robert in retribution, did you not?” He murmured, turning Bembridge’s face from side to side. “He killed someone important to you?”

Damn him! Bembridge scowled as fat tears welled in his eyes and he clamped his jaw shut to keep from crying. Here, now, on this open field? He’d be cast from his father’s house in disgrace and left to wander the countryside with naught to his name! His younger brother, a brutal monster of a man, Samuel, would gain his position and use it to rein holy terror upon Lincolnshire! All of Bembridge’s hopes and desires would be undone.

“Y-yes.” He shuddered. 

“Did you mean to kill me?”

“Never!” Bembridge cried. “I was never intending to take the Princess’s hand!”

“Of course not.” Henry replied, tsking. “I shall let you live with your pride, though I do ask that you trust me.” A strange tone had entered the man’s voice, and Bembridge shuddered again as a strange feeling washed over him. Resistance felt impossible, and he shivered as Henry shook out what looked to be an embroidery needle. In an instant, Bembridge gulped again.

A dagger was at his throat, the edge digging in with enough force to draw blood.

“As I said, trust me.” Henry purred. His hand jerked, and blood welled up, hot and bubbling. Bembridge let out a choked scream, and then abruptly fainted. His face whitened, and then turned the sickly pallor of a dead man.

Henry stepped off of the body and wiped his blade on the edge of his surcoat. Glancing up into the royal gazes of the King, her Queen and his intended, Henry Marchwood realized that at that very moment, he’d fucked things up very badly.

Princess Cecily-Anne’s gaze locked with his, and he gave her a theatrical bow. He twitched a nimble, ring adorned finger, and the ill-fitting armour appointing his form shifted into a teal sweater with gold details around the neck and cuffs, sea-green breeches with ivy-leaf clasps on the cuffs. Stretching from his knees to his feet were bottle green heeled boots with blue and sea-glass green flower embroidery and gold buttons. The whole affair was topped off with a knee length green cape held in place with gold-leaf shaped pauldrons that draped down his shoulders. His eartips lengthened into points and with a snap of his long-nailed fingers, gold cuff earrings dug into the flesh.

“My lord and ladies.” Henry gave a bow, and smirked. “A pleasure it has been to fight in this tourney of this year of our lord 41 A.D. I hope that the Princess Cecily-Anne has found my martial prowess to be desirable-”

“You killed my friend!” Cecily snarled, leaning over the edge of the box and shaking her fist at him. Anne’s face blanched while Richard’s turned an uncomfortable shade of purple. Both glanced at one another and Richard sighed.

I didn’t. Henry thought, his words meant for Cecily-Anne only. She stilled, and stared at him, mouth agape. Henry bowed again.

“Who are you then, charlatan?” Richard barked. “A shapeshifting demon? A devil, sent to sow discord and sin amongst us?”

Those were the men who I brutally killed and in doing so did your daughter a massive favour. Be at least agreeable to me, you silly man. Henry thought, and then bowed again.

“I go by the name William, Sir. And no, I am neither of those things.” He ran a hand through his blonde hair and it lengthened to curl down around the lobes of his ears. He smirked, showing perfect, fanged teeth, and snapped his fingers again against the knitting needles holstered at his waist. 

“I am a king of the Fae, and of the Court of Ivy.”

Stony silence met him, cold and as abrasive as the air surrounding them.

William paused in his tracks, his charm and smile fading. The fact that this response was met with coldness and confusion made sweat bead on his brow, and he glanced from face to face worriedly. Have we really become that well hidden? Is there at least some knowledge of the common folk? The brownies, the little ones?

“N-none of you know of Fae? C-common Folk?” He breathed, sweat crowding in now under his arms and at the base of his neck. He pulled back the collar of his sweater and fanned his face. Richard leaned over the edge of his box, and was about to say something - perhaps send in the second sons of this tourney to stick his immortal head on a pike, when a siren pierced the air.

The low rising wail caused the tourney-goers to rummage around in their seats for their possessions, pull on cloaks and hasten for the field. Soldiers of Richard’s guards and barracks surged onto the field to direct the people into groups, and William fell silent. Something in the air was shifting.

As he cast his gaze to the west, he saw it - a looming wall of cloud and darkness. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up straight, and his gaze snapped to Princess Cecily-Anne, who was arguing with her ladies. Queen Anne and Richard were directing people and men to marshalling points. In Anne’s arms was the young heir, Edward was his name? Will furrowed his brows, and looked down at Bembridge. The appearance of death was far stronger than he’d anticipated. Will leaned down and with a sharp smack, broke the glamour.

Bembridge’s eyes flew open and he gasped wildly, his hands flailing. 

“What’d you do?!” Cecily cried, skidding and slipping toward them. Her boots almost shot out from under her, and Will’s hands reached out, keeping her from breaking her neck on the frozen ground. She fought him wildly, and spat in his face.

“Unhand me! You killed him! You killed him and brought him back! You ain’t a fae, you’se a demon!”

“I swear to you, fair lady, I am a fae, and your friend has not at all been dead in this time.” Will’s voice dropped low in its pitch, magic weaving his words to calm Cecily’s frazzled nerves. 

She smacked him across the face, the stinging bite of her ringed hand digging into his flesh. The little lass’s wearing iron rings?! Of all the holy- He caught himself and shook his head. She was resisting his magic! And she knew nothing of fae! Her will and self image would have to be as sharp as diamond!

“Fair Lady-”

“Shut up, you foul beast!”

“Princess!” Will snarled back as the siren reached a deafening pitch. Cecily clapped her hands over her ears and cringed at the sound. The wind was howling now, and growing closer. Her ladies were drifting towards the carriages ready to bear the people back to Middleham’s high stone walls and battlements.

“If you don’t leave this field, you shall die!” He added, still keeping ahold of her. Hoisting Bembridge along by the arm and Cecily tucked under his shoulder blade, Will strode across the field as the storm built speed and strength behind their backs. The stands could be destroyed. All of the important bits were clattering back toward the castle.

“Why are you helping me, demon spawn?” Cecily hissed, the shock of losing Bembridge warping her mind. Will sighed again, and knowing that his magic would have no effect, spoke in low tones once more, yet was completely honest. He could twist his words as much as he liked, but he felt that Cecily-Anne, as his wife to be, deserved honesty.

“Because a lady of your station should not be left to fend for herself by her champion.” 

Cecily shook her head, and bared her teeth. She was refusing to listen to him, her mind folding in on itself to stay alive. However, he noticed a spark in her eyes, and some smaller, subtler cues that she’d heard him. She ceased her relentless thrashing for once, and was more gritting her teeth against the cold. Reaching the carriage set aside for her and crowded with her ladies, Will pulled the doors open and urged Cecily up the steps. She faltered, overcome with the burgeoning cold and exhaustion. Her ladies yanked her inside and then Bembridge. The doors shut with an audible snap, and Will pulled himself up onto the running board as the carriage lurched to a start.

The wailing siren began to grow quieter, whether from the oncoming storm or because people were heeding the warning, Will didn’t know, but he looked westwards regardless. The chill of the oncoming storm wormed its way under his skin and burrowed deep into his bones. The horses were running at breakneck speed over the icy ground, and Will pressed his hand against the side of the carriage, willing this one at least to hold. The horses knickered their thanks, and the unsteadiness that had begun to tilt the carriage ever so slightly righted itself. Craning forward, Will watched the carriages in front of them round a seemingly imaginary bend in this invisible road. He watched as the carriages in strict formation pelted blindly toward the castle walls, clattering over a frozen moat and into the bailey. As their carriage did the same, Will could see how the peoples within were hustled in a large gaggle, noble and peasant alike to the massive barn.

Built of wood, nails and stone, the barn covered one half of the bailey’s space and from within, it seemed an entire town’s worth of livestock were crammed. Will stepped off the running board as the carriage halted and the horses were swifty untethered and led into the barn. Through the double sliding doors, he noted just how many animals were within in their entirety, and drifted after Cecily and her ladies. Through the barn they went, trailing after the peasants who were so seemingly used to these blizzards being an occurrence that Will noticed how stalls were marked with familial names and had little scrolls with inked timetables for shifts. He examined one of them that held mostly cows and paused. These beasts were quiet, and a small smile broke over his face as a calf mooed at him. Scratching the creature’s chin, Will’s smile turned to a grin.

“Come along, demon!” Cecily’s voice rang from the castle doorway. “Not even you deserve to freeze to death out here!”

Will’s hand dropped from the calf’s chin, and he snorted, scuffing his boot on a strewn rush.

“If your Highness so pleases,” He called back, and headed from the chilling cold into the warmth of the castle’s basement kitchens. Behind him, the final carriage horses were stalled and the stablehands scurried into the lofts to wait out the first of what would become several bomb-like blasts of snowfall that dropped the temperature some 30 degrees in a matter of half-minute increments.

Will heard the doors close behind him, and he turned his head back toward the barn’s doors. The wind howled against the doors, and he shivered. Then, he moved through the castle doorway and let himself be shut off from the world for now.

End of chapter 1.

[girlinafairytale]

[writingsofestella]

vespera - ch. 0

Apostate!Din Djarin x Ex!Jedi!OC -(no use of Y/N Canon Divergent - some plot changed for sake of story, the razor crest lives )

tws // general canon violence, usage of blasters and weapons, mentions of death, minors DNI 18+ only, angst, mature content, more tags to be added later on

a/n: first chapter of the new story. posting this into the void and hoping someone likes it to read it. this story has been spiralling around in my brain for weeks now and i wanted to share it and get it out there. let me know what you all think, and i hope you like it.

wc: 2637

It was nice to see people celebrating. With all of the chaos in the galaxy, it was good to see celebrations of happiness, now and then. Children laughing and chasing each other, adults holding one another tightly, neighbors helping neighbors, excitedly talking and cheering.

The great stone water fountain in the middle of the small village hadn't been running for years. The marshal had seemingly had the only working fountain in the entire town in his home. Of course, he was a businessman first, and couldn't help but use that to his gain. Man had to make credits somehow, he claimed.

How ironic it was that after an anonymous tip, the people investigated the water lines that ran through the town, through the buildings, only to find that the pipes had been turned off and rerouted. The marshal, who had claimed to have his people's best interests at heart, had pled innocence.

It was also ironic how, overnight, he ghosted the town. By morning light, the great fountain in the center was bursting forth with fresh water from the underground spring. Other smaller fountains in the town were filled with water once again, restoring life to the dying town.

If someone were to be paying attention, they'd think it strange that all this seemingly happened within the few weeks after the stranger had arrived to their little town.

The hooded stranger paid them all no mind, as she stood in the shadow of an alleyway. She leaned against the cool stone wall, taking comfort in it.

The heat that bore down on the planet Utov from its' two suns was almost unbearable for her to handle, which might have been another reason the town's fountains were now back in order.

Maybe she just hated seeing old men in power.

It was all just coincidental, of course.

One of the townsfolk, a young mother with a kid on her hip, excitedly came up to her. She had a wide smile on her face, relief and joy evident on her once worn and tired features. "Fyra, isn't it amazing? We won't have to worry about water anymore!" 

Fyra smiled from under her scarf. "It is. What does the little one think?" She asked, looking from the mother to the child. 

"Oh, he's got all sorts of ideas in his head about who did it." The mother, who was named Siane, teased, lightly. 

The kid, a young boy no older than six, looked at Fyra with wide eyes and a toothy smile. "You did it, didn't you?" He loudly whispered. "They said it was a shadow in the night, that no one really saw who it was!" 

"Hush now! We don't want to be bothering our traveler with that." Siane lightly chastised, teasingly pinching the boy's ear.

He let out a whine in protest, squirming.

Fyra simply gave a tilt of her head, amused. "What a shadow that must've been then." She responded lightly, holding her fingers out and wiggling them playfully. 

The boy giggled, and reached his own little hand out for her to take. She squeezed his hand playfully, before letting it go. Fyra didn't miss the inquisitive look she received, however, from Siane.

"These kids and their imaginations." She sighed out, shaking her head, but there was a happy smile on her face. "We're going to Danthi's later to celebrate. Are you coming?" Siane asked, tilting her head slightly.

"I don't know. I might, might not." Fyra said, undecided yet. "You know I'm not one for large celebrations." She said.

Siane let out a snort, shaking her head. "Yeah, I can tell. You're over here sulking in the corner instead of coming out and celebrating with us."

"I'm not sulking, I'm in the shade." Fyra retorted, shaking her head.

Siane let out an exasperated sigh, and then shook her head. "Alright, alright. Well, if you wanna go, you know where we'll be at." She says, as her little boy starting squirming to be let down and go run around with the other children. "I'll see you later then." She said, and with a nod, was being dragged out to the crowd by her child.

Fyra let out a quiet huff, that smile still playing on her lips, as she shook her head. She slipped away from the main celebration, making her way down the alleyway. She might go get a drink later, maybe something refreshing since she felt parched already from the day.

As she walked around the corner, however, a sinking feeling filled her stomach, and the hairs on the back of her neck and her arms stood straight up. She held her breath as she slowed her steps.

Without warning, a vibrocord whip flew past her head and she swerved, just in time to avoid getting trapped in it.

The culprit of the vibrocord stepped around the corner as it whipped back to its owner. A Mandalorian, in worn, chipped armor, appeared in the shadows of the alleyway. The only thing new on him was his beskar helmet, which stared down at her, unrelenting. His fingers twitched over the blaster at his hip.

A bounty hunter.

All the way out here.

"That's a rude way to say hello." She found herself saying, body tense, ready to run.

"You're a hard woman to find." He spoke back, voice rough through the modulator in the helmet.

"Maybe that's the point."

He gave the slightest tilt of his head. "They told me not to bother speaking to you, just to bring you in." He spoke out, voice even, controlled. "But I'll offer you a deal. You can come with me peacefully, or, I can drag you, kicking and screaming."

"That's not much of a deal." She retorted back, her body tense with the adrenaline filling her to run once again. Her heart raced as she tried to will the Force to calm her, help her think rationally so she'd make it out of this alive.

"Murderers with a bounty of their head don't usually get deals at all." He retorted, taking a threatening, stalking step toward her.

She cursed internally. She thought she'd gotten far enough away to not have any bounty hunters follow her this far out.

She had thought wrong.

"How kind of you." She retorted, voice dry as she took a cautionary step backwards. "Too bad I'll have to decline your deal."

With a roll and a duck, she narrowly avoided the vibrocord whip that shot past her head. Without hesitation, she used that momentum to bolt forward. 

Right Into the busy marketplace. 

She didn't hesitate. Ducking and weaving in between people, she ignored the yells of profanity as she pushed through. She could hear his footsteps, heavy and powerful, chasing after her. The screams and yells of the people they pushed through.

She could only hope the people would slow him down enough for her to escape. She pushed herself further into the crowd, no longer pushing, blending in and moving with the crowd. 

Sharply, she turned into an alleyway, a small cantina set in the back. Making her way, briskly, past the couples lingering outside, she was quick to get inside. It took her a minute to blink, for her eyes to adjust, but she was still moving. She couldn't stop. Her heart raced, chest heaving, as she tried to keep the panic at bay.

The cantina wasn't busy, most crowds outside still in the marketplace, celebrating. There were a few people she knew inside, people she had helped, setting up for the party.

Her eyes landed on the bartender, who was hanging something up. 

Danthi, with her greying hair pulled back into a tight bun and a towel over her shoulder, immediately shot up to look at her. Her hazel eyes locked onto her.

Frya pulled down the cloth over her face. "Danthi-" She sucked in a panicked breath. 

"Oh Fyra! What's got you so panicked, you look like you've seen a ghost!" She immediately gushed out, coming down off of the ladder to her side.

"There's a Mandalorian after me." She said, trying to reign in her fear. "I don't know how he found me but-"

Danthi gently grasped her arms, standing in front of her. "Calm down, breathe." She said, voice soothing. She started to lead her behind the bar. "Hey, you two!" She yelled at the two sitting near the door. "Whoever distracts the Mandalorian gets free drinks for the next month." She barked out.

The two aliens grinned. Downed their drinks. They cracked their necks, then walked outside, casually, as if not going up to face a Mandalorian bounty hunter. 

Danthi turned back to her. "We knew this would eventually happen, right?" She said, continuing to lead her around the bar. Pushing open the half door, she led her in. 

"Yes, but I didn't think it'd happen so soon- I just came back here not that long ago." She breathed out, adrenaline pumping through her veins.

"There's a trapdoor leading to underground tunnels. Follow it, straight, 'till it dead-ends. You'll find a transport droid that'll take you to a port." She ducked under the bar, grabbing a canvas bag, giving it to her. "Take this and run." 

Fyra was overwhelmed with emotion, with information. She tried to control it, letting the Force in to try and let it wash over her again. "But what if he comes in here?" 

She gave a shrug, a grin growing on her face. "I'm not scared of any man, let alone a Mandalorian." She tucked Fyra's scarf better atop her head. "You need to go. Let this be your payment for helping us." She said. "Let us help you, just this once." 

"Danthi-" 

She pulled Fyra into a tight, quick hug, before pulling back. She pulled out the key from under the collar of her shirt, unlocking the trapdoor.

It looked dark, dimly lit. Like a dungeon or a tomb for the dead, dust and dirt spewing out down below.

Looking back up to Danthi, she gave one more look. "Thank you." She breathed out. 

"Go. May the Force be with you." She smiled, giving one last squeeze of Fyra's arms. 

They could hear yelling outside. An argument. She could sense the rising danger just outside the cantina doors.

"Come on, Mando! Don't you ever take a day off and drink?!" 

"You think there's a living bein' under that armor or do you think he is the armor?"

The two women locked eyes again, and Danthi all but pushed her down the trapdoor. 

She landed on her feet, half stumbling, with a cloud of dust, dirt, and sand shooting up around her. Jerking her head back up, she got one last look at Danthi's confident, grinning face, before it was sealed back up.

And she was left in complete darkness.

Swallowing thickly, she took in a steadying breath. Letting it out, she reached to her side for the silver-hilted weapon she kept at her side. Her fingers ran over the worn but familiar buttons, but she did not ignite it. Instead, she reached for the flashlight she kept on her belt.

Yellow flickering light ignited in the tunnel as the flashlight came to life. It casted shadows against the walls, down the endless tunnels. Little creatures of the darkness slithered back into it, hissing and clicking noises following as they disappeared back into their darkness.

Ignoring the shiver that ran up her spine, she slid her scarf back over her face. She started walking down the tunnel, heading straight and true as Danthi told her. She tried to keep her memories in check. She was not being left behind in a tomb. She was not being abandoned by her Master. 

There was, however, someone hunting her down once more.

She could sense danger up above her and she had no doubt that it was the Mandalorian. Quickening her steps, she continued down the tunnel, trying to keep herself calm and grounded. She had to keep moving, had to keep going. 

Reaching the end of the tunnel, she heard a noise that made her heart drop to her stomach. It was the sound of flame, and then, metal melting. 

She turned off the light, sliding it back onto her holster, swift. Jumping up onto the ladder, she could hear the metal trapdoor being melted, falling away and crashing to the ground. She pushed away any and all thoughts about Danti being hurt. She couldn't. She couldn't let herself slow or let Danthi's efforts go in vain to get her out safe.

She was fine. She had to be.

Rapidly, she climbed up the ladder, using her shoulder to try and open it. "Dank ferrik!" She hissed out when it didn't budge. With a lift of her hand, she swiped it across the lock. 

A click resounded and it flung open. 

She pulled herself up and out, finding herself in another alleyway, on the outskirts of town. Heaving for air as she pulled herself up, she saw the transport droids with the sandships, hovering and waiting. 

Shoving the trapdoor back, with a loud, resounding SLAM and another flick of her wrist, it locked behind her, sealing it shut. She bolted toward the ship, not caring if anyone was out to see her frantic movements. 

She slid to a stop in front of the sandship, wide eyes, heaving chest, looking at the R2 droid in the ship.

"I need to get to the port. Now." She commanded.

It beeped in response. A question of where she wanted to go.

"Doesn't matter. Closest one. One that can get me off-planet." She retorted, hopping into the sandship, tying the bag Danthi had given her around her back and under her shoulder. 

Within seconds, she was taking off, zooming across the dry, hot desert. She felt the blaster before she heard it, the heat flying past her ear.

She gasped, ducking down immediately, head shooting back to look behind them. 

The Mandalorian had made it out, standing with a blaster in hand. A shiver raced down her spine as their gazes locked. 

He fired again, and she did not hesitate to use the Force to project an invisible shield around them. 

The droid screamed in fear and the ship dipped to the side, swerving. She slammed into the side of the ship with a forceful exhale.

She sucked in a fast breath, pain in her ribs. "It's alright!" She yelled to the little droid, breathless from the impact. "I got you, keep going!" 

The droid sped along, and she used the Force to protect them from any other blaster shots, seemingly redirecting them as they flew past them.

The Mandalorian's form, shining and reflecting the dying suns' light, stared her down, slowly lowering the blaster as he grew smaller and smaller behind her. 

She knew, without a doubt, he was not giving up. Mandalorians, as they were, never gave up, never stopped, until they were dying. This would not be the last time she saw him. She only hoped she was far enough way when she did that she could escape him again.

With the rising stars and moon above, she could only hope to the Force that she'd have the strength to keep one step ahead. That the universe would guide her where she needed to go.

As he disappeared with the town growing steadily smaller and smaller, she let the town, and its' people, go from her heart. She would hold their kindness in her chest, but she knew she probably would never be able to come back again.

The life of a Jedi in this galaxy would never be safe.

all writing is my own. please do not redistribute, repost, or share on other platforms. thank you

[a-j-s-the-only]

sometimes war is necessary

even if it’s against myself?

[stupidfuckingwindow]

It's so fucking sickening to me, honestly, how proud Zionists really are of the war crimes they support. I've seen so many comments now on YouTube, supporting the Israeli Government and defending it with their lives.

This was on a post about the deaths caused by Palestinian schools, children, and teachers being bombed.

The irony of supporting a genocide while making claims that the ones being targeted and murdered are the perpetrators, is insane to me. Being uninformed is not an excuse. It does not take much effort to educate yourself on this situation and to understand that this is murder on a massive scale.

Even if you cannot donate at this time or do much to help, the least one can do is learn about what has been happening for decades, and spread the message to others.

[connected-through-the-force]

Here's our version of Prison Break! Just a heads up, there is some violence and mentions of death in this.

[bittyfromquotev]

The Noise

He didn’t care.

It was too loud.

Everyone at the return parade to celebrate their victory in the war was having fun, but Sun didn’t care.

He wanted the noise to stop.

The sound of drums and trumpets and other instruments vibrated with power in his chest, rattling the metal and wires within his scarred body. He pushed his even more ruined brother along in a wheelchair as if he was nothing more than a S.T.A.F.F. Bot. He kept moving even though all he wanted to do was run away and hide. He wanted quiet. The large band parted eventually, forcing Sun to roll a crippled Moon and himself through the tunnel of noise.

The band grew ten times louder than before, blaring into Sun’s audio sensors and forcing him to hunch over. He tried to stand straight again for the people, he really tried, but he couldn’t. It’s as if his joints rusted in place.

He pursed what would be his lips together, biting on the soft material that made up his tongue. He would get through this even if he had to be reset because of the delayed reactions to his panic this would bring.

The band wouldn’t stop. As the rest of the military branches followed behind Sun and the army, the noise got increasingly louder. The civilians at the parade cheered with all their might every time someone announced something on the booming microphone. Images of a hospital flashed though Sun’s mind. A hospital. Snow. Red snow. The screams of the Ukrainian victims. The ones he and his comrades were unable to save. Moon’s leg, lying mangled in the dirty snow several yards away from who it belonged to. Instead of the overjoyed faces that were actually there, Sun saw faces of fading hope.

The faces of defeat that were plastered on the victims of the war.

His grip on Moon’s wheelchair tightened as he looked on. Luckily, it wasn’t long before they all came to a stop. The military that walked, the band that played, the people that cheered.

It all stopped.

However sudden it was, the relief was obvious as soon as his sensors processed the silence.

Sun didn’t care for Moon’s concerned gaze trained on him as he breathed a sigh of relief.

All was quiet.

He would be okay.