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timextoxhajima · 4 years ago

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HOSTIS, Chapter XIII: Inferno

Previous Chapter (XII: Terminus, Limit)

Member: Lee Hyunjae (tbz)

Genre (by chapter): drama, comedy, SMUT

Category: Short Novel/Long Series

“my eyes are up here”

the hedonic value of touch, the pleasantness or unpleasantness, is intrinsically related to the physical characteristics of tactile stimuli, like softness , temperature, force and velocity.

however, as in other sensory modalities, the signals from the peripheral receptors are processed and modulated by several “top–down” mechanisms before the subjective experience of touch arises in the brain.

so what is your subjective?

the devil’s eyes were on the road, but his apparent need for provocation was draining into you by his palm on your right thigh.

this scene was familiar, but there was no third party to anger him. there was no table to hide under.

it was just you and him in his car, with the air-conditioning blasting into your hair and face and drying the pores on your skin.

each finger channels a certain amount of energy to apply pressure into your flesh, both inside and outside of your thighs. the rotation of his wrist allows him to dig his nails near a spot under your thigh, and it doesn’t help when each tightening grip inches its way up.��

the horribly familiar hardening of muscle in your abdomen ignites a harsh exhale from you, and in the not-so-still atmosphere, his little smirk in the reflection off the screen slaps a wave of annoyance into you.

“aw, kitten,” the car comes to a stop at a red light, and he angles his head just enough to show you his left eye. “what’s the matter?”

what’s the matter?

what’s the--

“’what’s the matter?’! you have a serious issue with how far you go to in order to win a game,” the snap was so sharp and quick, not only did it pull his lips apart into a demonic smirk, but it also tightened his hold around your thigh. he wasn’t even trying to hide how much he was enjoying having the heat of your flesh being in his grasp, like he owned it.

every dollop of satisfaction was written all over his face like an open book, and his eyes grew darker by the second despite his attention still being on the road.

the artery that ran along his arm and disappeared under the sleeve of his dress shirt was starting to peek at you from between your legs, and it does feel like his hand was around your neck instead of your thigh.

his house comes up along the road and his hand slides up nearer to your danger zone; your respiratory system starts to malfunction when the warmth of his hand ignites a burning sensation in your core.

the car stops, and he finally releases your leg. the lack of physical touch empties you, and though you were heaving a sigh of relief, your skin wasn’t loving the loss of bodily contact.

watching hyunjae walk around the kitchen and cook was a nauseating -- almost revolting -- sight to behold. the skin of your chest was literally flapping with the heavy thumps your heart was doing between your lungs, and no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn’t peel your eyes away from him.

the darkening white of his dress shirt becomes dotted and speckled with sweat, every now and then he reaches out to grab some sauce or ingredient and it stretches the material.

it sticks to his back when he’s relaxed, but every time his head turned, you could see the little droplets of sweat that rolled down the side of his forehead, wetting his fringe and sticking them to his face.

the energy required to flip and push whatever was in the frying pan was starting to attract all the veins from under his skin, and it was terribly difficult to stomach the sight.

the sight that your eyes loved but your consciousness didn’t.

“kitten.”

oh, god, please don’t.

“come here.”

a muscle under your left eye twitches like you were having a seizure, and your feet bring you to him even before you could start yelling at yourself not to. the frying pan and empty bowls used to prepare the ingredients were thrown into the sink , and two plates of cream pasta come into view.

he shifts the two plates aside and lifts you up onto the counter where they previously were, the heat that they left on the surface now pressed against your rear. a knuckle cracks as you grip onto the edge, and he uses his hips to push your legs apart so he was standing between your knees.

the damp fringe was pushed back, exposing his slightly glistening forehead, and the clink of a fork hitting the base of the plate knocks your attention away from his face.

the reluctance to take the first bite surfaces on your face in the reflection of his eyes, and he feeds himself to prove that it wasn’t just a ploy to kill you -- though you were already half dead inside.

your hand naturally comes up to take the fork for him as he’s twirling the pasta, but he holds it away from you, and shakes his head with a gaze that said, “behave.”

the first bite melts in your mouth, the heat from the cream runs over your taste buds and the pasta finds itself crushed between your molars while you feel your bones being shattered by the way he was looking at you.

but lee hyunjae was the only person on earth who knew how to break you.

some evil, life-destroying dollop of sauce decides to slip off the base of the fork and land on his shirt.

it could’ve been ignored.

it really could’ve been fucking ignored.

but he doesn’t.

each button he undoes, right under your nose, starts to make your gut churn. like you were about to throw up.

the contours of his collarbones and chest start to reveal themselves, the evening sun gleaming into the house and reflecting off the little circles of sweat on his skin. the base of the shirt gets pulled up from under his hip, and the dip of his hips into his belt was obnoxiously eye-catching.

“eyes up, kitten,” your chin gets pushed back up, and the line tells you that you’ve been staring at his torso for longer than you should’ve. “my eyes are up here.”

a pause.

“unless you want something else.”

a smile that would’ve gone unnoticeable if you weren’t staring at his face shows up in the corner of his lips; his eyes not doing you any favour besides making you pool in your own mess of needs.

he somehow manages to get you to mindlessly chew and swallow each bite he offers your mouth, the entire time spent without a single word spoken.

it would’ve been such an awkward situation to watch or be in, but the discipline you needed to dig out from the depths of your soul was a feat to be accomplished.

every now and then, he catches your eyes travelling downwards, your head following your line of sight. him tilting your head back up felt nothing but degrading each time he did it.

both plates empty and he removes himself from between your knees, the sudden space making your lungs feel like you were drowning. the dishes get done pretty quickly, or maybe because you were just too busy figuring out what virus has gotten into your system.

“you’re being a very well-behaved kitten, considering what you did today,” his hair was pushed back again, his arms circling your hips as he lifts you off the counter. the sudden jerk cues you to wrap your arms around his bare shoulders, and your noses come so close to each other, you were practically breathing down on his cheek.

“or is it because you feel sorry that you did it?”

his fingers dig into your rear, and your brows furrow from the blood rushing all over your body.

“very well,” he says after you refuse to, or can’t, respond. “stay quiet. we’ll see how long you can remain silent.”

your eyes choose to avoid his the entire time he walks you upstairs, and you couldn’t believe your eyes when he walks into his study, sits down in front of his home computer, and turns it on.

your lips had already parted to express your confusion, but he prevents a single sound from leaving your throat by cushioning his lips against yours.

the metal button on your pants get undone and he aggressively pulls the material off your legs, your body complying by standing up and letting him remove it off your ankles.

the belt around his hip gets undone while you return a kiss, and his hands on your waist pushing you down lets your wetness coat him like sugar glaze on a cake.

“oh... kitten...” he buries himself inside you by pushing you down, and your wrap around his shoulders tighten with your forehead pressing into his collarbone.

he kisses your neck and ear, the light touch sending your insides into a mess as if they weren’t already in a tangle.

but the sound of a keyboard clacking starts to wrap itself around the part of your brain that has already been ruined by him. every small flex of muscle in his forearm twitches against the sides of your torso, but your walls were begging for movement, either of you to move.

you were sure he was feeling your heavy breaths on his chest, so he’s not oblivious to what he was doing to you.

there has never been a moment when he’s held your pride and ego at its throat like this before, in fact, everytime he has himself buried inside you, it was always some new way of breaking you.

this time he was just waiting for you to do something for yourself. he was just waiting for you to move on your own.

he’s put you in a position that you didn’t need him to do anything, but that made it all the more worse.

each second and minute drags itself across the floor like a dying corpse, but he deliberately twitches inside you, the tip tapping on some deep, unforeseen spot that pushes you into both resentment and need.

the keys clacking behind you was extremely frustrating, and if he wasn’t stuck inside you, you would’ve already stomped your feet on hi--

“it’s been exactly thirty-four minutes, kitten,” the clacking doesn’t stop, and your forehead was getting hotter against his shoulder. “i’m impressed.”

the clacking stops and your forearms get pushed away, your torso and head finally being pulled off his skin. little locks of hair get tucked behind yours, and your cheeks start to blush both from the gesture and him occasionally shifting inside you.

“how long are you going to wait?”

i hate him.

“i let you ride and yet you refuse to.”

this piece of--

“if you want me to do it, you could’ve just said so earlier, kitten.”

your eyes squeeze shut as you turn away, but he reads you well, and pulls your chin back to him.

“it pains me to see you like this, kitten,” the skin on your neck gets sucked between his teeth, and the suction also pulls a gasp from your lungs. your fingers dig into the heart of your palm, both your fists wrapped around behind his neck.

but the thought of eric flashes through your head for a split second, and ares gets revived in the depths of your despair.

“at least eric wouldn’t wait for me to ask.”

the sucking on your neck halts abruptly, and nobody moves a single muscle for a few seconds, seconds that felt like they lasted for a lifetime.

“what?”

you pull away from his torso and find the energy to support your legs while they pushed you off the floor. having him inside you was so difficult to resist temptation, but you weren’t going to let him screw with your ego like this, not after he’s done it twice.

“i’m not going to listen to you just because you think you have me ‘wrapped around your finger’--”

he was already halfway out of you, but he shoves you back down and a yelp comes out through your throat.

“good,” a grin forms on your face as you collect yourself. “you’re upset.”

his soft, patient, demure demeanor completely vanishes when he realised you were all too ready to leave.

“you--”

“eric would be so nice to me, don’t you think?” your head tilts to the side and he tries to get a reaction out of you when he twitches inside. “he’s been trying to get my number for what, two weeks now?”

the look on his face falls into frustration, almost anger.

you were still pooling around him, and it was taking a great amount of effort not to look like you were dying for him to move.

but watching him crack under the mention of eric was enough to set you off on fire.

your feet push yourself off his lap again, but his hands on your thighs stop you dead in your tracks.

there was a simmering atmosphere boiling between the two of you, the room very definitively heating up with the amount of anger that was beginning to stir in his blood.

“would you look at that?” your walls clench around him tightly, and it pushes a tight groan out from him. “you’re not so hard to break after all.”

it was like you flipped a switch and he started up immediately like a generator, picking you up and almost dropping you onto the desk next to the computer.

his lips violently find yours and he bites on your bottom lip harshly, the pain spreading through your face and releasing itself into a gasp that allowed him to shove his tongue between your teeth.

your legs get wrapped around his hips as he starts thrusting, each slam ending with a groan or moan that gets lost into his mouth.

every muscle in you tenses up when his angle finds the perfect spot buried in you, your nails digging into the flesh of his arm tells him that he’s found it.

the pitch of the lewd noises that were dripping off your lips rings like a familiar song to him, and for once he doesn’t stop.

he’s thrusting like his life depended on it, like he needed the validation.

the sweat forming on his forehead tells him to pull away so he can watch himself disappear into you, your fluids coating all over him like honey. the grunts get louder and he starts on your collarbones to mask his need to satisfy you.

your arms holding yourself up nearly buckle and go limp when the rope inside your abdomen snaps; his hips continue to roll into yours while he chases his own high.

the marks on your neck from friday night barely recovered, yet he was already making new ones.

one sharp thrust tells him to pull out, and he coats your stomach with the hot fluid that disgustingly remind you of your dinner.

his tongue jabs the inner side of his cheek, and the crown of his head bares itself to you while he looks down at your stomach.

a nerve in your arm snaps when you try to sit up, and your torso loses all energy for a split second.

but a second was enough for him to catch you before you fell backwards, and his eyes looked tired for once.

“should i be worried you’re learning?”

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Chapter XIV: Errat

A/N: THIS CHAPTER WAS SO WHACK i literally had NO feels to write this smut and i really wanted to update but i can’t bring myself to write/post a piece i wrote without having feels for it. SO HERE IT IS. i hope all’s been good for you guys, it’s been two days since i’ve updated, but why does it feel so long urgh ;_;

#hyunjae #lee hyunjae #the boyz hyunjae #the boyz #hyunjae smut #the boyz smut #timetohajima #timetohajima hostis

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victoria-daydreams · 4 years ago

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Till Kingdom Come

Chapter One: My Story Is Much Too Sad to be Told

AN: I’m fairly shocked at the reception this story got, I didn’t expect to gain immediate attraction because I posted it at like 3am lol. Nonetheless, I am grateful to all the people who read this story. Once again, this chapter is dark as well. I promise this whole story is not going to be doom and gloom, but it feels inappropriate to even try to glaze over the cruel treatment of slaves in America and to be honest, this chapter is probably just a glimpse of what real life slaves were put through.

Word Count: 3.1k

Trigger Warnings: slavery, violence, physical/mental abuse, racism, racial slurs

Chapter Two: Life Being What It Is

That was seventeen years ago.

Sabine's life had changed for the "better", at least that's what Mistress Genevieve would try to convince her as such. Sabine certainly didn't see it that way, she was still a slave, after all. Not to mention, that the Martin family has for all intents and purposes, mentally and physically scarred her for the rest of her life.

Sabine was fucking miserable on the Martin Plantation.

From the moment Sabine arrived on the plantation as a child, she became something of a pet project to Genevieve. She taught Sabine arithmancy, how to read, write, and to speak proper English and French. This was not out of kindness though, no, this was a source of derision. Whenever Genevieve would host any type of social gathering, Sabine would find herself being paraded around by her Mistress to her guests.

She despised the gatherings with every fiber of her being, she was subjected to the most degrading comments by the party goers.

"Dear me, I didn't know negros had the capacity to learn how to read,"

"Genevieve, you must have the patience of a saint to be willing to teach a member of an illiterate species,"

"You taught the monkey to read and write? What's next Genevieve, music?"

This is what Sabine had been put through for as long as she could remember. Every time she learned and mastered something new, Sabine knew what was to come. She hated the fact that accomplishing something a white person could do was met with oohs and awws in the most mocking fashion from Genevieve's friends. Sabine remembered one night that word had spread at a party that she was fluent in French and for the rest of night she was bombarded with requests of ‘saying something in French’. She felt like an animal in a zoo and she knew that's how most people viewed her in the first place.

"Teach anymore parlor tricks to your pet Genevieve?"

Sabine would internally scowl every time she witnessed Genevieve be lavished in praise by her friends for her work. Isn't it sweet? The benevolent mistress bestowing an education to a lowly slave like herself. The Southern Belle, extending her graciousness to one of her lowliest effects.

Oh, but Sabine would find little ways to carry out her revenge especially as she grew older and was given tasks that held more responsibility. Her favorite way, "accidentally" pulling her mistress' corset too tight or "accidentally" stabbing her in the scalp with hairpins. Her yelps of pain would bring a ghost of smile to Sabine's lips which would instantly vanish if Genevieve turned around to scold her for her carelessness. And of course Sabine would offer a quick apology, telling her mistress that she didn't mean to and will be more mindful in the future. But the second Genevieve left the room, Sabine would let out a snicker only to be popped in the back of the head by Alice, the woman, who's in charge in keeping the rest of the slaves in order.

The blow was not out of malice, further from that really, it was out of love and concern. Alice had been like a mother figure to Sabine since the day she arrived on the plantation.

"One day the Mistress is not going to put up with your 'mistakes'," Alice warned, worry was evident in her eyes.

It wasn't until Sabine would turn sixteen the following year that Alice's warning would finally sink in for her. The most ironic thing about it was the fact that it didn't happen because of one of Sabine's mischievous acts, it happened because of the wandering eyes of Genevieve's husband, Aaron Martin. What's even more ironic, is that Master Martin didn't even want Sabine in the house at first, he wanted to make her a field hand. Genevieve convinced him otherwise, saying that she would be malleable and make the perfect, obedient slave since she had no attachments on their plantation.

She was wrong.

The decision to keep Sabine as a house slave would be one that Genevieve would come to regret, but only out of wounded pride. Sabine, on the other hand, longed for freedom and was desperate to escape the growing tension between Genevieve and Master Martin. She doubted that they knew how many times she fantasized about running away from the plantation. It was more than once as each day passed.

She had good reason to as well, Sabine had noticed that the mistress had been short-tempered with her as of late. And that was never more evident on one fateful day, where everything in Sabine's life seemed to further spiral out of what little control she had.

Sabine wiped down the top of the fireplace on the far wall of the parlor room, humming to herself.

"What's that song?"

Sabine stumbled in surprise of hearing Master Martin's voice, his French accent only slightly there. Pushing away from the fireplace, she tightened her grip around the rag in her hands as she stood at attention. His thin lips were curled up into a smile, a smile that Sabine was sure he thought would put her at ease, it didn't. Matter of fact, the expression had the exact opposite effect, Sabine thought his smile looked like a wound opening. Everything about the forty-five year old man unnerved her, Master Martin had a complexion that teetered between being pale and matte, short, dark brown hair sat on top of his oblong head. His long face made his humped nose prominent, but the most terrifying feature on his face was those piercing gray orbs.

It was the eyes of a predator stalking its prey.

Bowing her head in apology, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you, Master," Sabine apologized, vowing not to hum again.

"You didn't disturb me. What is that song?"

It's something that her mother would sing to her when she was younger. Sabine couldn't remember the words to the song, but she knew how the tune went, it was the only piece of her mother that she had left of her.

Shaking her head, "I don't know," Sabine lied remorselessly.

Instead of letting her get back to her work, Master Martin just continued staring at Sabine, it made her flesh crawl. His eyes traveled from her face before letting them roam down to her neck and then onto her chest. This had become increasingly normal behavior for Master Martin, each week it seemed like he managed to find her alone and just study her figure. His eyes would always linger on her breasts, and that was what made Sabine most uncomfortable in his presence.

Master Martin leaned against the door frame, "You've been filling out your dress quite nicely as of late Cecile," he commented, now looking at slim waist and then her hips as his tongue darted out to wet his lips.

Sabine had to swallow down the bile she felt that might escape her mouth.

"Cecile!" Genevieve's shrill voice called from down the hall. "Cecile! Where are you, you daft girl?!" she yelled, as she stopped right beside her husband. "Aaron, dear, what are you looking-" she began, but cut herself off when she followed her husband's leering gaze. Genevieve's expression hardened and she narrowed her eyes at Sabine, pressing her lips together into a thin line. She stormed over to Sabine and came to a stop in front of her.

"Mistress I-" Sabine started, but Genevieve's hand whipped out and struck her hard across the face. Sabine's head snapped to the side and she lowered her stare to the floor, her breath uneven as she rubbed her cheek.

It was the hardest slap she had ever received.

"You stupid girl! Why are you distracting the Master?" she demanded, glowering at Sabine. "Get out of here and get back to work!" she ordered, her rising temper reflected in her face.

"Yes Mistress," Sabine replied, quickly bowing her head as tears began to well up in her eyes.

"And didn't I tell you to cover that horrid hair of yours? The sight of it is revolting!"

Genevieve had never once demanded Sabine to cover her hair, not until that day. But from that day on, Sabine wore a headscarf religiously to cover her head. Sabine figured that Genevieve's thought process probably fell along the lines of, if Sabine's hair wasn't visible then she'd become less attractive. It was a flawed logic that did nothing of the sort, much to Genevieve's and Sabine's dismay. So, for Sabine, the physical and mental abuse she received from Genevieve increased on a scale that she never experienced before.

The days of Sabine just being a pet to show off to Genevieve's friends to poke fun at her, were long gone.

Genevieve now saw Sabine as competition for Master Martin's attention. Attention that Sabine never wanted in the first place, Genevieve could keep her disgusting husband all to herself for all she cared. But of course, Genevieve would never see it Sabine's way, no, somehow Sabine's at fault for Master Martin's lustful stares.

Things only seemed to get progressively worse for Sabine as the years passed and her body continued to mature. Not only did she draw the unwanted attention from her perverted master, but she unfortunately also captured the eldest son's attention, Marc. He was almost a spitting image of his father, but was by far, worse than him. He's actually touched her in inappropriate ways, too many times for Sabine to recall. At least Master Martin just stared at her, although Sabine was sure that one day he might begin touching her as well, her worst fear was that he would flat out rape her.

Lord knows, Marc had been working his way up to it.

Sabine noticed that he had become increasingly aggressive as of late. And that frightened her to no end. She remembered one time after a dinner party she had to serve in the parlor room where the male guests were playing cards. She had just finished serving a round of drinks to Marc's table and the way he decided to thank her was to roughly squeeze her ass with a disingenuous smile. This action made the men at the table roar with laughter, but all Sabine could feel was mortification.

She wanted to curl up into a ball and cry in the corner of the small shack that she called home.

Sabine wanted to believe that the abuse she was suffering could not get any worse, she thought wrong. For, not only was she terrorized by the Martin's, but Marc's arrogant, smug college friends who often visited the plantation, partook in her torment as well. They would whisper things in her ears that no upstanding, God-fearing gentlemen would ever say to a white woman.

And for having such a supposed repulsion and violent reaction to someone of her complexion, white men sure seem to fancy negro flesh. It was confusing, yet terrifying realization. How could you hate and treat someone with so much scorn, but at the same time want to sleep with them?

Sabine's worst experience with one of Marc's friends was that he managed to corner her and forceful stick his hand up her dress, grabbing her thigh, luckily his hand wasn't able to go any higher thanks to one Alain Martin.

The only kind-hearted Martin in the family.

Alain, the curly headed and bright blue-eyed boy who always had a boyish grin on his face. He actually treated Sabine and the other slaves on the plantation like actual human beings, showing them dignity and respect, something that was completely foreign to them. Sabine wondered how the cruelty that Alain's family gleefully inflicted on the slaves didn't corrupt him and make him turn out like them. Maybe it was because Alain had actually questioned his surroundings as a child and didn't simply just accept what his mother and father told him as fact. She could recall many times Alain saying, ‘that doesn't seem right’ as a child.

And as Alain grew older, he continued to challenge his parents on the practice of slavery, prompting several arguments and debates, especially when it was dinnertime. Sabine had been a witness to quite a few of the shouting matches that would erupt at the table between Alain and Master Martin, Alain would also go at it with his older brother. Marc claimed, 'that because of the negro skull size all they were capable of was menial work and that white people were justified for enslaving them. With no one to oversee the negroes, they would hurt themselves'. This claim only enraged Alain further and Sabine as well.

Sabine had more knowledge in her pinky, than Marc's thick skull.

She pitied Alain, he had become the black sheep of the family. He attended college in the North and his views against slavery had only become stronger. He was an unapologetic abolitionist, which of course was completely the opposite of what his family believed. There would be many times that Sabine found herself listening to Alain as he vented out his frustrations about his family. She didn't mind, because that's what friends do, you let them vent.

However, it was not always like this, the bond they shared now as young adults would seem unimaginable to Sabine when she was younger.

Sabine and Alain had spent a lot of time together as children, but not because she wanted to, at first. The only reason she and Alain were in close proximity all the time, was the fact that she was tasked with fanning him while he had lessons with his tutor. Sabine resented him, they were only two years apart and yet here she was fanning him like he was some type of king. She was cold towards him (as respectfully as possible) and it went on like that for a couple of months, until Alain decided to speak to her when his tutor went inside the house.

"Pssst, Cecile, do you know how to say this word?" he asked, pointing to a word in his book.

Internally, Sabine arched a brow, she didn't know if he was asking out of genuine curiosity or to mock her.

"No sir," she answered, her grip tightening on the fan at the fact that she had to address a fellow child as 'sir'.

"You didn't even look," he argued softly, looking up at her. "Come on, I know you're smart, probably smarter than me," he added, moving the book closer to her eyes.

"Don't let the master and mistress hear that," Sabine remarked mindlessly, before freezing at what she let slip from her mouth.

Sabine expected to hear Alain run from his seat and tell his parents what she said, instead she heard giggles.

"You're funny Cecile," he commented, shaking his head.

A breath of relief left Sabine and she craned her neck, "What's the word, sir?" she asked, her eyes scanning the ink on the page.

"This one," he replied, pointing to the third word on the page.

Sabine nodded her head, "It's glaciers, sir," she said, before looking at Alain.

"Thank you Cecile," he smiled, bringing the book closer to him again.

"Your welcome sir,"

"Alain," he corrected.

"What, sir?" Sabine asked, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"Call me Alain,"

And from that day forward, to some extent a friendship was born. The breaks in between Alain's lessons where his tutor wasn't present, were the only time that the two of them could really speak to each other. Alain did most of the talking, he told Sabine things he probably wasn't supposed to and if his mother ever found what Alain told her, Sabine was sure that Genevieve would just about faint. Sabine on the other hand, was much more reserved on what she was willing to tell Alain. She never told him anything personal, just mainly what she did each day. Sabine was afraid of telling Alain something that could somehow finds its way back to Genevieve. But, as years passed and they slowly matured, Sabine finally felt that she trusted Alain enough to tell him her real name when they were fourteen.

She hadn't heard the name Cecile since.

It was a friendship of secrecy, but that didn't mean Alain wouldn't try to protect Sabine as best he could. Alain could do it overtly, like he done with Marc's friend by yanking him away from Sabine and punching him square in the jaw. Other times, he would opt for more subtle ways that were just as effective. Remember the assault that Sabine suffered in the parlor room? Well, Alain was a witness to his older brother's molesting of her.

Alain strode over to Marc, appearing as though he was going to tell him off, which for Sabine's sake, she hoped he wasn't. It would only lead to further humiliation of her in some sort of fashion and probably Alain as well. Alain approached the table where his brother was playing cards when he suddenly tripped over his feet. Sabine watched in almost awe as the champagne flew in the air before raining down all over Marc, soaking his hair and a part of his evening jacket and dress shirt.

Marc's face turned beet red.

Sabine had to force herself to keep a neutral face, for a grin was threatening to form on her lips followed by uncontrollable laughter.

"You clumsy idiot!" Marc exclaimed, venom laced in his insult.

Alain didn't seem affected by the remark, "I'm so sorry brother," he apologized, without the faintest hint of sincerity in his eyes. "I'll go get some towels for you," he offered, before turning to look at Sabine. "Will you escort me? I would hate for my clumsiness to resort in another mess," he explained, and Sabine nodded.

"Of course sir," she stated, and led Alain out the parlor room.

Once they were in the hallway and out of view from everyone, Alain grabbed Sabine's wrist and pulled her along to the bustling sounds of the kitchen. Entering the room, Alain let go of her wrist and the two of them stared at each other before bursting out in laughter. Sabine felt tears forming in her eyes and used the back of her finger to wipe it away.

"You're going to get an earful from your mother Alain," Sabine warned, with a breathless laugh.

"I don't give a damn," Alain declared, a proud grin on his lips. "Marc deserved it," he added, nodding his head.

Sabine leaned back against the counter, "You didn't have to do that for me," she said, looking over to her friend.

"No," Alain disagreed, vigorously shaking his head. "I had to, Sabine," he corrected, his expression turning serious. "Marc assaulted you. He humiliated you," he continued, his hands bawling up into fists. "Humiliation in return, it was the least I could do," Alain explained, and Sabine ran her hand up and down his arm soothingly. "I know it won't erase what was done to you Sabine, but I had to do something," he finished, his gaze soft as he looked at her.

"It is a small victory I shall revel in for a long time," Sabine said, placing her hand on top of his shoulder. "Thank you, Alain,"

Chapter Three: Steal Away

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aethelflaedladyofmercia · 5 years ago

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A Cunning Plan

(This is a ButterOmens submission, expanding on @kaz3313‘s initial fic, “A Good/Bad Idea.” All continuations and expansions in any medium are welcome!

(CW: While this is the least distressing Hell story I’ve yet written, with almost no physical violence, it’s also not entirely played for laughs. The abuse is mainly psychological. The threats get intense and there’s a strong sense of exactly how bad it could be. Happy ending, though, unless you’re rooting for Team Hell, and there is comfort after the hurt.)

10575 words.

Michael glared at the telephone on her desk – an older model, with cords and physical buttons, instead of the sleek device she preferred. It almost never did anything anymore, but now it was giving off a horrific, shrill rrrriiiiing over and over. The blinking red light – not quite coordinated to the noise – told her it was an external call, to the general line.

Good. Someone else could answer that.

Rrrrriiiiing.

Except she had work to do and she couldn’t concentrate around that infernal –

Rrrrriiiiing.

After more than a minute of this abject torture, Michael gave in and snatched up the handset. “Hello?” she demanded, making no attempt to hide her irritation.

Her lip curled in disgust when she heard the voice on the other end of the line. She should have known. “No, I am not Gabriel’s…secretary, as you put it. Why would he give his personal line to you?”

Beelzebub’s grating voice seemed slightly less bored than usual. If this kept up, ze may even make it all the way to annoyed.

“Well, I believe he also said that we would be in touch. That means, don’t call us, we’ll –”

A scowl. “No, I will not transfer you.”

She stood up, very nearly losing her composure. “Or take a message. I told you, I’m not his secretary. You’ll get your paperwork back in a week. If you want to arrange a meeting then –”

Michael reluctantly listened to the demon’s reply. “Well. You had your chance for revenge, and as I recall, it didn’t work out, did it?” A pause. “No, I suppose things didn’t go well on our end, either. Not that that’s any concern of yours.”

Michael drummed her fingers on the desk, staring at the pile of paperwork. Everything since the failed Apocalypse had been paperwork and committee meetings, one scramble after another to create new plans for a world that stubbornly refused to end.

This wasn’t what she was designed for. She was built to lead the angels in a glorious war that should be going on right now. If it weren’t for those traitors…

“Fine. I’m listening. What is your plan?”

Two angels and two demons sat around the wrought-iron café table, awning shading them from the early-autumn heat, eyes watching the bookshop on the corner.

The pale one, Hastur, had a stench that had cleared out most of the outdoor seating area immediately, and Beelzebub’s swarm of flies had taken care of the rest. The flies coated every surface, every chair, the windows, the ground, and the little plate of pastries they’d brought as camouflage. Already the croissants were starting to rot.

Gabriel and Michael sat across from the demons, each with a cup full of bitter coffee. Neither would actually stoop so low as to drink a debase, earthly liquid. In fact, Michael had barely managed to convince Gabriel to sit near the cup, and he kept eyeing it as if afraid it would move closer of its own accord, spill all over his latest suit.

Michael pretended to take a sip, as the vile liquid tried to burn her fingers through the thin paper cup. It was annoying, so she immediately dissipated the heat. Somehow, it smelt even worse cold.

Beelzebub had some enormous, frothy monstrosity, to which ze was adding packet after packet of creamer, leaving the empty containers strewn about for zir flies to explore.

Only Hastur seemed to be enjoying his, devouring the cup one mouthful of shredded paper at a time.

“There,” Michael nodded down the street, the opposite direction from the bookshop.

Tall, clad all in black, dark red hair – the demon Crowley – and the round, pale shape of Aziraphale, in that absurd outfit he always wore, bowtie and all. The disgraceful angel was eating some form of confection while the demon talked at length, long arm waving in every direction.

Between them, their hands were clasped, fingers tangled together. It made Michael’s skin crawl just to look at it, and she slid her chair a little farther from the two revolting creatures at her table.

“This is what they do all day?” Gabriel demanded, incredulous.

“As far as we can tell,” she confirmed. “Go for walks. Eat foods. Sit in the bookshop. Touch each other.” Incomprehensible. Thousands of years of subtle defiance – so subtle even Michael herself nearly missed it – only to openly rebel against Heaven for a life of…nothing.

“Szoundsz miszerable,” Beelzebub muttered, echoing Michael’s thoughts, though the Prince of Hell had barely glanced at the two traitors. Instead, ze reached for the saltshaker, trying to add a pinch to the awful concoction. At the first shake, the cap came off, dumping several ounces of salt into Beelzebub’s beverage. “Great. Now it’sz ruined. Who doesz that?”

“Crowley,” growled Hastur, grinding his teeth so hard Michael thought they might crack. “He’s always loosening the tops in the Hell canteen. Thinks its…” he spat. “Funny.”

Michael and Gabriel shared a grimace. Hell was full of evil and cruelty, but what neither of them could stand was the unprofessionalism. “Regardless,” Michael tried to continue her report, “our experts have assured me they are indulging in several major sins. Sloth. Gluttony.” As they watched, Crowley paused, laughing. His thumb brushed crumbs away from the corner of Aziraphale’s mouth. “Lust.”

All four beings at the table shuddered this time, and four chairs shrieked as they moved apart, grating across the concrete floor. Despite being only a few meters away, the traitors didn’t notice – they would see and hear nothing of their observers, unless one of Beelzebub’s flies broke the barrier Michael had meticulously set up.

“Diszguszting,” Beelzebub declared as Aziraphale caught Crowley’s thumb and pressed it briefly to his lips. Several dozen flies buzzed agreement.

“When do we grab him?” demanded Hastur, ripping another bite out of his cup.

“That’s the tough part,” Gabriel said. “We have to wait until he’s alone. There can be no chance the demon is anywhere in the area.”

“Really?” The carefully maintained boredom in Beelzebub’s tone carried a note of mockery. “Are two Archangelsz afraid of one demon?”

“I don’t know, is the Prince of Hell afraid of him?” snapped Gabriel.

“Crowley is not the concern here,” Michael interrupted, glaring at both parties. She could not work like this, not if Gabriel was going to stoop to their level. “It’s Aziraphale.”

Hastur made a noise like an explosion in a swamp. “That cringing little nothing? Could take him apart with my bare hands.”

“No doubt you could, under normal circumstances.” Michael tried not to look at the hands in question – particularly the filthy, discolored nails. “But Aziraphale is a Guardian. He has extraordinary strength when acting in defense of one of his charges, and for some unfathomable reason he counts Crowley among them.” She glanced at the two demons sharing her table, neither of whom was paying enough attention for her liking. “Let me make this absolutely clear. He cannot access that strength in self-defense. That isn’t how he was designed. But if he thinks for one second that Crowley, or anyone else, is in danger – you will lose control of this.”

“Fine,” growled Hastur, who clearly lacked any patience, along with intelligence, grace, and good sense. “We grab the angel at night, when Crowley leaves.”

Michael pressed her lips together.

The look of horror slowly grew across Gabriel’s features. “Does the demon leave at night?”

“About half the time,” she admitted.

Another shriek of four chairs shifting apart.

Four nights later, Hastur watched the bookshop through the van window. Michael had manifested it, after spending five minutes mocking Hastur’s own attempt. He’d thought his imitation of a human automobile was good enough for the job, but Captain Fancy Wings wanted something convincing and realistic and with a functioning air conditioner. Little cardboard trees that he wasn’t allowed to eat sat on every surface, and Michael was spritzing the air with something that smelled foul and flowery.

“Stop that or I’ll rip your arm off,” snapped Hastur, as the spritz came too close to his eyes – and nose – again. The seven demons in the back grunted agreement.

Michael just raised an eyebrow. “You’re welcome to try.”

Hastur turned back to the shop. Crowley had finally left, and now the little cream-colored puffball was sitting in a chair with his eyes closed, sipping on a glass of something Michael had repeatedly insisted was not blood, though it was certainly red.

“Look. He’s alone. I say we go in now,” Hastur growled. This plan was taking far too long. If he’d been in charge, the angel’s hacked-off arm would be growing cold on Crowley’s doorstep by now.

“Not. Yet.” Michael’s voice was tense. “Believe me, I’m not going to keep you all a second longer than –”

They didn’t hear the telephone ring, but Hastur saw the angel jump to his feet and hurry over, sappy smile growing all over his face. “Ugh. They’ve been talking all day. What the Heaven else do they have to say to each other?”

The call went on for eternity, every expression on the angel’s face even more vomit-inducing than the last. Finally, he hung up and leaned back in his chair again.

“Now can we –”

“Our intel says after their conversation, Crowley always goes to sleep. So, yes, it should be safe to –”

Hastur kicked open the van door, emerging from the blessed potpourri cloud that Michael held them captive in. “Right, team, hit him hard and grab him quick. Let’s go.”

It wasn’t exactly the tactical strike Michael wanted, but it would do.

The doors to the shop had been magically reinforced, but they were no match for eight demons, one of them a Duke of Hell. In seconds, they swarmed through the shards of glass and red-painted wood.

She watched from the van as Aziraphale leapt to his feet. His fury at the intruder quickly shifted to horror when he saw what he truly faced, and he stumbled backwards. Michael smiled. “Not so brave now, are we, traitor?”

The first demon to reach him got a nasty knock in the teeth. Michael had warned them Aziraphale knew how to fight. Even without his Guardian strength, he was easily a match for any demon, possibly even two demons together.

But as he dashed to the phone, four jumped on him, dragging him down in a flurry of feathers, the traitor panicking so hard his wings manifested. Disgraceful.

When the demons finally had him immobile, Hastur stepped over and slammed a bar of metal into the back of Aziraphale’s head. Michael smiled again, imagining the crack it would make. Pity she couldn’t deliver it herself.

After a pause, she saw Hastur’s arm rise and fall again. Then a third time.

Really. That was just brutish overkill.

At last, Hastur and his smelly horde emerged from the shop, six of the demons carrying Aziraphale between them. That shouldn’t have been necessary. She tapped her fingers against the steering wheel, annoyed at the delay.

When the back door opened and the demons began wrestling the angel’s body inside, she snapped, “It took you long –” And fell silent as she saw Aziraphale’s eyes, wide open and alert.

“Michael.” With a flutter of white wings, he wrenched himself free of his captors, settling against the far wall of the van, trying to look like he was there by choice. “I wondered who the brains behind this would be. Just when I thought you couldn’t disappoint me any further.”

She glared at Hastur, who moved to sit beside Aziraphale. “You incompetent – I told you to make sure he was unconscious!”

“Won’t go down.” He jerked Aziraphale’s head forward by the hair, studying the back of his skull.

“What do you mean – you just didn’t do it right!”

“Listen, wanker, I know how to knock someone out. Know how to do a lot worse if I want. Something’s not right here.”

“Yes, I’m obviously too powerful for you,” Aziraphale said, but Michael could hear the tremble behind the false bravado now. “If you let me go, I – I won’t try to take revenge.”

Hastur hit him across the face so hard, the impact echoed off the metal walls of the van. And pulled away his hand with a shout, clutching his fingers to his chest. “How are you doing that?” Aziraphale barely even looked dazed, but the worry was blossoming into full-blown fear.

“We’re going,” Michael snapped. “Sit on him if you have to, we’ll figure it out once we get there.”

Hell had never captured an angel alive before. Beelzebub was nearly excited at the possibilities.

But ze was also aware it could go wrong, like at Crowley’s trial – instead of hundreds of demons witnessing the destruction of a traitor, they saw him boldly defy zir authority and shrug off gallons of Holy Water as if it were nothing. The damage control from that incident would never be over. Beelzebub couldn’t afford a repeat.

The cell ze prepared was deep in the twisted corridors of Hell; it had been designed to hold a Hellhound, so it should be enough to keep the angel contained. The chains that would bind him were forged from celestial orichalcum and stygian iron. Ze had added some fancy cameras, provided by Heaven, so the torture could be broadcast to all of Hell, but open plaza outside was to be kept clear.

“I like this,” Gabriel said, inspecting the cell. “Very thorough. Very dark. And the smell, that’s a good touch.”

“We don’t need your approval,” Beelzebub reminded him. “We know how to do our jobsz here.”

Gabriel grabbed one of the chains and pulled it with his whole weight. “But you’ve never had an angel before, have you? There’s a lot to consider. After all, angels and demons have very little in common –”

“The main differencze isz that angelsz are much more arrogant.”

The Arch-wanker finally turned to face Beelzebub, storming over to tower over zir, to try and intimidate zir. Pathetic, really.

“May I remind you that I’m here because you asked me for assistance.”

“Which you already provided. You’re now here asz a courteszy, nothing more.”

“A courtesy?” Gabriel demanded.

“Yesz.” Apparently, he thought puffing himself up and pulling a face would somehow impress someone who spent zir life ordering literal demons to stop chewing on each other for five minutes and do some blessed paperwork. “He isz our captive. We deczide what happens to him now. But asz he isz your traitor, and asz a szign of our goodwill, you can have a turn torturing him, when we are finished.”

“Listen here,” Gabriel pointed a finger. Wow. A finger. Beelzebub had never seen one of those before. “That little shithead has been a pain in my side for thousands of years, and if you think I’m just going to sit back and watch while your side takes him apart –”

“If you szat back and watched, you might actually learn szomething.” Beelzebub frowned. “But that would probably ruin your image.”

“Let me tell you something about…” But it seemed Beelzebub would go the rest of eternity without whatever wisdom Gabriel had been about to shit out, because they were interrupted by his flashy mobile phone ringing. He held up his finger and wandered off. “Michael! How’s the extraction going?”

Turning back to more important matters, Beelzebub made sure there were sufficient implements of torture in the cell. The one remaining issue was how to choose one of Hell’s many skilled torturers to work on the angel; despite Hastur’s insistence, he was clearly not the best choice. The camera set-ups were reminding Beelzebub of that reality TV thing Crowley used to write about in detail, and that was giving zir some interesting ideas for a competition…

“What do you mean there’s a problem?” Gabriel’s voice demanded, and Beelzebub sighed. Something else for zir to sort out, it seemed.

It was the second time Aziraphale had been led into Hell in chains, though the others didn’t know that.

It was harder this time. Not just because the manacles dragged at his wrists and ankles, each one connected to a different demon marching along beside him; Hastur led the way, pulling the chain for the collar around his neck. Two more demons held his wings in grimy claws.

It was humiliating, but that wasn’t all of it. Aziraphale found it had been much easier to be brave when everyone thought he was Crowley.

The routes they traveled were as wide as a city street, but the crowds pressed in on either side, reaching for him – he sometimes felt their hands brush his face, his wings, clutch at his shirt as he passed – and the shouting. Oh, the shouting.

I hope you brought enough angel for everyone.

Hey, angel, not so high-and-mighty now, are we?

You better hope they don’t leave you alone, angel, or I’m going to break into your cell and –

Hey, angel, I can’t wait to get my hands on your wings and –

What’s the matter, angel? Us demons not good enough for you?

Hey, angel –

Angel –

Empty threats, but no less terrifying for it. He tried to raise his hands to cover his ears, but the demons holding his chains jerked them back down.

It was fairly obvious which cell was meant to be Aziraphale’s: the one with two Archangels waiting outside it. He didn’t know how Michael had gotten there first. Probably took a more private route; the demons wanted to parade their captive in front of all of Hell, but they were still ashamed of their allies.

He tossed his head and tried to keep the quiver out of his voice. “Gabriel. I’d say it’s good to see you again, but I promised Crowley I wouldn’t lie so much anymore.”

“Aziraphale. What the hell have you been up to?”

“Is that…supposed to be funny?” He honestly could never tell with Gabriel.

Any trace of good humor vanished from the Archangel’s face, and Aziraphale felt a familiar fear tear through him. He can’t hurt you, he can’t hurt you…

“Take him inside,” Gabriel ordered. “String him up.”

“You don’t give the commandsz around here,” Beelzebub said, and there was a distinct note of anger behind the blandness.

“I thought you were supposed to be the expert,” Gabriel snapped. “We don’t argue in front of the prisoner. Take him in. Now.”

“What do you mean, he can’t be harmed?” Beelzebub demanded, rubbing zir forehead in annoyance.

“I mean, I bit him, hit him, scratched him – everything I could think of, but he barely felt anything.” Hastur looked offended, as if this was a professional insult.

“Barely felt anything?” Gabriel asked, trying to make sense of what passed for a report in Hell. “What did he feel?”

“Sometimes he flinched,” Hastur shrugged.

“Yes, but when did he –” Gabriel sighed. “Never mind. Michael?”

She nodded and stepped towards the cell.

“Sztop.” Beelzebub blocked her. “I told you, he isz our priszoner, and we get first –”

“Nobody is getting first anything until we know what’s going on,” Gabriel pointed out. “And unlike your…fine associate,” he gestured to Hastur politely, “Michael actually knows how to be systematic. Sit back and watch, you might learn something.”

Beelzebub’s face twisted, but ze stepped aside and let Michael go to work.

“Ah, Michael. Welcome to my new abode,” Aziraphale started, full of false bravery. Gabriel knew it was false. He’d known Aziraphale practically since the moment of the Principality’s creation. Soft and weak and anxious about absolutely everything. Right now he was standing in a dark, damp, filthy cell, arms and wings chained so they couldn’t even be lowered comfortably. He should be pissing himself already. But instead, he smiled that shaky, watery smile. “I’m sure they sent you to –”

Michael slapped him across the face, then shook her hand.

Aziraphale shrugged. “I’m afraid you’ll find that –”

Michael punched him in the jaw. His head snapped back, then lowered again to look at her.

“You know, it’s rude to interrupt.”

Over the next ten minutes, Michael tried everything, including half the torture implements Beelzebub had prepared. Knives scraped across his skin without any affect; hammers slammed into his joints with no more reaction than “Ooh, that smarts a little.” Pulling his hair brought barely a grunt of pain. Plucking his feathers seemed promising at first, but after the first minute, he stopped noticing.

They could find nothing that actually hurt Aziraphale.

It was while Michael was trying, unsuccessfully, to break a finger that Gabriel realized what was going on. He marched into the cell, grabbing the prisoner by the collar. “You didn’t.”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” Aizraphale whispered, tongue poking out to wet his lips.

Gabriel ripped off the bowtie, throwing it on the ground, then tore open the front of Aziraphale’s shirt.

“Stop – Stop it!” Finally, the high-pitched fear Gabriel had been waiting for, but he ignored it. Pulling back the shirt, he found what he expected to see: a complex, serpentine sigil carved into the skin over Aziraphale’s heart.

“You let him mark you. You let a goddamn demon mark you. Of all the disgusting, depraved acts –”

“Really,” Aziraphale cut in, sounding close to tears. “That’s no way to speak about my husband.”

“Huszband?” Beelzebub found that somehow more disgusting than the thoughts of what the two traitors had been physically doing.

“That’s not important,” Gabriel said, though he clearly found it just as disturbing. “That mark is protecting him from any harm. As long as it’s there, we can’t touch him.”

“Crowley,” growled Hastur, clenching his fist so that the jagged nails cut deep into his own flesh. “Thinks he’s so bloody clever, pulling this shit –”

Fascinating as his latest temper tantrum wasn’t, it was time to focus on the problem. “If the angel isz marked, it can only be eraszed with the blood of the demon. Which brings us back to the original problem.” They didn’t dare try to capture Crowley. Not without knowing what powers he might have.

“I got a good look at it,” Gabriel said, shaking his head. “It’s a demonic sigil, but an angelic mark.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, my good Prince of Hell, that it’s not powered by blood, it’s powered by faith.”

“Yeah? So?” Hastur got lost in conversations that didn’t feature disembowelments every few minutes.

Michael sighed. “There are two ways to break an angelic mark. Either he denounces his faith, or he loses it.” She frowned at her superior. “It might not be that easy. He believes he’s married to the creature. He won’t just denounce Crowley because you ask him to.”

Impossibly, Gabriel’s face grew even more smug. “Leave that to me. I know that idiot’s psyche inside and out. I’ll have him cursing that demon’s name by morning.”

Beelzebub frowned at the locked cell door. When they’d shut it, the angel had been smiling – he even waved at them. “I don’t szee how.”

“Trust me. He’s practically broken already. I’m going to need everything you’ve got on Crowley so I can sell this. Michael, if he’s marked, we’re going to need security a lot sooner than planned.”

“On it.” She walked away, tapping her phone. Then stopped and turned back. “Or I would be, if there was any signal down here. I need your Wi-Fi password.”

“We don’t just give that out to any angel who asks,” Hastur snarled.

“Hey,” Gabriel clapped his hands. “There’s no time for that. We’re going to be one big, happy family working together to break that angel, hmm?”

Beelzebub seriously considered just letting Aziraphale go and torturing Gabriel instead. It seemed like a lot less trouble at this point.

“Fine. Hasztur, go talk to Dagon. Get all filesz on Crowley, whatever she hasz... Michael, the code isz one-hundred-eighty-four zerosz followed by a one. Gabriel,” Beelzebub sighed. “Tell me how thisz isz going to work.”

“Oh,” the Archangel rubbed his hands together. “You’re going to like this one.”

Gabriel walked back into the cell, easy smile across his face. He placed a bright lamp beside him and settled into the folding chair Hell had provided. It wasn’t very comfortable, but it was important he look at ease.

The light made Aziraphale flinch, smile turning into a grimace. Good. Already used to the dark.

“Well, Aziraphale, looks like I have good news and bad news.”

“You’ve found you can’t torture me, so you’re letting me go?”

Beelzebub melted into the shadows behind Aziraphale, pulling on one chain, then another. “We can’t hurt you, but we can sztill make you very uncomfortable.” Aziraphale’s arms jerked upwards, until he had to stand on his toes.

Gabriel shook his head sympathetically. “Demons,” he shrugged. “They don’t really think big picture. But you know all about that.” Another jerk of the chains pulled down his wings as far as they would go.

Aziraphale grunted, trying to find a way to balance himself. “Crowley does. He always has a plan.”

“Yes, I’m sure he does,” Gabriel waved dismissively. “In fact, we’re waiting for him to show up. I assume that’s what his mark does, alerts him when you need help. Angelic marks are like that,” he added for Beelzebub’s benefit. “One is the protected, the other the protector.” The profane mark on Azirapahle’s chest was bright red against pale skin.

“Fasczinating,” the Prince of Hell muttered.

“He knew the moment you took me,” Aziraphale said, voice a little tighter. “He’ll be here within the hour –”

“Actually,” Gabriel glanced at his watch, “it’s been over two hours already.” It was almost impossible not to smile at the flicker of worry that crossed Aziraphale’s face at that lie. “No matter. When he finally shows up, we’ll bargain for your release.”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing much, really. Just certain assurances you’ll stay out of our way.”

“We’ve been staying out of your way!” He tried to take a step forward, then gasped and pulled back. Looks like Beelzebub’s theory was right – they couldn’t hurt Aziraphale, but he could still hurt himself, pulling against his chains. Interesting. “Look,” the angel tried again in a calmer tone. “All we want is to be left alone –”

“Then there’s no reason for this to be difficult. As soon as he –”

Gabriel’s phone rang, exactly on time. He smiled as he stood, pulling it out. “That’ll be Uriel’s team. Don’t worry, not much longer now.” Hurrying out of the cell, he pretended to take the call.

Beelzebub followed a moment later, scooping up the lamp, and Aziraphale’s tie from where it had fallen. “In casze we need proof that we have you. Enjoy the dark.” The cell door shut with a satisfying slam.

Gabriel waited just long enough for the dark and silence to press in on the prisoner. Then he shouted as loud as he could, “What do you mean he left?”

Exactly seventy-eight minutes after they’d dragged the traitor through the lobby to Hell, his demonic partner arrived. Michael had moved as quickly as she could, pulling eight of her best angels to guard the escalators, armed with every Holy weapon she could think of.

The demon Crowley burst through the lobby door with some sort of elaborate pump-action water pistol in his hands, a dark expression behind his glasses. When he saw the flaming blades, he slowed his march, lowering the plastic gun slightly.

“I’m afraid Holy Water isn’t going to work on us,” Michael smiled sweetly. “Did you have another plan?”

“Working on it,” Crowley grunted, eyeing the swords. She was relieved at that; she hadn’t been completely certain a demon immune to Holy Water would still fear heavenly weapons. “Why don’t you save us all some trouble and let him go? You can’t –”

“Can’t hurt him? You honestly believe that little mark is going to stop us?”

His lips twisted at that. So much for the infamous flash bastard. Crowley lowered his toy weapon to the ground and took a few steps closer, arms wide. “What do you want? Hmm? You want to negotiate? Give me your terms, I’m here.”

“We don’t negotiate with demons,” Michael started.

“No, you just raid bookshops with them.” Her phalanx took a step forward, and he jumped back. “Right, fine, touchy subject. I get it. Don’t want to be judged for the company you keep. Though, I’m pretty sure I smelled Hastur’s distinctive odor, and I am judging you.”

Even behind the glasses, Michael could see the way his eyes darted. He was testing her. Trying to find a weakness in their defenses. More clever than she’d expected.

“Just go home, Crowley,” she said. “We’ll be in touch.”

“When?”

“When we’re satisfied with the number of pieces he’s in, you can come and collect them.”

It really didn’t take that much to crack his composure. Michael almost expected him to charge their swords that second. “You can’t – he’s safe –”

“Because he trusts you? Let’s see how he’s doing right now.” Michael held up her phone, turning on the feed from Aziraphale’s cell. It wasn’t live, of course. Too risky. Gabriel had agreed to send her useful clips as the interrogation proceeded.

The first one played out, and Crowley made a wonderful noise of pain when he saw how the angel was chained up and collared, shirt torn open, Gabriel and Beelzebub confronting him in the harsh lamplight.

“Where isz thisz Alpha Czentauri?” demanded Beelzebub.

Aziraphale’s eyes darted from one to the other. “It’s…it’s just a place. Crowley mentions it sometimes.”

“And is that part of his rescue plan? Uriel says that’s where he’s heading. Took off in his car with,” Gabriel glanced at a list on his phone, “thirty-seven potted plants, a hundred and five discs of music, and all the wine from your shop. Not really sure what he’s planning to do with all that.”

“You’re…how could you…” The angel pulled his arms against the chains. “He wouldn’t go…”

Crowley turned astonishingly pale. Michael had been very impressed with the thoroughness of Dagon’s records, including a little snippet of conversation from the days after the failed Apocalypse, when the two traitors had made certain plans. Case of emergency, Crowley had said. If we ever have to run, we need to know exactly what we’re taking.

Michael slid the phone back into her pocket. “How long do you think his protection is going to last, once he thinks you’ve betrayed him?”

Crowley clenched his fists, but didn’t move closer. Instead, he threw back his head and howled: “Aziraphale! Can you hear me? I’m here! Aziraphale!”

Michael actually laughed. “That won’t work. He’s –”

“Hellhound pits? Thought I recognized that cell. Fine, he might not be able to hear me, but he still knows I wouldn’t leave him.” He picked up his water pistol and thundered out the door. “I’ll be back.”

Gabriel considered Hastur again; he was aggressively intimidating, which was good, but also aggressively stupid. “All I really need is for you to go in there and act like you want to rip him apart.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard.” Hastur grinned…well, it was like a grin, only horrible.

“Remember, he thinks he’s been in the cell for six hours.” It had only been three, but deprived of light, sound, and anything to occupy it, the mind lost all sense of time. “Just play along with whatever I say.”

“I know what I’m doing,” the demon snapped.

Gabriel opened his mouth, and one of the Beelzebub’s flies immediately zipped inside. He coughed, spitting it back out, and it buzzed away, unharmed. “That was rude.”

“You talk too much. Juszt open the door.”

The Archangel reached for the bolt that kept Aziraphale’s cell locked, but spun to point at Hastur again. “Whatever you do, do not threaten any harm against Crowley,” he hissed.

“I threaten whoever I want.”

“One word, one suggestion might be all it takes to set him off, even with the serpent nowhere nearby. Do. Not. Try it.”

The lanternlight pierced the darkness. The pale shape of Aziraphale slumped in his chains, limbs quivering from the strain. His eyes were closed, and he was mumbling to himself, a steady stream that didn’t pause with their approach.

Gabriel settled into the chair. “Saying your prayers, Aziraphale?”

One blue-grey eye cracked open, just a glint in the dark. “Our wedding vows. He will come back for me.”

Hastur snorted, picking up a twisted knife. “He’d’ve turned around by now if he was going to.” It would have been more convincing if he hadn’t immediately smirked at Gabriel.

“I’ve been in worse spots than this. He always comes.”

The voice was still tense, but not as shaky as Gabriel had hoped. The Archangel nodded for Beelzebub to begin pulling at the chains again, moving Aziraphale’s limbs into new, uncomfortable positions.

“You know,” Gabriel started. “If you were actually married, Heaven would have a record of it. We looked. Guess what?”

“It wasn’t under any authority but our own.” Now both eyes opened, looking past Gabriel towards the outline of the door. “We didn’t think it necessary to inform you.”

“We’d still have a record.” Gabriel had never looked at a marriage record in six thousand years, but he could pretend to be an authority on anything. “Unless, of course, one party didn’t really believe in that marriage. Just going through the motions.”

“I know what you’re trying to do.” Aziraphale’s eyes drifted over to the knife Hastur held, and his voice started to tremble. “It won’t work. Crowley will come for me.”

“Yeah,” Hastur gave another maybe-grin. “And if he does –”

Beelzebub grabbed the metal collar around Aziraphale’s neck, jerking his head back as far as ze could. “If he doesz, we let you go. Until then, you’re oursz.”

Gabriel would berate Hastur later. Thoroughly.

“Sorry, Aziraphale. Like I said, not big picture thinkers. They really don’t like that they went through all this trouble and didn’t get to hurt anyone.”

“Well,” Hastur grunted, stepping closer to breathe into the ear opposite Beelzebub. “Not yet, anyway.” He traced the tip of the knife across Aziraphale’s finger.

The angel’s eyes darted from one to the other. “You can’t –”

“Do you know what happensz to an angelic mark when the partiesz are four light-yearsz apart?” Zir tone was as bored as ever, but with the right question, it was still menacing.

“It’s never been tested before,” Gabriel said. “But our models show it fading long before then.”

Hastur dropped his knife and grabbed Aziraphale’s wrist, biting the soft part of his hand.

The angel gasped and pulled away; but thanks to whatever Beelzebub had done with the chains, his wings twisted against each other. Aziraphale gave a cry of pain, lost his balance, limbs jerking like a tangled marionette.

While the demons laughed – well, Hastur laughed, Beelzebub made what you might call a buzz of delight – Gabriel helped Aziraphale find his balance again. “See? It’s already starting,” he said, in soothing, comforting tones. “And it’ll just get worse the farther he goes.”

“That wasn’t…he isn’t…” Now Gabriel could see the confusion, exhaustion and fear he’d come to expect in Aziraphale’s eyes. “What do you want from me?”

Gabriel smiled beatifically, the smile he saved for his most important Messages. “Aziraphale. Just denounce Crowley. He’s leaving you, anyway. Do you want to wait here for hours while your protection fades? Letting the pain grow a little at a time? Giving Hastur a chance to think of something really creative to do with that knife? Denounce him, and we can get it all over with.”

“I…” Aziraphale’s eyes squeezed shut. “I…I know he’s coming. He is coming.”

With a noise of disgust, Gabriel shoved Aziraphale away. The angel gave an undignified squeak as he struggled not to fall again. “If that’s what you want, stand there and suffer. Just remember, every moment I’m down here waiting for you, is a moment I’m feeling less charitable. Let’s go.”

When the door was shut and locked behind them again, leaving Aziraphale alone in the dark with his thoughts, Gabriel allowed himself a laugh. “He’s nearly there.”

“You call that nearly there?” Hastur snarled.

“Agreed. Thisz isz taking too long.”

“I told you, I need one night. Just a little finesse. Not every problem can be beaten into submission.” Gabriel pulled out his phone. Fifteen missed messages from Michael?

“Can if you hit hard enough,” Hastur started, but the Archangel was no longer listening, scrolling through the text messages.

“Can demons make their own Hellfire?”

“Don’t be abszurd.” Beelzebub rolled zir eyes. “It comesz from the firesz of the pitsz. You can’t make it.”

“Yeah,” Hastur added. “It’s in the name. Hellfire. Why?”

As a precaution, Michael had doubled the guard at the escalator, but when the first fiery jar exploded at their feet, they had run screaming in every direction.

She’d retreated to Hell’s main gate, watching back down a corridor now completely consumed by too-hot flames. Strange flames, clinging to surfaces that shouldn’t burn, smoldering with black smoke. Flames that spread and grew in water.

She pointed her sword at the black-clad figure walking unconcerned through the fire. “Out of the way, Michael.” He still held two jars of fire, and the plastic gun strapped to his back.

“I don’t know what these flames are,” she said, calmly as possible, “but I heard back from Gabriel. I know it isn’t Hellfire.”

“Well, close enough. Greek fire. Little something I learned to make in Byzantium.” He threw another jar at her feet.

Michael didn’t flinch, even when the strange, sticky flames exploded across her legs. She forced the heat to dissipate, leaving nothing but a black, tarry substance. “I hope that wasn’t your only trick.”

Cautiously, she took a step towards him, trying to suppress the nearest flames. They were more resistant than normal fire, but once she knew they couldn’t harm her true self, it was easy enough.

Crowley backed away a few steps. She couldn’t see his eyes – the glasses reflected the light and flames – but she knew they’d be darting around again. Looking for a way past.

“Give up, Crowley. Or I’ll find out just how effective this sword is.”

“Let me see him again,” the demon demanded. “Show me Aziraphale and I’ll go.”

She could still hear the screams of her guards upstairs. He might not be able to cause harm, but the panic and chaos he brought was bad enough.

“Not here. Go home, send me a picture of yourself nice and comfortable. And I’ll send you a video of the angel. That’s the only deal you’re going to get.”

He clutched at the jar in his hand, but they both knew throwing it would be a meaningless gesture. With a sneer, Crowley spun and walked away. “This still isn’t the end, Michael!”

Once he was gone, she sighed in relief, and prepared to lecture her soldiers on proper discipline in the face of new weapons.

Crowley sat in the bookshop, in Aziraphale’s favorite chair. He’d cleaned up the spilled wine and shattered glass, gathered together the white feathers from the carpet.

It was nearly midnight.

The video played again.

“What’s so special about Alpha Centauri, anyway?” Gabriel asked, voice soft and calm. He sat in that folding chair like it was the Throne of Creation.

“It’s…just a place Crowley likes.” It hurt to look at Aziraphale, the way the chains pulled his wings back, his neck forward, his arms to the side. They weren’t supposed to be able to hurt him, but they’d still found a way. More than one; the strain in his voice had nothing to do with that on his limbs. “I don’t know why he went, but he’s coming back.”

“When did he first mention it?”

“During…when we thought the world would end.” He shifted his feet, one arm stretching to the limit. “Nn. He wanted to run. I didn’t. He came back.”

“Not this time.”

“He’s going to come. I know he’s going to come back.”

Crowley paused the video, rubbing his eyes. It was a trick he’d taught Aziraphale. Don’t try to be smart. Don’t be clever. It’s not like the movies. Just pick one thought, any thought, doesn’t matter what. And repeat it, over and over. Don’t think about anything else. Crowley should have known that he would be the thought Aziraphale picked.

He could hear the uncertainty creeping in. Was the mark on his chest looking paler than before?

He needed to reach Aziraphale, now.

Michael had doubled the guard again.

It wasn’t easy. Rumors of what the demon was capable of were spreading faster than his trick fire had.

But when Crowley sauntered up to the lobby at 1:45 AM, he found the room ringed with thirty fully armed angels.

She’d hoped he would be intimidated. Instead, he just waved.

“Lovely night for a drive, isn’t it?”

“You won’t get past us again, Crowley.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Just popping in for a friendly greeting.” He lounged against the glass door, opening it as far as it would go. “Say hello to my little friends.”

A swarm of rats – fifty, sixty, seventy, more – poured in through the door, flooding the lobby, scrambling over the feet of the guards, descending the escalator with a speed she wouldn’t have thought possible.

“Ooh, I can see you’re busy. Have fun, Michael.”

Beelzebub paced outside the cell. It had been over six hours, and so far they’d only succeeded in making the angel tired and uncomfortable.

Gabriel insisted it was going well. That the angel would break any minute. Just act like the result is inevitable, and sooner enough the prisoner will accept it.

The theory was interesting enough, but it still made for the most boring torture session in six millennia.

Some noise down the corridor. Beelzebub sent a few flies to investigate, buzzing around between the heads of demons.

Fifteen rats making their way down the hall, darting under feet and around tentacles, biting, scratching, but moving with more purpose than rats usually did.

These would be the vermin Crowley had unleashed. According to Michael, there were a lot more, but Hell was already full of rats. Did he think this would impress them? Make any difference in…

Something was different about these rodents.

Walking as fast as ze could, Beelzebub reached the edge of the commotion – the barriers keeping the crowds of Hell away from the angel’s cell – just as the first rat slipped out into the open. Ze snatched up the struggling creature, studying it. Brown fur, four scratchy paws, long bald tail –

There was a scrap of fabric tied to the tail, in a little bow. Tartan. Beelzebub scrambled in zir pocket and pulled out the angel’s tie. It matched exactly.

Nine more rats broke free of the crowd, racing towards the cell with tiny tartan bows dragging behind.

A message.

Beelzebub kicked apart the barrier and shouted at the demons behind. “Grab thosze ratsz! I want every rat in Hell captured, now! Move!”

The door to Dagon’s file room burst open.

She leapt across her desk, teeth bared. Who would dare interrupt her day? Four nothing demons? Armed with clubs? “This better be good,” she snarled, “or you’re going to wish you were swimming in a sulfur pool.”

“We…” the lead demon took one look at her teeth, and lost all nerve. “We’re looking for rats…”

“Rats? Rats? Look at this room –” Dagon gestured expansively to the overstuffed filing cabinets, the row on row of shelves filled with books and boxes and scrolls and, in the farthest corner, clay tablets. “Do you think I allow a single rodent in my domain? If you’ve come here to waste my time…”

She paused. Something wasn’t right. A noise she couldn’t account for. Rustling.

Gesturing for the others to follow, she stalked down the row of shelves, filled to bursting with files on every temptation, every misdeed, every demonic report since the dawn of time.

There – the fourth case down, on a shelf six feet high, one of the boxes vibrated with faint movement. Something was shuffling around. Skittering, even. As they approached, a little brown head popped out, scrap of paper in its mouth. It wiggled its whiskers at them.

“Get it!” shouted one of the demons, and all four raced forward, clubs falling, scrambling up the shelves.

“No! Stop! Don’t –”

With a crack, the case started to lean, slowly topple, and then crashed into the next.

And the next.

A hundred shelves overbalancing and collapsing like dominoes, a hurricane of paper filling the air, and Dagon stood in its eye, ready to scream.

The rat darted past her toes, a tiny bow on its tail.

In every corridor of Hell, demons raced after rodents, scrambling for them, grabbing them up only to drop them once the biting started.

Hastur chased after his prey as it got closer and closer to the prisoner’s cell. As it crossed the last meter, he dove to the ground, snagging the end of its tail.

The skin of the tail ripped free in his hand. But so did the little bit of fabric. The rat escaped, wriggling through a hole in the cell wall smaller than a demon’s hand, but without its message.

With a snarl, Hastur went in search of another.

Aziraphale was determined not to cry. He just didn’t know how much longer he could last.

His whole body ached. He told himself that it was just the chains, the way he’d been hanging in them for hours and days and eternity. It wasn’t a sign that Crowley had abandoned him, it wasn’t.

He just wanted to sit down.

One of the chains shook. He looked up into the darkness, wondering what new torment this was.

A rat dropped onto his shoulder, tail bleeding, claws scrambling at the heavy collar around his neck.

The first sobs started to escape.

Crowley paced outside the lobby of Heaven and Hell as the lead rat reported in.

“No, I’m sure you did your best. Did everyone make it out?” Tiny rat fingers ran across its whiskers. “That’s something at least. Shit.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to think. It would be dawn soon. They’d had Aziraphale all night.

“Right. No more nice demon. Time for plan B.”

The rat squeaked.

“I don’t know, D? E? It’s not like I’m keeping count.” He eyed the pack of angels in the lobby, larger than ever. “I’m not going to get many more chances. This has to work.”

He knelt down and looked carefully at his agent. “I need you to tell me exactly where they’re holding him, got it?”

Gabriel held the pile of fabric scraps in both hands. “Is this all of them?”

“Isz it?” Beelzebub demanded of Hastur.

“Well?” Hastur turned to the small group of demons who had declared themselves Hell’s best rat catchers. They all shifted their feet uneasily.

“We think so,” one offered, and the others nodded agreement. “We can’t find any more.”

“You think so,” Hastur started. “And that’s –”

“Enough,” Beelzebub interrupted. Gabriel and his psychology, Hastur and his noise. This wasn’t how things were done. “If I szee another rat, bow or not, I’ll feed one of you to the Hellhoundsz. I don’t care which. And I’ll keep going until there are no more of you left. Undersztand?”

The group of demons glanced at each other. “We’ll…we’ll look again.”

Gabriel looked almost impressed, but right now he could stick his condescension up any and every orifice in his coroporation. Beelzebub grabbed the fabric out of his hands. “Bring the lamp and don’t szay a word. I’ll show you how it’sz done.”

Crowley’s phone buzzed.

He looked up from the map of Hell he was sketching on a receipt from Aziraphale’s favorite bakery. It was going to take a lot of careful planning, but his idea was finally starting to take shape. He just hoped his Angel could hold out a little longer.

A text from Michael. “Thanks!” Followed by emojis: a rat, a bow, a smiling angel.

Then the video file loaded.

Beelzebub walked into the cell, in that way every demon in Hell knew meant find some way to look busy on the other side of the world. This time it was Gabriel who trailed behind.

“We caught up to your huszband,” Beelzebub spat. “Gave him our proof. You know what he szaid?”

The hope dawning on Aziraphale’s face looked painful. It certainly ripped Crowley’s heart to shreds.

Beelzebub dropped something at the angel’s feet. The lantern light shifted forward: dozens of scraps of tartan, a bowtie shredded to ribbons.

“Lying,” the angel said numbly. “Coming back.”

“No!” The Prince of Hell’s flat disdain rarely cracked; the anger that leaked out was something few demons had ever seen, and even fewer had survived. “He’sz not!” Ze picked up a knife, sharp edge glinting in the uneven light. “Crowley isz never!” The blade slashed across Aziraphale’s palm. “Coming!” Across his face. “Back!” Across his stomach – and this time left a bright red line, glaringly visible below the pale trace of his sigil.

It wasn’t a cut. But it was a mark. An injury.

Beelzebub pressed the point of the knife into Aziraphale’s chin, forcing his head back. “Szo you’re going to be our gueszt. Forever.”

When ze pulled the knife away, there was a drop of blood on it.

Aizraphale collapsed in his chains, sobbing, heartbroken.

And Beelzebub turned and smiled directly at the camera.

The video ended.

Crowley stared at his blank phone, at the map on the receipt. And threw them into the back of the car.

“Fuck planning,” he snarled. “Time to improvise.”

Beelzebub bolted the cell door.

“That,” Gabriel said, voice full of some kind of emotion. “That was amazing! You just –"

“Shut up,” Beelzebub snapped. Satan, why had ze even invited the Archangel for this? He had done nothing to help, just dragged his feet with his stupid mind games. “I’m getting the torturersz. You can play with the angel until we get back. Then he’sz oursz.”

“Of course. You’re sure I should have Michael send this video to Crowley?”

“I don’t care. What’sz he going to do? Send more rodentsz?”

In a way, Michael was enjoying herself.

Trying to keep out one highly determined demon was almost as much fun as planning a war. Twenty angels scattered around the lobby itself, four more making a line across the escalators. More than that, and they just got in each other’s way. She’d switched off the escalator to Heaven, stationed a dozen more with arrows all along it. And five scouts up and down the street outside.

Whatever Crowley tried to do next, they were ready for it.

Something like thunder rumbled in the distance, except the sky was perfectly clear. She could see the last stars, giving way to the pre-dawn light.

And some other sound. A strange, discordant clanging, perhaps? But very faint.

“What is that?” she demanded.

Were there words in the clanging?

…lords and lady preach…

“I’m not sure, sir,” said the nearest angel dutifully, “but it sounds horrible.”

“Well, naturally,” she agreed.

…descend upon your…skies…

“I think,” said another with a frown, “that’s what the reports call bebop.”

…command your very souls you unbelievers…

Three of Michael’s scouts burst through the doors, waving their arms frantically. “Move!” one managed to gasp. “Out of the way!”

Bring before me what is mine…

“Of what?”

With a squeal of tires, the long black demonic car burst through the glass windows of the lobby, roar of the engine echoing off the walls, mixed with the sound of music screaming about The Seven Seas of Rhye. Flaming arrows rained on it from above, and bounced off with no effect.

The car crossed the lobby in seconds, and it was accelerating.

There was really no way a vintage car should have been able to fit down that escalator, but the Bentley was very good at getting places she didn’t belong.

He knew he’d hit a few angels on the way through the lobby, but they’d survive and he didn’t actually give a damn, a shit or any fucks at all.

Up ahead, someone was trying to close the main gates of Hell. With a grin, Crowley shifted gears, stomped on the throttle and cranked the music up even louder.

Storm the master marathon I'll fly through By flash and thunder fire I'll survive, I’ll survive, I’ll survive Then I'll defy the laws of nature and come out alive Then I'll get you…

Gabriel stood beside Aziraphale as he broke down, weeping messily. He could see the last few strands of faith holding that pale mark in place, but they would break very soon.

“I know it hurts, Aziraphale, but you really should have expected it. He’s a demon. He tempted you away from Heaven, and then he betrayed you. It’s what they do.”

The bound angel shook his head. “No. My choice. I – I – I wanted to…to live. To love.” The door opened and his head jerked up, but it was just Beelzebub, and Hastur, and five other demons, each nastier than the last. Another strand of faith broke. “Crowley, please,” he whimpered.

“If you’re going to quesztion him, aszk if he would rather sztart with bladesz or fire.” The glimpse of anger had vanished, buried again under that mask of boredom. It was actually an impressive bit of psychological warfare. They should talk about it sometime, compare notes.

“You did say you wanted choices,” Gabriel reminded him.

“I…I want to go home…” That broken tone was music to the Archangel’s ears. “Please…just let me go…I won’t…I’ll stay out of your way.”

“Too late for that,” Beelzebub said, as the other demons began selecting their tools.

“Tell you what,” Gabriel put an arm around Aziraphale. “When they’re done, you can come back to Heaven. Would you like that? I mean, we can’t reinstate you, but I’m sure there’s some role we can find for you.”

Once the demons had done their work, he’d have some better ideas for Aziraphale’s punishment and execution. Given the rumors that were circling, he’d have to make it very public this time, and he couldn’t afford any more misjudgments.

Hastur pushed his way past the other demons. “This was my idea. I’ve waited fucking long enough. I get to go first.”

Gabriel stepped aside, giving Aziraphale one last pat on the shoulder.

Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled.

Looping his grubby fingers around the metal collar, Hastur pulled Aziraphale off the ground entirely. “I am going to introduce you to whole new kinds of pain, angel.”

“Juszt leave szome limbsz for the reszt,” Beelzebub reminded him.

…comes the black queen…

Some kind of commotion had started up, across the empty plaza.

Gabriel glanced out the cell door, half expecting to see more rats. No, just that strange thunder again. “What is that?”

…Fi-fo the black queen, marching single file…

Both Hastur and Aziraphale turned towards the door, recognition dawning on their faces.

“No.” Hastur growled. “No, no, no –”

“Crowley…”

“NO!” The anger Beelzebub had let slip in the night was nothing compared to that moment. Ze raced out of the cell, arms waving at the crowd. “Szomeone sztop him! Whatever you have to do!”

Gabriel’s legs brought him even further. “Release the Hellhounds! Get the fire, anything – destroy him!”

“You will not,” came a quiet voice. Slowly, Gabriel and Beelzebub turned back towards the cell door, which was still wide open. Aziraphale was standing straight, deadly calm. “You will not hurt Crowley.”

“Shit.”

A voice from behind me reminds me

Aziraphale stepped forward, shaking off his chains as if they were cobwebs, dispelling the gloom with the glow of his wings and the demonic sigil on his chest, bright as daylight.

Hastur didn’t back away fast enough, and Aziraphale threw him clear across the plaza, to crash into the far wall.

Spread out your wings, you are an angel

“Shut the door!” Gabriel and Beelzebub threw their weight against it, driving the bolts home.

With one kick from the angel inside, it crumbled like paper.

Remember to deliver with the speed of light A little bit of love and joy

“You will not. Hurt. My husband.”

Aziraphale held a length of chain in his hands, stygian iron and celestial orichalcum. It glowed as his angelic powers flowed through.

“Your husb – oh, Crowley.” Gabriel held up his hands, backing away. “Is that who that is? I thought it was some new breed of demon.”

“I have no idea what anyone isz talking about.”

“You’re liars.”

Everything you do bears a will and a why and a wherefore A little bit of love and joy

“I think liars is taking it too far, Aziraphale, you know –”

“You said he left me. You lied. And I believed you.” The chain flashed out, ripping their feet out from under them. “But I will not let you hurt him.”

“No one isz going to hurt the traitor,” Beelzebub insisted. “You want to leave, go!”

In each and every soul lies a man Very soon he'll deceive and discover

“Oh, I’ll leave.” He grabbed them each by the front of the shirt, lifting them clear off the ground. “But not until I’m sure he’s safe from you.”

But even 'til the end of his life He'll bring a little love

The Bentley wasn’t as bad as the day he’d driven it through a burning M25, but it was still less than pristine. The front end was all bashed up, the sides scratched and scraped, and he’d probably be digging demon teeth out of the grille for weeks.

But he finally broke free of the crowd, and there ahead stood his angel, looking worn and tired, shirt in tatters, but alive. And smiling.

Behind him stood a cell of some kind, the door held on not by hinges, but a web of black and gold chains. There was probably some story there, but Crowley didn’t care.

He spun the Bentley in a wide circle, and came to a stop in front of Aziraphale, pushing open the door. “Did you call for a lift?”

“Crowley…” He climbed into his usual seat and shut the door. “I should very much like to go home now, if you don’t mind.”

Crowley ran his hands along the steering wheel.

What he wanted was to grab his husband into a hug that never ended, to apologize, to swear it was all a mistake, a lie, he’d never leave…

But Crowley recognized that look. Aziraphale was barely holding together, and any display of that kind would utterly destroy him.

So, ignoring the tearstains streaked across Aziraphale’s face, Crowley put the Bentley into gear. “Why don’t you pick out some music for the ride?”

Michael was still standing.

Not by much, but she was.

Her soldiers had abandoned their posts. All the demons in Hell seemed to be hiding. She couldn’t reach Gabriel. But she was still standing.

She planted her feet in the hallway, facing the gates of Hell, sword pointed ahead, waiting for that blasted machine to return. She could hear it coming. A noise like thunder. The terrifying, unrelenting baseline of the next song.

She was not going to move.

The hallway stretched before them. The escalator. Freedom.

And in between, Michael.

There are plenty of ways that you can hurt a man And bring him to the ground

“What do you want to do?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale turned up the music. “I believe the term is ‘floor it,’ dear.”

You can beat him, you can cheat him You can treat him bad and leave him when he’s down.

Crowley shifted into fourth, and took his husband’s hand.

The car came, faster and faster. The sound of it, the heat of it, filled the corridor.

But I’m ready, yes, I’m ready for you

Michael could see their faces inside. She met their eyes, held their gazes. Stared them down.

I’m standing on my own two feet

Aziraphale smiled and waved. Crowley did, too, but with only two fingers.

Out of the doorway the bullets rip

And Michael…leapt out of the way at the last minute.

Repeating to the sound of the beat…

“Ta very much,” Crowley shouted out the window. “Let’s never do this again.”

“Wanker,” Aziraphale called.

The car, impossibly, climbed up the escalator, and shot across the broken glass of the lobby, escaping into the sunrise.

In the dark of the cell, Gabriel crossed his arms, glaring at all the other demons trapped in here with him. That one in the corner looked like he might be trouble. The Archangel hoped he wouldn’t have to make examples out of any of them.

“So. While we’re stuck here. Who’s fault was all this again?”

Beelzebub rolled zir eyes and glared at Hastur, just recovering from his head-first meeting with the wall.

And Hastur bit his hand so hard it leaked foul black blood, then howled: “Crowley!”

Afterward

Aziraphale lay in his four-poster bed, wrapped in every blanket Crowley could find. Already the table beside him held three mugs of tea – black, green, and chamomile – and one of hot cocoa. There was a bowl of soup, a tray of chocolates, and another plate with a dozen different pastries.

Crowley frowned, trying to find space to fit the sandwich. He carefully re-stacked Aziraphale’s three favorite books to make a bit more room.

“Thank you, dear, that’s quite enough.”

“No, no it isn’t. There’s no ice cream. You want ice cream? And pie. Let me go get some pie.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale called sternly. “There’s only one thing I need right now.”

“What’s that? I’ll get you anything, Angel, whatever you want.”

“I need my husband.” There was the faintest quiver in his voice.

In a flurry of movement, Crowley crawled into the bed, wrapping his limbs around Aziraphale, pulling him into his embrace. “I’m here, Aziraphale, I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, I’m never ever going to leave you.”

“I – I do know that. I promise. I – I won’t doubt you again. I’m so sorry.”

“No, no, no.” Crowley twisted around to cup his face, wiping away the tears that were starting to fall. “You don’t apologize. I’m sorry. I should have gotten there sooner. Michael and her bloody guards. I won’t let them take you, ever again.”

“Oh, dear, no, don’t blame yourself. What could you have done?” He sniffed, and wiggled a little deeper into his blanket-cocoon. “Besides, you’d have to stay with me every minute of every day. I can’t ask that of you.”

“Too bad. I’m asking it of you.” He pressed his lips to Aziraphale’s forehead. “I know we said we wouldn’t rush into living together, but I’m ready. I don’t ever want to be apart from you again, not for a second. Not after this.”

“I…yes, Crowley. I feel the same.” He sighed. “I’d like to hold your hand now, but –”

“No. You’re still in shock. Stay in your blankets.” He rearranged himself one more time, draping himself across Aziraphale like another blanket, looping his arms around his angel’s neck, resting his head on his husband’s heart. “I’ve got you now. You just rest. I’m here.”

Thanks for reading! The Bentley’s Queen songs were “Seven Seas of Rhye,” “March of the Black Queen,” and “Another One Bites the Dust.” I don’t write the demon crew very often, so I hope they were entertaining!

I’ll probably post this tonight to AO3. Check the notes for a link.

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sylvanfreckles · 4 years ago

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Blinded (FebuWhump 18)

Fandom: Fire Emblem: Awakening Summary: When a renegade noble tries to blind Chrom with a caustic liquid, Robin steps in to protect his friend.

* * *

Robin let his gaze travel around the room as Chrom made his plea for support to Lord Rasmir. Three of the noble houses of Ylisse had yet to acknowledge his friend's right to the title of Exalt, and Chrom was trying to win them over with diplomacy before his public coronation. He didn't need the support of all the noble houses, but presenting a unified government so soon after the war with Plegia would be good for the people.

Unfortunately, Lord Rasmir didn't seem to agree. He hadn't been outright disrespectful, but Chrom and his delegation had been brought in while the lord was holding a dinner party, and had been left standing in front of the high table rather than invited to join. Rasmir himself seemed to be listening to Chrom, although his slouched posture showed a lack of interest, and he toyed with the wine glass in front of him rather than drinking from it. Most of his guests ignored the royal delegation altogether, carrying on with their own conversations despite the Exalt's presence.

Rasmir picked up his wine glass, seemed to reconsider, and set it back down in favor of running his fingers down the cheek of the young woman sitting to his left, curling a lock of her blonde hair around his finger. “House Rasmir has always supported the Exalt,” he finally said.

“You have always pledged support,” Chrom agreed diplomatically. “I am only asking for a public gesture—for your formal attendance to the coronation in two weeks.”

The lord's eyebrow twitched. It was such a small, understated gesture that Robin wasn't sure he would have noticed it if he hadn't been looking. Rasmir lifted his wine glass, his lips twisting into a sardonic grin. “Then I propose a toast: to the reign of the Exalt. May he live long enough to see it.”

Robin saw the movement a heartbeat before it happened. Instead of drinking, Rasmir flicked his wrist to dash the wine over Chrom's face and chest. Robin leaped in front of his friend to try to wrestle the wine glass away from the lord, seeking to at least save his friend the humiliation intended by the insult, but he only succeeded in turning himself into the target. Dark red wine seeped into his hair and clothes and ran down his face and neck...and then it started to burn.

“Robin!” Chrom caught him from behind when his legs gave out. “Shepherds, to me!”

He could hear their friends charging, intent on protecting their Exalt and tactician, but there was the sudden ring of steel-on-leather echoing throughout the room around them. Robin tried to pry his eyes open to see what was going on, but whatever had been in the wine glass burned against his eyelids and the world around him was reduced to shadows.

“Is this a coup, Rasmir?” Chrom demanded angrily. His body was taught with rage, and Robin could feel the subtle shift in his friend's body as Chrom prepared to join the defense.

“When a wounded lion walks into your camp, you'd be a fool to let it walk out again,” Rasmir taunted. “Did you really think you could just take the throne, after everything your family has done?”

“Maribelle,” Chrom called as he shifted, dragging Robin to his feet. “Take Robin and my sister and find someplace to hide. Keep them safe until it's over.”

Lissa started to protest, but Robin found himself suddenly thrust against her as Chrom spun around, then the ring of steel against steel as the prince blocked a blow meant for them. “Now!”

“Come along, dearest,” Maribelle was on Robin's other side, pulling his arm over her shoulder. “Chrom's right: we have to get you out of here.”

The princess didn't argue further, and Robin found himself supported between the two young women as they fled the scene of battle. The liquid on his face burned, trickling in fiery lines down his neck and chest. He wanted to dig at it, to scrape it off of his skin, anything to stop the horrifying burning.

“Here, I'll try this one,” Lissa panted and slipped away from them. With one arm free, Robin dragged his hand up to dig at his eyes. It was worse than the time he'd rubbed his eye after helping cut hot peppers for the evening meal, but it was all over his face this time, and the tips of his fingers were starting to burn.

“No, Robin, don't touch it,” Lissa gasped, pulling his hand away from his face. “Here, I got it open.”

“Excellent, Lissa,” Maribelle sounded breathless as they half-carried Robin into the room. It smelled of clean wood and water, and the women gently set him down against the interior wall before setting off for their own tasks.

There was the heavy sound of the door closing, then the scraping of something heavy against the floor, and a splash of water.

“That should hold it, at least for a while,” Lissa's voice was strained with worried. “Do you think the others...”

“They'll be fine.” Maribelle was back at Robin's side, and he heard her shifting around before the delicate touch of a damp handkerchief was brushing over his face. “Dear heart, is there a bucket? We have to wash this off of him.”

“Mmm...there's a big bowl...I don't think they store much more than the water barrels in here.”

“That would be perfect. Yes, Robin, it's all right. I'm sorry it hurts so much.”

For all her airs, Maribelle actually had a kind bedside manner. She clasped Robin's hand in one of her own and dabbed at his face with the other.

“He's bleeding,” Lissa siaid worriedly. She'd taken Robin's other hand between both of hers, and he thought it was as much for her comfort as his.

“It was some kind of acid or poison,” Maribelle replied. “Miriel can tell us more; she's made a study of such things. Do you have a handkerchief, dearest? No, just hand it to me...you need to keep him calm.”

Robin tried to say he didn't need to be kept calm, but his voice came out as a whimper. Lissa squeezed his hand and scooted closer. She sniffed, and a splash of water landed on the back of his hand.

He tried again. “Liss...”

“I know,” Lissa sniffed, pulling one hand away for a moment, probably to wipe at her own eyes. “I just don't want to lose any of our friends.”

“We won't,” Maribelle replied, her voice ringing with sincerity. “Not in here, and not out there. Lissa, I'm so sorry, could you bring me some clean water? See how it's getting stained? I don't want to risk further contamination.”

It seemed to carry on for hours. Maribelle asked for clean water frequently, but though her ministrations were putting an end to the spread of the acidic burning nothing was easing the pain of the affected areas. Eventually the women worked together to shift Robin's head into Maribelle's lap, which was at least more comfortable than the floor, though the pain on his face and neck was started to drain his strength. She'd resorted to just covering the burned areas with cool, damp handkerchiefs in an effort to at least draw some of the heat out.

“Lissa?”

Lissa gasped. “It's Chrom!”

Robin felt the air shift as she leaped to her feet, then some uncertain sounds like something heavy being shoved around on the floor. “Chrom!”

“Are you all right?” Chrom's strong, familiar voice made something inside Robin relax a little. He hadn't realized how worried he'd been until now.

“We weren't harmed, but it's bad,” Lissa explained. “That stuff, it burned him...he can't see, Chrom.”

Chrom knelt next to them—his friend's presence always familiar, even when he couldn't see him. “Miriel and Stahl are searching the manor for whatever was in that glass. We'll find a cure, my friend.”

Robin nodded, though the movement sent a sharp pain through his head.

Of course they'd find a cure. How hard could it be?

* * *

“It's not as easy as it sounds,” Miriel explained. “We neutralized the acid itself, but there was extensive damage. Regeneration potions or spells are still mostly experimental.”

Chrom let out a sigh and dragged a hand over his face. “Are you saying it's permanent?”

“No, of course not,” Miriel adjusted her glasses. “The damage to Sir Robin's eyes, while extensive, did not result in the loss of his vision. That's due to the inflammation of the surrounding tissue. We're searching for a way to ameliorate his body's natural recovery, but he will recover with or without our help. It will just take time.”

Another sigh, this one of relief. “Have you told him?”

The mage nodded. “He seemed in high spirits when I left his rooms. Now, if you'll excuse me, Your Highness, I must return to this current set of experiments.”

Chrom waved her away, watching for a moment as she bent over a rack of phials with two of the palace's healers and the herbalist from Ferox. At least it was basically good news...he would have hated Robin to face such a challenge permanently, though he was confident his friend would have overcome it.

They'd put Robin in a room close to the healer's workrooms, and Chrom made his way there next. Rasmir's attempted coup had caused more problems within the council, and he'd had to spend most of his time on his return in meetings with advisors, governors, or other lords to convince them Ylisse was not on the point of revolt. He finally had a few hours free now, and was determined to spend some time sitting with his convalescing friend.

“Hello, Chrom,” Robin greeted him as soon as he entered the door. The tactician had a length of clean bandage wrapped around his eyes, to protect the irritated skin beneath, but he still followed Chrom's progress through the room as though he could see him.

“How did you know it was me?” Chrom asked with a smile.

“I'm developing more acute senses due to the loss of my vision.”

Chrom stared for a moment, mind whirling through the possibilities, then Robin was doubled over laughing.

“I wish I could see the look on your face,” he wheezed. “You all sound different when you walk; as long as I pay attention I can usually guess. I do it all the time when I'm reading, you just never notice.”

“Very funny,” Chrom teased, settling into the chair next to the bed. “How are you feeling?”

Robin shrugged, raised a hand to pick at the bandages on his face, but pulled it back down when he realized what he was doing. “A little impatient to be well, I suppose.”

Guilt twisted in Chrom's chest. “Robin, I...”

“Don't,” his friend turned to face him, a grim smile on his face. “Chrom, do you really think I regret this? That I could regret saving you, even if it meant it hit me?” he gestured toward his eyes, and Chrom winced. Robin hadn't come out of this without a few scars, though they would fade with time. Patches of skin on his face were rough and irregular where the acid had burned too deeply. There were salves and treatments that could help with scar tissue, but they had to wait until Robin's eyes healed.

“So...is there anything I can do?” Chrom asked awkwardly. Robin's face brightened, and he pulled a thick volume out from under his blankets and held it out to Chrom. The prince laughed as he took the heavy book. “Why were you hiding this?”

“Lissa thought I needed to focus on something 'more cheerful' for my recover,” Robin said sourly. “But this one looked really interesting, and I haven't found anyone to read it to me.”

Robin had obviously taken this book from the palace library before their visit to Lord Rasmir, though how he'd smuggled it into his sick room Chrom would never know. “Well...” Chrom teased, gently thumbing through the rough pages. Gods, this one was old...they'd both fall asleep while he was reading it.

“Please?”

Chrom laughed, turning back to the first page. “All right...The Tactics of War Mage Tychius, chapter one. 'In the course of my years serving in the high court of...'.”

* * *

Real talk: Real talk, Robin was probably carrying that book with him the entire time. You never know when you might get the chance to read!

#febuwhump #febuwhumpday18 #i can't see #blinded #fire emblem awakening #fic #fanfic #chrom #robin #lissa #maribelle #miriel (briefly)#temporary blindness #chemical burns #hurt robin #robin still likes books

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thecosmicsen · 4 years ago

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* : happy valentines day @shesin !!

it is that time of the year where the pastel heart-shaped candies flood delicate crystal glass vases. tacky red and golden helium balloons fill up the recently dusted corners of every single local florist. suddenly, no other colour theme besides the roaring lust of reds and dainty pink blush dominate the product spaces of every commercial establishment. not so long ago, the rosy extravaganza of this commodified holiday used tickled the boy’s heart with giddy delight to be caught up in the whirlwind romance of valentines day. the thoughts of handwritten letters sealed with lavishing kiss marks and the abundant sweet lingering fragrance of flowers in the air were a traditional trademark for this month. even before he had met the love of his life, the concept of celebrating love in its full bursting eternal glory has always enraptured Jaewoo. after all, what is more wholesome than planning a day dedicated to rejoicing the existence of the person who owns your heart ?

those are the memories that swirl in his mind in a hazy peachy glow filter as he awaits in the opulent hotel reception. limbs nonchalant but his jaw taut with tension, he reclines back in the plush armchair as he attempts to keep his impatience at bay. he knows Inés is going to arrive at this hotel with her new boytoy since he followed her car with hawk-eyed scrutiny, moreso since this is valentines and he knows she must have selected the disgusting deluxe valentines day hotel room offer. his nose crinkles with heaving disapproval, unable to fathom the images of another man between her parted legs upon petal-scattered sheets. that should be him.

the second the vehicle disappeared behind the barriers of the five-star destination, he wasted no time with immediately ditching his own car elsewhere so he can make his way to his very visible spot in the reception. sure enough, Inés emerges from the elevators, her latest thing in tow. as expected, she has gone all out for the special occasion with her pout painted ruby red and a v-neck dress that dips down just shy of her navel. jealousy flares in the pit of his stomach and it takes all of his strained willpower to not stab the man right there and then who has his filthy hands resting on her waist. no, he cannot afford to yield at this moment. he has a special gift for the woman who ruthlessly dominates every square inch space of his heart. for every single year they have spent so adoringly wrapped up and intertwined with each other, he has never once missed out on worshipping her existence on this day. so why should this year be any different ? she still wants to claim full ownership of himself. what Inés wants, Inés gets.

now she makes her way from checking in at the front desk, the gold hotel room keycard gleaming cheekily underneath the decadent lighting as she heads giggling to the elevators, presumably getting to the room. on her way, he makes sure to lock eye contact with her although she pretends to make no notice of his existence as she irritatingly continues to engage with the existence of her new toy. that’s fine. it’s a part of today’s exclusive heart-themed plan anyway. even when she keeps excessively caressing swift palm touches to her new partner’s lower body and arms. at least she knows he has followed her and made his fixed presence open for her to acknowledge, as much as she wants to fake ignoring him.

they head upstairs in the elevators. to the seventh floor. is this another fucking jibe —

this has become their new routine. a waltz of lure, nip and trap. Inés dangles the bait of her going out with whoever she decided to piss him off with and lure him with the bait of faux albeit temporary ownership over her toy. look how well I fuck them too, she seems to be challenging him in his mind, the devious glint in her darkened eyes forever penetrating the back of his mind. yet he rises to the challenge every time. he devours the bait and rolls it around in his mouth in relish. this is more added time to be with her despite a third party being the cause of interference. which is fine in the end. he kills them all anyway. she moves onto the next one, he follows after her with his bloody trail.

depending on his mood and the various circumstances that she smugly twirls him through, he may follow them to the hotel room and make his grand entrance in there. but today, on this wondrous commercial holiday with origins that date back to gruesome blood-splattered epic romance antics, a different course of action is more suited.

heading down to the car park instead, he swiftly searches for her maserati which he finds in no time. making a full show of checking her car out, inspecting the tyres, swiping his fingers across the engine hood, he finally makes eye contact with where he believes the black box may be hidden. he knows she has something recording so she can get off from his spectacles of following her gallivanting about town. now she has video material of him purposefully lurking about her vehicle as she is upstairs doing god knows what to her latest addition. he’ll leave it up for her suspense on what is to come next. he isn’t entirely sure on whether her recordings are linked and live-streamed to her phone but it is highly plausible. perhaps she is even squinting at the stream mid-fucking. the thought makes him want to smash a dent in the gleaming hood, his knuckles whitening from the sheer force of violent anger that wrecks his body.

leave it for later.

heading back upstairs to the reception, he passes time by obsessively checking instagram and her other online platforms for any potential updates which he inevitably regrets seeing. moments away from allowing the simmering nausea to just take over and allow himself to throw up on the intricate carpet details, a more rumpled looking Inés eventually shows up again to check out. again, he is thrusted into a furious pooling wave of revolted resentment to witness her fucked out transformation. but he has a task at hand. he cannot afford to waste any more seconds of wistfully reminiscing about how he was the one leaning in, pressing harsh kisses square to her lips, catching her pout between his teeth till he feels it growing tender with oozing beads of blood.

snapping out of his reverie, he waits a few more cautious moments before leaving Inés behind in the reception to skilfully make his way back down to her car. effortlessly opening up her car, he quells the security with a simple flare of annoyance to jumble up the system. he folds himself up to fit in the gap behind the driver’s seat, his all black outfit camouflaging him for the most part. he knows Inés will be able to detect him straight away but that doesn’t matter when he places his bets on her not immediately calling him out.��

in due time, Inés and the guy who doesn’t deserve to have a name head back to her car in which he hears her beginning her tittering again. rolling his eyes, he has to stuff his sleeve in his mouth to retain audible retching as he can hear them discuss a spot for a ‘ change of scenery ’.

ah yes, this is usually the time she flaunts her exhibitionism by deliberately parking in a spot where she knows he will have a full clear view of whatever she decides to do to her partner at hand. most of the time, he can barely contain himself for more than a minute before barging in to interrupt the obscene display in full raging fury. it’s slightly different this time.

they enter the majestic vehicle, Inés presumably acting on his bet that she will not immediately call him out for being hidden in the backseat of her car. if anything, he knows she purposefully slides a hand over the other male’s thigh to forcefully squeeze and grope at it hard when he slightly peeps over to see what is happening. fuck you, Inés.

it’s only when they’re a good thirty minutes cruising down one of the main big roads when Jaewoo decides he will finally make his move. stealthily shifting to the seat behind the male passenger in shotgun, he springs up with his knife in hand and his other hand immediately finding its way to harshly yank at the hair of the male’s head, preening his neck all the way backwards as he presses the tip of his knife against the crook of his neck.

“ don’t scream or I’ll slit your throat open, ” he smoothly addresses the male. “ mm-mm, no funny business either. ” grabbing hold of the man’s sneaking hand to his pocket to retrieve his phone, Jaewoo beats him to it and mercilessly snaps his fancy latest iPhone model within a split second in the murderous crushing grip of his palm. now turning to Inés who is completely unperturbed by the so-called surprise, he flattens the entire breadth of his knife’s edge across the male’s neck, toying along the defining lines of his jaw as he maintains eye contact between her as her gaze flits directly to him and between the road, addressing her fully now. “ why another rich bastard with rocks for brains ? doesn’t your demon scum already fit that criteria perfectly ? pathetic. how long did he last, huh ? big boy looks like he’s about to piss himself right now. ” with that, he digs in his blade with a tad bit more of pressure till a trickle of blood stains the trembling male’s neck which he smears all over the canvas of his neck, still carefully assessing Inés’ reaction.

“ how the fuck is it any of your business, Jaewoo ? ” she hisses at him, his name being emphasised with callous glee that address him formally as she turns her gaze back to him with full scorn. “ shouldn’t you be at home with your bitch ? why the fuck are you in my car throwing a fit about who gets to taste my cunt ? unlike you, he knows when to be a good boy so that he can eat my pussy. ”

that is when his jealousy hits its limit and his body moves wholly out of his control. jumping forwards to the front seat where the shrieking male attempts to grab hold of him and push away, Jaewoo is unfazed as he unstraps the cowering figure and shoves him down to the floor so that he can fully slit his throat open with the projectile of fresh blood splaying all over his body. wrinkling his nose in disgust, he doesn’t bother wiping off the crimson that stains his face as he shoves the dead weight of the body fully onto the floor which he uses as a footrest for himself now as he belts himself up in full bloody gore.

the roses that he has tucked in the inner pocket of his jacket remain intact despite the chaotic jostling in the spur of the moment. but he uses the petals to wipe off any small splatters of blood that manage to escape to the maserati’s crystal clear passenger window. also wiping off his dripping wet knife onto the roses, he sets the bloody bouquet in the flower holder, their wedding ring band fully glimmering underneath the passing city lights, showing off how its made its way back onto his ring finger. there’s a silent plea in the silent electric tension that has utterly blanketed the air of the car as he lowers his eyes, fully focusing on the soaked stained petals. I killed him for you. please accept me. take me back. I want to listen to you again. I’ll be your only baby boy. I’ll do anything to have you back again.

here he is with a testament to his love for her that still burns like an inferno. he hasn’t broken their tradition cycle for this day of love. he hasn’t forgotten and never will. Inés takes a turn and he realises that she is driving them back to her apartment. what once used to be their home. at least this means, he has successfully done his work for today. he will get slightly rewarded even if it may be a minuscule moment of her giving to him but he’s desperate. he’ll lick up anything she has to offer him.

“ happy valentines day, Inés. ” he ends up murmuring, a steely edge to his tone that’s rough with emotion.

#I hope you enjoy <3 #this is uh... yeah #:))#just... enjoy #others look away #tw // murder #tw // death #tw // blood #ask to tag #shesin #* : ✮ ┆ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑘 𝑒𝑦𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑜𝑎𝑟𝑠𝑒 𝑙𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑦 (𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠).

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malcortez · 5 years ago

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Fabian trying to teach Mal how to use his vampire powers on young helpless women but oh god he's used them to get some warmth and charmed Sal instead. Malcolm his blood is like a PIGS'S-

It was COLD being dead.So cold.He felt it indoors, and summer nights, and as close to fire as he could get. It was nothing clothes and blankets could cure; it was the frigidity of his own dead body. Even when Malcolm was buried down in the earth to sleep for the day, he felt the cold in his unconsciousness. The one time he did not feel it, the one time he felt anything near warmth again, was when the blood of another filled his mouth and veins.This was common. This was the experience of all vampires.Fabian’s experience was also common. Not as universal to their kind as the cold, but still common. The greatest greeds that a person had in life--usually sex, food, power, money, or drugs---would translate to an equal craving for blood in undeath. In Fabian’s case, he was doomed to crave the blood of beautiful women and powerful people beyond any amount he actually needed, and he could tolerate no other kind unless in the most dire of straits.Thus, it revolted to him to see one of his lineage preying exclusively on elks and rabbits, not to mention sleeping in dirt like some kind of animal himself, instead of a tragically romantic mausoleum or a glamorous modern apartment. The boy needed TEACHING, and it fell to Fabian’s black-clad shoulders. He supposed there was no better vampire on the planet to set an example for a fledgling! So here they were in a club, the most common feeding ground for their kind. It was a cliche, but if it works, it works. The place was a bit low-class for Fabian’s elevated tastes, but it was still a cut above most, and anything more private and exclusive became that much harder to prey easily on the patrons, as nicer places were also usually safer, at least for the people spending money there. This was just the right combination of plush and glitzy with dark and gritty, and Fabian frequented it despite his snobbishness. Not TOO much though---you never wanted to establish yourself in a pattern, especially not around somewhere where people tended to disappear and/or turn up with holes in their neck. It attracted suspicion, and worse, hunters.All this, he had relayed to the mostly-silent Malcolm on the way. He wished he could also relay some fashion sense; the kid had on an army-green workshirt worn open over a white tee, with hunting pants and hiking boots. Disastrous. At least it was clean; Fabian STILL couldn’t get his head around the fact that this child BURROWED for shelter during the day. Fabian, of course, looked fantastic, a delectable and alluring predator of the night, with his deep-cut designer suit jacket with its silk lapels worn over his bare chest, like a white marble statue draped in darkness, his hair down in a magnificent mane. He was easy to pick out in a crowd, which technically was NOT what you wanted---but he reasoned that even if he tried to be more ‘plain’ it would never succeed, not when one was a strikingly handsome 6′5 redhead, so why try? He was powerful and smart enough to evade any hunter anyway. And women didn’t get charmed by ‘plain’ men. Women, he told Malcolm, were what he would be hunting, and it was an entirely different game than stalking an elk or snaring a rabbit. A game of finesse, of elegance, of attracting, of pure animal magnetism weaponized elegantly into---“Ah, let me demonstrate,” said Fabian, once they were inside. He’d just spotted a pair---a trio!--- of choice targets, and it suddenly occurred to him that the best course of action for teaching Malcolm would be to SHOW him directly instead of talk about it. Yes, definitely. “Just watch me,” he said hurriedly, and left Malcolm, going to the nearest corner to look brooding and dark within the line of the sight of the three women. They did not, to Malcolm, seem terribly interested. And when Fabian decided to move things along by approaching them directly instead, they seemed...the opposite of interested. Malcolm knew an animal on the defensive when he saw it. But he kept his eyes on the awkward dance anyway; Fabian was far wiser and older than he, so perhaps it was MEANT to appear this way to an outside observer, while actually being part of a very effective master plan of persuasion. At least, til he felt a tug on his wrist. And was very surprised at what he saw when he looked down.***A few hours later, Fabian stumbled slightly out of the VIP room, covering his mouth with one hand as he tried to lick the blood away. He’d gotten what he was after, finally, but he needed to clear out, NOW. Where the hell was Malcolm?Fabian didn’t like the idea of going back into the crowd now but he’d give it a quick search. If Malcolm wasn’t there, well...he could find his own way back. And if he couldn’t manage that, he was never meant to be undead.Like Fabian, Malcolm’s brilliant red hair and unusual height made him easy to find in a crowd, so Fabian didn’t even need to brave the dance floor itself to see he wasn’t there. Instead, he found him in a booth near the bar, snuggled up to the small figure of a---Dear god.“Malcolm!” Fabian hissed through his teeth, “Get away from that thing! Don’t you know what it IS?”Fairies had a much brighter reputation in the modern world than vampires did, but they were nasty pieces of work all their own. They didn’t cross paths with the undead too much, though individual parties did at times get curious about one another, but it was known that you did NOT drink from them. Fae blood was as unpredictable as the sidhe themselves, and one never knew what effects it might have. Sometimes it was blissful beyond any ecstasy, sometimes it was agony past imagining, and often it was addictive. There were stories of vampires being enchanted to it and bound as the fairy’s servant, becoming the victims of love spells or curses, hemorrhaging blood from every orifice of their undead bodies, or simply exploding into light that killed every fellow vampire around them. It was a grab-bag from hell, a gamble that should not be taken by anyone with a shred of sanity, no matter how desperately thirsty they were in ANY sense of the word.But here Malcolm was with one of the wretched creatures practically on his lap, kept balanced by one of Malcolm’s huge hands holding it in place. The horrible little thing had its face resting against the bottom of the boy’s chest, but upon hearing Fabian’s warning, it turned its head towards the him and smiled deviously, clearly taunting him.“Malcolm!” Fabian urged again. He wasn’t about to risk himself by actually TOUCHING the thing to remove it. “I’m not drinking him,” Malcolm said, understanding why his mentor was alarmed,“He’s just...really warm.”It was cold being dead. So cold that nothing natural could help it.But, like vampires, the fae were supernatural. And so was their body heat.Including that of the one called Sal.

#writing #fic

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everlarkficexchange · 6 years ago

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The Virgin (Social) Suicides

WRITTEN BY: @ally147writes

PROMPT 85: Katniss makes unsettling discovery that everyone in her close and extended group of friends has dated at least once and sometimes even each other. Except for her. The “late bloomer” teasing (b/c she’s never even been kissed) stings. Older boy Gale crosses paths with group, finds he shares common interests with Katniss, they get together to hunt, leads to him casually inviting her out for a real dinner date. Not feeling desire but pressure to “get it over with,” she accepts. Peeta has regrets. [submitted by @567inpanem]

NOTES: I desperately wanted to have this complete, but uni conspired against me. A million thanks to our angel mods, @xerxia31 and @javistg for holding this exchange, and allowing the extra week 😊

This is parts one-and-a-half (ish?) of a (probably?) four-part story. I won’t be posting to AO3 or anywhere else until the rest of it is complete. Parts 2, 3 and 4 are all between 30% and 75% complete already, so hopefully it won’t take me too long to wrap up.

Unbeta’d. All errors are my own.

Rated M for swears and discussions of sex (or lack thereof)

Thom and Lavinia’s engagement party is a sedate affair, which Katniss never would have guessed. Whenever Thom or Lavinia were left in charge of planning anything, it always started with them drowning themselves in cheap beer at Abernathy’s, got a bit muddy somewhere in between, and ended in a trip to the hospital for someone to get their broken wrist or dislocated shoulder set.

And once, to the police station, to face indecent exposure charges.

The doing of their mothers, Katniss supposes. (Probably a smart move, considering the alternatives; no one’s engagement party should end in a holding cell). They’re perched by the string quartet, amongst a cluster of white rose bushes, their oversized, feather-trimmed hats knock against each other’s with every exaggerated, bird-like nod and squawking laugh they release, while their husbands make awkward small-talk by the fence overlooking the golf course.

How they’re out there like that in the sun, in dark suits and all, Katniss has no idea. She dabs a napkin across her damp hairline and peels her sticky skin away from the plastic of the chair. An afternoon in the sprawling gardens of the Snow estate, when it’s pushing a hundred degrees out, isn’t exactly her idea of a good day — if she weren’t part of the bridal party, Katniss would have skipped out hours ago. Add that to the cocktail dress she all but shoved her body into and the hair that’s falling out of her braid and sticking to her glossed lips, she’s about ready to revolt.

But, she concedes, Thom’s parents are loaded up to their eyeballs, and they’ve made sure there’s free — mercifully cold — booze everywhere, so bottom’s up.

The happy couple don’t seem to mind the heat, or the change in pace too much. The groom-to-be dips his laughing bride over his arm and kisses her square on the lips, swaying along to the soft tones of the violin strings, the intimate connection between them somehow the simplest thing in the world. The scene should inspire at least a smile — she’s happy for her friends, right? But it tugs somewhere deep at Katniss instead, unrelenting and unrepentant, leaving behind an odd sort of hollowness, demanding more yet leaving her starving for… something.

“They’re sweet together, aren’t they?” says Madge as she sips her champagne.

Katniss shakes her head, but she can’t stop the nagging in her gut. “Yeah, I guess. It’s a little sickening, actually.”

“You would say that, wouldn’t you?”

“What? They’re hunting for each other’s intestines through their mouths.”

“You are absolutely disgusting.” Madge swipes a celery stick from their shared crudité platter and nibbles at it like a rabbit. “Please stop speaking.”

“I’m still not wrong.”

“I guess it is kind of funny, though,” Madge goes on, chomping through the celery. “You’d never guess he could be so doting. I mean, when I dated Thom, the nicest thing he ever did for me was give me the olives off his pizza.” She sighs and smiles an odd little smile as Katniss’ hand freezes with a cherry tomato halfway to her mouth. “I guess it really does change everything when you meet the right person.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” She drops the tomato, and it bounces off the table and lands on the floor, where someone will slip on it later, probably her. “You dated Thom? As in, Thom, Thom?”

Madge arches a plucked brow. “Well, yeah, a while ago now, not long after we first started college. Well before Lav was in the picture, if that’s what you’re worried about. I thought you knew about it; we were all friends then.”

Katniss frowns and tries to dredge the memory — what would Thom have looked like then? Was this during his mohawk days, or after? “For how long?”

Madge quirks her head to the side, and not a single strand falls out of her intricate up-do. “I don’t know. A few months, maybe? Not a long time.”

Katniss taps her index finger — unadorned with polish, to Prim’s everlasting dismay — against the pristine surface of the timber table. “Is it… weird? Being friends with him now, I mean?”

Madge laughs. “Kat, if it was weird to hang out with someone I’d dated before, I’d have to find a whole new group of friends.”

“Why?” Madge smiles that weird little smile again, and the urge to slap it off is overwhelming. “How many of them have you gone out with?”

“Uh…? Let’s see.” Madge counts them off on her fingers, like there’s a real need to keep track of them. “Thom, Darius, Gloss. Leevy a couple of times, too, but that was over pretty much as soon as it started. Oh, and Peeta once, as well.”

Katniss chokes on a piece of cucumber. Oh, god. “Peeta, too?”

“Yeah. What’s the matter, Katniss?” Madge flashes another grin as Katniss knocks back a hearty sip of her drink. “Jealous?”

“No!” she exclaims. But without even meaning to, she finds Peeta across the courtyard, where he’s entertaining Lavinia’s many nieces and nephews with embarrassing Dad-style magic tricks. The sleeves of his starched, pale blue dress shirt are pushed up around his elbows, and there’s a rogue curl stuck with sweat against his forehead. He meets her eyes and smiles at her, as warm and tangible as a touch. Her cheeks flood with heat and she tears her gaze away. God, it’s like they’re in school all over again.

Madge shoots a grin Katniss can only describe as shit-eating, and it’s all she can do not to throw her remaining champagne in Madge’s face.

“No, of course you’re not,” Madge says, like she’s talking down a screaming child. “That would mean you had a soul or something.”

There’s nothing she can say now that wouldn’t incriminate her further. Katniss turns to the dripping glass of ice water at her elbow and drains it.

“Well…” she says, once she’s certain the nuclear blush on her cheeks is under control. “Why’d you only go out with him once?”

Madge smiles that stupid little smile again. The secret one Katniss has no insight to or context for.

“Peeta’s… very sweet. He’ll make the girl he’s got his eye on extremely happy.”

The words are innocuous, but something in Katniss seizes urgently. “Peeta’s got someone in mind?”

Madge nods and adds solemnly, “Has done for years now.”

“Years?” There’s no good reason why this information should make her want to break something. None at all. “Why won’t he make a move?”

Madge snorts, and the sound is weird coming out of someone so refined. “Honestly?” she says, as she flags down a waiter for another class of champagne. “I’d say he’s terrified. The girl isn’t exactly one who’ll take his declaration with open arms.”

She shouldn’t — she knows she doesn’t want to — but she prods anyway. “You know who she is?”

“She was pretty much the basis of our one and only date. He didn’t think he had a chance, needed someone to wallow with, that sort of thing.” Madge smiles a dreamy sort of smile and tips her eyes closed. “God, we got so drunk.”

“…And?”

“I’m not going to tell you!” Madge nudges her with her bony elbow, but the effect is ruined by the draping, bell-sleeves of Madge’s deep-aubergine dress. “Ask him yourself if you’re that curious.”

Yeah, there’s not a prayer in hell of that happening.

“So,” Katniss says instead. “Have our friends always been so… incestuous?”

Madge rolls her eyes and, for the first time since this awkward line of questioning began, looks vaguely annoyed. “Katniss, what’s the problem? I’m pretty sure Annie and Finnick are the only other completely monogamous people we know. Johanna’s dated pretty much everyone, too. Cato made the rounds too, before he got his shit together with Clove. Darius dated Lavinia, too, when he and Thom were roommates. That’s how she met Thom in the first place.”

“So… yes?”

Madge laughs and sighs at the same time. “It’s people in their mid-twenties being people in their mid-twenties. Honestly, I’m surprised you never noticed before — it’s not like Johanna’s discreet about it or anything — but I guess you’ve always been a bit…”

“A bit what?”

“A bit… I don’t know… pure, I guess?”

“Pure?” She spits the word out like poison and leaves it in the air.

Madge pats her arm. “There’s nothing wrong with pure, Kat. It’s just… we’re twenty-five now, you know? You don’t need to be so embarrassed about anyone else’s love life. Hell, maybe we should get you a nice date of your own, so you’ve got something else to focus on.”

Heat crawls up her chest and settles in her face. Her fancy cocktail dress feels way too small and way too hot.

“Uh…”

“Kat…”

“… Yeah?”

“You have gone on a date before, haven’t you?”

“I… uh… no?”

She’s not sure why it comes out as a question. She sure knows about her complete and total lack of love life; no need to have other people confirming it for her.

Madge’s jaw drops. “You’re kidding.”

“Why would I joke about that?” she retorts. “And we’ve been friends for how long, now? How didn’t you notice?”

“I don’t know! It’s just that…” She scrutinises Katniss like she’s a wayward science experiment. “Really?”

Katniss rolls her eyes. “Yes, Madge. Really.”

“Not even in college? No one? Nothing?”

“Is it so hard to believe?” Katniss snaps. “No, Madge. I have never, not once, ever gone on a date.”

“Well, you’ve… you’ve at least had sex before, right?”

Heat fills her cheeks until she’s sure she’s about to melt from the pain of it all, though she’s got no idea why it embarrasses her so much. It’s normal, right? Or normal-ish, at least. And it’s not like she planned on it happening. Or not happening. Whatever.

Her virginity isn’t some sacred, precious jewel she’s carting around in a bubble wrap-lined basket. And it’s not something she’s hoarding, just so she can get down on bended knee and present it to The Right Guy when The Right Moment comes along. It’s not a personal choice, a feminist statement or even a religious one. The opportunity to do so just hasn’t… come up, so to speak.

And it’s fine. She guesses. Most of the time, it doesn’t even bother her. She’s had enough going on in her life that it isn’t something she’s missed, or even had time for. And it’s not like she’d be any good at any of it, anyway. The hand-holding. The intimacy. The kisses.

The sex.

The mere idea almost makes her shudder. She’d suck. And not in the sexy way.

It might be nice. Maybe. One day. When she’s good and ready to make it happen.

Until then, though…

“Uh…”

Madge’s bright blue eyes blow wide. “Katniss!” she shrieks.

A hundred people turn and stare at them, Peeta included, not even slightly helping her blush to fade faster.

“For the love of God, Madge, would you keep it down?” Katniss swats at Madge’s arm and hisses down at the table, “No, I’ve never done… anything.”

Madge lowers her voice to a harsh whisper. “Not even kissed?”

Right on cue, Thom kisses Lavinia again, long enough for it to get awkward. Katniss scowls and looks away. “No, Madge,” she mumbles. “Not even kissed. Or held hands. Or hugged or by someone who wasn’t an immediate family member.”

“What about yourself? Do you masturbate?”

“Fucking hell, Madge, really?”

“Okay, sorry. I just…” Madge gives a tight laugh and shakes her head. “I… You cannot be serious right now.”

“What part of this is so hard to believe?”

“I don’t know. I mean, you’re gorgeous, for one. A great person, kind, generous, brave, loyal to a fault. Anyone would be lucky, you know?”

Katniss snorts and drags a carrot stick through a warm bowl of hummus. Why couldn’t they have held the party indoors, like normal people? Yeah, maybe she’d still be getting the third degree, but at least the condiments might be cold. “Yeah, no. I don’t think so.”

“Well,” Madge starts, leaning in so they’re a hairsbreadth apart. “Have you ever… you know, wanted to?”

There’s no right way to answer that question. If she says yes, she’s as doomed as if she answers no. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

“Are you…” Madge stops, starts, opens and closes her mouth like a fish blowing bubbles. “Have you ever thought that you might be ace or something?” She holds up her hands and all but yells before Katniss can say anything, “Not that there’s… it doesn’t matter if you are or anything like that, I just thought… maybe you’re —”

“— No,” Katniss cuts in, before Madge can hurt herself. “I’ve had… you know, crushes and stuff before, I’ve just never been in a relationship, and I wouldn’t have rejected one if it came along.” She shrugs. “It just never did, and I’m okay with that.”

But, is she? God, and she’s always thought of herself as an enlightened, modern, don’t-need-no-man sort of woman, too.

“Honestly, Kat? You’ve probably been hit on a thousand times, but it never registered in your head that it was even happening to you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that… I don’t think you’re aware of the effect you have on people, that’s all.”

Katniss frowns at the wilting crudité platter. “You’re making me sound like a heartless bitch.”

Madge rolls her eyes. “Of course, you’re not a heartless bitch. I’m just saying you should… I don’t know… open your eyes a little, take a second look, you know? Someone might really surprise you one day.”

Again — completely against her will, she swears — she finds Peeta across the courtyard. This time, he doesn’t look up from pulling a coin from a little girl’s ear. “I’ll think about it.”

“You definitely won’t, but I’ll give you a pass for tonight.”

Katniss cringes. “You’re not going to make it your mission to get me laid, are you?”

“This isn’t a shitty eighties movie, Katniss,” Madge says as she pushes her seat away from the table and stands on her ridiculous four-inch heels. “So, no. I’m not going to try and get you laid. Now, let’s go dance or something; it’s a party, for God’s sake.”

XXX

The next time they’re all together, at a reasonable temperature and in normal clothes, Katniss surveys her friends with a strange, acute sense of awareness she didn’t possess before. Annie perched on Finnick’s lap, feeding him pretzels like coins in a slot machine; Cato and Clove with their arms wrapped around each other so tight it looks like it should hurt; Johanna and Bristel with their tongues so far down each other’s throats that they’re probably going to leave and do God knows what before their next round arrives. All of them know a sort of intimacy Katniss can’t even begin to fathom. All of them… except her.

And it’s… weird. Like she’s on the outside of a joke that’s been going on for years.

How are they all still friends? How is it all so… natural for them? Granted, it’s not like she’s got any insight to what’s going on in their brains, but it must be awkward on some level, mustn’t it? How can you share so much of yourself with one person, then pretend like it never happened? And then, how can you do it with four or five or maybe even more of the people you hang out with the most? Katniss can’t wrap her mind around any of it.

Only Peeta, sitting beside her, seems to notice her out-of-body experience.

He nudges her ankle with his foot beneath the table and leans in to whisper, “Are you all right, Katniss?”

She shivers at the warmth and scent of him, of cinnamon and dill and all kinds of other delicious things. He’s never smelled bad in all the time she’s known him. “Yeah. Just, uh… weird day.” She tips back her gin and tonic and almost chokes on it.

He nods, thoughtful, and takes another sip of his own drink, the only one he’ll have for the whole night. “That sucks,” he says, and she can tell he means it, too. He smiles, and another shiver races through her. “Wanna talk about it?”

She shakes her head. “It’s nothing. Just the usual.”

“Another drink, then?”

“I think I’m done for the night, but thanks.”

He shrugs and takes another sip. “No problem.”

“Hey… is it true you dated Madge?” She wants to punch herself in the face as soon as the words leave her mouth.

He almost spits out his drink. “What?” He coughs and thumps his chest with his fist. “She told you about that?”

“She just mentioned it. I had no idea.”

“It was… uh, a while ago.” He drags a hand through his curls and surveys her with something almost like worry. “What else did she tell you?”

“Not much. Just that you guys went out a couple of times —”

“— Once,” Peeta cuts in, a tendon in his jaw twitching. “We went out once. Years ago.”

“All right.” She holds up her hands in surrender. “Sorry for mentioning it.”

“No, Katniss —” He breaks off with a sigh and twirls the last of his beer around in the bottle. “Yeah, Madge and I went out. It wasn’t a big deal. We were both dealing with… I don’t know, shitty personal lives, I guess?”

“Madge said it was to forget a girl.”

Jesus fucking Christ, would someone please, please, cut out her tongue?

“I… uh…” He chugs back the rest of his beer in one feel swoop. Awesome, now he doesn’t have to watch her tear at her hair. “I guess it was kind of like that. I think Madge had just stopped seeing that Blight guy? It was… a while ago, that’s for sure.” He looks at her critically. “Why do you ask?”

She lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I don’t know. Just, she mentioned it and I was… curious, I guess.”

His lips quirk into a hint of a smile. “Curious about what, Katniss?”

Yeah, her brain taunts her. Curious about what, Katniss?

Even if she knew, she’s got no clue how to go about admitting it to Peeta, of all people.

“I don’t know,” she mumbles at her empty glass. “Nothing, I guess.”

Now, the concern is back full-force. “You sure?”

Not really, but she’s not so sure why or what or how anymore. “Yeah. I’m sure. But I think I’ll take that drink now, if you’re still offering.”

He flags down the nearest server and says, “Yeah. I think I might, too.”

#Springtime Edition 2019 #submission #ally147writes #Prompt 85 #567inpanem

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tomeandflickcorner · 6 years ago

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The Halloweentown Tetralogy

To commemorate this Halloween, I’ve viewed all four of the Halloweentown movies, as requested by @knightrookjones. Special thanks to @xemmaloveskillianx @unabashedlyswimmingtimemachine and @midouriya for helping me locate sources where I could watch them.

Halloweentown- The first movie in the Halloweentown Tetralogy where we’re introduced to the series’ main character, Marnie, and her family. In the first installment of the franchise, Marnie is 13-years-old, and she lives in an unnamed town with her apparently widowed mother, Gwen, and her two younger siblings, 12-year-old Dylan and 7-year-old Sophie. For some reason, Gwen is clearly adamant about preventing her children from participating in any of the usual activities associated with Halloween, from going trick-or-treating to attending costume parties. But when the family receives a surprise visit from Maternal Grandmother Aggie, played by the dearly departed Debbie Reynolds, Marnie ends up eavesdropping on a conversation between her mother and grandmother, which leads her to discover that their family are actually descended from a long line of powerful witches. But, because Gwen’s late husband was an ordinary human from the Mortal World, Gwen had decided to keep her children from ever learning of their magical heritage, in the hopes that they would grow up to be normal. This doesn’t sit well with Marnie, however, and, with her younger siblings tagging along, she ends up following Grandma Aggie back to Halloweentown, a pocket dimension where witches, goblins, monsters and every manner of spooky creature have been living in peace for centuries in order to avoid persecution from the people of the Mortal World. Shortly after they arrive, the children learn from Aggie of a mysterious being known as Shadowman, who is behind the disappearances of many of Halloweentown’s inhabitants. It eventually comes out that the Shadowman’s ultimate plan is to lead Halloweentown’s population in a revolt against the people of the Mortal World, in order to take back their rightful place instead of continuing to live in hiding. The only hope of defeating the movie’s antagonist is by activating Merlin’s Talisman, which Aggie just happens to have in her possession. But when Aggie and Gwen (who ends up journeying to Halloweentown herself upon discovering her children were not in their beds) fall prey to the Shadowman’s evil spell, it’s up to Marnie, Dylan and Sophie to help save the day.

As far as made-for-TV Disney movies go, this one is fun. I particularly like how creative they got in regards to creating the world of Halloweentown and the number of creatures that live there. We got a skeleton who drives a taxi, a werewolf hairdresser, and a literal cat woman who works as an aerobics instructor. They even had the town dentist be the actual tooth fairy. And actress Debbie Reynolds was by far one of the highlights of the movie, as she just took this role so seriously. Not just when she had to play the part of a bonafide witch, but also when she was interacting with her on-screen family. You really got the impression that she was utilizing her experience of being a real-life mother and a grandmother when she was portraying the role of Aggie Cromwell.

Of course, the movie is not exactly a masterpiece. There are a few moments when they resort to obvious green screen technology, and that can be a bit distracting. But that wasn’t my only issue with the movie. For instance, Marnie’s brother, Dylan, comes across as a bit of a pod person. I get the idea is that he’s supposed to be the serious-minded sibling, but come on. What 12-year-old kid talks like that? I’m also a bit confused on exactly why Gwen was so adamant about keeping her children from having anything to do with Halloween. The movie claims it was because of her mortal husband, but that seems like a rather weak explanation to me. It would be one thing if the movie gave any indication that Gwen had experienced some kind of ostracization because of her magical heritage when she first decided to stay in the Mortal World with her non-magic husband, but they never alluded to anything like that. Though, to the movie’s credit, Gwen eventually acknowledges that she was wrong to try and prevent her kids from learning of their family history. As far as the main character goes, Marnie was a pretty believable 13-year-old, right down to the fact that she was clearly at that stage where she felt she was, and I quote, ‘practically an adult.’ Even though everyone over the age of 20 would know that’s not the case. And admittedly, there were many times when she was a bit useless. Not that I’m saying that to mock her or anything, because she was able to figure things out on her own when it mattered the most. But at the end of the day, it actually was the little sister, Sophie, who contributed the most. They wouldn’t have managed to even activate Merlin’s Talisman in the first place if it wasn’t for this kid. Honestly, Sophie was probably the best out of the three siblings.

I also do have to applaud the movie for the reveal of the Shadowman’s true identity. I suppose you could say it was a pretty big Scooby Doo moment when it’s revealed the main antagonist was the town mayor, Calabar. They even have him do this whole bit when he explains that his true motivation was his bitterness over how Gwen ended up marrying a man from the Mortal World instead of him. That’s right, the movie’s antagonist is angry over how he was ‘friend zoned’ by his crush, and that made him decide to turn evil. I can see how this could potentially rub some people the wrong way. Of course, on the other side of the coin is Luke, who is initially Shadowman Calabar’s smart mouthed flunky. At first, he admittedly comes across as this punk kid who thinks he’s all high-and-mighty because of his position of being the main antagonist lackey. But once he figures out that Shadowman Calabar is even willing to harm Aggie and the rest of the Cromwell family in his quest to overthrow the Mortal World, he quickly recognizes the error of his ways and even helps Marnie save the day. On a final note, I think it could be argued that the way they ultimately defeat Calabar seems a bit too convenient, in the sense that it really comes across as a whole ‘defeated by the power of love/friendship/etc.’ sort of deal. Especially when Dylan is suddenly revealed to have magic powers as well, despite there not being anything to suggest he had inherited the magical gene before that point. But hey, it’s clear this was never meant to be this big epic movie, so I suppose I can cut them some slack. After all, for what this movie was, it was pretty good. Though the people who wrote the movie’s script really need to come up with better insults. (Seriously, did Marnie actually call Shadowman Calabar ‘chocolate bar?’ What kind of insult is that?)

Halloweentown 2: Kalabar’s Revenge- The first sequel to the Disney Channel original movie, this one was certainly the darkest film of the four. But it also brought about a slight issue with how to spell the name of the first movie’s antagonist. The title card for this movie stated it was spelled with a K, but the closed captions and opening & closing credits for the first installment had his name begin with a C. But that’s probably just a small nitpick. Regardless, I’m going to continue spelling it with a C for these reviews. Anyway, the movie opens on Halloween night, exactly two years after the events of the first movie. Right away, we see that Aggie has moved in with her daughter and grandchildren, and Gwen has eased up on her anti-Halloween stance enough to allow her family to throw a Halloween party at the house. Of course, that doesn’t mean things are completely harmonious for the Cromwell family, especially since Marnie is scheduled to spend an entire year in Halloweentown with Aggie in order to focus on her training, as she is first in line to become the next head of the Cromwell line. And if Marnie chooses to follow that path, she’d have to completely give up her life in the Mortal World. Which is something that would deeply affect Gwen. Of course, Marnie is still a bit of an idiot, and when a young boy her age named Cal shows up at the party, Marnie instantly develops a crush on him, like you do. And, in order to impress her new crush, she proceeds to show him around the house, including a stop at Aggie’s room. This, of course, proves to be a mistake, as Cal is actually Calabar’s long-lost son. No word on who the baby mama was, but it appears Cal has decided it’s up to him to continue his father’s work in conquering the Mortal World. Taking advantage of Marnie’s naive trust in him, he steals Aggie’s spell book and uses it to cast a spell on all of Halloweentown, turning the whole place into a warped version of the Mortal World, in which everything is dull and gray and the people of Halloweentown are transformed into caricatures of boring old humans. This, of course, turns out to be only the first step in Cal’s evil plan, as he only casts this spell in order to trick Marnie and Aggie into entering Halloweentown, thereby getting them out of the way while he gets to work on his real plan- turning the humans into the very creatures they dress up as for Halloween, as punishment for always mocking the people of Halloweentown. When Aggie is once again put out of commission because of Cal’s spell, Marnie has to team up with, Luke, the goblin she befriended in the last movie, to try to find a way to fix things while Sophie and Dylan work to assist them from the Mortal World. They even manage to utilize a time traveling spell in their attempts to stop Cal’s plan. While there are moments in the movie where it seems like they’re simply following the formula from the last film, there’s still enough fresh elements to make things seem new and interesting. Including the introduction of the crotchety Gort, who collects and hoards every single item that’s ever lost in both Halloweentown and the Mortal World. Basically, every time something ends up lost, from that last puzzle piece to the left sock, it magically ends up at Gort’s place.

In a lot of ways, this movie often seems to be better than the last one. Especially since the stakes seem a lot higher, as Cal’s plans will effectively destroy both worlds if he succeeds. We also get a legitimately creepy scene where the mother, Gwen, is transformed into a hag and even tries to attack Sophie. And, towards the end, it really seems that Cal actually wins, as the portal between Halloweentown and the Mortal World closes before Marnie, Aggie and Luke can succeed in stopping Cal, which means they’ll be stranded in Halloweentown and won’t be able to save Dylan, Sophie and Gwen, not to mention everybody else, for an entire year. But because of another Deux ex Machina moment, which involves Marnie deciding that they can take advantage of the strength of the Cromwell family’s magic and pretty much rewrite the laws of magic, they manage to reopen the portal despite Halloween being over.

One thing I particularly liked in this movie were the scenes with Sophie and Dylan. And not just because these two really sold the whole brother and sister dynamic. Sophie is more or less the same as she was in the last movie, but she’s become a bit more assertive than the sweet little 7-year-old she was when we last saw her. Dylan, on the other hand, really has improved in terms of his believably. In the original movie, the character of Dylan came across as if it had been written by someone who wanted him to act like a nerdy stick-in-the-mud kid, but had never actually been around a 12-year-old and therefore had no idea how they actually acted and spoke. This time around, Dylan’s characterization was much more believable. He’s still reluctant to embrace his magical heritage, but he actually does act like an average 14-year-old. Especially when he’s trying to find a date to a costume party at the school later that night. (Though that does seem a bit odd, that the Cromwells throw a Halloween party at their house when there’s another party being held later on that night. Exactly how long is this Halloween night supposed to be?)

Now, there’s this one part in the movie that, depending on your sensitivity level, might be offensive. There’s a character in the film named Alex, who poses as Cal’s father before Cal’s true identity as Calabar’s son is revealed. Thanks to Sophie’s intuition, Alex is eventually revealed to be a golem that Cal created out of frogs. Considering the golem is a figure of Jewish folklore, the inclusion of Alex in this movie could potentially offend some people and be taken as cultural appropriation, especially when the golem was created and controlled by a warlock. It’s possible that this was just an unfortunate oversight on Disney’s part (and let’s face it, they do have a history of overt racism in some of their movies, particularly the older ones,) but you could argue that makes it even more offensive. That particular issue aside, however, this was a good sequel to Halloweentown, as it brought back the whole cast and actually connected to the events of the first movie. But the problem is, the sequels that came after the movie never referenced anything about Cal again. That admittedly bothered me a lot, because the movie even had them acknowledging that Cal would probably come back. But if he did, we never saw it happen. Talk about a major loose end.

Halloweentown High- Once again, two years have passed, and Marnie has been commended by the Halloweentown Council (because there’s a high council now) for the part she played in ensuring the portal between Halloweentown and the Mortal World would remain open all year round, and not just on Halloween. But now, Marnie has developed an idea to fully heal the rift between humans and the people of Halloweentown by creating an exchange program of sorts, in which some teenagers from Halloweentown would actually attend a school in the Mortal Realm. Unfortunately, Marnie ends up accidentally wagering her entire family’s magic on the outcome of this, meaning that if this attempt to prove that humans have changed since the creation of Halloweentown and would no longer persecute the creatures that live there doesn’t work, then her entire family would lose their magical powers forever. When Marnie realizes what she’s just done, she is reasonably uneasy, but is still confident that she can make this work, as long as she’s there to help guide the Halloweentown students, which consist of Cassie the witch, Pete the Werewolf, Natalie the troll, Nancy the fairy, Chester the gremlin, Bobby the ogre, and Ethan the warlock, with the non-humanoid students donning human disguises while attending the school. The whole human disguise thing alone was pretty laughable by itself, as they’re basically just wearing human skinsuits like it’s a Men in Black movie. (Wasn’t there a spell that could make them appear human?) Aggie also ends up stepping in to assist Marnie’s efforts by getting a teaching job at the school. But of course, this movie decides it wasn’t enough to just have this be a simple high school themed movie, because we also have to contend with an apparent threat from Knights of the Iron Dagger, a fabled order that sought to destroy all things magical.

Okay, I’m just going to come out and say it. This movie was terrible! I can’t think of a single scene in this movie that I even remotely liked. In fact, while watching it, I kept checking the time to see how much longer I had to endure this crap. I think the worst part was that they were clearly trying to give the movie this whole underlining message about prejudice and whatnot, but the execution of it was just so horrible. In the climax of the movie, it’s revealed that the father of the warlock student, Ethan, who is actually on the Halloweentown Council, wants the portal between Halloweentown and the Mortal World to be closed permanently. So he conspired with the human school’s principal to expose Marnie as a witch in the worst possible way, by making it look as if she was openly attacking the school with her magic at the school’s annual Halloween Bash. Thereby getting the other students to resort to a mob mentality and try to chase her and the Halloweentown exchange students out of town. But all it takes for everyone to calm down is a whole ‘shame on you’ speech from Cody, Marnie’s new love interest, and then it’s all hunky dory. Even the school principal, who was in league with the movie’s main antagonist, ends up changing his tune because of his apparent crush on Aggie. Okay, obviously, it should go without saying that prejudice is bad. But it’s a very complex issue. It’s not something that can be instantly solved with the substance of an after school special. So seeing the way this movie resolved everything was quite eye rolling. They even have Aggie completely forgive the principal, even though he had been openly persecuting her and her granddaughter moments before. While forgiving someone is obviously admirable, it’s a bit bothersome that the movie is acting as if Aggie should just forget all about what the principal had just tried to do and enter into a relationship with him. Just saying, forgiving someone does not mean you have to let them back into your life. Especially if there was a serious breech in trust between you and the person you’re forgiving.

And even the way this movie portrays characters we’ve grown to love in the first two movies was really bad. Sophie, who was a prominent character in previous installments of the Halloweentown series, is now little more than a background character. And she seemed to disappear from the movie altogether after the mall scene. That alone was annoying, as Sophie was arguably a better and smarter witch than Marnie, and the only reason why Marnie was first in line to be the head of the Cromwell line was because she was the oldest. As for Aggie, she suddenly seems to be more of a senile old woman than a powerful and wise old witch, with the movie playing her up for laughs. I’m just saying, considering she’s supposed to have spent four years living in the Mortal World, you’d think she’d be a bit more careful in regards to her magic and wouldn’t accidently magically create a parrot in front of a roomful of students. Oh, and Gwen, who had made it clear beforehand that she wanted to simply live her life as an ordinary mortal like her late husband and only used her magic in special circumstances, is now using her magic in everyday situations. The only character who seems to have maintained his characterization from the last two movies is Dylan, even though he spends most of the movie sharing a possible romance subplot with Natalie the Troll.

Finally, there’s the fact that they’ve seemingly forgotten all about Cal, the antagonist of the last movie. Even after the last movie implied that he would be back, we never see him do so. They don’t even acknowledge his existence, even though they had the perfect opportunity to do so. At one point, Marnie and Aggie are having a mild argument about Marnie’s latest crush, Cody, with Aggie being suspicious of him as Cody has apparently just moved into the area. So, when they start seeing evidence that the Knights of the Iron Dagger were lurking around the school, Aggie speculates that Cody might have something to do with it. Of course, Marnie isn’t interested in hearing any accusations against her crush, but this was such a perfect opportunity for Aggie to say something like ‘remember what happened the last time you met a boy who had just moved here.’ But they don’t. It’s such a missed opportunity. And by the way, why are the movies so determined to give Marnie a love interest? I know, she’s supposed to be a teenage girl and all. But doesn’t she have enough on her plate, considering she’s training to be a witch while trying to help bridge the gap between Halloweentown and the Mortal World so they won’t have to remain separate anymore? Not to mention the fact that her entire family’s magic is on the line. Does she really have the time to worry about finding romance? I’m not saying that finding love is necessarily bad, but it is bad to imply that someone NEEDS to have a boyfriend to be fulfilled. Besides, what happened to Luke? I know there was never anything to suggest that they were ever more than friends, but Luke clearly had a crush on Marnie ever since they first met at 13. And the last movie had him saying something along the lines of how he believed anything was possible as long as Marnie was there. So I was admittedly a bit of a Marnie/Luke shipper. Thus, I was really upset that we didn’t see him appear in this movie. They could have easily made him be one of the Halloweentown exchange students. Even if they didn’t have him and Marnie end up together, they had a pretty good friendship going on. I would have been satisfied with them simply continuing on as good friends.

Return to Halloweentown- Okay, apparently, Halloweentown High was supposed to be the final installment of the Halloweentown series. But in 2006, someone over at Disney decided to try and squeeze out a bit more milk from the franchise, creating this fourth film. I’m not sure why they thought it was a good idea, as Halloweentown High wasn’t even good. And apparently, Kimberly J. Brown seemed to agree that this was a bad idea, as she didn’t return to reprise her role as Marnie, forcing them to hire Sara Paxton to take her place.

So, in this movie, Marnie has been accepted at Witch University, a college located in Halloweentown, with a full scholarship. This is a bit distressing to Gwen, who had hoped that Marnie would go to college in the Mortal World, but Marnie insists on going to college at Witch University because she didn’t want to hide her powers while attending a human college. Which does present a bit of a continuity issue, as Halloweentown High suggested that everyone now knew all about Halloweentown. And it’s not as if they try to pretend that movie never happened, especially since the character of Ethan Dalloway comes back as one of Marnie’s classmates at Witch University. Regardless, Gwen eventually allows Marnie to go off to Witch University, on the condition that Dylan goes with her. (It’s stated at one point that Dylan ended up skipping a grade). Of course, once Marnie arrives at Witch University, it slowly becomes apparent that she was only given her scholarship because this evil group of witches called The Dominion stumbled across some moldy old prophecy involving an ancient box that had once belonged to one of Marnie’s ancestors, Splendora Cromwell. This box is said to contain the Gift, an extremely powerful magic, and that only a Cromwell can open it. So this evil group of witches, which includes Witch University’s headmistress and the history professor, plan to trick Marnie into opening the box so they can steal the Gift for themselves and become all powerful. Yeah, the plot of this movie is just as painful as the one of Halloweentown High. And to make it even worse, we have to endure the inclusion of the Sinister Sisters, the typical Mean Girl™ troop, the leader of whom Dylan ends up getting a crush on simply because she can speak Latin. Which just really makes Dylan seem extremely pathetic as he doesn’t even care when Scarlet and her sisters treats him poorly. Not even Debbie Reynold’s portrayal of Aggie Cromwell could save this movie, considering she was barely in it, since Aggie was away focusing on Sophie’s witch training and only appeared briefly through magical hologram. Yeah, that’s right. Sophie wasn’t even in this movie, and Aggie only briefly appears twice. Instead, we got a Aggie lookalike in the form of Miss Periwinkle, one of the professors at Witch University.

Of course, one of the most painful aspects of the movie is one I have to go into spoiler territory for. Marnie, at one point through some more time travel shenanigans, ends up finding out that Splendora Cromwell was actually just a younger version of Aggie. And that the Gift was a magical amulet that could be used to grant the wearer the power to control anyone. Unfortunately, after she finds that out, the members of the Dominion try to blackmail Marnie into helping them enslave all the non-magical inhabitants of Halloweentown. Okay, since when was it even hinted at the fact that some witches and warlocks viewed the non-magical inhabitants of Halloweentown as inferior? Wasn’t the last movie’s attempts to send an anti-prejudice message bad enough? Now we got a moral about segregation? Even though these are good points to get across, the Halloweentown films are not exactly the best place to try and convey those messages. Besides, how did we go from angry warlocks who wanted to punish humans for persecuting them to angry witches and warlocks viewing their non-magical neighbors as inferior beings?

It’s just really upsetting that the Halloweentown franchise went so downhill like this. The first two installments were really good. Not great, but really good. They were fun and imaginative and unique. But then they had to go and butcher it by turning the last two movies into generic, formulaic drivel, complete with one-note antagonists who are either lack a relatable motivation or are simply being mean for the sake of being mean. And of course, they’re also trying way too hard to give the movies a relevant moral to teach kids some life lesson or whatever, completely forgetting what made the first two Halloweentown films special in the first place. We watched the Halloweentown movies because we wanted to see something fun with interesting creatures. I don’t think anyone was interested in seeing the franchise turned into bland ‘high school movies.’ Because that’s what Halloweentown High and Return to Halloweentown were. They were just another set of ‘high school movies’ that just happened to feature the characters of Halloweentown.

I don’t know what else to say. By all means, check out the first two Halloweentown movies sometime. Especially if you want to see something fun and lighthearted. As for the other two, just skip them. Because you won’t be missing much.

#halloweentown #halloweentown franchise #halloweentown tetralogy

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arcticdementor · 6 years ago

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So I was recently pointed to this article at The Atlantic: “The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy.”

There’s actually some good stuff in there — even if it’s been said before by folks like Toby Young (or, for that matter, Murray’s Coming Apart) — that I wouldn’t expect to see someplace so mainstream. Stewart even mentions assortative mating, which I would expect to be too close to the dreaded, taboo topic of heredity.

But, then, there’s the part where he says this:

From my Brookline home, it’s a pleasant, 10-minute walk to get a haircut. Along the way, you pass immense elm trees and brochure-ready homes beaming in their reclaimed Victorian glory. Apart from a landscaper or two, you are unlikely to spot a human being in this wilderness of oversize closets, wood-paneled living rooms, and Sub-Zero refrigerators. If you do run into a neighbor, you might have a conversation like this: “Our kitchen remodel went way over budget. We had to fight just to get the tile guy to show up!” “I know! We ate Thai takeout for a month because the gas guy’s car kept breaking down!” You arrive at the Supercuts fresh from your stroll, but the nice lady who cuts your hair is looking stressed. You’ll discover that she commutes an hour through jammed highways to work. The gas guy does, too, and the tile guy comes in from another state. None of them can afford to live around here. The rent is too damn high.

There’s a lot of this sort of stuff about how elite and “privileged” the author and his “9.9%” peers are, even as “we’ve convinced ourselves that we don’t have any privilege at all.”

But then, later in the post, he gets to the topic of Trump, and it’s what you’d expect:

The 2016 presidential election marked a decisive moment in the history of resentment in the United States. In the person of Donald Trump, resentment entered the White House. It rode in on the back of an alliance between a tiny subset of super-wealthy 0.1 percenters (not all of them necessarily American) and a large number of 90 percenters who stand for pretty much everything the 9.9 percent are not.

Cue the usual bits about how uneducated Trump voters are, American “anti-intellectualism,” “the poor man’s idea of a rich man,” “belligerent commitment to maintaining his ignorance,” et cetera. And, of course, ignoring that pretty much every “super wealthy 0.1 percenter” in the media or Silicon Valley was for Hillary. And then:

Did I mention that the common man is white? That brings us to the other side of American-style resentment. You kick down, and then you close ranks around an imaginary tribe. The problem, you say, is the moochers, the snakes, the handout queens; the solution is the flag and the religion of your (white) ancestors.

“Sure, the peasants have plenty of resentment, but they're all a bunch of stupid racists who blame the wrong people.” Sorry, but no. The tile guy he mentioned earlier isn’t against illegal immigrants because he’s “racist,” it's because he’s struggling to stay solvent trying to do the right thing while his competition undercuts him by paying illegals sub-minimum wages under the table. And when he complains about the government failing to enforce the democratically-created laws prohibiting these things, he gets lectured about how he’s a racist, “diversity is our strength — just look at all these great Thai restaurants immigration has brought us.” Same with that stressed-out hairdresser who can't afford to live near where she works; she isn’t a moron, and it’s not black people she blames for her commute. People like these are mad at people like Mr. Stewart, and that's why they vote Trump.

All this hand-wringing about how ‘problematic’ all the privileges and wealth of his class are, followed by turning around and consoling his audience, members of this same class, with affirmations that those victims left behind by their meritocracy and it’s oh-so-enlightened policy choices deserve it because they’re wicked and stupid. They revel in the benefits that illegal migrants bring to their upper class, and then go on to claim to be morally superior for burdening their social inferiors with the externalities of these choices, and get angry at those inferiors when they dare to object. These aristocrats would be a lot less insufferable if they had some scraps of real noblesse oblige and loyalty to their subjects to go with their status.

Similarly, Stewart goes on a bit about the class elements in the decline of marriage, but nothing about how elites like him, to borrow Charles Murray’s term, increasingly failed to “preach what they practice,” and instead pushed “liberation” that removed what for many of the lower classes were guard-rails against failure modes, that, while the elites can avoid or afford, prove too frequent and ruinous to those without upper class advantages.

That said, there’s some definite positive elements here from my particular viewpoint. Because consider the traditional narratives about the “bad” hereditary elites of past generations, and their overthrow. Like the “idleness” of elites; parties at Versailles and all that. Then look at where Stewart describes how his class is discovering “that being an aristocrat is not quite what it is cracked up to be”:

Jay Gatsby might have understood. Life in West Egg is never as serene as it seems. The Princeton man—that idle prince of leisure who coasts from prep school to a life of ease—is an invention of our lowborn ancestors. It’s what they thought they saw when they were looking up. West Eggers understand very well that a bad move or an unlucky break (or three or four) can lead to a steep descent. We know just how expensive it is to live there, yet living off the island is unthinkable.

Or the standard narrative about the French Revolution and similar revolts, about how the common folk were quite naturally and justly resentful of the aristocratic elite and thus spontaneously took action, and it was not at all about a rising rival proto-elite stirring up such resentments in order to use the peasant masses as foot soldiers to help them sieze power. Then contrast, in Stewart’s tirade against Trump and his supporters, where he asserts:

No one is born resentful. As mass phenomena, racism, xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, narcissism, irrationalism, and all other variants of resentment are as expensive to produce as they are deadly to democratic politics. Only long hours of television programming, intelligently manipulated social-media feeds, and expensively sustained information bubbles can actualize the unhappy dispositions of humanity to the point where they may be fruitfully manipulated for political gain.

And, of course, he goes on to make deliberate parallels between the present “90%” and their Gilded Age equivalents where “[a]n appreciable number of them could be found at Ku Klux Klan rallies.” But he then goes on to admit that “The best revolutions do not start at the bottom; they are the work of the upper-middle class.”

So we have a fellow admitting that he and his class are an increasingly hereditary, increasingly entitled aristocracy… but that’s okay, because they’re “the people of good family, good health, good schools, good neighborhoods, and good jobs… so far from the not-so-good people on all of these dimensions, we are beginning to resemble a new species.” That one of the big problems for this New American Aristocracy is their refusal to admit they’re an aristocracy. That the peasants can be made to know their place and not resent the wealth and privileges of their betters… by squashing any rivals who try to increase or play upon such resentment as political tools in intra-elite competition, as past aristocracies failed to do strongly enough. Not to mention blame any problems on the real “evil elites,” the Crown “1%.” Otherwise, they’re “next in line for the chopping block.”

Of course, the problem that our elites are still pious, puritanical adherents to — and global missionaries for — an unsustainable, insane non-theistic religion remains. But this is the first real sign I’ve seen of those who are “The Man” being willing to admit it, and defend it.

#longpost is long #aristocracy #meritocracy #the atlantic #matthew stewart #semi-hereditary elites #heredity

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dont-trust-the-clogs-blog · 7 years ago

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28. Free write for 20 minutes. It does not matter what the words on the page are. Do not stop writing for 20 minutes.

They told Harry two things after the mission ended.

That he had gone against every procedure, every order, and that if it was up to them he would be in big trouble.

The king was coming to meet him and he was not to tell anyone about it.

Obviously this was a big deal, the young King, nor his father had ever visited the Samads camp. It was an honour to even be considered important enough. Keeping a secret till only two hours before, even from his friends, was something Harry struggled with. But he was glad he did at the cracker of responses he got from them all, from panicky June, to excitable Don. Only Emma was annoyed, but she was impossible to read anyway.

The camp was lined up with more order than ever before, the five heroes stood a step in front along with Head Councillor Hamilton.

First walked in the biggest poof you’d ever seen, his hair gelled back, clipbook in hand, he ran his eyes amongst the group, only pausing to let out the tiniest drop of positive emotion when his eyes caught on Emma.

“May I present, King Samuel the 3rd.” he announced, and out came the king. The room dropped into a bow, the only exception being, again, Emma who instead stepped forward. Hamilton grabbed her arm, shooting her one of his trademark warnings but she just rolled her eyes and told him to fuck off.

The king laughed and either the shock of her talking to him like that or the king's response or just through her own raw talent Emma slipped past Hamilton and approached the king. She dropped into perhaps the most overdramatical curtsy ever done before they both laughed and she was pulled into a hug. The entire room watched in complete shock because what the actual fuck was going on. Harry could feel the cogs turning in Cody’s head beside him as they all tried to figure out what was happening.

But then Emma pulled away from the hug and jabbed her finger against the kings chest, “no!” she cried “I’m still mad at you, do you realise how long I have kept these dipshits in the dark about you and this whole life. Two years. Two fucking years they have thought I was a nobody from an unnamed town. And then you waltz in here, with a literal order of not warning me!”

“You mean like you did at my coronation? You came in halfway though the after party, and starting laughing about my ceremonial gown in front of all my generals.”

“I’m not saying I don’t deserve it! I’m saying you’re meant to be the nice one!” Emma whined.

“It’s good to see you too Em,” King Samuel chuckled. He looked over at the rest of the camp still in a state of shock, “are you going to tell them or..?

“Oh I’m giving Cody his full two minutes, he likes a good puzzle.”

“Holy shit, Aciman.” Cody exclaimed, his timing as perfect as always.

“Okay now I’ll tell them, that is, if Anthony doesn’t mind me taking his job for a moment.” She said, smiling at her old friend who smiled back and gestured for her to continue.

“Great. Hi everyone, I am sure you are all surprised at my relationship with the King, but I am about to clear everything up for you. As our dear Cody has already realised my name isn’t actually Emma Aciman, it’s Emma Namica the second child of the Royal Family, sister to King Samuel.

"You know right? That he’s a faggot." The young king's backhand came across Harry's face faster than he could follow. Staggering, Harry gripped the wall for support, and look up at the furious face of his King. "How dare you say that, you ignorant fool.”

“Your majesty, I am just telling you the truth, please!” Harry said, holding his arms up to try and show the king he means no harm. His back hit the wall as the king continued to advance.

“I have known Anthony for 15 years, I just told you that he is my closest friend and you think I don’t know that he is gay?”

“Then why are you angry?”

The king stared at him demeaningly, as though assessing every single thought he had ever had and deeming them unworthy. The king visibly sighed, and he brought his hand up, causing Harry to flinch. The King did not strike him, but run his fingers over the badge he had pinned on Harry’s chest mere hours before. “This badge, is a marker that the wearer is a person who has contributed greatly to our nation. It is a marker that the person is a member of my elite group, that they are someone to look up to for more reasons than their ability with a sword. THat they are selfless, and kind, and believe in equality. I choose the people I give these badges to very carefully.” The King dug his fingers beneath the badge and ripped it off, easily tearing through the shirt. To Harry, it felt as though the king had ripped straight through his body and pulled out his innards. “I really thought you deserved this.” the king snarled.

Harry dropped to his knees. “Please, your majesty, I apologise, please do not take this honour from me, from my team.”

The king looked down on the boy, on the hero who had saved so many lives.

“You are a hero Harry Mock, as are the members of your team. But this honour, this badge, is an invitation to join the ranks of some of the best people I have met. Amongst those people is Anthony’s boyfriend, an elderly couple who are from (foreign country) and still practise (unliked religion) and a beautiful lady who was born as a boy. They are heroes too, and based on your comment on Anthony, they are all much worthier than you of this honour.” Harry breath turned shallow and he felt as though his heart had stopped. A guard at the end of the hall broke the silence. “Sir, sorry to interrupt but Carlisle wishes to talk to you about the party tonight.”

The king sighed, “Inform him that there is no longer a party to plan.”

As the guard went back out of sight the king took a step back, and straightened his jacket. “If I ever hear you say that revolting word again, to Anthony or anyone else, I promise that you will lose more than a badge.”

With that the king walked away without turning back, leaving Harry shivering from something other than the cold.

___

King Samuel was shaking, his fist clenched white around the badge. The first one he was to give as King and he had chosen that homophobic asshole. He smiled as he approached Anthony “How quickly can we get our stuff together, we are leaving.”

“In an hour,” Anthony said promptly, “but what about the party”

“An hour sounds perfect, and there is no more party.” The king place the badge in Anthony’s hand. “You know where it goes.”

“Sam wait, what happened.” Anthony grabbed his arm, “this hasn’t got anything to do with what we spoke about last night does it?”

Sam sighed. “Anthony call Ryan and tell him that you will be home earlier than expected, and inform him that there currently will be no new inclusions to the club.”

Anthony studied him for a moment then nodded, and set to work, informing one of the helpers, before pulling out his phone.

#365 day writing challenge #day 28 #i put a break in because its four pages of unedited unconnecting snippets #thank goodness for spellcheck

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themed-playlists · 4 years ago

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playlist tour transcript: McMansion House Party

Link to episode/tour: McMansion House Tour

Link to full playlist (more songs than the tour, constantly updating): McMansion

“Show Intro”

This is themed party playlists, the show where I make intricately, carefully themed playlists and invite you to a little music listening party, where you can mix and mingle with some new media! I’m Ashlyn.

“McMansion Entryway”

Welcome to my McMansion House Tour of an episode. This is a playlist that I’ve been working on for a while. Um, I think it’s a really interesting vibe and concept, uh.. And I’m pretty proud of the name, even though I know sometimes it needs a little bit of explanation. But I decided to call it “McMansion” because… a McMansion is a modern style of house that is usually built kind of quickly, it doesn’t make a whole lot of architectural sense, and its main, um, goal is to make the owners look very wealthy and successful in a [very] “American Dream” type of sense. But it’s ultimately kind of.. Kind of hollow, and shallow, it’s the type of ugly, weird house that you see in those surreal suburbs, they usually have that kind of really big entry way that like… oh I hate them so much because you could easily have room to have a whole other room upstairs but instead you have this entryway that’s just a waste, and this playlist is all about the uh facad 0f the american dream, listen I’m in my mid to late twenties right now and i feel like i wanted to collect a bunch of songs that convey like a quarter to midlife crisis, feeling in america, and feeling like “I should have had a nice house by now, like I should have ah, you know, like a finished basement with a var and a garage tha fits two to three cars, and like, this big, ridiculous, dumb looking ohouse out in the suburbs and like a normie job and all that sort of stuff,” um so yeah. I named it McMansion off of the house that I remember seeing a lot of when I was little in the pre-recession times I guess. Um, yeah, i’m going to , for a little bit more of an explanation of that kind of thing i’m gonna show you guys a clip from a mini-doc where they interview Kate Wagner who runs like one of my favorite blogs of all time, it’s called McMansion Hell and it's really interesting.

McMansion hell

Segment of: McMansions: The houses that people love to hate (first 30sec)

Joywave

My first little grouping here is a collection by Joywave, who’s one of my favorite bands, and I feel like a lot of their stuff sort of fit this feeling and that’s probably why I love them so much and relate to them. Enjoy!

Joywave - Nice House (Audio Only)

Joywave - Half Your Age

Joywave - Like a Kennedy

School and Work

Alright, this is a little collection of songs about, like, getting a degree, and getting a job… these feel like such mundane topics to have such, like, excited, fun, sort of fantastical songs about. But I always love that combination of sort of the mundane and the exaggerated. If I were tasked with making like, some sort of jukebox musical about normal day-to-day, like, mundane life I feel like I would absolutely put these songs in it.

Kero Kero Bonito - Graduation

"i don't wanna go to school" full song

Kero Kero Bonito - Try Me

Dorian Electra - Career Boy (Official Video)

Chris Fleming

Speaking of this combination of like, the over-the-top interpretation of the mundane details of day-to-day life, I feel like Chris Fleming really gets that, I guess? You need to watch his series “Gayle” on YouTube. It's like this insane drama of like normal kinda suburban moms, I guess? It’s hard to explain but it’s really really good, I was able to sell a few friends on it who thought that they wouldn’t like it. It’s very over the top and it dramatizes the cliquey nature of suburban moms. So it's very fictional, very over the top, but I feel like it sort of validates how extreme these silly little details are. It’s a lot of fun, but anyway here's a couple of his songs that are kind of along that line.

Sick Jan

The Grad Student Shuffle

Column

What really cracks me up about what Kate is saying here about the columns on the fronts of these McMansions is just that combination of trying to be so grand and just so much, and then it’s in the middle of this boring suburb, like that’s so funny, I love that type of juxtaposition in things, it just really gets to me!

McMansions: The houses that people love to hate (later in this video)

Suburban

Here’s a collection of songs that are sort of about you know setting into a place to live out your normie life, and they all have, sort of an element of terror? Or concern? Or like a part of you revolting against this? Type of thing. Or just- you know. Just listen to them and think your own sort of thoughts.

Don't Worry About the Government (2005 Remaster)

Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime (Official Video)

Soft Cell - Frustration

KOPPS - Lose Control (Official Audio)

McMansion bye

Guys, thank you so much for coming to my little McMansion house party, here. I think this is a playlist concept that I’m going to keep adding to, cause it’s just sort of fun and really interesting. So I’ll probably do more tours of this collection in the future, so keep an eye out for that. Until then, here are a few more songs of this vibe. That i want to send you out on

Hobo Johnson - Subaru Crosstrek XV (Official Video)

Short Skirt Long Jacket by Cake

Normie car

Okay I lied, i guess that wasn’t goodbye. I guess I have to pop in for one more piece of commentary because I think it's funny that short skirt, long jacket and Subaru crosstrek both involve the purchasing of a like, normie car. I guess, I don't know why that cracks me up. Okay enjoy the last few songs! I love you, bye. Be good.

Raffaella - NASA's Fake (Official Lyric Video)

Fountains of Wayne - Stacy's Mom (Official Music Video)

Good Charlotte - The Anthem (Video)

#playlist #playlist tour #themed party playlists #thenewmi6 on spotify #thenewmi6

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opedguy · 4 years ago

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Dueling Town Halls Expose Fake News

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Oct. 18, Instead of debating last night, 74-year-old President Donald Trump and 77-year-old former Vice President and Democrat nominee Joe Biden held dueling town hall meetings exposing for all to see the fake news media. When Trump took the stage in Miami, he was treated to NBC’s Savannah Guthrie who proceeded to ambush him with a series of left wing talking points. Biden, on the other hand, greeted ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, stepping into a warm Jacuzzi of softball questions, showing the stark contrast the fake news media gives to either candidate. Let there be no mistake, the news media has an ax to grind in the 2020 race putting their credibility on the line to get Biden elected. With a bombshell report in the New York Post about newly discovered emails between Hunter and Burisma Holdings businessman Vadym Pozharskyi, showing that Joe met with Pozharskyi, not one question.

No, Stephanopoulos spent the entire 90 minuets on nothing controversial, the closest thing being what would Joe pack the Supreme Court. But the venerable New York Post has carefully researched story implicated Joe in egregious corruption while Vice President, it’s completely ignored. Watching Guthrie, in contrast, grill Trump on old stories like failing to disavow white supremacy, accepting the election outcome or his stance on climate change, showed how NBC News sought to sabotage Trump. Trump handled Guthrie with aplomb, making her look like a pugnacious sophomore, focusing only on Democrat talking points. Guthrie slammed Trump for his Supreme Court pick, threatening Roe v. Wad and the Affordable Care Act AKA Obamacare, hitting Trump with worn out Democrat talking points. Biden sat back and listened to Stephanopoulos stroke his old tired ego.

When the politically biased Commission on Presidential Debates changed the format to Zoom Conferencing Oct 8, Trump refused to play along, saying he would not participate. Settling on dueling town hall meetings, Trump knew he was walking into an ambush, with Guthrie going after him like she was his debate opponent. Guthrie looked foolish going toe-to-toe with Trump, exposing to a national audience the egregious political bias against Trump. When Trump debated Biden Sept. 29 in Cleveland, he faced Fox News moderator Chris Wallace, another well know Trump critic. So, truth be told, there’s no safe place in the broadcast or print media for Trump, with even Fox News setting him up. Trump commented during the debate he was debating two-against-one, with Wallace going after Trump. Stephanouplos let Biden focus on key Democrat talking points: Covid-19 and racism.

Guthrie’s revolting bias against Trump had to offend fair-minded voters helping Trump make a comeback in the last weeks of the campaign. Voters saw first hand that the media ‘s bias against Trump, looking for anyway to sabotage his campaign. Guthrie said nothing when Trump raised the four-year media hoax that Trump colluded with Russia. Guthrie hammered Trump on fake news saying Trump would not accept the outcome of the election. When, in fact, it was former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton who told Biden publicly Aug. 26 that “he should not concede under any circumstances.” Guthrie doesn’t bring that up only more fake news that Trump wouldn’t concede it he loses. Guthrie and her network accused Trump of threatening to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller for two years before he issued his Final Report March 23, 2019, clearing Trump of Russian collusion.

While Biden was giving barely coherent platitudes about race in America, Trump was hammered by Guthrie about QAnon, a conspiracy group that reportedly opposes pedophilia but somehow supports Trump. Guthrie didn’t like it when Trump said he knew nothing about them. Guthrie couldn’t wait to ht Trump with an unverified New York Times report that he paid only $750 in taxes in 2016 and 2017, holding $421 million in debt. “The amount of the money, $400 million, is a peanut. It’s extremely underleveraged. And it’s under leveraged with normal banks,” Trump told Guthrie, drawing a grown. Democrat talking points hold that Trump’s on the verge of another bankruptcy, another fake news story. Guthrie finally got to some audience questions, the whole purpose of a town hall meeting. Even then she selected people largely against Trump’s reelection.

When you consider that Trump and Biden have another debate coming up on Oct. 20, it makes you wonder why go through it. Debate moderators like Wallace, Guthrie and Stephaopoulos are so anti-Trump, what’s the point of another debate? Even so called nonpartisan CSPAN had their long-time anchor Steve Scully resign, admitting he lied about having his computer hacked. If the Commission on Presidential Debates and today’s journalism says anything, it’s that U.S. journalism is hopeless overrun by Democrat Party operatives. When it comes to the media’s narrative on Biden, he didn’t make a major gaffe, largely because Stephanoupolos asked him almost nothing significant. How low have expectations gone for Biden gone when they assess his performance as not making a major gaffe? Given today’s media, there’s absolutely no reason to hold another debate.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma. Reply Reply All Forward

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beatrice-otter · 7 years ago

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Slavery, Racism, The Civil War, and America: Or, Why Does Anybody Care About Those Whiny Idiots?!?

Lo these many years ago, American History was one of my special interests. My undergrad degree was in it (well, not technically, but like 90% of my classes--including Historical Methods and stuff like that--focused on US history). I still love it, but I'm not focused enough on it to call it a special interest any more. But you guys, there is SO MUCH interesting stuff about early American history that, if it were taught properly, would REALLY change peoples' perspectives on the "brave, gallant, noble" men of the Confederacy. And I'm not talking just the racism stuff, like 90% of them were whiny pissbabies and THAT is why the Civil War even existed in the first place. I shit you not. The modern Conservative Christian persecution complex has NOTHING on the antebellum Southern elite. Sure, a lot of those guys were personally brave in battle. But on a political or moral level, they were ... most five-year-olds are more mature. (I'm simplifying things a lot here and painting with a really broad brush, but it's not inaccurate.)

There are five parts:

How Black And White People Came To Be

Economic Differences and Political Boondoggles, or, How the South Learns That Temper Tantrums Are A Viable Political Tool

The South’s Persecution Complex vs. The North’s Manifest Destiny

Taking Our Marbles And Going Home, Then They’ll Be Sorry: Civil War Edition

More Delusions Of Grandeur: The Whole Lost Cause Romantic Bullshit This meta is going to take as read that slavery=EVIL and that there is no such thing as a "good" slaveowner and that racism is horribly, horribly evil and nothing good can ever come of it and white supremacy twists and mutilates everything good it comes in contact with. You all know that, or you should, and you can find lots of places talking about that with a quick google search. Also, Blacks and poor Whites had vibrant cultures during this time period that I'm going to largely ignore because while all that is awesome, I want you to truly understand ALL the reasons why it's stupid and pathetic to glamorize the Southern elite, which means focusing on them. The South was (and is!) REALLY AWFUL AND SCREWED UP and racism is part of that but not the only part. But we will start a bit by talking about racism, because it's the root of so much other evil. I'm sure you've heard that "race is a social construct!" Let's look at how that construct got constructed, shall we?

How Black And White People Came To Be To start with, it is very important that you understand that Africans arrived in North America before White people did. No, I'm not talking about some African empire that sailed across the Atlantic before Columbus. (African empires focused on sailing to India and China, which was closer and much more profitable.) I'm talking about the fact that "white" and "black" didn't exist as conceptual categories when the first American colonies were founded. There were lots of ethnic rivalries and hatreds! It wasn't a paradise! (See the Kingston Trio song "They're Rioting in Africa," particularly the bit starting at :30) But there wasn't really a category for race, it wasn't part of how people thought.

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How did that change, you may ask? Well, it all comes down to the English Civil War. (No, seriously, it does!) The English Civil War was a series of conflicts in the mid 1600s (so about the time that the first colonies in what is now the US were getting settled) where the middle class and the nobles fought bitterly about what sort of government England was going to have and what sort of religion. The middle class were in favor of Parliament controlling things, and in favor of sober, stripped-down, moralistic religion (i.e. Puritanism) and the nobles were in favor of the King controlling everything and lots of bells and smells and no strict moral guidance to trouble them. And at various times, England wasn't really safe for one group or the other depending on who was winning right then, so people left in droves. The middle-class Puritans settled in the north, and the aristocratic Cavaliers settled in the South. Now, other groups came later but those first settlers were really, really important because they were the ones who established governments and cultural systems that later groups then had to adapt to. And each group took the bit of 17th Century English society they liked and tried to recreate JUST THAT SEGMENT of it, with all the rest gone. Middle-class Puritans wanted everything to be middle class farmers and businessmen. They purposefully excluded both rich and poor alike from entering their colonies, and set up laws and such that benefited the middle class above all.

The Cavaliers were just the opposite. They came from the aristocracy and the wealthy, and they wholeheartedly believed in its values--many of them had been forced to flee from their homes because of their commitment to the "ideals" that certain people are just better than others, with an inherent right to rule and control society. Or they were younger sons who wouldn't inherit the family estate and, for the first time, had some options besides "become a priest/lawyer/soldier." They could come to America and have an estate here! THEY wanted to be the lords of Great Estates like their older brothers back in England had, with lots of servants and other peons to work the house and the fields, while they sat in their drawing rooms and played cards and threw parties. (Nice work if you can get it.) And they really DID NOT WANT the sort of influential merchant/middle class that had been so troublesome back in England. So they set things up to benefit the super-rich elite at the expense of, well, everyone else, and started shipping over slaves and indentured servants in job lots.

If your high school US History class mentioned indentured servants, it probably lied to you by trying to tell you something along the lines of indentured servitude being really different from slavery. But the truth is, they were really, really similar. Indentured servants were poor Englishman working for years to pay off the cost of their passage to America, and would be free after a period of some years. Slaves were Africans or Native Americans (to start with, at least, although it quickly shifted to only Africans) who had been captured in Africa and sold to Americans. And they had no such time limit. But it wasn't unusual for African slaves to get freed eventually as a "reward" for service, and as for how they were treated, well, the elite who owned both groups didn't really make much distinction between them. And life for them (for anyone in the Southern colonies who wasn't part of the elite) sucked so bad, you guys. SO, SO BAD. Even once the slaves and indentured servants got freed, life really sucked, because the whole point of the society was to separate the elite from the peons and make sure everyone stayed in their place.

And then, in 1676, exactly one century before the Revolutionary War, it happened. Bacon's Revolt.

You've probably never heard of it, and truthfully you don't need to know much about it. There was a lot of complicated stuff about hating Native Americans and internal English politics, but that's not important for our purposes. What IS important about it is this: it scared the southern elite out of their ever-loving minds. See, while Bacon was off doing HIS part of it, the slaves and indentured servants (and all the poor people who had been freed but used to be slaves or indentured servants) got together and decided, oh, hai, we have a common enemy, those aristocratic dudes who are oppressing us, let's get together and BURN THEIR HOMES AND CITIES. And then, after the revolt in Virginia was put down IT SPREAD TO MARYLAND. And abruptly those Cavaliers realized OH CRAP, THERE'S A LOT MORE OF THEM THEN US, and if we don't DO SOMETHING they will kill us all and destroy our aristocrat's utopia!

What they did about it was create the slave codes and the whole idea of "white" and "black" in an attempt to play poor whites and blacks off against each other so that the two groups would be so busy fighting each other they wouldn't have time to go after the elite. Which, sadly, has worked. They eliminated indentured servitude and hardened the rules for slavery, so that they could go to the poor "white" people and say "look, our skin color is the same, our cultural heritage is the same, you are JUST LIKE US, and not like those horrible "black" people, and your life is so much better than theirs is* and let's all be WHITE together and if you help us oppress and control those slaves we'll only oppress you a little." And instead of saying "Screw you, we're going to join with the slaves and send you all packing back to England so there's NOBODY oppressing ANY of us," they said "sure, okay."

*not THAT much better.

This was a really bad deal for the newly christened poor "white" people, on a multitude of levels. And a large part of it has to do with slavery, and where the burdens fell. Nobody is going to stay in slavery voluntarily unless you force them, particularly when it's as brutal and hopeless and universal a form of slavery as the South was busily developing. So you have to have social controls, and those things cost time, effort, and money. And guess where the burden of that fell? Not on the elite who were the ones PROFITING from slavery, no. On the poor whites. For example! In order to prevent slaves from running away in the night you have to have white people out patrolling every night. This was not, by and large, a paid position. Every able-bodied white man in the area would take a turn at it, usually one night a month on a rotation. And you'd have one really rich guy with LOTS of slaves, he's getting BY FAR the most value out of this, right? But he only spends one night a month doing this, and the next day he can sleep in because he doesn't have to work, his slaves do it for him. Then there would be a couple of what middle class whites the south had, and they'd have a couple of slaves, so they were at least benefiting some, and they could MAYBE sleep in but unlike the rich dude, they would have to work the next day. But most of the guys on the slave patrol were poor guys who owned no slaves and would NEVER be able to afford any. They are getting no benefit out of this whatsoever. And they don't get to sleep in the next morning, they are going to have to work sun up to sun down just to feed themselves and their family. They are, as a class, putting in like 95% of the work needed to maintain the slave system, and getting 0% of the wealth out of it. It's a great scam.

So while all that's going on, the North has slaves but not huge numbers of them, and instead of worrying about "how to control the lower class" they're worrying about "how to expand the middle class." And this has huge economic consequences. Not only are their economies totally different, the North's economy is A LOT healthier. Like, orders of magnitude healthier. But in the Colonial period, at least, this is not apparent on the surface. Nobody's really figured out much about GDPs and the like, and so the South looks awesome on the surface. They produce expensive raw materials like indigo, rice, and cotton, which they then sell at a hefty profit. They've got a lot of REALLY RICH FAMILIES. They glitter. The northerners ... just don't glitter. Even if it weren't against their whole Puritan schtick, at this point they don't have anybody as fabulously wealthy as the southern elite. But they also don't have the sort of desperate poverty that is normal in the south for much of the population, and what they DO have is a vibrant and growing middle class. So even if they aren't as impressive on the surface, their society as a whole has a larger GDP than the south, and unlike the South's economy which is largely stagnant, the North is growing great guns.

Before we go any further, I don't want you to take away from this that the Northerners were saints or anything. They were complicit in their Southern bretheren's work, as "Molasses to Rum to Slaves" from 1776 points out so powerfully.

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Economic Differences and Political Boondoggles, or, How the South Learns That Temper Tantrums Are A Viable Political Tool

So the Revolutionary War happens, and during that generation a lot of the Southern elite were really uneasy about the contradiction between fighting for their own political freedom while keeping others in literal bondage. But not uneasy enough to really change things, right? They still believe that they are better than everyone else and deserve to rule everything, that's what they've believed all along, and they don't want to risk creating a situation where they might lose control and not be fabulously wealthy any more. Where's the fun in that? And they want to dominate national politics, it's REALLY IMPORTANT to them. If they can't, they are going to take their marbles and go home. Since the North is attached to this ideal of a United States more than the South is, the South can get a lot of concessions by threatening to take their marbles and go home. (They haven't quite devolved into toddlers yet, but they're getting there.) And this is where a whole bunch of the political boondoggles of the US Constitution come in. Such as the 3/5 Compromise, which I always find hard to believe the North actually AGREED to.

For those of you who are not American, the national government is based on each state working together, not the general population. Political districts are state-based, Electoral College votes are state-based, everything is state-based. And some of these things (like the Senate) are based on geography (two senators for each state, regardless of how big or small it is) and some of these things (like the House of Representatives and number of votes each state gets in the Electoral College) are based on how much population each state has. And therein lies the rub for slave societies.

You can't give slaves the vote, obviously, because they would vote to free themselves. But if you don't count them at ALL for the purposes of votes, if you apportion House seats and Electoral College votes just on the basis of the white population ... some parts of the south are going to have very few of either. And then the South won't be able to dominate national politics, and that wouldn't be any fun at all. On the other hand, the North wasn't that thrilled about the idea of "oh, they're not citizens and they can't vote or do anything else citizens do, but WE get to vote FOR them." So they compromised and said that for the purposes of apportioning votes in the House and Electoral College, slaves counted as 3/5 of a person. Which gives the South a big boost both in Presidential elections and in the day-to-day negotiations in the House. I mean, regardless of the ethics of it, this and other "compromises" pretty much screwed over northern political interests until the Civil War, because it gave the South the votes needed to keep control through a combination of actual votes and temper tantrums.

Anyway, now we're in the first half of the 19th Century, and the North is growing great guns. The economy is taking off like a rocket, and the South's economy ... is inching along like a snail. Because the North wants to grow, they want the middle class to prosper, and so they are doing things that will help it grow. One of the things they're doing is building lots of infrastructure. Roads are a necessary precondition for economic growth because without them you can't get goods to market. Schools, too--as the Industrial Revolution gets into full swing, you need more and more people with at least some education. Hospitals, etc. The South isn't. Because they don't want poor people (and especially not slaves!) to travel, or get too prosperous, or too educated, because then they'll be harder to control. The Southern elite has decided that they would rather have all of a small pie than a large chunk of a big pie, so as long as they, personally, stay wealthy the don't want the pie as a whole to grow. (The pie being the economy.)

I don't remember all the details now, a decade and a half later, but I do remember sitting in class while the professor outlined all the ways in which slavery hamstrung the Southern economy, and how we all sat there flabbergasted that anyone would think it was a good idea. Now, at the time they didn't have all the tools of economic analysis we have today to see all the fine details of why stuff was happening the way it did, but they could (and often did) see the bigger ones, and they could sure as hell see the difference in large-scale RESULTS between them and the North, and they still chose to double down on slavery whenever the opportunity presented itself. To give you an example of how different things were, say you were a Southerner who got rich and wanted to invest. You bought some land and slaves and you got rich and built yourself a plantation house. You got rich, but society as a whole is not benefiting. There is no more infrastructure than there was, and there is very little more money in the local economy than there was, because mostly you're saving it or sending it off to the North or England where they're building a lot more luxurious things than down in the South, and there's no secondary industry being spawned. Good for you! You're now richer. The economy as a whole benefits very little.

Now, say you had the same amount of money to invest, but you were a Northerner. Instead of slaves you invest in, say, a railroad. And it is profitable. Your personal return on investment is about the same as that Southerner with his slaves, but the railroad doesn't just benefit YOU, it economically benefits the whole REGION. Ordinary farmers can send their vegetables to market in the city and make more money on them. Small businessmen can sell their products outside their own town, or get raw materials shipped in much cheaper. People who have no opportunity in their own hamlet can go easily to find work elsewhere. Railway employees are learning valuable mechanical and business skills that a lot of them will take to other jobs and some of them will use to start businesses of their own. Plus, the northern states have higher local taxes which they then use to build infrastructure. You are still rich, but the local--and regional!--economy benefits from your success.

So why didn't the South invest in things like railroads, too? Why keep doubling down on slavery? Well, remember, their whole culture was shaped by people who wanted to be aristocratic noblemen. That's still their ideal. If you invest in a railroad you are just a dirty businessman. If you invest in slaves and the closest thing America has to an English estate, you are a gentleman. So who cares if the railroad would be better for society? You don't, you have a good carriage and the wealth to go anywhere you want. And besides, railroads are only really profitable if ordinary joes have enough money to use them for transport and business purposes, too, and remember the whole "aristocracy" shtick goes hand-in-hand with "making sure nobody but us has the money for anything fun, so they know their place." For railroads in the south to be as profitable and prevalent as railroads in the north, you would have to change that whole mindset. And they didn't want to. This example focuses on the railroads because it's what I remember, but it is largely illustrative of the larger picture and the differences in how things worked in the two regions.

Back to national politics, and how all these economic differences affected things. Remember that the southern elite honestly believed it was their God-given right to rule, that they should guide America because obviously they were the best men to do so. But as time went on, two things happened: one, the generation of Revolutionaries who had moral qualms about slavery died off, and their sons not only decided that there was no problem with slavery, but that it was a moral good. (Southerners, as part of their tendency towards heroic delusions in which they are noble knights as in the days of old, are also prone to taking any bad decision and doubling down on it rather than admitting any fault or error.) And second, the differences between the two economies started growing by leaps and bounds and it was pretty obvious to anybody that the northern economy was LIGHT YEARS BETTER.

Like, there are all these diary entries and news articles from European tourists who come to America and visit the North and are Really Impressed because they've got rich people who are as wealthy as anybody else in the world but they also have all this BUSINESS going on at all levels, and things are HAPPENING, and lots of people are improving their lot in life, and while there are slums they're a lot smaller than in most other places of the time. (It's not perfect. There's tons of racism and sexism and classism causing inequities everywhere, but all the things that are being built are impressive enough to impress even people determined to be snobbish about provincial yokels.) Then they go to the South and go, wow, these people are all slooooooooow and provincial with a few rich jackasses at the top. So the southern elite develop one hell of an inferiority complex. Because they are SUPPOSED TO BE THE BEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD. But whenever they push their nose outside their own region ... nobody else agrees with them.

The South’s Persecution Complex vs. The North’s Manifest Destiny

By all rights, the North should have dominated the country politically by, say, 1810. They had far more money and far more people. (Both because they had a higher rate of children surviving due to better medical care and less poverty, but also because no sane immigrant would ever go to the South unless he already had the money to buy a plantation and join the local aristocracy ... and most people with that kind of cash don't immigrate to another country.) But the South had all those boondoggles favoring them in the Constitution, and they also had a willingness to throw great big whiny pissbaby tantrums to get their way. And round about this time they also develop a MASSIVE persecution complex. Like you know how modern Conservative Christians tend to think that if they don't get their way, if they can't dictate political policy, they are being persecuted? The southern elite of the early 19th Century makes them look like pikers. Because the southern elite DID control the country, AND THEY STILL BELIEVED THEY WERE BEING PERSECUTED.

You think I'm joking? Of the first fifteen presidents of the United States, every pre-Civil War president from Washington on down, only 6 were Northerners. Literally 2/3 of the time, the South controlled the Presidency. As for major political decisions, again, you put up a list of major laws and political compromises on a national level from this period, and about 2/3 of them were decided in favor of the South, which was (let me say it again louder for the folks in the back) a lot poorer and less populous than the North.

This is a summary of pretty much every major national debate in the first half of the 19th Century: The South and the North want different things. The North looks like it is going to get its way because it is more powerful economically and more populous. The South screams about how the North always gets its way, it's not fair, the South is being persecuted, they should just take their marbles and go home. (Seriously, they sound like spoiled five year olds.) About 2/3 of the time the Northern elite roll their eyes but cave. Meanwhile, the average joe on the street up North fumes because those fucking inbred Southern aristocratic cretins just screwed him over AGAIN. (The average joe on the street down South mostly either is too busy just trying to keep from starving to pay attention, or if they are, well, the elite control the papers and society so he only sees a very slanted view of things and isn't allowed much political participation anyway. But contrary to what the Confederate patriots would have you believe, quite a lot of white Southerners loathed their "leaders" for good reason.)

Things get more ridiculous as the decades pass. Because at first the average Joe on the street up North could tell himself that obviously the Southern economy sucked, eventually it would collapse, and it certainly wouldn't spread, and so let those fucking inbred Southern aristocratic cretins keep Virginia, obviously as the country expands west they will be less and less relevant, and the Northern system will finally prevail. Like, there was realistic hope for a long-term solution where okay the South can just be its own little region built on slaves and sabotaging its own growth to prop up the elite, and everywhere else can just have a sane (and free) economic system. But the problem is, the South can see the writing on the wall, too, and part of what they spend their political capital on is enlarging the region of their control. Like, they don't let free states get admitted to the Union unless there is a new slave state to be added at the same time, which means the slave states always control 50% of the Senate. And it starts to dawn on people up north that unless something DRASTIC changes, the South will ALWAYS have just enough votes to force the North to dance to its tune, and the South is only getting louder and more vehement about how THEY ARE BEING PERSECUTED! And northern resentment against the South and the whole institution of slavery starts building.

Now, I want to make it quite clear that the whole nation, North and South, had bought into White Supremacy as an ideology for decades by this point. Even most White abolitionists are racists. Some of them are the "nice" condescending type who sort of think black people are about the equivalent of dogs, but you wouldn't treat a dog the way the Southerners treat their slaves. They envision an abolitionist movement in which nice White people like them free the slaves, and educate them (at least as much as you CAN educate them, which they debated) and give them jobs and the former slaves are eternally grateful and deferential. Some of the White abolitionists are more open in their racism. They hate slavery because it means that black slaves take jobs away from free white men, and so they want to get rid of the problem all together by shipping the slaves back to Africa. Abolitionism started the 19th Century as the pipe dream of lunatic fringe whackos, and what gave it steam to grow great guns as the century wore on was not, by and large, a principled moral stand against racism, but rather an objection that it limited most of the benefits of White Manhood to a small group of white men (i.e. the Southern elite), instead of ALL white men. Most of America--especially in the North--believed in Manifest Destiny, that it was their God-given right to expand westward and take this "empty" land and subdue it and make it their own. In the North, the focus was on it being settled by middle-class and working-class farmers and businessmen. In the South, the focus was on second sons of gentlemen getting their own plantation and thus extending the system of the "deserving few" and the peons. And mostly even then, the whole point was to preserve their cultural and political hegemony, whereas in the North the focus was more on expansion for its own sake.

But these two economic systems can't coexist in the same territory, you understand? A system built on slavery will inevitably devalue free labor. A system built on free labor will inevitably undermine slavery, and make it less profitable (if it's even viable) because society as a whole is not going to provide the social controls necessary to keep slaves in their place, the slaveowner is going to have to do it him or herself. So while the South is trying desperately to preserve its power, the North (whose population is growing by leaps and bounds) needs more space for free white men to build new communities. And it can't do that if the slave system gets expanded. By expanding enough to keep their political hegemony strong, the South is sequestering more and more of the country's national resources and potential space for the exclusive use of their elite. They are forming a drag on the national economy. They are selfishly monopolizing resources that millions of White northern men want for themselves. Pressure starts to build, and in newly settled territories pro-slave and anti-slave people start murdering one another.

Taking Our Marbles And Going Home, Then They’ll Be Sorry: Civil War Edition

About this time the Whig party starts to fall apart. For reasons that don't need explaining at this juncture, the structure of US elections kind of inevitably forces us into a two-party system, that's just the way the math works. So a new party can't be born until a previous party self-destructs. Well, at least a new party can't be a true national player until a previous party self-destructs. At this point the two parties are the Whigs and the Democrats, and then the Whigs self-destruct, and the Democrats split in half (North vs. South) and the Republican party comes roaring into existence.

The Republican Party is made up, at this point, of a whole bunch of disparate groups: former Whigs, modernizers, abolitionists, but the most influential group is the Free Soilers. Their slogan: "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men!" Their whole goal, their only single issue, is to prevent the spread of slavery. If slavery is contained, the South's power will fade as more and more free states are admitted to the Union, and EVERYTHING ELSE THE NORTH WANTS then becomes possible. If the Southern system is allowed to spread, they will continue to dominate. The economy will be slowed, free white men will not have the opportunities they deserve, and America will not live up to its full potential. This cannot be allowed to happen.

Meanwhile, the South has been slipping ever further into la-la land. We have already mentioned their persecution complex, which is only getting stronger as time goes on. Anything other than complete victory is persecution. No compromise is possible. They have believed all along that they are the best, smartest, most noble men in America and thus it is their Right and Duty to guide the nation. To this they have added a heavy helping of aristocratic delusions. Sir Walter Scott is by far the most popular author in the South, and every gentleman thinks himself Ivanhoe, a knight, a Great Hero. They are Noble Men in every sense of the word, they are Great and True and Morally Superior to all other men--they are heroes, courageous, dashing, etc., etc., etc., If anyone doesn't like them or stand in awe of them, it's because they simply don't understand the Greatness Of The South. This is what the elite and what little middle class the South has thinks. Poor whites, on the other hand, are about evenly split between buying into the whole thing and being disgusted by it. And the rest of the country thinks they're a bunch of whiny immature pissbabies trying to control everything.

Which is why they elect Lincoln. He didn't even appear on the ballot in most of the South, and he won any way. Like I said. The Southerners had been falling behind the North, demographically and economically, for DECADES at this point. It was ludicrous of the South to believe they could maintain their national political hegemony indefinitely, but like I said, by this point they're pretty delusional. Their control has, for decades, depended on the North sighing and giving in whenever they throw a temper tantrum. As soon as the North gets fed up with that ... well. The North wins. Lincoln was, until this point, a non-entity who was only the Republican candidate because the Republican Party is, at this point, a loosely-aligned amalgamation of splinter groups whose main line of agreement is that We Aren't Going To Let The South Push Us Around Any More. Anybody with any prominence in any of those splinter groups would have too many enemies from previous political parties to rally the party support. So a guy nobody cares about, but who is firmly Free Soil, sounds really good. As it happens, it sounds really good to the rest of the North, too.

Now, Lincoln's pledge isn't to get rid of slavery. His personal beliefs are in favor of abolition, and he is genuinely one of the least-racist White politicians of the era, but he doesn't think abolition is realistic and he is a realist before all else. His main goal is to prevent slavery from spreading. That's it. He's not trying to destroy the South, he just wants to curtail its power.

The South goes nuts. Here is proof, PROOF that they are being persecuted! They are the brave knights, they are the guardians of American culture, they are the Great Men, they are the noble heroes, the martyrs in the cause of Protecting White People! They will show those jumped-up dirty peasants from up north! They are going to take all their toys and go home AND THEN THOSE BULLIES WILL BE SORRY! They will secede and form their own country that really APPRECIATES their greatness, and all the world will see that THEY are far better and richer and smarter and more necessary than their northern cousins! All of Europe will support them, because they can't POSSIBLY live without Southern cotton! Everything will be perfect and nobody will ever persecute them again!

Spoiler alert: it doesn't work out quite like that.

I mean, don't get me wrong. They did have at least a little crumb of truth to it; they were much better fighters than the Northerners. (All that knighthood delusion, expressed through all those military academies, paid off.) Personal valor and gallantry on the battlefield? No question. The South was superior. Military tactics and strategy? Yup. Superior there, too. But that was it. They sucked at everything else.

Politically they were a mess and showed nothing but how terrible they were at political leadership. I mean, the whole Southern system is built on selfishness. "I want to be wealthy and make everybody else wait on me hand and foot." That's it, that's the bedrock. I mean, it's a communal selfishness, that focuses a lot in preservation of the class, but as it turns out that doesn't really translate well to preservation of the nation. I mean, a lot of the fights between North and South had been over funding infrastructure and the like. The North would say, "oh, hey, we really need this, it will benefit the economy as a whole and the country as a whole," and the Southern elite would respond "but it doesn't benefit ME PERSONALLY all that much, so why should I help pay for it?" Or even things that didn't require funding, the Southern elite didn't care if it would benefit the country as a whole if it would discomfort them in any way. And it turns out that if nobody is willing to pay for anything and nobody is willing to allow themselves to be inconvenienced or discomforted, and everyone believes that when you don't get your way you take your marbles and go home, you ... can't really run a government. (This is why Jefferson Davis tried to turn down the Presidency of the Confederacy. He knew exactly what was coming.) It was one show of incompetence after another. Nothing worked, nothing got accomplished, when you read stories and records of all the shenanigans and incompetencies you are left with the realization that your average middle school class council would have done a FAR better job. Heck, our current Republican congresspeople are more competent than they were.

The military leadership of the Confederacy was superior to the military leadership of the Union, but the disparity in numbers and materiel was overwhelming. The only reason it lasted as long as it did was the Union general with the longest tenure was McClellan, who hated advancing unless he was sure of victory and had a positive genius for winning a battle and then RETREATING. Once they finally had someone who was both competent and willing to press forward (Grant), it was all over but the shouting.

As for the support of Europe ... dude, nobody liked the South. To the actual aristocracies of Europe, the Southern elite were commoners with delusions of grandeur. They sneered at both North and South equally. And Southern cotton was very useful to them, but they had other sources of cotton and other industries. The South ... their entire economy was based on exporting raw goods that they grew to other places to be processed, either to factories in the North or to factories in Europe. Their economy simply couldn't survive without markets. But all of their markets could survive without them. It was a rude awakening.

More Delusions of Grandeur: The Whole Lost Cause Romantic Bullshit

They lost. They lost HUGELY. Their economy was trashed and, for a time, the elites' stranglehold on power was curbed by the occupying Union army and Reconstruction. But the South has always been good at delusions of grandeur. As soon as the boot was off their necks, they set busily about constructing an alternate history in which they weren't whiny immature pissbabies but noble, principled men defending Right and Good and Just Society. Instead of sighing for the Golden Noble Age of Heroic Knights, now they will sigh for the Golden Noble Age of Heroic Confederate Soldiers. Their leaders weren't feckless and selfish and incompetent, they were Noble Leaders Heroically Trying To Build A Great Society, Heartlessly Prevented By The Grinding Northern Industry. They will convince the world of how ABSOLUTELY AWESOME THEY WERE.

And this time they succeed. They didn't just convince themselves of their delusions, they convinced most everyone else, too! Places that hated them or resented them or rolled their eyes at them now accept that they were these noble heroes! See, the thing is, the South was not all united in support of the Confederacy. The elite, sure, they were all for secession. Blacks were obviously NOT, but nobody asked them. Middle class whites and poor whites ... it really varied from region to region and from individual to individual. West Virginia was the only region where poor and middle class whites who wanted to stay in the Union had enough sway to make it happen (and the geography to keep themselves from being conquered by the Confederate states surrounding them) but there were actually quite a lot of places in and around the South that wished they could have done the same. But by now they believe that their ancestors were wholeheartedly Confederate and that it is a matter of heritage and pride that they be the same.

Do you know why most historians--especially most WHITE historians--who focus on the Civil War focus on military history? Both professionals and amateurs both? Because it's the one thing the South actually did WELL. If you look at the politics, you have to deal with the fact that they were a bunch of whiny, immature brats with less maturity than most five-year-olds who threw temper tantrums whenever they didn't get their way and couldn't govern or lead themselves out of a wet paper bag, and who would have collapsed under their own weight even if they'd managed to win. If they had won, and managed to put together some sort of ramshackle government, I guarantee you that a) it would have been very unstable and b) it would have been passed around like a prize between a few of the elite families as their own personal playground and c) their economy would be pretty poor. (Also, good chance that somewhere along the line there would have been a slave revolt that actually worked long-term.) Because as much as the Southern Elite managed to get themselves back in control after Reconstruction, and as much as they managed to put a lot of the old structures that benefit them at everybody else's expense back in place on a state level, they STILL have much more of a functioning economy post-slavery than they did at any time during it. The South's economy has always been slower than the North's because they keep hobbling it so the elite keep in control, but they weren't able to do that quite as badly and so in the 20th Century the gap between them and the North has closed a bit. The South wins the Civil War? The South would look like a third-world country today, and not one of the ones that is pulling itself up by its bootstraps, either. And the thing is, where most third-world countries are the way they are because a colonial power came in and smashed everything nice, the South would be that way because they did it to themselves in an effort to keep the poor poor and the rich rich.

And I look at this and shake my head at the triumph of propaganda over reality, and also at the fact that ANYBODY, even a racist, could POSSIBLY think that those idiotic inbred delusional cretinous whiny pissbabies were cool or worthy of adoration.

Discussion and commments are at my Dreamwidth.

#history #politics #US history #slavery #economics #meta

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dodgeahex · 4 years ago

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Seulgi's love of dance is prematurely halted by the unpredictable. What kind of twisted reality made her true love the thing that could kill her?

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Poise.

Grace.

Sweat.

Artistry.

Strength.

At the age of three, most children have their own take of the world. Pure minds and extraordinary imaginations lead these wonderful bundles of joy with no limitations or expectations. Dreaming of becoming a professional singer, astronaut, or even president every day and night is not seen as absurd; it’s encouraged.

After these rambunctious dreamers begin attending grade school, the heartbreaking truth embeds itself in their little minds. It is very unrealistic, and flat-out impossible, for all their dreams to become reality. Not everyone can be the president or make it big in the music business. Hope becomes discouragement and dreams stay dreams, locked away, and forgotten.

It seems as though parents encourage the corruption of innocent minds by directing the youth in paths that make great amounts of money instead of what they’re really passionate about. Others do not direct at all, leaving them clueless and helpless. Time progresses even more, and eventually, the motivation these innocent children once had is replaced with shiny electronic devices, solitude, or multiple red cups at parties. All have the same mindset: get out of school and venture through the rest of life in a career that is expected.

Dreams are long gone. Reality has taken its toll.

At the age of three, Seulgi was lucky enough that her dream was along the path her parents wanted her to travel. It took one bad visit to the babysitter’s, in which this cheerful toddler and her younger sister Sooyoung voraciously downed numerous boxes of sweets, to drive the tired old woman to the point of quitting. The two had always been particularly hyper without the help of jellybeans and pixie sticks. Seulgi always wondered if the poor lady used the incident as an excuse to finally get her well-deserved time off.

The girls’ mother took this opportunity to introduce the two to her former dream; ballet. Prior to marrying and starting a family, she was known as Bravura Bonhwa for her intricately graceful performances and solos, though a torn tendon quickly ended her career before it could really kick-off. Seulgi eagerly slipped her pastel flats onto her always cold feet and fluffy tutu over her pale frame just to see the glow in her mother’s eyes. The thick air of summer was setting up to bid its farewell for the season, its radiant heat fleeting. Seulgi and Sooyoung each held one of their mother’s hands, skipping across the crosswalk and kicking pebbles, on the way to the nearest ballet studio in downtown Seoul.

At three, one twenty-minute class was all it took for Seulgi to find her passion. Every week, she would insist on rolling her reluctant black hair into a bun by herself before class (which her mom would soon come behind and fix). Mastering the barre and basic routines took no time at all. Once Seulgi turned six, one class a week quickly became three with her begrudging sister trudging along behind her. She didn’t care if the short hour left her with headaches and leg cramps. Twirling, leaping, and being on her toes was all Seulgi was interested in anymore.

She dreamed of becoming a professional ballerina.

Her advancement never seemed to cease. The instructor saw so much potential in the determined, charismatic child that she placed her in a class with the older students. Constellations of red cascaded onto her cheeks, burning hot to the touch, once she first entered. Everyone was taller and more advanced than she had thought them out to be. The brave now ten-year-old bit her lip, sucked her stomach into her back, pushed her chest forward, held her head straight, and persevered.

Catching up was hardly a challenge at all. Fall was in full swing; the cool weather signaled the annual tryouts for The Nutcracker at the studio. Younger students were automatically cast as secondary characters, such as snowflakes, mice, and soldiers. The upper classes, Seulgi included, had the opportunity to dance in lead roles or dance in the very front. Seulgi wasn’t entirely too sure what The Nutcracker was about, but she knew she wanted to be the lead, Clara. She knew this was highly unlikely, seeing as there were still many classes ahead of her, so she set her mind on being a dancer in the front of the line.

Rotating, galloping, and entrechat-ing her way, she found herself becoming a lead soldier for the production.

Now, Seulgi was practicing every chance she got. She wanted to become the best she could be. The passion heating her entire body was evident; against his best wishes, her father uprooted the family from their small home into one slightly bigger so his beloved daughters could have a room to practice in when the studio downtown was closed. Naturally, Seulgi spent all of her free time stretching on the barre or doing pas de chats and delicate pirouettes. Her parents had a hard time coercing her out of the practice room for meals and family time. Even when they were finally able to get the youngsters ready for bed, Seulgi would still use the footboard of her bed as a barre, much to her sister’s annoyance.

“I want to sleep,” Sooyoung would whine, silky hair toppling out of her ponytail and framing her pouty face. “Could you turn off the lights and go to bed?”

“I’ll never get better by sleeping,” Seulgi would smile and continue standing on pointe with her chilled toes.

The price for Seulgi’s love was rapidly adding up. Blisters blotched the entirety of her feet. Her muscles were extremely worn and needed to be deeply rolled. Pointe shoes definitely did not come cheap; with Seulgi’s constant practice, she was wearing through a pair and a half every two weeks. She even started having nosebleeds - something that never used to happen but became pretty regular. Seulgi found it odd that her constant dancing was irritating her nose like that. Nevertheless, the eloquent little soldier would stuff tissue inside her nose, wrap her tender toes in gauze, lace-up her worn-down flats, and continue practicing.

Two weeks before the production, Seulgi’s dream fell like snow over Seoul.

Winter had kissed the skies and allowed its soft snowflakes to blanket the city that never stops. A week before Seulgi and Sooyoung’s tech week, Seulgi was becoming increasingly anxious. The ten-year-old was wearing herself to the bone in an attempt to perfect her solo before the big performance. No matter how high she jumped or how perfectly she stuck her landings, nothing was good enough in her eyes. Exhaustion was slowly consuming her. The only time the lifeless girl slept was when the sleep deprivation took over and she found it too difficult to stand.

On one sluggish walk to the studio with Sooyoung, Seulgi realized she’d forgotten her water bottle. After reassuring her sister that she’d catch up, Seulgi branched off of their normal route to stop in a convenience store. Yawning and furiously rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands in a poor attempt at staying awake, the not-so poised soldier shuffled into the drink aisle. Her dark, glossy eyes scanned the shelves for the water when they caught sight of something else instead.

A week before the production, Seulgi collapsed during dress rehearsal.

Winter hissed and let its frigid winds rustle the city, chilling it to the core. To counteract her fatigue, Seulgi decided to spend her week’s allowance on energy drinks. She had tucked multiple cans into her duffel to sneak into her room after rehearsal. Deciding she was too tired to go to class without one, she popped open a can and started chugging before her sister could get suspicious. The sickening, syrupy-sweet liquid coating her throat was absolutely revolting, but she knew it would give her the energy to continue practicing throughout the week.

Seulgi found herself drowning in her own solace, leading up to her fall. She shut her family out to continue practicing. On the first day of tech week, Seulgi and Sooyoung had set out to go to rehearsal where their parents would pick them up to take them out for a special lunch. Once it came time for class, Seulgi worked herself too hard. The dangerous drinks had her heart beating so rapidly, she could feel it vibrating her chest. Choosing to ignore it, she continued leaping with the rest of the dancers. The rapid beating intensified, adding a dull pain to the mixture. Seulgi tried her hardest to ignore it until it became absolutely unbearable.

Seulgi thought her heart was exploding.

***

At nineteen, Seulgi still didn’t understand her condition, nor did she want to. Waking up to blinding fluorescent lights beating down on your face and different wires attached to your bare chest was not something a normal ten year-old would like to endure. She never expected the thick smell of heavy chemicals clinging to the air to become part of her routine. The feeling of a rough blanket scratching at the back of her arms after the first time she passed out gave her goosebumps while a machine’s excessive beeping droned in her ear.

As Seulgi laced up her, now useless, flats, she thought about when she first learned of her disease. “Stay still sweetheart,” the doctor had rested her hand on top of Seulgi’s. “We’re just finishing up some tests. Once we get you settled into your room, you’ll be able to see your family. How does that sound?”

Seulgi remembered blinking and trying to swallow away the dryness from her mouth. “Tests?”

“Yes, darling,” the older woman had plastered on a smile as hopeful as any hospital could allow. “For your heart condition.”

The doctors said it wasn’t necessarily the fault of the energy drinks, but they did play a part in making her chest hurt and alerting the rest of her body. Seulgi had aortic coarctation—a narrowing of her aorta. Because of this, her heart had to work harder to deliver blood to her body. To Seulgi’s dismay, her mom had always blamed herself for not piecing together the symptoms sooner, but they were easily masked. The headaches, weak muscles, and leg cramps could have easily been attributed to Seulgi always practicing, while the nosebleeds never seemed like a big deal. Unfortunately, the disease wasn’t exactly the problem. The issue was that it had gone undetected for so many years, while Seulgi overexerted herself. The exhaustion, shortness of breath, cough, and lack of appetite were indicators of something much bigger.

It wasn’t just heart disease. It was heart failure.

Had she undergone treatment sooner, and not overworked herself, there was a chance she wouldn’t be sitting on the bench of her old practice room, large woolen sweater concealing her heart monitor and small frame, pining to be able to give her all on the wooden floors once more. Maybe she’d be able to dance, but not as well. Or maybe she’d still be in the same boat with a tattletale piece of equipment taped to her chest letting everyone know what her heart was doing. Due to her most recent chest pains returning, she had to wear the damned thing for two weeks to determine what needed to happen next.

To her right were her daily slew of medications—diuretics, pain relievers, and aids—with a large jug of water and a bowl of fresh fruit, courtesy of her mom. She poked the pills around the bench with her index finger, forming a smiley face. Were they actually helping her anymore? Her chest pains were hardly numbing, and her appetite was replaced by a constant state of nausea. The weakening girl choked down her pills nonetheless and followed up with a few large gulps of water. Reaching under the bench, she grabbed the familiar worn-down flats and began lacing them up her tender feet, because acceptance is the hardest pill to swallow.

Sooyoung had gone onto Seoul’s most elite ballet school while Seulgi was homeschooled. She even got initiated into a ballet company. How was this fair? Sooyoung didn’t even like to dance. What higher power had her sister living her dreams while she was forced to watch from the sidelines anticipating a transplant? Cheeks heating, Seulgi crept to the studio’s door and carefully turned the lock. This was going to be her space until the end.

Seulgi knew she wouldn’t have the strength to do a full routine. Truthfully, she was advised against ballet altogether. All the leaps and twists she craved to experience once more were now too extreme for her failing organ. She was advised to go on short walks instead. How was walking around the block anywhere close to the beautiful feeling of being the lightest person in the room? The stubborn girl pulled out her phone and began queueing up songs. After pressing play on a slow-tempo ballad, Seulgi slowly stood and made her way to the barr.

Seulgi started with small pliés, starting with small squats until her legs were completely bent at her sides. As the song picked up slightly, she moved to stretch her achy legs on the barr. Bending her body to simply touch her toes felt foreign now. Worse, it felt unnatural. How could something she deemed so important become a stranger?

Waiting for the next song to start, Seulgi begged her heart to give her this one moment. Please, she closed her eyes and placed her hand on her monitor. Please just let me feel like me again. When the song finally ended, Seulgi could hear her uneasy breaths counting down to the next. When the song began, she immediately leaped back into her world.

Panting as she twirled, Seulgi bounded through the practice room bringing the old space back to life. She let the melody guide her through the first verse before her chest began to protest. Refusing to give up so soon, she closed her eyes and danced harder. Seulgi danced like it was life or death because it was. She could sit through the rest of her short life yearning for a single chance to dance again, or she could dance and risk her heart giving out. She couldn’t live without dance, yet she couldn’t dance without living… what kind of twisted reality made the only thing worth living for the thing that could take her out?

Closing her eyes, Seulgi began to pirouette. If she could just get through this song unscathed, she’d go back to pouting for weeks before trying again. But this moment was what her body needed all along. This was the kind of medicine fake-friendly doctors couldn’t prescribe. Arabesque. Had her monitor alerted her parents? If they were trying to force the door open, she couldn’t hear over the music. Développé. As Seulgi lifts her leg behind her, she lets out a sharp cry. Her heart was overworked, and she knew she should stop. Clenching her jaw, she ignores her pleading organ to make it through the other half of the song.

Assemblé. Seulgi felt her nose beginning to drip. She knew the familiar crimson would wreak havoc on her clothes, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She was finally free. She was no longer strapped down to earth. She was flying. When Seulgi heard her monitor beeping, her reality slowly came crashing down once more. The beeping was quickly followed by banging on the door, followed by screams begging the fairy to give up her wings. Blood was no longer dripping from her nose; it was pouring. The dam was broken, drenching the front of her sweater.

Before she could get to the second chorus, Seulgi let out a shriek. Once she started crying out in pain, she couldn’t stop. Her body had finally had enough. Every part of her felt like it was on fire, and her vision was practically nonexistent. “Mommy,” the devastated teen screamed, blood dripping from the sides of her mouth. “Daddy!” Slipping on a few drops of blood, Seulgi’s thin frame met the floor with a thud.

Seulgi went up in flames.

#rotate #kang seulgi #seulgi #red velvet #red velvet fanfic #red velvet au #kpop #ballet au

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