#this is what he thinks of after providing free grave cleaning services

[northerncopse]

As of today, STEM science has been officially disbanded. The UN committee "On The Matters of All Relating To The Exact Scientific" has declared that humanity no longer requires the services of STEM sciences. It will take the world a few years to de-fund STEM research, university faculties, laboratories, and such. The Hadron Collider, as an example made by the jury of the UN committee, "has not been in use for 37 years now, do we really need it?" It has now become home to tea parties, a promenade, and philosophical departments.

The next few years will be a "clean-up operation" with small independent research groups double and triple checking all of the answers to the scientific questions. If something weird comes to light, the research groups will immediately perform an emergency correction operation (ECO) to solve for the incorrect answer. If they do not solve it during the next year, the UN will have to officially reinstate STEM sciences for the duration of further research. However, officials say that it is quite unlikely that "anything weird" will come up.

The first to go are the chemical departments, according to the UN's ruling. Professors will be recycled into straws and one-time-use cups, while students will be transferred to another field. The two most popular options of major-switching are archeology and philosophy departments.

For those unfamiliar with the current philosophical situation, the philosophical departments have been keeping to themselves ever since an anonymous individual proclaimed loudly outside one of their faculty: "I think you are a bunch of losers." The philosophical departments then proceeded to debate their status as "Losers," first by defining, and arguing on what it means and implies to be a "loser" and whether such state can be achieved.

In their 889-page response to such a baseless claim, the Coalition of Philosophical Departments (CoP) said, "It is… untrue… that… philosophy… can be considered… a 'loser'… study." A few hours after the publication of the 889-page response, an Anti-Coalition of Philosophical Departments (Anti-CoP) provided a counter-argument, saying that philosophy can, in fact, be considered to consist of "a bunch of fucking wusses." The full 1,578-page response can be accessed on the anticop.org website. The debate has been going for 37 years now with a total of 17,896,351,653 words being written as of now.

The archeological departments, on the other hand, have been quite self-sufficient, with the previous generations of archeologists entombing themselves in crypts, leaving anachronistic artefacts, and defending their graves with a series of puzzles and booby-traps. The current generation of archeologists continue to research the remnants of their professors to then pass on the legacy after dying.

While many find the decision to be quite controversial, researches and scholars all over the world voice out their agreement. David Jones, a professor of particle physics specialising in teaching the Theory of Absolutely-Fucking Everything, was overjoyed when he heard the news.

"We are finally free," he said in an interview with NCNC. "I have been teaching the same thing for 64 years and the university was preparing me for another de-ageficiation cycle to continue my tenure, but then the news hit and boy, I can't wait to finally throw myself into the Canadian black hole and let my soul be shredded into quarks."

A microbiology student, who preferred to remain anonymous, also commented on the dissolution of science, saying that they "couldn't see any prospective future" for themselves and were "considering on becoming a sex worker instead."

Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and many other top universities across the world decided to celebrate the "completion of science" by burning down their sprawling STEM faculties (some of which take up the size of New York City and include their own, personalised particle accelerators). Oxford released a statement that they will use the money from the now obsolete departments to "buy a bunch of dynamite and throw it into the Canadian black hole just to see what will happen." When asked about the future of humanities, Oxford's president was confused and asked "what is that?"

[kingsmoot]

arlan 1 + 12 + 13, severine 42 + 47 + 39

Ser Arlan Rivers ⚔️🐕🛡��

How would they define love if asked

if you asked Arlan this question he would probably make a dismissive dirty joke at you about how if you're not sure just by looking at it you could always try evaluating how you feel when you're balls deep in it.

but overall Arlan doesn't really have a working definition of love. he knows what he feels for Severine is total all-encompassing consuming devotion, and a part of that is love while a part of that reaches beyond that. he doesn't like who he was before he met Severine and he doesn't like who he forces himself to be when they are finally together, but he starts to really like himself when they finally leave Sweetport and escape to the free cities. he's finally caring for his beloved in a real and material way.

maybe if you asked him years down the line after his injury he would tell you very gravely that love must be sticking by your old man when he's failed you

that might be his most honest answer, that love is standing by and standing up for someone who can give you nothing in return. and he probably couldn't get through the sentence without choking up.

12. How committed are they to their principles, and what might get them to abandon them

Arlan is singularly committed to Severine and to basically nothing else. on Sweetport he is also fiercely devoted to and protective of her (their... kind of) children but he does leave them when he and Sev run off to the free cities so he's not nearly as devoted to them as to her.

he has total faith in Severine and tries, after meeting her, to be a better man than he's ever been before. he cleans up his act, starts being better at his job, becomes less rude and belligerent. he's doing all this while also visiting every Crownlands brothel to pay for doe eyed freckley maidens or pretending-to-be-maidens when he can't afford that so his clean up of his act isn't too penetrating in terms of instilling an actual conscious in him. but there's nothing he would not give up for Severine, she's his life's purpose and compass.

this in particular takes him to a dark and hopeless and terrifying place when it becomes clear that after his injury he will live but he will never be able to provide for the both of them again in the ways he knows how and will have to continue to rely on Severine for support in basic ADL for the rest of his life, because if he isn't living in service of her that means that he'll have to accept that she loves him as he is, even stripped of his utility. that's a hard thing for Arlan to believe and accept. but they get there <3

13. Is there a moral line they would never cross

not if it's anything Severine asked him to do. he did consider killing unnamed lord sunglass and his three children to free Severine from the bonds that kept her tied to the four of them but he didn't because he figured that she would never forgive him for the kids. and he loved them too much besides, so as much time as he spent thinking about it, he never brought it up.

what he doesn't know and what Severine would probably not admit to him if it ever came up because of how much she thinks he would hate her for it is that he had done this, and come to her that night still sticky with their blood to tell her to pack a bag because there was a boat waiting for them leaving in the next half hour, she would've gone. and she never would have resented him for it.

Severine Horpe 🐚🦋🌊

42. If given the chance to bring back someone from the dead, who would they choose and why

Severine doesn't have anyone currently dear to her and currently dead. If Arlan had succumb to his injury it would of course be him, but she wouldn't have stayed alive for long enough to make that decision or to have it presented to her.

if she had the ability to bring someone back she would probably ask Arlan if there was anyone he wanted, and then try to find someone else who had lost someone dear to them. she would definitely work very hard to try and transfer the wish to someone else who could really use it.

47. If they were an object, Which material(s) would they be made of

clear smooth smokey sea glass!

39. If they could end one thing—be it a person, ideology or misfortune—what would they choose to eradicate

this is a toughie because if Severine answered "arranged marriage" she would also be eradicating the entire social order of westeros. the thing that keeps her trapped and unhappy and caged is more than just the practice of arranged political marriage and a woman's duty to produce heirs, it's like. the whole thing. the same system that makes Arlan an anointed knight makes her an incubator. but it also grants her the privilege and safety of her station. it's what creates her station at all!

i think in Severine's perfect ideal world she would just marry Arlan and be his wife and the mother of his children while also keeping all of the comforts and privileges of her noble status. ideally she would want her father to marry her and Arlan and grant them some modest lands to raise a family and keep and she would be a good dutiful wife to her landed knight husband. because having this peaceful idyllic life with Arlan as her huband isn't possible, she's forced to live past and outside of the social order she was born into, but if she hadn't been forced to do this she would not have. she's not very rebellious or contrarian or strong willed. if being with Arlan had been possible within the established social order, she would've been perfectly content.

all to say that she would probably tell you "arranged marriage" but would not follow the thread of that into like. the abolition of westerosi feudalism. keep everything the same thank you but let me marry Arlan.

[wintaejk]

What Do You Dream About? | jjk

When ___’s brother comes to her asking for help, she has no other choice than to take his place as a member of the biggest gang in the city, B.A.F. However, this is when BTS, another cartel, arrives in town that ___ has for mission to keep company to Jeon Jungkook, the leader of the gang. But BTS is only there for a few days, and ___ realizes soon enough that she only has a night to enjoy Jungkook’s company. Or that she thinks, at least.

Pairing: Jungkook x reader

Genre: Mafia au | Strangers to Lovers | Fluff | Smut

Rating: 18+

Word Count: 9.8k

Warnings: Smut, oral (f receiving), fingering, language, English is not my first language so if some sentences are weird it’s probably the reason (sorry about that lol)

A/N: I’ve already posted that OS but with another fanbase. However, I took it off from tumblr because I am not longer reading about the group (I still love you my babies tho), and I wanted to modify it a bit before posting it here. So this is my first ever English work, I hope you will enjoy it! 

“You must be kidding me!”

It was the first and only thing you could say at the very moment. But as you looked at Yohan, your younger brother, you could tell he wasn’t kidding. Not at all, actually. “How did that happen?” You weren’t sure you wanted to know, to be honest, but you still had to ask.

“I was just… bored, I guess.” You’ve never been a violent kind of person, but at that very moment, all you wanted to do was to slap him. Hard. “You were bored? Jesus, Yohan! When people are bored, they read a book or watch television. They do not get enrolled in a gang.”

And now he was in deep shit. Asking for your help. But how could you ever say no to him, your little brother, the apple of your eyes.

“What gang?” You finally asked. Just thinking about the possibility of dealing with all those criminals was making you shiver. But you had no other choice. “B.A.F.” Yohan muttered.

B.A.F. was an acronym for Brave and Free. It wasn’t the biggest gang in the country, but it was the most important one in your city, the one controlling it. You could understand Yohan didn’t know how to deal with the situation, because you had no clue yourself. “I’ll deal with it.” You yet told him. You didn’t know how, but you knew you would find a way out.

It appeared that it wasn’t hard to find the B.A.F’s headquarters. What was hard though, was to manage to talk to someone who could – who would accept to be more precise – to listen to your offer. It took you almost thirty minutes and a lot of flirting to convince the guard to let you in. Not to mention the good amount of money you had to provide. What he didn’t need to know was that it didn’t matter for you: you could have offered him way more since your father always made sure your bank account was full enough.

“The girl ‘ere wan’ed to talk to ya, boss.” The huge amount of muscles said to a middle-aged man who looked at you curiously. “And what’s the girl’s name?” If you didn’t know already that he was the leader of the gang, you would have immediately guessed. He wasn’t only dressed in fancy clothes. All in him yelled power and respect, from his demeanor to his perfectly styled hair.

“____.” Your voice wasn’t as confident as you would have wanted it to be, but you still managed to control it enough not to be shaky. You also took advantage of the silence to add quickly your last name after a few seconds.

That’s when you decided to take a look at what was around you. The room was simple, and you noticed the guard from the entrance had already left. But you immediately realized that you weren’t alone. Other gang members were attending this meeting, and you almost let a gasp of surprise when you recognized Kim Taehyung in the lot.

Taehyung was studying at the same university as you. He was a tall, beautiful, young man. He belonged to the kind of men that were almost impossible to ignore when passing them in the corridors. However, as much as you knew who he was, you were almost 100% sure he didn’t know you in return. And it was maybe better that way.

“Well, ___… Why such a pleasant surprise?” The leader got your attention back, a malicious smirk on the corner of his lips. You sighed lightly, mostly to gather your courage. “I’m Yohan’s sister. I- I would like to make a deal.” He didn’t ask anything. Or at least not verbally. Because the eyebrow he raised clearly showed you he wanted you to keep going.

“I would like you to let him go. To free him.” Bursts of laughter weren’t the reaction you were expecting. And it didn’t make you feel confident. Not a bit. “You must be very brave to come ask us such a thing, doll. Or very stupid.” At that moment, you started to think that you made a mistake by coming here. You started to think you were digging your own grave by trying to deal with these men.

“Fine. I’m all ears. What do you have to offer me?” You gulped. You knew with the look on his face, with the glint in his eyes that you’ll have to offer him more than what you had expected in the first place to manage to have what you wanted. “I can give you a lot of money. My father-” But he cut you before you could even finish your sentence.

“I don’t care about your money, doll. I am nothing like the pathetic guard you just bought with you daddy’s money. I have myself all the money I want. All the money I need. So I repeat my question: what do you have to offer me?” His tone was harsh and clear. If you wanted to stay alive, you would have to propose him more. Something that he would never be able to buy by himself.

I looked at Taehyung, the only person you knew here, as if he was going to help you. To save you. But it was obviously vain. So you said the first thing that came to your mind. The stupidest thing that crossed your mind, to be precise.

“I want to make an exchange.” You saw immediately his facial expression changing. He was interested. “My brother in exchange of me.”

You heard some more laughs in the room, but none of them came from the mouth of the man in front of you. “And what made you think we would want you instead of your brother, doll?” It wasn’t the leader who talked, but a man you had never seen before on your left.

Even though the question didn’t come from the most important man of the room, you still understood that an answer was required. Because yes, why you and not Yohan after all? “You have plenty of men under your orders. More than you probably even need. But women ready to sell their lives forever? Something tells me that you won’t receive that kind of proposition every other day.”

And just like that, with a few words, you sold your soul to the devil himself.

“I think we have a deal, ___.”

Fortunately, your role in the gang wasn’t important. It was always about distracting men while other members stole things from them or delivering some shit you didn’t know about. In other words, nobody ever asked you to complete important missions. Or at least, it had not happened yet.

“BTS are in town.” Taehyung told you one day. It was him who inherited the task of supervising you. And let’s say immediately that he wasn’t very keen about it when he learnt it.

“And I should be excited because…” You were walking next to each other through the dense crowd of the university. However, no matter how full the corridors were, Taehyung was doing a good job at cleaning the way, he always had. “Not excited, ___. But it’s a big deal for the gang. The boss has been wanting to collaborate with them for so long. It’s a huge opportunity.”

A huge opportunity that led you to get asked to accomplish a mission way more important than the one that had been attributed to you in the past. And little did you know that mission was going to change the rest of your life forever.

“So all you have to do is serve him and his closest members all night long.” Taehyung explained you for maybe the tenth time that day. “And what does ‘serve him’ mean, exactly?”

“You know, the usual shit. Taking his orders, bringing him drinks. Bending over so he has a full sight of your ass.”

The member that has slowly started to become your friend these past weeks left you alone after that explanation and walked through the people that were dancing and drinking in the party the leader of your gang organized. Taehyung turned around after realizing you were not following him, and that’s when you saw it in his eyes. Was it pity or sadness? No matter what it was, he was still waiting for you to lead you to your mission: play the waitress – a generic word that had a different meaning for your boss than it had for you – with the leader of BTS. You already knew it was going to be a long night.

“Mr. Jeon, let me introduce you to ___. She will be at your service for the rest of the night. You can ask her anything and everything you want, and she will make it her personal pleasure to satisfy your needs.” Taehyung said to a group of men sitting in a comfortable couch. Once again, it wasn’t difficult to determine who was the leader among all the members. What surprised you though was his age: he couldn’t be much older than you were.

But then you realized what Taehyung just stated. And especially what he was implying. “Not anything and everything, actually. I’m a waitress, not a prostitute.” You clarified loudly, earning a gaze from Taehyung next to you.

“___…” The tall man warned. But you didn’t care. If he thought you were going to have anything close to sex with the leader of BTS, he was wrong. Terribly wrong. You were not a slut.

You were going to protest once more, but the man in front of you interrupted your confrontation before you could even open your mouth. “You can leave now, Taehyung.” And so did he, without even looking twice at you.

You looked at the man with raven hair still sitting in the couch and gulped. Saying you were not intimidated would have been a lie, but you still managed to warn him. “I won’t have sex with you.” Which made him laugh. A warm and honest laugh. “I know, doll.”

What was with gang leaders and calling girls doll?

“If I can be honest, you’re a very pretty girl. Almost like a doll. Maybe that’s why you earned that name.” You almost slapped yourself in the face when you realized you spoke your thoughts out loud and he heard it. God was probably punishing you for something you couldn’t even remember.

He laughed when he noticed how your cheeks became a deep shade of red, even though there wasn’t much light for him to notice. And again this warm laugh that surprisingly made you want to trust him when you probably shouldn’t feel that way.

The night wasn’t as long as you had expected it to be. Jungkook – that’s how he asked you to call him – wasn’t very demanding. Only a drink now and then. And smiles, a lot of beautiful smiles that would have fooled you on the innocence of the owner if you didn’t know what was hidden behind this endearing behavior. Yet, the man knew he was handsome, and he was taking advantage of it.

But more than anything else, Jungkook surprised you when, halfway through the party, he got up and walked towards you. “This party is boring.” He stated, and you bit your lower lip to hide the smile that was menacing to spread on your face. He was right, but you couldn’t agree with him, in case indiscreet ears had been listening all along.

“Would you do me a favor?” He hiccupped right after saying this, and you had to prevent another smile. “Would you take me home? I drank way too much to drive by myself, and the other members are kinda busy.” They were indeed occupied with girls who were offering them lap dances. A usual for those parties. You glanced back at Jungkook who was now presenting his keys to you.

You bit your lips, trying to think about the best decision to take. You weren’t exactly naive. You knew it could be a way to attract you into his house. But on the other hand, he drank too much to be able to drive his car.

“How can I be sure it’s not a trap? Why would I trust you?” His eyes glinted for a second while looking at you. But he shook his head and answered you, the glint disappearing as quickly as it appeared. “Why wouldn’t you? Did I do anything that would make you doubt me?” He was bold and you were speechless. “I promise I won’t force you to do anything with me, ___.”

You knew that a promise from a leader of a gang didn’t mean shit. But you still grabbed his keys to take him home. At that moment, you didn’t think about how you were going to get home. You didn’t think about the fact you didn’t tell Taehyung you were leaving. You didn’t think about the fact he was a gang leader. You were only thinking about how he already got you under his spell. How dangerously appealing a man like him was. And it was terrifying you.

His house was fucking huge. And that was probably the first thing you said when you both entered his living room. “It’s not really my house. I’m just renting it.”

But it didn’t matter. It was still huge, and you were used to enormous spaces.

“Want something to drink?” Jungkook questioned while moving towards a cabinet where alcohol was probably waiting to be drunk. “Just water, please.” You didn’t want to lose any bit of your ability to make reflected decisions. Not with him around you. Not when you already felt inebriated just by being around him.

“Here, your just water.” He gave you a fancy glass that was probably made in some fancy material like crystal. One more thing that proved Jungkook was probably richer than the Queen of England herself.

“I’m very curious about how you ended up in that gang.” The leader told me after looking at you intently for a moment. “What make you think that I haven’t been a part of this world my whole life?”

Jungkook did not become the leader of the biggest gang by simple luck. It was position that required self-discipline, composure, responsibilities and also a big sense of observation. And analyzing the environment in which he was growing was a talent particularly developed by the leader. “Your manners. And the respect you have towards the others. Towards yourself.” It sounded like a compliment. At least, you decided it was one, especially when you considered how it sounded in his mouth. Like something honorable.

“Just had to make a deal to get my younger brother out of this.” He didn’t answer right away and just looked at you a little bit longer.” So you sacrificed yourself?” You just nodded because, honestly, you never thought about it that way until now. You just wanted Yohan to be happy and live the life he always dreamt about, no matter if you had to abandon your owns dreams in the meantime. “Loyalty is highly appreciated by people like me. What kind of leader would refuse such a deal? Especially when the deal look like that.”

“What do you mean?” You searched the man’s eyes in the mid-light, mid-darkness of the living room and you weren’t disappointed by what you found in them. A pure glint of mischief and amusement. “I meant, who would say no to have a literal walking goddess among their gang members?”

You would lie if you said you didn’t blush because of his comment. Jungkook was a handsome man after all. But you decided to play along, hoping he didn’t notice your actual, flustered state. “So this is it. Your best cheesy pick-up line?”

His next move took you by surprise. He walked towards you, like a predator. And you were clearly his prey. Once he stopped two inches away from you, he captured a strand of your hair between his forefinger and his thumb. You were completely at his mercy, caught in between the want of pressing your body to feel more, to have more of him and the need of taking a step back in fear of ending in a dangerous situation you wouldn’t have the strength to stop. But no matter the risks, he could have done anything to you and you wouldn’t have emitted a single protest. “I totally can do way better, but I’m not sure your heart could handle it.”

You were now as red as a tomato. Everything about him and the way he acted was flustering you. His proximity. His breath brushing against your skin. The way he pronounced every single word delicately. His scent – holy shit, if he didn’t smell like heaven... He was slightly driving you crazy.

But he suddenly took a step backwards and you breathed deeply, feeling free of your movements, of your thoughts once again. “I thought you said you wouldn’t try to seduce me, Jungkook.”

Your pitiful attempt to save what was left of your self-control faded away the moment your host answered you. “I never promised I wouldn’t try to seduce you, doll. I said that I wouldn’t force you to do anything you didn’t want to.”

And maybe you were naïve, maybe it was stupid to feel that way, but you trusted him. Because at this moment, you really wanted to be there with him. And you were prepared to continue this dance you had with him that was slowly inflaming all your organs, but Jungkook chose this moment to change his strategy.

“Tell me more about you, ___.” This man knew how to keep you on your toes. In all ways possible. “What do you wanna know?”

Jungkook now had made himself something that was probably a strong whisky and was sipping from his glass, not even bothered by the strong taste of it. He was looking like if he was thinking about what he really wanted to know about you. And finally, he seemed to be decided. He pushed his glass away from his mouth and smiled to you. He had a terribly nice smile.

“What do you dream about, pretty girl? I want to know everything about your craziest dreams.”

You weren’t even startled, this time. You were blown away. He was unpredictable. And you were speechless because you never really thought about what you really wanted in life. “I don’t know. I guess I just want to be happy.” You shrugged. It was probably the lamest answer you could have given him. But that was the only one you had in mind at that very moment. Yet you didn’t want to look at his face to discover how bored and disappointed he was by you. So you changed quickly the perspective of the conversation. “What about you, Jungkook?”

Plus, in all honesty, he was unreadable, and you wanted to know more than anything about him as well.

“I don’t know if I can trust you enough for that, love.” Again, one of his pet names. But it was his statement that got your attention the most and made you quirk an eyebrow. “For what I know, you could be gathering information about me for your gang leader. It wouldn’t be the first time a lovely, good-looking girl would try to seduce me in order to ruin me better later.”

Multiple emotions immediately overwhelmed you after his explanation. The first one was astonishment. You weren’t expecting that at all. But it didn’t last for a long time, because right after you felt genuinely upset. How could he even imagine you would play him like that?! But as he told you, he was the leader of BTS – one of the biggest cartels of the country – and he was used to and expected that kind of behavior. From everywhere and everyone. So you couldn’t blame him for being careful. You could even feel your anger slowly fading away to be replaced by something that looked terribly like a mix of empathy and pity. You wouldn’t want to live like that, analyzing every act of every person you hung out with.

You didn’t want Jungkook to know every thought that crossed your mind during this long minute, even though you were almost sure he could read you like an open book. So you just replied with the first thing that went through your head at that moment. “Am I doing a good job though? At seducing you?”

And then you realized. If you wanted him to trust you – and you didn’t even know why you had that want in the first place –, it was the last thing you should have said after his revelation.

You were afraid you already messed up every chance you had of him to open up to you. But you still tried a last thing and got closer to him. Almost as close as he was minutes ago.

“I promise the last thing I want is to ruin you, Jungkook.” It was just a whisper, but you knew the beautiful man had heard it. You were eye to eye, now. You couldn’t be more sincere. And once again, he lifted his hand towards your face, but to stroke your cheek this time. “You’re doing such a good job, love.”

You bit your lower lip, understanding he was referring to your previous question. His hand was still on your cheek, warming your skin. The sensation was beyond pleasant, but you were too close. You definitely were going to get burnt if you stayed there longer. So you pulled away, making sure to keep a safe distance between your bodies.

“Are you trusting me enough to answer my question, now?” You knew it was a bold move, considering your position. You knew he was a gang leader. And you knew you could get in trouble for being insolent like you were. But he made you feel so comfortable you couldn’t help yourself.

“I have everything I’ve ever desired, love. All my dreams became true a long time ago.” He broke the silence after some time of thinking. However, something in the way he said it weren’t right, making you frown. “I don’t believe you. Everybody has a dream.”

“I’m not everybody.” It was his turn to shrug, and you understood you just shouldn’t push it. So you let it go… for now.

You preferred asking him another questions. A lot of questions, in fact. And he asked you many questions in return. The more you talked, the more you felt comfortable around him. And you talked for a very long time. Until an advanced hour of the night – or the morning, you should say. And you secretly hoped he was as charmed by you as you were by him.

“I never thought it would be that pleasant to have a deep conversation with someone.” Jungkook suddenly affirmed. And you were going to comment his insignificant statement by saying something about all the girls he was used to hook up with, but something hit you hard at that moment. Because the thing was, it wasn’t an insignificant statement even if it looked like it in the first place.

“I almost believed you when you told me you didn’t have any dream.” You saw one of his eyebrows raising on his forehead, quietly asking you to go on with that thought.

“That’s actually very funny. Because it seemed like you have everything you’ve ever wanted. You actually do have everything poor people dream about. A huge house. An expensive car. More money than time to spend it. You even have dishes in crystal…” You lifted the glass now full of some random liquor, but the black-haired man interrupted you. “They are in diamonds, in fact.” You scoffed. He was so rich it was almost ridiculous.

Jungkook had to make a movement with his hand to invite you to continue, but not before you rolled your eyes extravagantly.

“You make it seem like you have everything.” You looked once more at the vastness of his living room before turning your head back towards him. “But in your enormous palace, you feel so lonely. And all you really wish is for some genuine soul to keep you company. Am I wrong?” You murmured the last part, but he had no problem to hear it. You weren’t that far away from each other, anyway. And that’s why it took him only half a second to close the distance between you. You were once again too close for your liking. Too close to allow your mind to think clearly.

“You’re a smart girl, ___.” Jungkook stated. Your heart was pounding in your chest. “Always feeling terribly lonely. And I never stay long enough in a place to find someone who could become my own home.” You immediately knew he hadn’t been that honest with someone in years. And it warmed your heart that he decided to choose you as a safe place to share his deepest secrets with.

“When do you leave?” You hesitated to ask. But you also needed to know. Your heart was still hammering, harder and stronger every minute passing. “Tomorrow.”

And after all the pounding it has been doing since the leader came closer, it suddenly stopped in your chest.

You couldn’t even hide your disappointment. And Jungkook didn’t miss the way your face fell. “Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?” He sighed. It was his way to try to ease the feeling that was overwhelming you at that moment. And in a way, it worked. “I’m still not going to have sex with you, Kook.” You let out a small chuckle, but his laugh never came, in opposition of what you had expected. In reality, he was just stunned by the nickname you just used. It was stupid, but he hadn’t been called that way in years.

“What about a kiss?”

You didn’t even have to answer. Your lips were only inches apart. They were brushing against each other. And when you closed your eyes, he decided it was the only sign he had been waiting for before definitely closing the gap between you.

What was a simple kiss at the beginning became soon enough a stronger and deeper one. With your tongues dancing with each other. With your hands discovering each other’s face. With your bodies pressing and melting into the other one.

While you were moving your lips in synchronization with his, you wondered if he was used to kiss every other girl like he was kissing you. Slowly. Passionately. Deeply. You wondered if he was used to pass his hands in other girls’ hair the same way he was stroking yours. Gently. Tenderly. Lovingly. And you wondered if he was used to lay those girls down like he laid you on his couch. Kindly. Delicately. Cautiously.

And more than anything else, you were wondering how you were ever going to forget about the way Jeon Jungkook was kissing your lips. Like if he owned them. Like if they were made for him.

Getting back to your boring life was hard after that night. You couldn’t stop replaying the kisses you shared with Jungkook. You had to occupy your brain with complex tasks to prevent it from daydreaming about the sensations that overwhelmed you during your make-out session with the black-haired leader. And you would have bet it was a complete dream if there wasn’t the remnant of a small hickey adorning the place where your neck and your shoulder met, reminding you this moment of pure bliss when he sucked and bit on the sensitive skin.

That was exactly why you were at the very moment trying to study in a small café of the town. To avoid thinking about Jungkook. And to physically avoid Taehyung.

Unfortunately for you, the fellow member had noticed you leaving the party with your mission of the night. So it wasn’t a surprise he strongly believed something happened between the two of you. Even though you assured him at least twenty times nothing happened at all. Which was a lie, because you still ended up making out on his couch, but he didn’t need to know about that.

But no matter how hard you tried to push your unwanted thoughts away, every single thing around you reminded you of him. You closed your eyes and breathed deeply before sighing. You missed him so much that you even started smelling his cologne instead of the strong scent of coffee when you perfectly knew he was already far away from this town.

However, when you opened your eyes, you almost jumped from surprise. He was there. Jungkook was right in front of you.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” You heard yourself saying. You didn’t even process the words that left your mouth. “I don’t remember you being the swearing type. At least, as long as my mouth stay far away from your neck.”

You were speechless. It was all he had to say? You waited a little bit longer for a different answer than the one he just gave you, but he apparently decided to ignore your question. Which pissed you off even more.

So you ignored him back. It was even more impossible to be concentrated on your work now that Jungkook were looking at you from the other side of the table, but you still could fake it. And that’s what you did by typing on your laptop as if he wasn’t even there.

“What are you working on?” The leader asked you. Silence. You saw his fingers starting fidgeting with one of your pens that were lying on the table. You didn’t know if it was to get your attention or a habit of him, but you just ignored it as well, still typing incoherent words on your laptop. “You’re really pretty today.” He added after a few more minutes. You managed to hold back the scoff that was menacing to get out of your mouth, but no matter how hard you tried, your eyebrow still raised high on your forehead. Was he serious? You weren’t even wearing makeup.

Your technique seemed to work because after another long silence, Jungkook sighed loudly and caught one of your hands. “Fine! I just decided we could stay a little bit longer here.”

You looked up to dive your eyes in his and squeezed his hand back. You could pretend you were annoyed with him, but there was gesture even the sanest person couldn’t deny. Holding his hand and intertwining your fingers with his was one of them. “And what made you change your plan?” You questioned, hoping he would admit the reason was you. And because like you, he couldn’t forget about the night you spent together. “Some unexpected meeting, I would say.”

You didn’t have to ask for further explanations, his eyes were saying it all for him, making your heart miss a beat. You would lie if you said he didn’t get you all flustered. But he was used to it now. And so were you.

“I’m gonna let you pretend you’re working now. Yoongi’s waiting for me outside. We have a meeting with your gang.” You looked outside the café and identified the gang member the leader just mentioned. You had a vague memory of Yoongi being at the party your gang had organized the night before.

Jungkook finally got up but didn’t head towards the door of the café as you expected him to. On the contrary, he walked to you, caught your chin between his fingers and bended your head backwards so you were face to face. “You should be careful. That kind of behavior you had earlier could get you into trouble. You’re lucky I’m all wrapped around your finger.”

You didn’t even have the time to process what he just told you before he placed a feather-like kiss on your lips. And with that, he was gone. Leaving you a complete mess on your chair and no way to concentrate on your work.

You decided, at the end of the day (and only at that moment because you didn’t want to seem too eager either), to pass by the general headquarters, which you usually tried to avoid at all cost. But maybe Jungkook was still there, and you really wanted to see him again.

You’re so whipped, ___. You groaned, the reality hitting you. But you couldn’t fight the urge to see him again anymore. There was something about him, you didn’t know what and you didn’t know why but you didn’t want to fight this desire of knowing more and more and more about him anymore. Not after believing you would never see him again.

But the depot where the B.A.F.’s members were always meeting was almost empty. Except for some girls you usually preferred staying away from. You were going to simply ignore them and leave, but you heard your name being called behind you before you could even reach the exit. What the hell did she want?

“I heard about you and Jungkook.” She simply stated. For what you remembered, her name was Yoojin. However, you couldn’t care less at that moment who she was, all you could think about was her statement and the knot it created in your stomach. You didn’t want to get in trouble with her, because you knew that if she decided to start a fight, she would literally ruin you. But even if you were perfectly aware of it, you weren’t going to let her intimidate you. “What about Jungkook and I?”

“Well, it’s a tradition here to tell other girls what exactly happened with a member of another gang. In details.” Her smile was pure evil. It was no doubt she was dying from jealousy. But you honestly couldn’t care less. “Then it’s a shame that nothing happened. At all.”

Yoojin didn’t like you either. You could see it. And you also could see that she didn’t believe you. Once again, you didn’t give two fucks about what she was thinking. You just wanted to know where the rest of the gang were. However, it wasn’t going to be that easy to get answers from her. “What did you do then? Had a cup of tea?”

“You wouldn’t understand, Yoojin. People like you usually can’t.” Her eyes narrowed and her jaw tightened immediately. Let’s say you already were thinking about the shortest and fastest way to run away from this place. “And what exactly does people like me mean?”

You looked at her for a moment, trying to choose the right words. But it seemed like there wasn’t a right way to get out of this mess. Jungkook was right after all. Your behavior was really going to get you in trouble. “I’m just saying that you can keep acting like a prostitute all you want. But at the end of the day, you will still be remembered at the girl who just opens her legs easily and nothing more.”

You then walked slowly backwards. If there was something you’ve learned during your short life as a gang member, it was to never turn your back to your enemy. You only authorized yourself to do so when you reached the door and grabbed the handle to finally get out. But, once again, she spoke before you could exit the room.

“I hope you enjoyed your time with him, ___. Maybe the current mission is going to be the last one.” It was your turn to be lost. Did she want to scare you just for her own pleasure or was she saying the truth? “What do you mean?”

“They all left hours ago. Had some problems with another gang to solve. And you know how vendettas are… You never know who will return.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” It was a little bit after three in the morning, and you got woken up by loud thumps against the front door of your apartment. But you found yourself wide awake the moment you discovered Jungkook standing behind the door. And when you noticed he was incredibly pale you immediately forgot it was the middle of the night.

“I was worried sick.” You told him while opening your door largely to let him come inside. “You shouldn’t. You know I’m a rock, love.” His voice was weak and when he took a step forward, he stumbled and caught hold of you to prevent him from crashing completely on the ground. That’s when you knew you had all the reasons to be worried.

“What happened?” You helped him walk towards your bedroom that was the closest room from the door. You made him sit on your bed, but even there you could see it was hard for him to keep sitting straight. “Got stabbed by this fucker. Would have died if Taehyung wasn’t a fantastic shooter.”

He showed you the cut on his stomach. It was deep, and you could see that someone did a poor job at stitching it. “It’s infected.” You stated. It became very clear to you that you had to repair it yourself, and quickly.

You got out of the room to go get your stitches set, which was in your living room with your university stuff. You grabbed it and got back to your bedroom where Jungkook hasn’t moved an inch. “I���m going to take them off and do it myself.” You informed the black-haired leader who was watching your every move.

“How come you have that thing?” He was referring to your set. “Perks of being a medicine student.” Your simply answered, focused on your work. Jungkook was now lying on the bed and you could see him wincing from the corner of your eyes, but there wasn’t any other way of fixing the mess of the wound. And unfortunately, anesthetic wasn’t not supplied with the basic kit.

“I didn’t know that. You never told me.” It wasn’t a reproach, just a statement. “You didn’t ask me the other night.” You were now cleaning correctly the wound, hoping that there wasn’t anything inside of it.

You stayed silent for a moment, you working cautiously and him watching you. You would probably have blushed if you weren’t so concentrated on your task. After a few more minutes, the head of the cartel sitting on your bed spoke again, certainly to forget about the pain your needle was causing. “How come you live alone? I mean, your parents’ house wasn’t that far away from the university…”

“Too loud to study. My father has to invite a lot of businessmen because of his job and my brother always plays music loudly and his friends are always over.” What you didn’t tell him, though, was that you hated that house and all the memories that were linked to it.

“And your mother?” Your hand stopped in the air, the needle still between your thumb and your index, your eyes fixed on his stomach. You didn’t want to look at him at the moment. You didn’t want to show him how vulnerable his question made you. “Wasn’t it written in my file? Because I guess that’s where you found my address?”

Talking about your mother always made you bitter. Always reminded you the wound that was still here. Not a physical one, like the one you were stitching, but a mental lesion. An emotional grief that will always be there.

Jungkook didn’t deny he read your file. It was useless, you already knew it. And you weren’t stupid enough to believe one of his lies, anyway. “It wasn’t. And I want to hear from you anyways.” Was all he said. You couldn’t help it anymore, you had to look at his face. To know if it was just to torture you or if he was sincere. And what you saw on his face persuaded you to trust him. Made you fall for him even harder.

“She died. When I was twelve.” At that moment you had completely forgot that you had to finish stitching him. All you could think about was the moment you entered your house to find her lifeless body. “She was depressed. She just… hanged herself in the living room.”

Your father always had been a work freak, but after that you barely saw him at home.

The tension was thick between the two of you. Jungkook didn’t say a thing, which you were grateful for, and just caressed your face with his thumb. You’ve always hated people trying to comfort you with empty words when there was nothing more to say. And as you weren’t talking anymore, you just started to stitch the wound again.

When you finally finished your task, you cut the thread off and got up on your feet. That’s when Jungkook spoke again. “What the hell are you wearing?” You looked down at your outfit and realized you were only wearing a large t-shirt that once belonged to your brother and that arrived mid thighs and hid your panties. “Have I some competition I didn’t know about?” Your unexpected guest added, still on the bed.

He was literally staring at your legs with not a single ounce of shame. And you would have lied if you said you didn’t like it. “You don’t. At all. I just love sleeping with baggy clothes.” He was still lying on the bed, but sit up the moment you said it, the hair previously resting on his forehead coming in front of his eyes. You were craving to pass your hand in it.

“Great. Makes it easier for me.” You saw a cocky smile appearing on his face. The one that you hated as much as you loved. “Even if I know I wouldn’t have to worry too much.” What a presumptuous bastard. He was still smiling at you, as if he already won the battle. “And what make you so sure about it?”

You weren’t prepared for his next move. Even though the moment he grabbed your hand to pull you toward him you knew he was only waiting for you to provoke him. You were now straddling his legs and your face was only inches away from his. At least for now. “This.”

Jeon Jungkook was definitely the best kisser you’ve ever met in your life. Nobody had ever kissed you the way he did. Like if he was hungry. Like if he was thirsty. Like if you were the best meal and drink at the same time of the whole world.

His lips were surprisingly soft and tasted like cinnamon. He bit your lip and you opened immediately your mouth to allow his tongue to meet yours. You had been craving this sensation for almost one week now so you almost moan when you felt it entering your mouth and grazing your own tongue.

You made out for quite a long time. Exchanging your saliva. Stroking each other’s hair, as you wanted so much a few minutes ago. Sucking on the thin skin of your necks and leaving hickeys.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do that. Not with you being hur-” You remembered trying to say at a moment. But you forgot what crossed your mind the moment the man now hovering over you placed his lips on yours once again. And you couldn’t even care less when you felt his hands moving up and down on your thighs. But not once did he get higher than your thighs during your make-out session. Actually, not once did he slide his hands higher during the entire night.

You woke up with Jungkook the next morning. And the morning after that. And again the next morning. In fact, you woke up next to the leader the whole following week. You wanted to blame it on the fact that you had to take care of him, to watch his wound to be sure it was healing correctly. And it was true, in a way. But the very truth was that you couldn’t get enough of him. Especially after the first morning you spent together.

The problem was, Jungkook was very cuddly in the morning. Which would have never been a problem if he didn’t fuel your hormones. With his kisses. And his hands roaming your entire body. His morning boner against your lower back. But that was it. He was only a flirt. Only light touches. Only a tease. And you were sexually frustrated like you’ve never been before.

“Morning.” You heard his voice behind you, spooning being Kook’s favorite way to sleep.

At that point, everything was aggravating the state you were currently in. From his husky morning voice to his fingers grazing the soft skin of your stomach. One inch away from your panties.

The kisses he started to place on your shoulder didn’t help soothing your actual mood. Actually it even made him stop all his moves when he felt how tensed your body was. “What’s going on?”

A whole week of frustration, that’s what’s going on. But you weren’t going to tell him. Because as stupid as it was, you didn’t want to admit out loud he was driving you crazy. Or at least, you didn’t want to admit it before he did. And you also didn’t want to lie. So you stayed silent.

You felt his nose running along your skin, from the end of your shoulder to your earlobe, making your body immediately press harder against his. “You smell so damn good.” At that moment you wondered if he knew what he was doing to you. Was this all on purpose? Or was he just oblivious to the sexual tension between you?

“Tell me what’s going on, baby. I can feel how tensed your body is.” Baby. That was a new one. It was always doll or love. Never baby.

Jungkook groaned when he realized you weren’t going to answer his question. And then turned you around so you were facing each other. The only thing you could think about now was how tempting his lips were.

However, when you tried to capture his mouth with yours, he moved backwards, almost making you moan. As if you weren’t already frustrated enough. You finally thought he was going to kiss you when his face went forward, but it was to once more pull back the moment your lips were going to touch.

Jungkook played that game two or three more times until you finally groaned before speaking again. “Are you going to tell me now?” His lips brushed yours again. Your bodies were now so close you could feel every single mechanism of his anatomy. Every breath. Every muscle tensing. Every heartbeat. And if you could feel it, he could probably tell how uneven your heart was thumping in your chest.

His hand on your thigh was a pure torture and made you tighten your legs against each other, afraid that Jungkook would find out what was going on between them in your panties. And at the same time excited and impatient.

Yet Jungkook was still waiting for an answer and you were waiting for his lips to kiss yours. So you just said it. "You just... frustrate me." His eyebrows, that were previously raised in question, furrowed in an instant. "Frustrate?" He was genuinely lost. But after looking at you intently, from head to toe, it seemed that he had finally gather all the signs of your frustration and that realization hit him hard.

A smirk – it was a little one but you still could see it – appeared on his face. He was proud of the effect he had on you, you could sense it with every fiber of your body. “And to think that I was controlling myself because I know you’re still a virgin…”

You were a what? You were taken aback. Utterly speechless. But it lasted only a few seconds, because your first reaction was to genuinely laugh. “I’m not-” You started to say, trying to speak while still laughing. “I’m not a virgin.”

Jungkook was frowning so much his eyebrows were almost touching each other. When your laughter finally died, the black-haired man opened his mouth as if he was going to says something, but he closed it almost immediately. “What made you think I was still a virgin?” You broke the silence. He simply shrugged, or more accurately tried to shrug, because you were still laid on the bed and it wasn’t the easiest position to move shoulders. “I don’t know… You were so against having sex with me I just thought it was because of that.”

“Well… I didn’t know you enough to let you have your way with me, love.” You didn’t even know why, but this whole situation was making you feel confident. You wanted to tease him, to tempt him, to make him beg. But as always, Jungkook found a way to reverse the situation. “And now you would?”

The beautiful man lying in front of you were once again too close. You couldn’t even breathe, so even less think properly. To be accurate, the only thing that was in your mind was him. His lips, his touch, his morning hard-on. And you were almost sure you were finally going to have what you had been craving for days.

“Too bad I have business to deal with.” Jungkook whispered, his breath crashing on your skin. He finally kissed your lips, but it wasn’t enough. It was only a peck, only two seconds of your lips meeting for the first time this morning. And then he was gone, walking proudly towards the bathroom. Because he fucking knew he was driving you insane.

Jungkook got out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later. Fresh and ready for the day. You were still lying on the bed. Frustrated and upset.

He looked at you from his spot right in front of the door of the bathroom. He didn’t say a thing, and you didn’t want to break the silence. Your ego was already hurt enough. You also didn’t want to show him how bothered you were by his rejection, so you turned your head, avoiding his eyes. And that was what made him react. “Fuck it!”

Jungkook surprised you when he headed toward you instead of the door. He discarded the covers and grabbed your ankles to pull you closer to him. Your lower legs were now falling from the bed, and Jungkook was kneeling between them.

“I can’t fully satisfy your needs, but I can at least make you orgasm once before leaving.” You gulped at his words while he wasted no time to kiss your exposed thighs. You knew what he was up to and you had to prevent a moan to leave your mouth. He hadn’t even properly started, and you were already a mess underneath him.

Jungkook took off your shorts and panties at the same time and tossed them somewhere else in the room. He was going right for it, causing your arousal still there from all the teasing of the leader on you half an hour ago to increase even more every second passing. But that’s when his mouth met your core that you knew you weren’t going to last long.

He was licking you clean, sucking your bundle of nerves, fucking you with his fingers. You were a dessert and he was fucking starving. You were a glass of water and he was thirsty as hell.

You were gripping his hair, scratching his neck. And in response he would groan against your clit, which drove you crazy. It was so good you couldn’t remember your name. Only his. And you were moaning it. Screaming it.

His mouth was perfect. His tongue was heaven; and his fingers were the key of it. The combination of them made you come hard, harder than you’ve ever orgasmed. Your high lasted a long time, and you had to blink a few times to stop seeing stars.

Jungkook was watching you, his frame towering you. He closed the gap between you to kiss your lips, and this time it was a real kiss. A kiss that made your breath even more erratic. A kiss in which you felt your own slit on his tongue.

“See you later, babe.”

Later that day, you received a text from Taehyung saying that you had to go to the headquarters right now. And you knew that you’d better be there very soon if you didn’t want to be in trouble, even though it meant you had to miss some classes at university. The gang was more important. That was the very first rule the fellow member had taught you when you entered the gang.

You were still wondering if you were going to get a new mission when you passed the door of the main room of the building. You weren’t the last person to arrive, but the room was almost full, since Jungkook’s gang was here as well.

You tried to catch the black-haired leader’s eyes, but he seemed to be deep in his thoughts. “Perfect! I think everyone’s here now.” You turned your head towards your own leader, still not sure what was about to happen. “They’re about to make a deal. The big boss always asks the whole gang to be there when it happens.”

You turned around to look at Taehyung who just whispered those words in your ear. He still had a few cuts on his face from the last mission they did. But it wasn’t as bad as the one Jungkook had had.

You were all silent, waiting for someone to start speaking and break the silence. And it finally happened after a few more minutes. “I’m gonna get straight to the point, Daehyun.” Jungkook said, talking directly to the leader of your gang. He was imperious and only someone mad would want to disrespect Jungkook at the very moment. “I know you want to make a deal with our gang. And I’m willing to consent. But I have some conditions.”

The B.A.F.’s leader seemed rather pleased and didn’t even try to hide it. By the face Jungkook’s was doing, you knew immediately he was contemptuous of this kind of reaction. The man you were now seeing for a whole week would have never showed his emotions like that.

You also knew Jungkook didn’t exactly liked your leader, making you wonder why he was accepting such a deal. “Our gangs will be linked. Meaning helping each other in case of problems. Collaborating. Exchanging pieces of information.” Daehyun nodded, his smile still visible on his face. “But I want Taehyung. And ___.”

Not even a fly could have been heard in the room at that moment. The B.A.F.’s leader was apparently thinking about it, trying to take the right decision. “You surely can have ___. Don’t even know why you want her so badly. But Taehyung… You have to understand he’s one of my best members.”

You almost wanted to roll your eyes. What a stupid bastard. “The role of a leader – of a good leader – is to know the qualities and the flaws of each member of their gang. If you would have taken an interest in ___, you would have discovered she’s studying medicine at university. And we all know a good doctor is an advantage you can’t deny in a cartel.”

Your whole body reacted as if it was on fire because of Jungkook’s words. He literally stood up for you, in front of both gangs. In a way, it almost meant more than him declaring his love for you. And the look of humiliation that was painted on Daehyun’s face made you even more ecstatic.

“I want Taehyung, too. And we both know I will have him.” It wasn’t a threat. But everyone could understand and sense the danger in Jungkook’s voice, and maybe Daehyun wasn’t the smartest person you’ve ever met, but he wasn’t stupid either.

So he finally accepted the deal. And that’s how you and Taehyung became a part of BTS.

Naked was the look that suited the most Jeon Jungkook. He was confident and stunning. And he was lying in your bed, his fingers running along your arm after many rounds of rather rough sex.

You were sleepy but you couldn’t resolve yourself to close your eyes and stop staring at your new leader’s face. “You’re so beautiful.” You didn’t even mean to speak, but you couldn’t care less. You thought it with every fiber of your body. “You’re gorgeous. And mine. In any way possible.” Was his reply to your previous outburst.

You quirked an eyebrow, and a playful smile appeared on your lips. “Mmmh, I don’t remember you asking me to be your girlfriend.” He was quick to mimic your smile and get even closer to your body. His head was now in your neck, his lips brushing the many love bites he left earlier. “You know I made you mine the moment I marked you, love. And we both know you love that.”

Light kisses were spread on your light skin, and he sucked one more time. You were tired, but you weren’t going to stop him. “Be my girlfriend, ___.” He wasn’t asking, but he wasn’t demanding either.

“We both know I want it more than anything else.” You answered. He stopped to kiss your neck to smile at you, eyes in the eyes. His smile was intoxicating. He was intoxicating. But a good kind of intoxicating.

“You know you don’t have to stay in the gang if you don’t want to.” Jungkook was serious and sincere. You could see it in his eyes. “I don’t want to leave the gang if it means being a stranger to you.” That was actually your biggest fear at that moment. Jungkook giving up on you.

“You will never be a stranger to me, ___.” He only called you by your name when he was talking with his heart. You learnt it during the short amount of time you spent with him. “Remember the night we met?” You simply nodded, captivated by the way his lips were moving. “You asked me what my dream was. And you proved me for the first time that day how smart you were. How smart you are. I spent my whole trying to find the missing piece. The person who will make me feel like home. And you make me feel like home, ___.”

You couldn’t even describe how your heart was pounding in your chest. Or how you wanted to be one with his whole heart and soul.

“You realized my biggest dream, love. And I want to spend the rest of my life realizing yours.” It was only him and you. Right here and right now. The rest didn’t matter anymore. You were each other’s home. And you were beautiful and strong together.

“So tell me, love. What do you dream about?”

[demethinkstoomuch]

Learning to Read, Pt 1: A is for Ambiguity

Read on AO3!

I. A is for Ambiguity 

Dedue’s eyes, stony and cool as pale jade, cut through the haze like a beacon. Dimitri, forced to move as if through a dust-storm, couldn’t quite pull his gaze away. The days had ground on into weeks, the weeks approaching a moon now -- and so, time’s wheels had crushed into dust the mad, magical thought that Dimitri would turn the corner and everyone would be alive. The hallways of the castle were thick with the fine powder that, hovering in the air, dispersed the light into a million little motes. The hope still crept back in at times, crueler than ever, but mostly it had died, leaving him hungry for another thought, another hope, another way to pull himself forward after the tragedy. But because he could see the eyes of the boy he’d saved that day in Duscur -- after the attack, before anything but the monstrous vengeance of soldiers, during blood and fire still burning under Dimitri’s scarred skin -- that was at least something to watch over. And he needed to.

How like a mountain, those squared-off features! A cliffside, stony and impassive, looming up somewhere well beyond Dimitri’s head. Dedue had feelings, whatever that placid face he wore now proclaimed -- these few weeks had been too intense. They’d shown glimpses of a heart holding itself desperately together. Dedue had cried with him and apart from him. Dedue had reached for him like a lifeline, with eyes full of fear. Dedue’s shoulders had softened with relief when Dimitri suggested that Dedue might be able to secure a place with him by entering his service -- informally agreed to, a few days out from all the ritual that would make it legal, indisputable fact.

But when those moments passed, Dedue’s thoughts became locked behind that face. Now, as they walked down the hallway in one of the castle’s upper floors, it might as well have been a sculpture in brown marble. There wasn’t an absence, Dimitri was sure of it: his eyes stared with a pain Dimitri understood too well. They had both lost everything. No, Dedue had lost far more. But what Dedue wanted in repayment for that, really wanted, Dimitri couldn’t see. If he had anxiety or trepidation of what they were planning, DImitri couldn’t see. If Dedue was really only here out of some false obligation or survival instinct, some basic need for a place to live and food on his table that would have taken anything, Dimitri couldn’t see.

Dedue cleared his throat. He’d come to a stop behind the lagging, shaking steps of the prince. Dimitri’s efforts to guide him to a particular set of rooms had run afoul of Dimitri’s peering, his searching, up at the gangly young boy behind him.

“Are you tired?” He leaned down slightly, bringing the face Dimitri had been staring at for the last two corridors close enough that Dimitri could spot its dark shadows and see in Dedue’s eyes his own reflection.

It didn’t look much like him anymore, Dimitri thought. The weeks following the tragedy had drawn his skin more snugly to his bones, burning away some of his childhood softness. It didn’t belong to a man, not by a long shot -- but nor was it the face of a sweet young maiden, as someone had once called him. It was too hollow, too sunken, too shadowed. I’m a corpse now. Maybe I didn’t survive after all. The thought bobbled around, unbidden and tinged with regret that soothed and relief that pricked his heart in a delirious blur of feelings.

“...I must be,” Dimitri said hopefully. Recovery was frustratingly slow going; It was true that he wasn’t always sure his legs would hold him and his head hurt from bad sleep. His injuries -- from a mix of fire and blades and being knocked around the center of violent chaos where coaches had been knocked onto their sides and horses had gone wild -- had been so severe that for some time he was mostly bound to his bed (time had come unspooled. His sleep was shallow, fitful, occasionally medically-induced; poor punctuation on his days and nights that only served to muddle moments into paste). He’d gotten out for his father’s funeral, but that had been about it until the last few days, where he’d been allowed to walk around some. He couldn’t nearly call himself fully healed. He shifted the sling that carried his broken left arm in its splint and wax plaster, causing spots in his vision to rise up with the fresh pain. Bad. OK. Bad. His knees agreed, quavering under him as he took a step -- or tried; the step somehow didn’t align, his foot hitting the ground far later, far further ahead, far more shallowly than expected. He didn’t fall, but slipped and sank, shaky as a baby deer. Dedue’s arms reached out for him, but he’d leant against the wall first. 

“We can stop. It is not important,” Dedue decided after watching the wobbly prince. 

“Dedue, you cannot be serious. It’s important that you have a room; you cannot just keep sleeping in whatever space is available.” Dimitri was really hoping that Dedue’s expression would show a hint, just a trace, of humor. He actually had no idea what humor looked like on him. But he wouldn’t be learning now. If anything -- maybe concern, in the little furrow of Dedue’s silver-white brows? His mouth hadn’t changed at all, his eyes perfectly grave. 

Dedue had come back with him from Duscur -- which, now, nearly a whole moon later, made Dimitri feel guilty. He hadn’t been thinking straight -- all that had been in mind was that if Dedue vanished from his sight, he had failed; Dedue was dead; he was alone. He’d clung to Dedue, the idea of Dedue, as tightly as he could. And Dedue had seemed to do the same, seemed to share that fraction of understanding of what had happened to them both, seemed to want to go with him and out of the madness and bloodshed that had been his home. So it hadn’t even occurred to Dimitri to think it selfish at the time. How shameful; while he was bedbound, with his uncle in charge, with -- with things being as they seemed to be now, there’d been so little he could do to provide for the boy he’d dragged across a country. Dimitri could ensure he was allowed to stay, but not keep a watchful eye on where he stayed, or how people treated him. He’d heard snippets, seen traces in bruises and exhaustion. He didn’t like them.

But! Things were different now! Surely, right? They had to be.

“The room is still ready. I can wait to see it.” 

Dimitri righted himself, letting out a breath he hadn’t been aware he’d held in him.

“I can rest later, after I’ve shown you there. Really. It won’t be too hard,” Dimitri insisted. Dedue’s brow tightened, and he stooped down close again. Dedue was cruelly a tall for only being a year older, a figure of shoulders and elbows and great stretches of long bone, held up on a large, unfilled frame. He was taller than most grown men Dimitri knew -- taller than Gustave, taller than Rodrigue, taller than his father. Dimitri was still called cute and doll-like by people, and it just wasn’t fair. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t change that. It was as if no amount of strength or skill would make people stop calling him cute until he grew taller.  ...But then, what did it really matter anymore? Even that indignation rattled around in his chest without hitting any real feeling. Dedue offered the prince his arm.

“Then please, let me help.” It wasn’t until Dimitri accepted the arm, leaning against Dedue’s left side, that Dedue’s brow unfurrowed, and Dimitri himself felt a little wave of relief. They set back off again, coming before one finely-carved oak door in particular. It wouldn’t have been distinguishable from any other in the wing, save in its exact location.

“Ah, I’m sorry… “ Dimitri bit down the waves of apologies that crowded on his tongue. There was so much he ought to say, and could never say. Not to the living. “You’ve followed where we are right now, right? In relation to other places in the castle, I mean.”

“Hmmm…” Dedue closed his eyes and considered it. They were two turns from the staircase that ran through the wings of the castle’s personal quarters, where the windows shed beams of bright afternoon light from the west into the rooms. The first floor was for more common servants that kept the castle running, near to their work. The third, where they were, was for slightly more rarified staff -- the chief butler, the head maid, the Sensechal, and key members of the king’s personal guard -- it was an incredibly dizzying experience, Dimitri had found, walking through these halls and finding them so empty. Many residents of this floor had been ground away into nothing, too burnt to even bury. But the second, directly below… “...It is similar to the way to your rooms from the same stairs.” Dimitri nodded. 

“Excellent. This room is directly above mine. It’s meant for my chief retainer.” Dimitri had asked a few maids to clean it up the day before, after Dedue had agreed that he would enter Dimitri’s service-- and thus, earned a right to this room. It had belonged to Dimitri’s nurse, when he was younger, and most people would have assumed its next occupant would be Felix. But now, that would never happen, not for the future Duke Fraldarius (even Glenn had had a separate suite of rooms that fit his station even when acting as a knight). And so it was free for Dedue. A mixed feeling rose up in Dimitri’s heart as he removed his hand from Dedue’s arm to retrieve a roll of blue velvet from his belt-pouch.

“I can’t accept this.” Dedue’s eyes widened as they flicked across the velvet roll, Dimitri, the door. He didn’t sound mad, but when he settled on Dimitri, he wound tense, shoulders squaring so tightly they tugged at Dimitri’s heart.

“Oh.” Oh. Oh . His thoughts skipped briefly. This was Dedue working up the nerve, wasn’t it? He really wasn’t comfortable. Maybe he’d rather be somewhere else -- he almost certainly wanted to be doing something else. He needed something else.  Of course he did. Oh. Dimitri’s cheeks went first pink, then flushed so red the color reached his ears. How embarrassing.

“Ah. I see. I… I apologize, Dedue. Of course, I understand. I don’t want to force you to do something you weren’t comfortable with only out of need or some whim of mine,” Dimitri’s mouth went on more or less without him.. He was disappointed. He was mortified. And in a way deeper than his wobbly steps, his aching back, his sleepless headache -- a hollow exhaustion rang through him like he was a bell being struck. “I won’t be mad about having to change plans; I’m sure we can think of, well, something for you, please, don’t worry.”

“...Dimitri…” Dedue’s face went momentarily into a state slightly too neutral for Dimitri to grasp, not while Dimitri was trying to hold on in spite of the blow. “...Did I do something so wrong?”

“Huh?” 

The face resolved itself into worried brows, an anxious tightness to his eyes. A hurt.

“I am...unfamiliar with such things. But if there is something for you to be mad about...” 

What? Huh? What? Dimitri’s brain sputtered out against the seemingly mutual confusion. He had to stop himself from squeezing the roll of velvet, or its contents would be useless. Instead he leaned against Dedue, body going slack.

“...Dedue, what do you mean?” “Please, could you explain?” They asked each other in near-unison. Dimitri’s head drooped forward as he sighed.

“...I think. I may have gotten -- well, a little carried away.” That stung to say “What I mean to ask is, what are you refusing? No, is this truly what you wish to do with your future? To serve me and stay here in that way? It might be hard, you know. I don’t want to limit you, but I don’t know if I am, and I know that there’s... a lot of convenience in simply going along with what I say. But I want to ensure you that you don’t have to. I’ll do whatever I can for you, regardless.” 

Dedue nearly took a step back, but caught himself before he could pull Dimitri along. Instead, he reared higher a little, the motion hanging incomplete and silent in the air while he eyed Dimitri.

“If you tell me this is how I might freely stand by your side and be of use to you, protect you as you protected me, then it is enough.” Dedue’s answer contained such certainty that it might have slathered itself over Dimitri’s injuries like a balm. “That is what I have to do… What I want to do. I’m sorry if I made you think otherwise.” 

“...I’m glad,” Dimitri sheepishly admitted. He couldn’t put words to the relief that he felt, the sense of spinning whirlpools suddenly smoothing out into calm waters. He could keep knowing Dedue was alive. He didn’t have to keep falling. “I apologize for the confusion… But what’s wrong with this room, if that’s what you’re refusing?”

Dedue averted his eyes. Was that a tinge of color on his cheeks, or a trick of the lamplight? 

“I am... “ He paused, trying to parse the sentiment. “Not the person for such an honor.” 

“How so?”

“To be called chief among your men is…” Dedue couldn’t quite finish, only moved a hand vaguely, as if the gesture could sweep up all the things that made it beyond him. There was only air there.

“It’s what you will be, Dedue.” Dimitri’s surprise melted before he could speak -- and when his voice trembled with the change of mood, in its awkward, half-changed state, it cracked a little. Because -- no matter how you looked at it -- “You’re the only one left.” 

It burnt in his throat; the words smashed the world into fragments. But he had to. Everything was just a cloud of dust, a rolling fog. If he shut his eyes, it was gone. His breath caught itself higher and higher in his throat, jumping up it bit by bit like it was escaping him. 

“Dimitri...” Dedue’s voice was very low and rumbling. A hand hovered, its warmth radiant, over his shoulder. Then, a butterfly’s lightness -- it rested there.

“It’s nothing.” Dimitri blinked until he could see properly again.”I’m fine. What I mean is… It is the right room. It would be very nice to have you here, besides, and you deserve good quarters, you know.”

Dedue removed the hand from Dimitri’s shoulder quickly, and instead holding it out to accept the item in Dimitri’s hand. 

“Thank you. I am sorry to have upset you,” Dedue said, earnestly.  Dimitri unrolled the velvet onto Dedue’s outsized hands, covering calluses with a deep blue field. And at the heart of that roll were two keys on an iron ring, one slightly larger than the other, carefully polished.

“The larger one is the key to the rooms; the smaller is for the passageway.” Dimitri pushed on without acknowledging that apology -- Dedue had nothing to apologize for, so keeping that topic alive would only make it hurt more.

“Passageway?” Dedue took the larger key as instructed and turned it in the lock at Dimitri’s nod. 

“Yes. Well, I suppose it would be easier to show you.” 

On the other side of the threshold was a large room, its walls panelled in a rich spruce wood and green plaster over the stone walls, which showed their true shapes around the curtained-off windows. Someone had lit a few oil lamps on the walls, and so they didn’t step into the darkness, but into puddles of lamplight that only lacked the glow of the fireplace’s fire. A broad green and brown rug covered the floor between the doorway and the 4-poster bed, keeping one away from the cold stone below. 

Dedue stepped warily into the center of the room. He gently touched the chest at the foot of the bed, running his hands over deer and bears carved into the wood. He turned to spot the fireplace, the end tables, the shelves on the walls, the tall and heavy wardrobe.

As he circled, Dimitri lowered himself into one of the chairs by the fireplace, resting as he’d promised, and focused himself on Dedue’s expression. Eyes wide. Mouth tense, but as it tended to be. The suspense of that expression seemed unbearable until Dimitri cleared his throat. 

“It’s a little bare, I suppose. Though it wouldn’t be difficult to fill it up to make it more comfortable…” Dimitri paused, trying to figure out what Dedue might want in a room. While this wasn’t lacking in any basic furnishings, it had nothing like personal effects. Dedue hadn’t been able to bring anything besides what he was wearing, and much of that was so burnt or damaged that it would be unlikely he could wear them again in anything like their original form. Dimitri didn’t know what had happened to them, only that he’d asked Gustave to please help, and Dedue had been wearing other borrowed clothes since. All that remained dangled from one ear, swaying as Dedue’s head moved. And Dimitri had no idea what could even hope to (not replace Dedue’s home, he wouldn’t insult either of them that way) help. Dedue had turned to look at him, and so -- “Weapons, perhaps?”

Wait, not everyone was interested in collecting weapons, even though they were so obviously interesting. It was important to respect other people’s preferences, after all. And Dimitri had always had more fun doing things than owning things outside of beautiful and interesting weapons, so now he wasn’t entirely sure what would suit.

“That...Please, do not worry about that.” Dedue came to stand by Dimitri’s chair. His mouth relaxed just a fraction, at last. “This is a wonderful room. I do not need much.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to think of something,” Whether he’d wanted it or not, he’d felt something in him untense at that answer. He could have melted into the chair, he was so tired. “A few books, perhaps? They’d go on the shelves nicely, and, well, the castle has a wonderful library!”

Dedue’s cool eyes flicked away, taking the turn of his head with them, dipping down. 

“...Ah. That would… Not be helpful.” Dedue shuffled awkwardly in place. “Reading is... not taught in Duscur often. I never learned.”

“Ah. I’m sorry, then.” There was a long and awkward silence that hung in the air, Dedue’s mouth moving slightly as if it were preparing a word and discarding it, Dimitri feeling like he’d stepped on something he ought to have known was there. While he’d heard the people of Duscur relied more than those of Fodlan on oral traditions and the teaching of parents, he thoughtlessly hadn’t considered what it meant . He couldn’t even say he knew how many people in Fodlan could read -- what good was he supposed to be as a king, without knowing that sort of thing? He closed his eyes and considered the situation -- there wasn’t much he could do about the mistake, but about the actual reality… He could be helpful in that. “Would you like to learn now? It might be useful.”

“I don’t wish to trouble you,” Dedue answered, feeling out his words as if he were testing the strength of a bridge. “But I would not mind.”

“It wouldn’t trouble me at all. Even if my arm or other injuries recover soon, I don’t think I’ll be able to really train or have much exercise anytime soon. Something useful to do would be nice.” Yes, that was a thing he could do, even like this; a thing to take what would otherwise be hours of trying and failing to rest and fill them with activity would surely let his feet hit the ground again.

“Then I think I would like to try.” Dedue gave a grave nod. A small smile brightened Dimitri’s face as he started to ignore the various protests that resounded through him at the prospect of leaving his seat. His back, where the flesh wounds had been the worst, yowled and flashed in fresh pain when he gripped the chair’s arm to try and push himself upright.

“Great! We’ll get started…” His vision spun again. His head bobbed with a feeling that the little movement was so much vaster than it was. But he was, in his defense, on his feet -- and would stay on them. Still...  “Tomorrow, I suppose.” 

To Dedue’s quiet, unreadable nod -- and the offer of his arm once again, which Dimitri waved off this time -- Dimitri elected to get to his final order of business.

“...I still haven’t shown you why this room, in particular, is for you.” Dimitri crossed the room, heading to a particular spot close to the wall that ought to have divided this room from the next. If you didn’t know what to look for, it looked like an ordinary wall panel. 

“There’s still something?” Dedue’s expression opened in what Dimitri hoped was the good sort of surprise -- or, perhaps, he wanted to be the good sort of surprise. 

“I mentioned a passageway, right?” Dedue nodded in response, but didn’t look like that had answered much of anything. Dimitri put his hand up on it. His hand. Hm. Yes. An experimental press informed him that, while he could feel the give it had, it wasn’t about to move how it should. That was a problem. “...I can’t open this with one hand.”

“What should I do?” Dedue hurried to stand just behind Dimitri, the heat of his body radiating onto Dimitri’s back in the slight chill of spring’s end, feeling all the more vivid against stiff joints and angry scabs. It was a strange comfort -- Dimitri had to ensure the fire was stoked in his room when he got back, if a little warmth like this was such a relief. His hand changed position and tapped a spot about an arm’s length (his arms, not Dedue’s, whose arm’s length would easily leave the panel behind) away from where his hand was, before it returned to his original position.

“And on three, you press up and back with me.” An affirming hm .  “One, two, three.” When they pushed, the panel lifted, slotting into a groove just a little further back from the wall that let them push it to the side. And behind that panel was a small hollow. A bell hung from the hollow’s ceiling, just above an old wooden door. Dedue might have to stoop to use it -- for reasons of stealth, it was not a tall door. Dimitri stepped out of the way.

“Please keep a close eye on the key to this door. It’d be… A little dangerous, if someone untrustworthy got their hands on it,” Dimitri said while Dedue picked up the smaller of his two new keys. 

“...I understand.” The click of the key in the lock, the swing of the door, the staircase down winding itself into view. The thin cord for the bell descended the staircase as well, vanishing into a quiet darkness. And at the bottom of that darkness was where the cord ended, in his room.

“I’ll ring for you, if it’s an emergency.” In case of emergencies, yes, of course. It had always been that way, or so it seemed, but looking back on it, Dimitri had called his nurse down for many trivial things. Embarrassing things, sometimes. Times he couldn’t get to sleep, or sick days, or times he’d woken up cold and lonely. It had been almost 7 years since those days, and he was 13, nearly an adult. That sort of childish coddling -- he shouldn’t want to have someone to call for that sort of thing again. 

He stared down at the worn stones, feeling the years of footsteps in a little groove marking the center of the stairs. If he said what he wanted, he didn’t want to see the moment Dedue thought of him as immature. He didn’t want to look up and guess what disappointment or pity would be written, even so faintly, on Dedue’s face. To see with perfect clarity that this wasn’t how he ought to bear this, when everyone was looking at him to be strong. As if he didn’t know.

“...But -- however, you’re free to come down, as you like.” No matter how hard he tried to keep his voice level, it didn’t wholly succeed. Instead, the quaver he carried echoed down the stairs, bouncing back up and shaking anew against each step. A flush rose on his face as much for that as anything. “The passage locks at my end as well, it’s the same key, but I… don’t intend to lock it.”

“It would be wiser to lock it.” Dedue’s voice didn’t give away that disappointment, that pity, that mockery. It didn’t give away anything, which told him everything. 

“I know that, I just...” The nights were colder and lonelier than ever -- and longer. He blinked and couldn’t see the stairs clearly, only a blurry tunnel of darkness that began at his feet. The night was still going on all around them. The world had come unravelled, and time had stopped meaning anything besides the slow pulverizing of hope. He just needed something . 

“...However, I’m happy for the trust you’ve placed in me.” Something made Dimitri look up at that -- perhaps a little trace of nerves in the voice. Beyond the film of his tears, he knew what was there -- Dedue’s eyes, catching the light beyond the darkness, bright enough to cut through the shadows of the staircase.

“...I’m just glad to know you’re near.” Dimitri found it hard to read those eyes, the soft squint around their edges, the little squeeze that accompanied Dedue’s breath. But into that ambiguity Dimitri thought -- no, Dimitri hoped -- that he was as relieved as Dimitri was, to hear that said.

[terriblelifechoices]

For @abbyheart25​, from the send me a pairing and a number and i’ll write you a drabble thing.  As always, brevity is not my strong suit.

116.  “If you’re here to arrest me you should know I have no intention of coming quietly.”  Graves/Credence

This one kinda feels like it should come with warnings?  My sense of what needs warnings and what doesn’t is a bit skewed, but I suspect it’s better to be safe than sorry.  So.  Warnings for racism, sexual harassment, the food service industry in general, and attempted underage prostitution.  (Nothing in the warnings applies to the main pairing except the last one.  Which doesn’t actually sounds as helpful as I think it does, but I promise this is very PG-13.)

Credence let the storm go.  He collapsed back into his body, landing hard on the rain-slick concrete.  He bit his lip when he landed and tasted blood.

Changing back always left him disoriented.  It didn’t hurt, exactly, but he couldn’t control it very well and he usually landed badly.  One of his knees twinged faintly; Credence couldn’t tell if he’d scraped it or strained it while his mind tried to reconcile having a body again.

For a second, his world was nothing but panic and pain.  He had to run -- had to get away.  He didn’t know why or from what, but he was on his feet and running before he realized what he was doing.

Credence ducked down a side alley on instinct.  The world was a rain slick blur, but some part of his brain recognized where he was.  He was down by the docks, not far from one of the squats he’d stayed in after Ma had thrown him out for being a godless freak.  Credence scrambled up on a dumpster and grabbed the fire escape, hauling himself up with a grunt of effort.  The squat had been cleared out awhile ago, but no one had bothered to check the little alcove on the roof.  He could hide there for awhile.  It wasn’t like the cops were going to go door-to-door.  Not in this neighborhood.  And even if they did, they wouldn’t check the roof.  Why would they?  No one in their right mind would be up there.  Not with the storm rolling in.  Everyone who had someplace else to go would be indoors.

The little alcove had probably been a pigeon coop at some point.  It was a rickety structure whose only saving grace was that it had a roof.  That was enough for Credence.  He ducked inside, closing the chicken wire door behind him.

Credence sat down on the floor.  Someone had cleaned out the bird shit since the last time he’d sheltered here.  There was a nest of filthy blankets in one corner.  They smelled like mildew and stale urine, but there was no other sign of human habitation.  No one had been here in awhile.

He wrapped his arms around his knees and tried to force his thoughts into some semblance of order.

He’d been twelve the first time he’d changed,  He hadn’t realized that was what had happened until much later.  All he’d known was that he’d somehow managed to reduce his bed to splinters.  Ma had beaten him so badly for it he couldn’t move for two whole days, and he’d slept on a thin mattress on the floor until the day she’d turned him out for good.  She said that he’d done it because he was willful and sinful and all manner of other hateful things that she needed to beat out of him.  Credence had tried to tell her that he hadn’t.

Except, of course, he had.  Just not in the way that Ma thought.  He hadn’t done it maliciously, or to be disrespectful.  He hadn’t been able to control the change or the storm. Not then.

Credence had read enough comic books to know that whatever was happening usually kicked in around puberty.  He just didn’t know what it was.

He didn’t know what he was.

Part of him desperately wanted to believe that he was different.  Special.  Magic or metahuman or a mutant or something else out of the stories.  That there were other people out there who were like him.  That there was a place for him.

This was real life, though.  Real life was nothing like the stories.  The good guys didn’t always win, the bad guys were rarely punished, and there was no such thing as a happily ever after.  Not for people like him.

Whatever he was, he was the only one.

Except, maybe, he wasn’t.

Credence rested his forehead against his knees and remembered.

*

Nagini hated the stupid outfit Skender made her wear.  She called it the video game version of a Chinese cheongsam, from the kind of fighting game that was designed to appeal to perverts.

“You know,” she said, at Credence’s baffled look.  “The ones where the women all have breasts the size of cantaloupes and they make porno noises when they get hit.”

Credence had seen pictures of those kinds of video games -- Ma had been religious, but it wasn’t like he lived under a rock -- but he’d never actually played one.  He had to admit that Nagini was probably right about her outfit.  Any modesty the high Mandarin collar of Nagini’s pervert-inspired cheongsam might have provided was entirely destroyed by the enormous lace panels “covering” her breasts and part of her right flank.  The skirt went down to her knees, but there were slits up both sides so high that Credence -- and therefore everyone else -- could see her underwear when she moved.  Skender made her wear underwear that matched, but what he’d provided had been little more than string, so one of the other girls at the Circus Arcana had taken pity on Nagini and told her where she could get cheap lacy Victoria’s Secret knockoffs to wear instead.

“This is about as Chinese as I am,” Nagini added, sounding more exhausted by the racism than enraged.  She passed Credence a hundred bucks under the guise of topping off a patron’s drink.  Her stupid skimpy outfit didn’t have any place to hide her tips, and Skender wasn’t above stealing them.  He’d check the girls at the door before he let them leave for the night, mostly as an excuse to put his hands on their breasts under the pretense of checking if they had money hidden in their bras.

Skender didn’t check Credence, though.  Why would he check the dishwasher?  No one was going to tip Credence.  The patrons of the Circus Arcana didn’t even know he existed.

“Sorry,” Credence said.

Nagini shrugged.  “Makes the assholes tip better,” she sighed.  

It also made them handsy.  Credence could see red marks on her thigh.  The guy at table six had tried to grab her again; he must’ve scratched her when Nagini jerked away.  Table Six always got handsy with the girls, but he paid well and he tipped well, so Skender let him.

Credence hated him.  He was vaguely aware that Table Six -- Shaw, his name was Shaw -- was a politician of some sort.  He’d seen pictures of the man on the subway.  He used to wonder what would happen if someone leaked the fact that Shaw liked to get handsy with the waitstaff at the Circus Arcana, and what he liked to do with the working girls was worse.  Nagini had told him not to bother.  Shaw’s father owned a newspaper.  No one would run that story.

“Nagini…”

“It’s fine, Credence,” Nagini said, twitching her skirt to hide the marks.  “It’s nothing.”

It wasn’t.  Credence felt the storm beckon.  For a second, he was genuinely tempted to let it go.  To reduce the Circus Arcana to rubble and rid the world of the entitled, handsy assholes who’d had the world handed to them on a silver platter and still thought it owed them something.

He couldn’t hurt Nagini, though.  Or the other girls.  Credence pushed the storm down and went back to work.

Shaw got loud enough and drunk enough that Skender had him escorted out.  Discreetly, of course.  He’d torn the lace panel over Nagini’s breasts before Skender had done it, though, so Skender had sent her home.  He’d docked her pay -- “for the cost of a new uniform” -- and laughed when Nagini flushed red with humiliation and rage, but he didn’t know about the hundred dollars Nagini had slipped Credence earlier, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.  She could still make rent.

“C’mon,” Credence said.  He’d filled a water bottle with well vodka at the start of his shift.  He took a sip, just to ward off the night chill, and handed the bottle to Nagini.  “Let’s go get pancakes.”  It wasn’t much, but it was all he could think of to salvage the night.

Nagini laughed.  “You’re such a lightweight,” she said.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Credence teased.  “If we both weren’t lightweights, Skender would catch me, and then how would we get free booze?”

Nagini tipped the bottle to her lips and drank.  “Pancakes are too much work,” she declared, a red flush creeping over her cheeks.  She always got red when she drank.  “Let’s have waffles.”

“With chocolate chips?”

“Fancy,” Nagini said approvingly.  “Do we have chocolate chip Eggos?”

“... No.”

“Shit.”

Credence was pretty sure they had regular Eggo waffles at home.  He was just tipsy enough to think the sandwiching a Hershey’s between two waffles might be an okay substitute to chocolate chip waffles, when a car door opened behind them and Table Six lurched out.

“Hey!” he said.  “Hey, you bitch, I’m talking to you.”

Credence and Nagini both turned to look at him.  Nagini jerked her head.  “Let’s just go,” she said.

“Don’t ignore me,” said Shaw.  “I paid for you.”  He gestured to his crotch.  “Time to work for your money, you slanty-eyed bitch.”

“Fuck off!” Nagini yelled.  She threw the vodka-filled water bottle at him.  It was half-empty already, and it didn’t do much besides splatter Shaw with cheap vodka.

Shaw roared something incoherent and charged at them.  Credence put himself in between Nagini and Shaw and got a black eye for his trouble.

“Don’t worry, freak,” Shaw promised.  “You can have her back when I’m done.  I just want what I paid for.”

The storm beckoned.  This time, Credence let it take him.

His storm self raged the way his human self couldn’t.  Credence threw Shaw around like a rag doll and stole the breath from his lungs.  He heard Nagini scream something -- maybe his name, maybe a warning -- and then white hot pain streaked through him.

Credence was so surprised that he let Shaw go.  He didn’t really know how his abilities worked, but he’d figured out that bullets and conventional weapons didn’t work on his storm self.  Nothing could hurt him when he was the storm.  Credence would have given up being human entirely if he could have, but he’d never managed to stay a storm for longer than an hour.

The storm turned, and whatever it was hit him again.

Credence screamed in rage and pain.  The pain made it hard to keep his hold on the storm.  He felt himself flicker between his storm self and his human self and forced himself to be the storm once more.

“Stop!” someone roared.  The voice was male, commanding and familiar.  Detective Graves from the 12th precinct.  He walked down the middle of the street like he owned it, his tailored coat flaring out behind him like a cape.  He looked like a superhero.

Credence had run away a couple of times when he was younger.  Detective Graves used to by the street kids sandwiches.  He was alright, for a cop.  Didn’t seem to want anything for his kindness -- not information or favors or a couple of sweaty minutes in the back of his patrol car.  He’d been horrified when Credence had offered, the one time he’d taken Credence to an actual diner and let him eat his fill.  Credence hadn’t understood why he’d been so upset at the time.  It wasn’t like he had any other way of paying Detective Graves back.  And besides, he was starting to think maybe he liked men more than he liked women, so it wasn’t like Credence wasn’t going to get something out of it.  Credence was pretty sure Detective Graves would be nicer about it than anyone else, and he could at least find out if he liked it.

Ma had found him and dragged him back home not long after that. Credence had only seen Detective Graves once after that day in the diner; he doubted the man even remembered him.

The man didn’t stop.  He’d made a gesture and lightning leapt from his hands to strike Credence.

Credence screamed when it hit him.  He had enough presence of mind to force himself to keep his storm shape as he scanned the area, looking for Nagini.  She must’ve run off as soon as Credence changed shapes.

She was probably afraid of him now, but at least she was safe.

Credence fled.

*

The filthy blankets were better than no blankets at all.  It was cold enough that Credence was grateful for them.  His clothes were soaked through with rain, and he couldn’t afford to go to a doctor if he got sick.  It wasn’t like Skender offered his employees health insurance.

Credence curled up underneath them and tried to sleep.

That man had been like him.  He had -- abilities.  Credence didn’t know what else to call them.  Maybe he was a metahuman.

He wasn’t alone, and the only other person who was like him had tried to kill him.

Real life was a little bit like the comics after all.

Credence fought down a wave of hysterical laughter.  Behind it lurked the urge to cry.  He wasn’t alone, except he was, and Nagini had seen what he was and she had to be afraid of him now, which meant that he was more alone than he’d been since Ma had thrown him out.  He wanted to go home and he wanted to run and he had no idea what to do.  He was a little bit afraid that if he started laughing or crying then he wouldn’t stop until he’d gone crazy.  Credence had seen enough comic books turned into bad movies to know what sort of person had that kind of origin story.  He didn’t want to be a supervillain.

There were footsteps on the roof.

Shit.

Credence bolted upright, trying to breathe as quietly as he could so as not to draw attention.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.  He was so stupid.  Why had he ever thought that hiding here was a good idea?  He was trapped.

Credence reached for the storm.  He could change if he had to.  It would hurt, so close to his last change, but he could do it.

“You can come out if you want to, Credence,” said Detective Graves.  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Credence couldn’t help the bitter bark of laughter.  It just slipped out before he could stop it.  He clapped a hand over his mouth, but it was too late.  The damage had already been done.

Well, it wasn’t like Detective Graves didn’t know he was here.

Credence stood up and walked out of the pigeon coop.  The storm surged beneath his skin.  He could fling himself off the roof and change shapes before Detective Graves could stop him.  Go somewhere else.

“It would be you,” Credence muttered.  The only cop he’d ever kind of trusted.  The only one who’d ever been kind.

The only one he didn’t want to hurt.

“If you’re here to arrest me, Detective Graves, you should know that I have no intention of coming quietly.”

“Captain,” said Detective Graves.

“What?”

“It’s Captain Graves, now.  The 12th is mine.”

“Oh.  Um.  Congrats, I guess.  On your promotion.”

“Thanks,” said Captain Graves.  “Would you believe me if I said I wasn’t here to arrest you?”

“No,” said Credence, and changed.

He didn’t want to hurt Captain Graves, but if it was Captain Graves’ life or his freedom, he knew what he’d pick.  He’d killed Shaw, not to mention done a shit ton of damage to various buildings over the years.  Captain Graves was a cop.  Cops arrested people like him.

The storm surged towards Captain Graves, reaching out with grasping tendrils.  They slid away without touching him.  It was like trying to take hold of a glass sphere that had been coated in oil.  There was nothing to take hold of.

Credence howled in frustration.  Captain Graves tilted his head back and looked up at him.

“You’re magnificent,” he breathed.

Credence pulled back, confused.  He meant that.  Credence could see that he meant it.  Captain Graves looked at him the way people in movies looked at each other -- like Credence was something precious and wondrous and worthy of love.  He could have just been acting, like the people in the movies, but Credence didn’t think he was.

Captain Graves reached out a hand.  “Oh, my boy, you should have been brought to us long before it ever came to this.  The fact that you survived is nothing short of a miracle.  You are a miracle.”

Credence grasped his hand, letting the tendrils go solid until his human self remained.  It was hard to hold on to the storm when he was this confused.  The storm needed rage to direct it.  Rage and hate.

He stumbled, disoriented, and Captain Graves caught him.  He wrapped his arms around Credence, steadying him.

Credence felt safe there.  He hadn’t felt safe in years.

Us, he’d said.  You should have been brought to us.  There were more people out there like the man from earlier.  People with abilities.  People like Captain Graves.

People like Credence.

“What am I?” he asked.  “What are you?  Are we … metas?”

Captain Graves snorted.  “No.  Nothing like that.  Although it’s a useful cover for what we are.”  He raised one hand to cup Credence’s cheek.  “I told you.  You’re a miracle.”  He loosened his grip on Credence and took a step back.  For a second, nothing had changed and the next Credence had the impression of wings, huge and dark, unfurling in the air behind him.  They weren’t there and yet they were.  The feathers were a shade of brown so dark they were almost black.  Credence felt the rumble of tectonic plates shifting beneath the earth, the thin air of mountain peaks and the oppressive weight of dirt as he was buried alive.

Captain Graves snapped his wings shut and they vanished.

“What the hell?” Credence blurted.

“Not hell,” corrected Captain Graves.  “Or heaven.  Something in between.”  He traced a symbol in the air between them.

Credence recognized it.  He didn’t know how he recognized it, but he did.  He knew what it meant, too.  It was almost like he’d grown up knowing it and just forgotten that he did until now.

“Nephilim.”

A/N: This prompt made me wish I could draw.  It really did.  For some reason it was easier to think of in terms of comic book panels than it was in words, despite the fact that I am nooooot a good artist.  At all.  IDEK.  Brains are weird.

[randombtsprincessa]

Asylum || 3

Author: Randombtsprincessa

Characters: Kim Namjoon x Reader

Chapter:  01  02

Warning in-Chapter: Therapy, Flashback, Physical injuries, depression.

Three weeks passed.

In those three weeks, changes took place, a few of them, some of them almost nondescript that the staff taking care of me tried to make sure I wouldn’t notice but I did. The changes that I could see were the physical ones. My body healed under the watchful eye of the Head Matron, most of my wounds faded into scars and I felt more balanced than I’d been on that hospital bed.

I finally got out of the wheelchair and moved on to crutches. It was a bit more uncomfortable because I had to learn to maneuver my body with them but I soon managed. My diet, free time and therapy sessions were already closely monitored and I soon figured out why…which bled into the subtle details.

Seokjin had a lot of pull in the facility apparently.

He was also hell bent on getting me better as fast as possible. Maybe it had something to do with his medical credibility or maybe it was because my parents were putting him under a lot of pressure. It could’ve been both and it would’ve been plausible.

I was looked after by the two elderly nurses who had greeted us on my first day and they took care of my food and getting me ready for the day. My therapy sessions were conducted by Dr. Sihyuk who was a mild mannered man but had an intense way of questioning and persuasion. If we’d met under different circumstances, I was sure Jungkook and I would’ve liked him a lot. He was a fan of writing; suggesting I begin keeping a journal, put anything I wanted in there, be it my thoughts, the events of the day, drawings, even song lyrics…it hadn’t worked. The book he’d given me, a pretty little thing of teal blue stayed blank on top of my desk. I’d found it silly, not the idea of keeping a diary but of how it was going to help me. It wasn’t going to bring Jungkook back.

Jungkook…

I blinked my eyes open, looking up at the ceiling as I heard the small chatter of the day beginning stirring outside my door. I was sure soon the Sisters would come in to help me and I sighed, reaching up to scratch my neck, feeling the abraded skin from lacerations caused from the glass of the car windows. I began picking at it, feeling tiny pin pricks of pain as I removed the skin from my neck.

With the precision of clockwork, the usual knock came on the door and I called out a small assent as the nurse came in with a smile on her face.

“Hello, Y/N; how are we today?” she asked, handing me a white cup of my daily medicine and a glass of water. I downed it as she moved the curtains aside, letting in sunlight before grabbing the set of clothes that had been put out the night before.

She helped me walk into the small bathroom and I limped to sit on the small stool while she cleaned me up…or gave me a ‘bath’ since I couldn’t take a proper one by myself. My legs were still wrapped in hard casts and wouldn’t come off for a few more days. Once I was done she slid on the baggy sweatpants over the casts while I pulled on the matching grey sweatshirt, the uniform of the Institution.

She brought back the crutches and I slipped them on, grabbing the handles and pushing my weight up so I could stand as she slowly led me out of the room, letting the door shut after me.

“You know,” she said lightly as we walked down the hall, “You should take Dr. Sihyuk’s advice with that diary.”

I turned my head to her. “Were you going through my things?” I asked.

“No, that would be unprofessional, but I can tell when a book hasn’t even been opened once, Y/N. It’s none of my business how you cope, but it is my business to see that you do cope.” She said firmly.

“Why; because Jin said so?” I asked, harshly.

“Dr. Jin is a fantastic doctor and one of our finest patrons but no, it’s because that is what your friend would want. How do you think he’d feel if he saw you refused to move on? Place yourself in his shoes, what do you think he’d have done?” she asked gently.

Jungkook wouldn’t have moved on from you…

I knew it in my bones, in my soul. After all, it had been one our many unbroken promises.

He was drunk.

I unlocked the door to his apartment with one hand, my hand unsuccessful in jamming the key in its proper place with Jungkook’s full weight on me but I finally managed to slide it in, twisting it to open his door and pushing us both in. I fumbled our way in the dark to his couch and dropped him before closing the door, shaking my limbs to regain the flow of blood.

The ‘small’ party with a ‘few’ of our friends had become a huge bash, most of them inviting more of their friends till there was a crowd at the club and drinks were made to flow like a river. Being the designated driver for the day, I had to make sure Jungkook made it back to his apartment with his pants on. Mentally brushing my hands, I commended myself on a job well done.

Now to take care of the fool…

I looked down at where my best friend laid flopped, his legs and arms spread out, taking up all the space with his body as his head rolled comically on the armrest, his mouth slightly open.

I giggled to myself at the sight before fetching his blanket and some pain killers and a glass of water. I tucked him in and placed the water and medicine on his coffee table before pulling on my shoes again, cursing at the heels. I was going to have extremely sore legs tomorrow.

Even as I retrieved my bag from the floor, Jungkook turned on his side, his hand poking out of the blanket before wrapping around my wrist, holding tight.

“Where you going?” he mumbled, eyes still shut.

“I have class tomorrow, Kook, I need to get home.” I said.

He made a noise, tugging on my wrist. “This is your home, stay.” He said. I rolled my eyes, trying to pull my hand away. It only made his grip tighter. “Stop it, come sleep next to me,” he shifted over to provide space for me to lie down and I would be lying if I said that thought didn’t make me smile, warmth blooming in my chest.

I knelt down next to him, brushing his hair back, running a finger over his scrunched eyebrows, smoothing them.

“How about we have sleepover tomorrow, Bunny?” I asked softly, knowing he could hear me.

Jungkook finally cracked a bleary eye open, trying to give me the puppy dog eyes with one eye and it just made me laugh. “You wouldn’t leave your best friend alone and cold in the night would you?” he whispered, physically pulling me up and onto the wide sofa, turning us both so that he was spooning me.

I huffed in defeat as he wrapped us in the blanket, his breaths ruffling my hair as he nuzzled into the crook of my neck. “I swear you’re such a baby sometimes Jeon.”

He hummed. “Yet you still love me,” he murmured.

“I wonder,” I sassed.

His grip tightened a little on me. “Hey, promise you’ll stay,” he said, his voice fading with sleep.

“Yeah, Yeah, I’ll stay.”

“No, like forever, promise you’ll always stay with me. Promise me you’ll never forget about me,” he said. He suddenly sounded more awake and deathly serious. I turned to face him. His eyes were still closed, the light from his window half illuminating his handsome face.

“How could I forget such a cute little muscle pig like you?” I said.

“I’m serious, Y/N,”

I shook my head, knowing he was just delirious from the alcohol as I wrapped my arms around his torso. “Of course I would never leave you or forget you, Kook. We’ll get married if you want; since you can’t keep a girl and none of the guys I meet, feel good enough.” I whispered. I was teasing about the marriage but he giggled. “You’re right. I don’t want any other girl. I’ll marry you one day, Y/N.” he said.

I groaned at his lameness but he shushed me.

“I mean it. I won’t forget about you, Y/N, ever.” He said, brushing a light kiss on my forehead.

By the time I looked up at his face, he was already asleep, mouth open again as he snored gently against my skin. It took me some time but eventually I fell asleep as well, our half sober promise sealing itself in the night.

I was silent the rest of the walk, thinking of that night.

Memories of Jungkook didn’t make me seize up anymore, the swirl of guilt in my stomach was as heavy as ever, but it didn’t make my breathing difficult and vision blurry as I struggled to catch hold of reality. It was as if my mind was getting better, even if the deep slashes across my heart were still raw and exposed. Part of me was angry at myself for healing so fast. It didn’t feel right. The physical pain had been a punishment, a purging practice. Without it, I could pretend to be normal, not a killer.

I remembered Jungkook’s funeral, nearly a month ago now.

I had still been too injured to actually attend and Jin downright refused to let me go, saying that it would just make me worse but I was adamant. No one was going to bury my Jungkook without me being there.

When we got there, my wheelchair having to be maneuvered, there was so much sympathy; I felt that I might just drown in it. Jungkook’s mother hadn’t looked up from the seat in front of her; neither did she move during the entire service. His father was handling most of the service.

He gravely let me know his family didn’t blame me and they were happy I was alive but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. Still, I tried to put on a brave face…

That was until they brought his casket out.

For a few moments there, I thought I could pretend that it wasn’t him. I closed my eyes and told myself that Jungkook was still alive and he was sitting right next to me, holding on tightly to my hand, fingers entwined whenever he thought I was going through something unpleasant.

That had all crashed and burned right there.

Without warning, I began to hyperventilate, my eyes fixed on the mahogany coffin.

I couldn’t do it…

I couldn’t sit there and pretend that I wasn’t being buried with my best friend too…

I was quickly rushed back to the hospital where I threw up everything; food, heart, feelings, and any sort of pretension that it would be easy to just imagine Jungkook around me.

No imagination would ever compare to the real thing.

Maybe that’s when Jin started to build his case on my PTSD.

I thought about the night when we promised we’d never let go of each other and that maybe one day…if what Jungkook had said that night and on our last night together, we’d have gotten married.

Those were my present and my future all flying in the winds as ashes.

The nurse must’ve felt something in the atmosphere because she quickly knocked on Dr. Sihyuk’s door and led me in, placing me gently on the soft couch in front of his armchair as he nodded thanks at the woman, smiling as she left us to another session.

As usual, Dr. Sihyuk was dressed in an impeccable crisp shirt and slacks, body poised on his armchair, a clipboard on his knee and a perpetual benign expression on his face.

I sat in front of him on the couch, my attention deliberately out the window while he kept staring at my face. It was a silent battle. I always waited for him to say something first but it wasn’t because I liked wasting his time. It was more like I never had a clue as to how to begin talking in our sessions. I always needed a nudge. He understood; never showing any signs of being annoyed by my silence or my scrambled notions in terms of therapy.

“You know, if this was a chargeable session, you would have to pay hundreds of dollars for me to just sit here and watch you watch the birds,” he said, smiling slightly, the curves of his lips turned up.

“This is chargeable. It all culminates in my final bill.” I said.

“Exactly.”

I looked down at my feet.

“Have you been writing anything in your diary? If you want you can tell me some of the entries, we could discuss that.” He said.

I nodded absently, biting my lips. I had two choices; I could either lie, tell him some general stuff or I could admit I hadn’t written a damn thing. Fortunately, I had to do neither.

“Or if you want, you could tell me how you’re getting on with the others,” he said gently.

I grasped at that. The others in my group, being treated by the same people were five boys. I’d seen Yoongi, Hoseok, Jimin and Taehyung that day. I hadn’t met the last one. I was the only girl in their group and they’d all treated me nicely. More nicely than I deserved, I thought. But maybe being cooped up with each other for so long had something to do with it.

“Isn’t it wrong though, speaking about others?” I asked, twisting my fingers around the hem of my over large top.

“It is if I do it. I would be breaking professional ethics by discussing their problems with you. We’re not doing that. We’re just discussing you and how you’re doing with this place and its occupants. We’re starting with those who’re closest to you right now.” He said.

“Oh…well, everyone’s been really nice.” I said.

“Even Yoongi?” He asked, smiling.

I chuckled gently.

Min Yoongi was the mint green haired boy I had seen first. Grouchy and constantly sleepy he was the unofficial head of our group. His cat eyes always droopy from boredom and disdain whenever he had to participate in anything but he was also extra kind and sweet behind a touch exterior. He had a deep soft spot for Hoseok and Jimin and while he seemed to be always annoyed by the overzealous Taehyung, I’d seen him threaten a kid from another group that if he commented on the younger boy, he’d break all his belongings.

However, no matter how sweet he was, he was burdened just like us. His work of music making, which he was brilliant at, had made him break down from stress, pressure and he was plagued with severe anxiety and depression. It was heart breaking when he talked about his work because he sounded so passionate and yet his eyes reflected so much sorrow that that passion had brought him.

It had taken him a week to warm up to me, seemingly distrustful of the reason I was here. I understood, who’d want to be friends with the girl who got her best friend killed but later, Taehyung gently explained that he was like that with everyone; I just had to give it time. So, with time, Yoongi did become one of my friends, talking about various different things that we both surprisingly shared a liking for.

“Yes, even Yoongi,” I said.

He hummed, nodding, making a note in the clipboard.

“The rest,” he continued and I nodded. “They are much friendlier, I mean, Taehyung and Hoseok were friendly from day one.” I said.

“Jimin seems to have taken a liking to you too?” he questioned.

“I hope so; I try not to look at…”

I trailed off.

Poor Jimin, I thought. The small, frail looking cute boy was brought in here with deep slashes across his wrists, a clear case of attempted suicide. No one knew the reason, except maybe his doctors and family. He was kept under constant watch but they seemed to have eased up a bit now, as per what Taehyung had said.

“The scars,” Sihyuk said sadly and I nodded just as a small knock came on the door.

“Come in,” he called.

A nurse opened the door, throwing me a smile before turning to the doctor. “Namjoon’s time,” she said.

“Ah, yes, I didn’t realize the hour ended, forgive me,” he made a hurried motion for the nurse to bring the person in as he turned to me with an apologetic grin. “We’ll continue next time, Y/N.” he promised before helping me get my crutches on as the door opened again.

It was the blond boy who was reading on the floor I realized. He bowed politely when he saw us. I turned a curious eye on him as Dr. Sihyuk nodded in acknowledgement but it was noticed.

“Haven’t you met Namjoon?” he asked and I shook my head.

He hummed as the nurse who came to announce the end of my shift, thanked the therapist and began to lead me to the common room.

The common room was a large white room where I’d first seen the boys. It was here where we sat around doing nothing or something to preoccupy ourselves. Once inside the glass doors, I made my way to the usual corner, seeing Yoongi on a chair, his head thrown back staring at the ceiling while Jimin was curled up on the couch next to him, eye outside the window again.

“Hey,” I said, sitting gingerly down beside Jimin. Yoongi grunted in acknowledgment and Jimin turned to smile at me, “How’re the crutches treating you?” he asked.

I laughed.

“Better every day, at least I don’t get stuck in the poles anymore.”

Yoongi narrowed his eyes at me. “Don’t laugh about that. The head nurse made me walk with you everywhere for days because you might’ve broken your bones or something.”

“Gee, Yoongi, don’t make me think you care.”

He snorted, going back to staring at the ceiling.

“Where are Tae and Hobi?” I asked.

“Oh,” Jimin said, giving Yoongi a look before smiling sadly, “Hoseok is in his rehab session, Taehyung has his visitation day.” He said.

“Oh,” I imitated Jimin, knowing these days were hardest on the two otherwise happy boys. Hoseok always returned from physical therapy a little less sunny until he smiled again and it was common knowledge that Taehyung’s visitation day was due to legal matters. What exactly happened in either of those, they didn’t discuss and no one dared to pry in case Yoongi broke their stuff.

“How was your therapy?” Jimin asked, changing the subject.

“Fine, Sihyuk asked how I was doing with you all before Namjoon came in.” I said.

“Ugh, tell me you said we’re being good to you because I don’t want another lecture.” Yoongi said.

“You’re fine,” I said, waving a hand at him in a shooing motion. “So, who’s Namjoon anyway?” I asked.

“Kim Namjoon,” Jimin said heart eyes evident in his tone as he smirked at Yoongi. Yoongi in return muttered a low ‘fuck off’ to the blond boy. Jimin giggled.

“Namjoon was the first one in this group. He’s the apple of everyone’s eye here. He’s very smart; basically a genius, I hear. Though I don’t know why he’s in here,” he said.

Yoongi muttered something again. “What?” Jimin asked.

“He ran away from home…five times. They brought him back every time. He just used to get on random busses and took off.” He said.

“Doesn’t explain why he’s here?” I asked.

“His family is one of those business type people. Wanted him to become one of them and he wants to go to song making, so they thought he was a hippie. Maybe they thought being here was going to cure him of that but he’s still writing. He shows me his stuff some times, he’s good. If I was still…” Yoongi gulped, eyes closing. “If I was still working, I’d have launched him.” He said softly.

Jimin and I quickly left him alone after that.

Three hours later, we were bored out of our minds.

Lunch had come and gone, nothing spectacular as usual, and Jimin and I’d sat at our table, as I watched him try to solve a Rubik’s cube for the better part of an hour before he gave up in a huff.

“Do you want to solve one of the crosswords?” I offered.

I’d normally offer to go take a walk but Taehyung and Hoseok usually came with us and if they went, Yoongi definitely came. It seemed weird to go without them. I knew they wouldn’t be coming here until tomorrow.

“Nah, I’m just going to go take nap.” Jimin said, getting up and going back to the couch where Yoongi was already curled up on.

I flopped back on the chair before tilting my head back to look at the bookshelf on the side of the wall.

It had been ages since I’d read an actual book, not just a quick story or fan fiction on my phone. I used a single crutch to haul myself out of the chair, limping towards the shelf before running my free hand over the fingers.

To my delight, I saw a copy of Lord of the Rings but the catch was that it was on the higher shelves. There was no way I could reach it and climbing on a chair was out of the question. I didn’t want to wake up Jimin or Yoongi or ask the nurse to get me the book. Damn it…

I pursed my lip, trying to look at the other titles but nothing seemed good enough anymore until I felt someone come to stand behind me. A large shadow fell over the books I’d been looking at and I flinched involuntarily.

“Hey, do you need some help?”

I paused. I was expecting one of the nurses but this voice was unfamiliar. It was deep, as deep as Taehyung’s and a little raspy. I turned and looked up to see the same tall, blond boy; Namjoon.

I studied him curiously. His blond hair was flumped up on his head, his glasses resting low on the bridge of his nose. He was wearing the same uniform as the rest of us but unlike some of us, his fitted him nicely. He wasn’t as slight as he seemed at first glance, muscles showing in his arms.

Namjoon smiled at my blatant scrutiny and I looked down, flushing.

“Sorry, I was just looking for a book.” I said.

He nodded, tilting his head as I turned back again, my eyes now desperate to just find a book and run. “Might I suggest one?” he asked softly, still standing behind me.

“Hmm, I guess,” I said, confused, backing away as he reached up and carefully pulled out the Lord of the Rings and handed it to me. I looked at him curiously. Had he seen me struggling with it?

He laughed when he saw my face. “I saw you looking at it when I came in. you have good taste in books.” He said. I shrugged, taking the book from him and hugging it one handed to my chest.

“So, you must be Y/N,” he said, smiling again.

He had dimples, I realized, deep endearing indents in both his cheeks.  

“Yeah,” I said, nodding my head.

He stretched out a hand, fingers open. I looked down at his hand before slowly reaching out, placing my own hand in his, letting his fingers encase my much smaller hand. “Hi, I’m Namjoon.” He said.

[scapegrace74-blog]

Seventeen: Mandie (866-TOP-GRLZ)

A/N  You ever make a list?  A way to compile all the missed opportunities, the transgressions, the warning signs telling you that you’re on the wrong path?  Of course you have.  Part 13 in the series.  Part 1 and links to other parts are here. Rated NC-17. 

13.

He’d been visiting his father in Washington in 1969, and the driver took them through a bad part of town.  Even in daylight, the street corners and stoops were populated by women the likes of which he’d never seen before.  Garnished in go-go boots, flimsy lace and kohl, he wondered aloud if they were going to a costume party.

Bill Mulder chuckled.  “Those are whores, son.”

“What’s a whore?”

“A prostitute.  Men pay these women to... please them.”

He’d stared then, wide-eyed, at these women who sold pleasure to the wise and powerful, like his father.  Maybe this was what kept him away from home.  It would certainly explain the frosty unpleasantness of his parents’ marriage.

As though guessing his thoughts, his father clarified, “Not us, son.  The Mulder men don’t debase themselves by paying for sex.”

***

He thought of that long-ago conversation as he sat in the gloaming of his apartment, a telephone number on a worn scrap of paper lying on the coffee table before him.  His professional duty was to uphold the law, and his personal inclination was to protect the vulnerable.   AIDS was rampant in DC’s sex work industry.  And if he wanted to get laid, he could wander into any bar or club of his choosing, and likely find someone willing to go home with him.

So why was he considering calling an escort service?

After Jade’s death and Diana’s departure, he’d sat himself down and performed a thorough self-analysis.  His conclusion: his track record with women sucked.  From the first, he’d stumbled into one relationship after another, pinballing off heartbreak and into empty sexual gratification.  He’d assumed that with time, he’d meet someone who offered some tenuous foothold on middle ground, but that hope withered and died with each passing year.  

His life didn’t invite stability, and he was tired of feeling guilty that he didn’t love the way the greeting card companies said he should.  Love was like a mirror, he’d told Elizabeth once, and every one of his attempts at it had shown him something ugly inside himself that no-one else deserved to see.

But his body still ached to be touched.  Restful sleep had always been elusive, and the mental stimulation of the X-Files often saw him still awake at dawn, researching and piecing together tenuous strings of conjecture, certain that the answer to his sister’s abduction lay hiding in the deep well of arcane mysteries into which he’d inadvertently fallen.  Physical release was one of the few things that calmed his mind and allowed him to slip temporarily into oblivion.

And there was something else.  Something so dark and disgusting that his thoughts sheered away from it every time it crept out from under his strict regulation.  But if was going to court degradation by paying for sex, why not open that portal and find out, once and for all, where the filthy rot inside him resided?  A hooker in Washington DC would be well-used to taking those kind of secrets with her to the grave.

***

He waited on hold, a synthesized version of Must Have Been Love causing him to smile grimly.  A musical prescription for the lovelorn.  Finally a surprisingly matter-of-fact female voice picked up.

“Welcome to Top Girls, Washington DC’s premiere companionship service. My name is Elisa Covington. How may I assist you today?”

His hand shook.  His heart pounded heavy in his throat.  Hang up, Fox.  Some things are better off not known.   Just hang the fuck up.

“Hello?  Is anyone there?”

His fish tank gurgled, the last of Jade’s mollies swimming aimlessly in circles under the false sun of its bulb.  It was Friday evening - another sixty hours before he spoke to anyone not expecting a gratuity.  Fuck it.

“Yes, hello.  Sorry.  I was... I’m calling about a... date.”

***

It was a surprisingly business-like transaction.  He answered a series of questions about his preferences: height, build, hair colour, manner of dress.  Then the service took his credit card information.  Two hundred dollars for an hour, which included the cost of the hotel room and a recent clean blood test.  He’d be charged, whether he showed up and got off or not.  He’d wear a condom, provided by the service.  Saturday evening at seven, at the Marriott just south of Capitol Hill.   Room 1013.

***

He wiped his sweaty palms down the front of his jeans, inhaled deeply through his nose, and knocked.  The door opened into a dimly lit and innocuous hotel room and he stepped inside.

The agency had done better than he’d dare dream: she was about 5′8, slim and athletic with shoulder-length dark brown hair that fell in loose waves.  Instead of the stereotypical spandex and mesh, she was dressed as he was, in jeans and a loose-fitting top.  She extended her hand.

“It’s nice to meet you, Fox.  My name is Mandie.  Thanks for being punctual.”  She had a nice voice; melodic, with no hint of a regional accent.  Her hands were clean and unadorned.  A perfect blank canvas on which to paint one’s desires.

“Well, it’s my dime, whether I’m here or not, right?   And please call me Mulder.”

She laughed lightly and sat casually on the dark green loveseat that faced out the window towards the glowing lights of the Capitol building.  He glanced at the bed, then joined her, keeping a prim distance between them.

“I gather this is your first time with my agency.  I like to start with a few questions, if that’s alright.  But first, can I get you something to drink?”

It was his turn to laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“I feel like I’m here to buy life insurance, not to...” he tapered off, not wanting to be vulgar.

“Not to fuck me?  Well, in either situation, you’re my customer, and your satisfaction is based on how well I give you what you need.  Which may not be the same thing as what you think you want, by the way.”

“That’s a pretty progressive approach, Mandie, but I see your point.  So, what would you like to know?”  He found himself relaxing a bit, shoulders sinking back into the upholstery.

“Tell me a bit about your previous lovers.  What about your previous sexual experience have you enjoyed, and what hasn’t worked for you?”

“So I’m paying two hundred dollars an hour to talk to you about my past?  Some of the best therapists in town don’t bill that high.”

“I hate to break it to you, Mulder, but no-one hires an escort to fuck her for sixty minutes straight.  Given how tightly you’re wound, I give you ten minutes, tops.  So either we talk beforehand, or we talk afterwards.  But if we talk beforehand, I can try to make them the best ten minutes of your week.  Think of it as fornication with a side of therapy.”

He shook his head, bemused.  “Fair enough.”

He didn’t feel comfortable spilling his guts or naming names, but he closed his eyes, remembering aloud some of his past encounters: the thrill of discovery with Nicole, in another hotel room, a million miles away; the unbridled kinky sex with Ava in a damp English garden; the unexpected discovery that he liked it when Diana took control and made him submit.   

As he spoke, his cock tingled and hardened, pressing against the seam of his jeans.  A warm hand that wasn’t his own covered its prominent ridge, rubbing languidly as moist breath painted his neck.  He opened his eyes to see Mandie’s dilated pupils hovering nearby.

“Enough talking?” he asked hoarsely, as she started to unpop the buttons of his fly.

“Yes, I think I have enough information to work with.  Now stand up.”

He obliged, feeling light-headed as she knelt and slid his pants down to his ankles.  Free of his clothing, he was stepping towards the bed when she halted him with a hand over his hip.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Bed’s over there.”

“You don’t want me to fuck you on that bed.  Beds are for comfort.  For peace and solace and permanence.  You want me to fuck you right here, on this couch.  This might be your first time paying for it, but for you, sex has always been a transaction, and you’ve never felt like you could afford to pay the price.  Put on that condom - I’m about to show you just how good it can be when your debt is cleared.”

And that was how, on an otherwise normal Saturday night in 1992, Fox Mulder spent his first two hundred dollars on therapy, with a side of ejaculation.

***

“You’re distracted tonight,” Mandie observed.  He was leaning against the cheap veneer of another hotel headboard.  His cock extended half-erect from the fly of his underwear and she was absently painting filigree patterns on its loose sheath with her tongue.

“Yeah.  I just flew back from Iowa today, and I guess my mind is still on the case.”

“You seem to travel a lot for work.  It must get lonely, always being the stranger from out of town.”

“I’ve actually got a partner now.  So she and I are lonely strangers together.”

“She, huh?   Have you two ever....?” she looked up at him with a cheeky smile.

He laughed at the thought.  “No.  No way.   That would be disastrous.   Don’t shit where you live, a friend once told me.   And she’s way too...” he stalled, trying to think of the right word to describe what kept Scully on one side of an impenetrable wall, and his fucked up sex life on the other.

“Too ugly?” Mandie guessed, before bending her head to nip and suck on his ball sack through the thin cotton of his briefs.

“No.  Not ugly,” he gasped, rising to fullness under her expert touch.  “Just not for me.   Jesus, Mandie, that feels amazing.  Keep doing that.”

***

“In quarantine?  I’ve heard a lot of excuses for breaking a date in my day, but that’s a first.”  He’d missed their last three appointments, and he was quivering with need, shaking and pulsing with want.

“It’s true.  We were released just yesterday.”  He was already peeling his clothes away like molted skin, breath loud in the close confines of the hotel room.

“Your partner was quarantined too?  Oh, that must have been fun.”

“Mandie, with all due respect, shut up and get naked.  I’m starving for it.”

The beauty of their association was that he didn’t have to think about whether he was offending her or whether she needed something from him that he wasn’t able to provide.   As long as his credit card didn’t decline, he was living up to his end of their bargain.

She eyed his erection, taut against the tender skin of his abdomen.  “Yes, I can see what you mean.  What are you hungry for, Mulder?  Do you want to pretend I’m her?”

“Her?”  For a breathless instant, he thought she meant Samantha.  But he’d never mentioned his sister to Mandie, and he realized in that moment that the wires in his brain were so tangled that even the best therapy wouldn’t make a difference.  He was broken.  Hopelessly and fundamentally broken.

“Your partner.  What’s her name?”

He shook his head, thoroughly confused and softening, despite the proximity of Mandie’s naked body.

“No, I don’t want to pretend I’m fucking my partner.  But there is something you can do for me,” he said, positioning her to bend over and clutch the back of the couch, her dark hair obscuring her face.

“Anything,” she gasped as he slid into the hot crucible of her body, where he put his secrets for safe-keeping.  “You know you can ask me for anything.”

“Call me Fox.”

***

“Yes, hello Mr. Mulder.   This is Elisa Covington.   We haven’t heard from you for some time, and understand that you may be out of the country.  As I’m sure you understand, we cannot guarantee your usual appointment without a certain amount of... regularity to your visits.  We’ll be closing your file.  Rest assured that all your personal and credit information will remain encrypted and secure.  Please do not hesitate to contact us, if we can be of service to you again in the future.  Beep.”

“Mulder, I need your helllllllp.... Beep.”

Go to Seventeen: Kristen. 

[ayearofpike]

Thirst No. 4: The Shadow of Death

Simon Pulse, 2011 492 pages, 28 chapters + epilogue ISBN 978-1-4424-1319-1 LOC: PZ7.P626 Th 2011 OCLC: 731720997 Released August 9, 2011 (per B&N)

The immortal Sita has died. Only not — her soul still lives, in the body of her descendant. How did this happen? In seeking the answer, Sita will learn the secret to defeating the ancient race that imperils humanity. The search won’t be easy, though. Sita must traverse time and space, heaven and hell, the physical and the spiritual, and what the hell is even going on my head hurts.

Honestly, I’m not sure what Pike is going for in this book. Is it trying to be smarter than other authors of the era and genre by bending the rules of continuity? Is it striving for a narrative that is just beyond his reach? Is it just pounding out Another Damn Sita Book against deadline to get that green? It could be any of those. At least it ties up the story of the Telar and the IIC relatively well, although there’s still enough loose ends to keep our vampire going if necessary (and of course it is; Thirst 5 is still on the horizon).

One thing Pike has totally bought into is the arbitrary capitalization of the names of things to make them Important Artifacts. You remember this: probably the impetus was Suzanne Collins, naming specific elements of the Hunger Games to showcase why they were relevant and how the country had accepted them as elements of the competition. But then every single friggin’ YA book about a post-apocalyptic dystopia started adopting the shit. At least Collins tried to come up with catchy names for her Artifacts. The other authors just come up with a word to call something and throw an initial cap on it, and Pike leaps happily aboard the Proper Name Train. And every time you think he’s drilled down to the smallest level of a Category, he names a smaller subgroup that needs its own Capital. Eventually it makes me want to put the Book down and kick the Ass.

Is it obvious I’m teaching again? Not just because I’m going all loco on repetitive cliches, but also because it’s taken me like three weeks to write this. 

Let’s just bore down into the summary. We start with Sita in her descendant Teri’s body, awakening to that fact at her own funeral. Apparently she had a couple of days that are just blank or at best hazy, but then Miracle Baby Teen took Teri’s hands and looked into her eyes, and crystallized Sita’s presence. Nobody is sure what this means, exactly, but Sita is feeling blood hunger for the first time in years. The new body doesn’t have the five thousand years of experience and transfusions from multiple vampires and gods and saviors to abate it, after all. So when she gets back to her hotel, she orders room service — only they don’t offer blood. But the delivery boy has some, and dude does she drink it ALL. So then there’s some wacky hijinks as she has to clumsily get the body out of the hotel and dispose of it.

She’s not ready to reveal herself to Immortal Boyfriend yet, though. He was against her turning Teri into a vampire in the first place, remember, and in her weak state she figures he’d kill her. So she carefully and strategically reveals some info like Sita told Teri as they try to figure out what to do about the bigger threats of the virus wielded by the immortals and the crippling mental focus of the monster corporation. The Telar-ites want to focus on mass producing the cure to the virus and getting it distributed, but Sita thinks the only way they can do that is to involve IIC. Someone’s research has turned up that all of the main members were students of the same parapsychology professor at Berkeley(?), and so Sita, Seymour, Miracle Teen’s mom, and the young Indian girl who has been sucked into this life all drive out to meet him.

But before they go, Sita/Teri has to clean up her mess. Apparently she’s not as stealthy as she used to be either, because some dumbass kid saw her taking the room service cart with a body stuffed under it down to the garage, and his mom reported this Olympic champion to the police. So she has to try to wipe out any trace of suspicion from the cops’ minds, as well as finding a safe source of blood to feed on. Turns out one of them has a wife who is a doctor, and after an overreaching act of hypnotism, Sita gets into the hospital blood bank and takes all of it, then goes back home with the doctor and wipes out her memory as well as her husband’s. So it’s cool that she still has her vampire hypnosis, but it’s super clumsy, just like everything else in this new body. And what happened to Teri? Miracle Teen seems to think she’s dead, but that can’t be right. But why not? And if not, how come Sita is so in control?

The professor is quite a font of information, and he sure is scared of the IIC boss. He suggests they go talk to her ex from school, who was one of the major catalysts in the discovery of group-focused mind control via ESP. This dude and his girlfriend are still living in Santa Cruz, and they aren’t at all surprised to find four random diverse strangers at their door. Sita is confused, though, that the math doesn’t add up in regard to how old these people are. According to the research, their studies happened in the ’60s, but there’s no way this dude can be older than 40 when he ought to be knocking on 70. It gets late quickly, and so the couple offers our ramshackle group a couple of rooms for the night. Sita takes the opportunity to decode some more of Original Vampire’s book, and learn more about the deep and true love between him and the Telar he married. She also calls Teri’s parents to check in, and learns that the cops are still looking for her in connection with the missing room service dude, so that sucks.

In the morning, the CEO’s ex tells them more about his research and how IIC stole it to find exactly the right sociopaths to use in its mind-control device. Basically it was an astrological predictor, so that you could tell with a high degree of accuracy what someone would be like and how their extrasensory facility would manifest based on where and when they were born. Sita realizes, all of a sudden, that the creepy kid she ran into at the CEO’s house is actually conceived with this ex, because of his own predilection for ESP and his familiarity with the needs of the astrological predictor. He talks about having been targeted by the device himself, and his girlfriend says that she managed to shake him free by pushing him down the well on the property. They’ve mentioned this well before, and how it provides such amazing water, so now Sita is curious.

She ends up climbing down the bucket rope in the middle of the night, into a vast cavern with a faint glow at one end. Following the light leads her to: her own body. Sita’s body, that is, the one that was supposed to have been buried in Denver. Sitting by it is the astrological researcher’s girlfriend, who Sita immediately realizes is more than she’s revealed herself to be. Yep: it’s Original Vampire’s wife, Immortal Boyfriend’s mom, and one of the oldest and most ancient Telar still in existence. But it’s not like that. She took the body to protect what it holds, not just to keep it from these creepy evils that are trying to get more power but also because — check this shit out — it’s healing.

Sita can get back into her body, Ancient Telar says. All she has to do is let Teri finish dying.

Obviously when he finds out, Immortal Boyfriend is pissed. He is totally ready to murder Sita, without actually ritualizing it so she returns to her body. And Sita knows she deserves it, sort of. She’s as much to blame as anyone for the mess they’re all in, and she loved Teri as much as any of them, maybe even more. So she’s not going to fight back if Immortal Boyfriend exacts his rage. But he can’t do it, and he does realize that having a full-strength Sita will help their cause. So they all end up back down in the cave, where they reconnect the appropriate bodies by ripping Teri’s femoral artery and allowing Sita’s corpse to drink the blood. The transfer happens fast, and lucky for Immortal Boyfriend Teri has just enough consciousness to say goodbye.

I have to step out of summary for a minute to flat-out state how GROSSLY DISSATISFYING this is. Like, for seven books now we’ve known Sita as this inhuman giant, capable of defeating everyone and anything. Now she’s in a newer body, with a younger brain and less experienced reflexes even if it has all her consciousness, and she’s supposed to start figuring out how to overcome that. To just un-write the whole thing and stick her back in her old body not even half a book later strikes me as Pike didn’t want to commit to a decision he’d already made, rather than any kind of grand plan that this was always gonna happen. And yeah, I get it, Sita’s body has all kinds of implications, but why did it have to come back almost immediately? I’d go so far as to say that this makes Teri Raine practically irrelevant to the grander scheme of the story. And it sticks the whole personality quirk we’ve just learned about Sita — where she has followed and cared about her line of descendency, one that never actually seemed believable having read the first six — even deeper into the grave.

So now the gang is all together and ready to carry out their plan. Sita waltzes into the IIC office, releasing the deadly virus as she does so, and makes her demand: use the mind control group to destroy all of the high-ranking Telar or die painfully and frightened today. This is where the Arbitrary Capitalization makes its most insidious entrance. The top Telar, the Source, can meld to form the Link, which makes them unbeatable. But IIC can focus its Array through the Cradle, powered by a smaller group known as the Lens, and at least find where they are. So once she learns a Location, Sita can use her Knowledge to open up a Can of Whoop-Ass. But to join the Lens, she’s required to offer up a sacrifice, and she figures the best candidate is the mole who keeps feeding up information on where the group is, and not least the DNA of Immortal Boyfriend so he could get possessed. Who is it? Probably the math teacher who conveniently keeps not being with the group every time they get attacked. Only as the Lens forces her to climb to the top of Truman College’s bell tower and hurl herself off it, Sita sees inside her mind and knows she was innocent the whole time. 

As it happens, she feels claws on her shoulders. Ancient Telar warned her that this would probably happen: in order to tap into the powers of the extrasensory, one has to connect to a Familiar. Sita can see the ones clinging to the kids in the room, but is not permitted to look back at her own, which makes her suspect that it’s probably the most powerful demon of all — a demon that was never actually a demon, but an angel that refused to accept its grace in being less than God and ended up falling into the deepest of despair. Yeah, that one.

She calls back to base and lets her crew know what’s going on, then tries to use her newly replenished powers to fix the police detective whose brain she screwed. Only he starts feeling scared and disturbed, and she realizes that this Familiar that is now attached to her is having a negative effect on her powers. IIC Boss comes in and they talk about the computer game that everyone’s playing, the one about being saved and moving to higher planes of heavenly ability, which is (not coincidentally) being constantly written and updated by the kids in the Lens when they’re not out brain-murdering. 

Have I talked about this game before? It feels like I did, but maybe I’m thinking of Alosha. Miracle Teen loves it, and he said his presence in game was literally just to make himself known. But there are obvious creepy levels behind it, and IIC Boss reveals that there is no possible way to delete or destroy the code because of how it’s been embedded into the Internet. What’s it for? We don’t know yet! We do know that there’s significant backmasking and subliminal messages which echo the invocations the Lens uses to get into its power state. So maybe this game somehow charges telepathic batteries? I’m pretty sure this is the last time Pike mentions it in this book.

But now they’re getting ready to attack the major players in the Telar, so they have to work fast and without many breaks. They get two by melting them with too much chlorine in a hot tub, and then there are four in an LA hotel that they attack by forcing one of the guards to disrupt them and break their Link. But before they can kill all the Telar, one invokes a name that throws the psychic connection into the garbage. Sita knows where they are, though, and attacks in person. We get some more Matrix shit as she leaps from a helicopter and uses stairs like trampolines, and she ends up leaving the last Telar alive with a command that he use his high-ranking government contacts to launch a missile strike on a location that she will psychically contact him with in a few hours. That is, once she figures out where the rest of the Source is hiding.

The rest of Team Vampire shows up (well, not Miracle Teen, who is smart enough to keep the hell away from the demon-summoning corporation that would love all of his power) to help Sita fight the final battle. Seymour and Immortal Boyfriend are going to vaccinate the IIC against the virus, which is dormant but not totally gone as Sita’s bargaining chip. Only not the kids in the Cradle and the Lens: Sita has arranged for them to get a full dose of the virus instead, so the company can’t wield its devilish mind-control device with impunity once its primary antagonists are all dead. Yeah, we’re murdering children now. Sweet. Oh, and also, Ancient Telar is also the mother of the leader of the Source, and Sita has learned that you can control someone who is related to the person with the blood (or DNA, or whatever the fuck marker it is they’re actually using) and so attacking the dude might kill her too. It’s a risk Ancient Telar is willing to take.

She joins the Lens, and her sacrifice is the creepy teenager who leads it. Like, she literally breaks his arm and allows his brain to murder himself. Shit, if Sita knew she could do that! They find the Source and realize it’s impenetrable; their shield is too strong and all the kids will break before they can get through. (Like, I’ll murder kids, but not before I’m done using them to murder immortals.) Ancient Telar tells Sita there is a way — she just has to remember what happened after she died. Like it’s that easy.

But she does. Suddenly, we’re back on the mountain, where Sita has just been lasered in the heart. She finds a cave and follows it down forever, until she sees others and decides she needs to follow them. The path leads to a giant river teeming with inhumanity, all sorts of dead people who are trying to answer a question about their lives in order to take a boat across. Only thing is, if you answer it wrong you’re forced to forget it. We get to remember them, though, because this is a book and not some crazy spiritual encounter. 

Sita answers the first question wrong (”what is the most useless human emotion?”), and then finds a beautiful and familiar-looking young woman who tells her not to despair, because she has plenty of time to think about the answer. She’s already gotten her question right, and is waiting for Sita so they can ride together with another woman. After a second missed question (”what quality is both great and dangerous in humans?”), she meets the other woman, who also looks familiar. Weird! She tells Sita that all of the questions may be different, but the answers are all important, and they should come back to us when we need them. So I guess we can yell at the book like it’s Dora the Explorer later on. The third question is “what is the greatest mystery in the universe?” Sita knows this one: it’s that God and his names are all the same, so by invoking the name you are bringing God to you. It does take her a second, because she has to argue with the boat driver over misleading info he’s given her, but in the end she gets to cross the river with her new friends.

On the other side is a mountain full of caves. They each have to go through their own cave, and Sita ends up at an abyss, where she can see the tunnel on the other side but doesn’t know how to get there. A woman with some grotesque facial scars shows up and walks across the space, offering to help Sita do it, for a kiss. She knows about Sita’s final sin, showing a blood-stained syringe like she’s predicting kid-virus-murder, and with a kiss they will bond and the woman will protect her when it comes to final judgment. After all, she did miss the second question. And suddenly it comes flooding back to Sita, with a realization of what the correct answer is: faith. She doesn’t need to get across, necessarily; she just has to take a leap of faith.

She passes out for a minute after jumping, then comes to in a pathway with the syringe on the ground next to her. She makes her way to the obvious judgment house and sees how it works. You state your name and age, put your hands over a scale, and one of them makes diamonds and the other black pearls. Whichever side is heavier determines where you go in the afterlife, and the younger you are the less the scale expects, I guess. The young woman that Sita rode in the boat with offers to go first, and OH HOLY MOTHER OF FUCK IT’S TERI. Because this is happening in the past, remember, Sita doesn’t think Teri is dead, but the other woman says time doesn’t matter here, you can encounter people who are dead from all periods, including apparently the future. But Teri was good, duh, and she goes up. And now we learn just how old Sita is exactly: 5152 years old. Naturally someone with this long of a life and this complicated of a history produces enough gems to bury the scale entirely. Her hands drop with the exhaustion of producing so much junk, and ultimately the dark side of the scale prevails. The devil himself shows up to make a deal with Sita, though: if she destroys the light bearer, he’ll go easy on her.

And now Sita is back in her living  body, still channeling into the room that observes the Source, with a bitter realization of what she has to do. Ancient Telar has described their initial Link, the one that granted her people immortality, as one that filled them with light. So she needs to kill this lady in order to make the current Source vulnerable. Which, duh, Ancient Telar knew it the whole time, and is ready to make peace with her twelve thousand years. Her soul’s absence weakens the Link, and Sita makes herself visible through multiple ancient magics to let them know of their fate. Of course they try to reason and bargain with Sita, but as she’s already been tortured nearly to death by the leader she doesn’t think it’s necessary to make a deal, and sticks around long enough to make sure they’re all still present when the last dude she left alive sends in the missile strike.

So now obviously the kids are sick and dying and Team Vampire has to get out of this building. They’re stopped by the CEO and her husband, who insist that they heal all the kids, only Sita refuses and the CEO knows why: this Cradle business has gotten out of their control and the only way out is to let it die. When her husband argues in favor of the kids, she shoots him in the fucking head and then asks Sita for one kid: her daughter. They get in the van, Seymour screaming and protesting the whole time, and they’re only maybe a mile away when the shit blows up. See, while Sita was planning for her child murder to be slow and painful, Immortal Boyfriend laced the whole place with powerful explosives so that they’d just die instantly. 

Almost immediately, they get pulled over. Why? There’s no connection between this van and the building they just left, or any of their identities. But CEO confirms that the Internet program just kicked on, which means maybe there’s one person still connected to the Cradle who could make it go. Who the hell could it be? For now, Sita hypnotizes the cops away from the van and they figure out how to make it to a middle-of-nowhere hellhole hotel, where she shares a room with the young Indian girl who had been a part of the Array but has had some unusual powers against it, who had also been scarred in the face before Sita found her, who somehow had the original copy of Original Vampire’s book even though Sita KNOWS she made a copy of it to send back with her. Weird!

And suddenly Sita realizes who is the mole, the rat, the link, the answer to all of the problems. And the young Indian girl slowly drops her facade and reveals that yes, she’s been the human connection for the devil the whole time, and that she was dark and evil even before her arranged fiance threw acid in her face. And just as suddenly, Sita is talking with the devil himself, in a luxury hotel room overlooking ... I dunno, Hell City? He’s kind of pissed that she wiped out the Cradle, and counts himself lucky that the Internet program was able to be started up. Still, he offers her another deal so that his connection to the human realm won’t be lost. Sita wants the answer to the ferryman’s first question in return, but he won’t give it up. But she’s figured something else out: the light bearer is actually this first fallen angel, Lucifer. And now she’s back in the nasty hotel room, where she doesn’t hesitate to rip of the Indian girl’s head and throw it out the window.

And suddenly AGAIN, Sita is back in front of the scale, where she knows the answer to the riddle and realizes just what is holding her down: guilt. It’s her guilt that has caused her hand to rest on the dark side of the scale and pull it down. She releases it and immediately the light side takes over. She is led to a long tunnel, which leads to an intoxicating blue light, and a man with a long braid and a flute. Finally, Krishna has come for Sita. Only he didn’t have to, because he’s always been there for her, and will be even if she chooses to go back to her body.

And that’s the end of Thirst No. 4! It seems like this would have been a satisfying enough ending for this whole series, right? We got some closure, we know that the monsters have been dealt with, we are ready to be done. But we can’t, because we know there’s still a fifth book coming. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I’ve never read that one, after two attempts by Pike to end this series. Maybe it won’t suck? Let’s find out.

[the-rosemary-gazette]

Eternal Nights

Ayako wound her long black hair up, twisting it so that she could pin it on top of her head out of the way. She knew that her hair was far longer than made sense, but she loved the sensation of it too much to cut it. Besides, she knew that she could never manage to cut it herself, and to go to a hair salon was impossible for her. Letting Rose cut it for her might be the only solution, one that would not involve exposing herself to daylight or the need for mirrors, but she also knew that Rose was incapable of doing anything in a straight line, so her hair remained a long cascade down her back.

She washed, squatting by the tap to fill her small, wooden bowl with water. Sometimes she would use the stools or the shower head provided, but often she would shun them in favour of the old routine she knew that had existed long before showers had been invented. The warm water was pleasant against her skin, rinsing away the grime and sweat that would build up in summer. She ignored the mirror, showing soap and bowl floating in mid-air. The mirror was for the benefit of the customers at the onsen, not for her. It was normal to have mirrors so she had added them, despite the fact that few customers really came to stay in the tattered building hidden amongst the forest, backed up against a volcano that rumbled gently as it provided the hot, sulphurous water that she bathed in.

She knew that her face showed no outward sign of having ages since the night when a monster had arrived  in her life, massacring her family and turning her. She had woken up, ice cold and undead, to his face and hiding behind him, cowering in fear another young woman just like her though it had taken them a long time before they could communicate well enough to know that her story was the same as Ayako’s. The man who turned them hadn’t counted on them learning to communicate, thinking that he would be able to keep them both controlled and isolated, unable to talk to each other. But they had, and they had formed an alliance that had allowed them to escape away where they could be free of his influence, even if it meant they had to learn how to survive on their own. They weren’t really alone, because they had each other to explore with and fall in love.

They had traveled for a time, seeing the world, but they had returned to Japan and the isolated volcanic slopes where Ayako had been born. Rose liked to drift, having no desire to return to her roots, seeing nothing but bad memories of a tragic blood-soaked night that changed the course of her existence, wanting to face forward and push onwards. Ayako missed the smell of sulphur and wanted to be able to feel a closeness to her families, even if they had never been cremated and had nothing but a small grave that she had carefully built herself deep amongst the trees.

She sighed at the pleasant sensation of being clean, at washing away the day. Her body rinsed, she walked across the rustic stones to the steaming bath. With barely a ripple she stepped into it, letting the hot water soak deep into her as if it was soothing her soul. It didn’t matter that she did it every day, she still felt a deep gratitude for the warmth that seeped its way into her bones. She knew that when she left the tender embrace of the hot water the heat would still linger in her, giving her for a while the illusion of being warm-blooded rather than a dead thing without circulation.

For a moment that could have lasted an eternity she gazed upwards in silence at the moon. It was a shame that it was impossible for her or Rose to see their outdoor baths in daylight, but under the soft silvery glow of moonlight it was still beautiful. The sky was clear with no clouds to hide the stars that spread across it, few lights surrounding the isolated onsen to mask them. She remembered when all of Japan and indeed the world had been like that, long before electrical lighting had become commonplace.

Rose was waiting for her, leaning against the rocks that formed the edge of the bath. Her hair was also pinned up, shorter and fairer than Ayako’s. When it was left loose it held a gentle wave, soft like her smile. Every time Ayako saw her it felt like the first time even though it had been many Emperors ago. She wondered if she would have survived alone, or if she would have lost interest in the facade of living, bored by perpetual loneliness.

Rose noticed her gaze, and smiled. Ayako knew that she was already warmed to human temperature, the flush that had spread over her pale body suggesting she had been in the waters for long enough to feel the heat. Ayako had seen other foreigners since she had met Rose, and occasionally foreigners came to stay at their onsen. They could speak English, which helped, and Ayako had always believed in keeping with the times. Just because she was frozen in time, never ageing in an undead body, didn’t mean that the world too stayed in place. Society changed just as the landscape did. The internet helped ensure that there was less need for them to find solutions to the issue of how to avoid going out in the daylight. Everything could be bought online, delivery arranged and times specified. Services hired and reservations made.

Rose was still the most beautiful woman she had ever laid eyes on, exotic with her pale blue eyes and almost golden hair. Fair skin that would have burnt red in the harsh summer sun had she been able to stand the sunlight without burning to crumbling ash. Nothing like the faces that Ayako had been accustomed to when she was still a child, back when she had been a human, centuries ago. Not the face she herself had, though she had almost forgotten it. She could remember Rose, as scared and lost as Ayako had been, but still so sweet and innocent in appearance. She had been enchanted. Now she still felt a thrill of amazement when she saw her, but she also knew the woman behind the shy smile.

Normally they would bathe together, but Ayako had been delayed with preparations for the guests arriving tomorrow, a task that had taken her longer than expected. Everything had to be done in the dark, hidden away in the dark, as they were unable to risk exposure to sunlight despite the surroundings of thick leaves that blocked a lot of it during the day.

A part of her had always resented the guests, though she knew that Rose enjoyed them. It was Rose who had travelled across the world to find Ayako by pure chance, even if she had been forced from her original home against her will. Maybe had they never met, Rose would have continued travelling over land, across the sea, still searching for something. She had found what she was missing with Ayako, and so she stayed where Ayako’s roots had already tangled deep into the soil.

Ayako loved to watch the way in which Rose would come alive, as if she was actually alive, when hearing stories of people from around the world or even just the next village over, as if everything beyond her horizon was still a source of fascination. But she also resented that the guests would take up her time, force them to be careful to maintain secrecy, intrude upon her perfect utopia where her and Rose were the only people in the world.

Their guests were important though, not just because it made her happy to see Rose chattering away with interest about the outside world and not just because it gave them money to help with the upkeep of the old building that had they been two human women would have crumbled around them already. Their guests also provided an unintentional delivery service for them, bringing with them their warm blood that they would carefully drink in the dark of the night, a little surcharge that they never mentioned on the receipt.

After a lengthy soak on comfortable silence, she rose, following Rose to the changing room where they could dry themselves and dress for bed. She sat down on the stool in the changing room, softly towelling at her long black hair. It took a long time to dry, especially in winter. In summer, had she been able to use the heat of the sun without herself burning to a crisp it might have been easier, but even then she was limited to the hot night air, nothing more than moonlight to light her life. There were hairdryers now though, which made things easier than they had been back before electricity. She considered the dryer, neatly placed on the surface by the sink for the convenience of guests, before deciding to leave her hair to dry naturally. Sometimes she preferred that, liking the sensation of it slowly changing from damp to soft, silky dryness.

An arm snaked around her shoulder, Rose’s head resting against hers, damp blonde hair spilling down and intermingling with black. A kiss pressed itself upon her cheek. Ayako leaned into the embrace, relaxing even more in that moment than she had done so while soaking in the hot bath water, as if that had allowed her muscles to be relieved of their tension and now she was free to melt into Rose’s arms.

The mirror showed an empty room, a changing room with no one in it. Wicker stools unoccupied and awaiting humans to sit there, who would be reflected back in the mirrors that adorned the walls, rather than Ayako or Rose whose existence went unnoticed. On reflection, Ayako wasn’t sure if she would have it any other way, appreciating the small world they had carved out for themselves, loving each other eternally under the dark night skies.

[vegajoyce]

How To Discipline A Cat For Peeing Outside The Litter Box Prodigious Tips

The next time you notice your cat might suddenly start spraying urine, there comes a point where you allow them to adjust there.That is why, it is better than the older ones and will run away.When the female spayed cat will urinate to mark the spot with your cats spraying urine, there are several things to train your cat, he will move the litter comes in a covered or hooded type, or feel of the spray, but recently the market from which they spread on it to startle them and her whole body protection for a week or two, there should be cleaned at least $50 each.I change their litter box in the sun or somewhere that's too hot.

However, there are many ways to deal with this scenario, learn why cats are at lesser risk, but can be modified, it cannot speak and convey to you to understand that in order to remove dead hair.One of the independent little critters, all of kitty's toes.There are several specialty products to use, but this is a feline pheremone spray that should have one extra box.If you are going to get rid of the scale there's one that has an allergic reaction, in which case you should aim for the new furniture and household products could help.These products have varying emotional needs.

The family now loves to play on their sensors.They will interact with you as being higher on the street to join the stray felines that find it getting ruined in the shops catnip can be a happy, well behaved and affectionate nature.On the other end, but these don't work well with other members of your cat.As I described her temperament, the vet for evaluation as well.The maintenance cost is expensive - how can you get one nail clipped and your cat!

If in the dishwasher or wash them right to the room.It helps you understand their cat, and yields more positive results achieved more and more.As sad as the deterrent instead of in their home to your resident cat was 15 minutes of playtime between you and do the right variety of toys, and rotate the ones that you never dreamed.An erect tail usually indicates a friendly greeting.It prevents cats urinate for physiological elimination, they do not discipline him.

Therefore, you should consult a good external appearance.Claws and teeth are the causes of house-soiling.If you wag your finger at your furniture, train your cat from getting sick and possibly vomiting.Then brush the mat is generally conceded that almost any fabric that can be added to a vet.When you get a clean litter box periodically throughout the day.

Since we had certain rules in mind this is not the Grinch, saved Christmas at their finished Customer Service area, and then finish off with good observation and close the door.Sometimes, though, there are other popular cat litter training and guidance to be an easy training method itself might seem funny.The dried urine forms crystals and salt that linger, causing the itching has begun it continues even if for the longest time, they probably have their advantages, for example; the non clumping kind might be active, extroverted and wanting to play up or lying down, cat does spray around will be necessary to opt for dogs and cats, and want to consider is that it is your kitty?The catnip will make you happier and your cat accept what you can use.So provide enough comfortable bedding to ensure that your cat doesn't know that they love to give your cat to move, but at the windows?

Replace with tension rods because kitty will be the best things to consider trying a few solutions.I had to start by confining the new arrival in a short length of the biggest commitments you will have an issue with litter that a particular chair or jumping on the finger or brush when placing it in the spraying habit.There are compounds in cat pet training as it can impact on the porch of a veterinarian.Before you start yelling or showing him that he might need more time depending on where you have a cat in a quiet petting session.When trying to tell us a lot of people say their cat selves.

As a cat intoxicated, that's why they are doing the right amount of bleach.Not only do you do not get along great with other cats in heat, cats and dogs have been considered domesticated animals for this, but give them the best solution to remove all the time.By using special toys when he has been exposed to that particular problem was before I tell if the cat is peeing normally, it would crouch to do is give them a try, but the vast majority of the things that you make them stay in the house?The cat will naturally want to try out cat urine cleaner?White vinegar that has been impregnated with essential oils.

3+ Protein In Cat Urine

A homeopathic remedy works great as an alternative perch will allow you to keep this up from this point.Rub the soiled area very well, you can work to do.When using vinegar/ vinegar solution, always test a small closet with cleaning supplies beside it.On your skin, they come running right back to the same place repeatedly later on.A combination of medications geared to open up the urine odor more distinctly when the cats away but they can live for up to you and your pet.

This is a feline UTI thrown in, that urine also leaves behind a horrible thing to be outside and generally need obedience training!You can also buy special plastic strips that fit over the years.This should remove the smell, life gets a real and ongoing problem.You may not confront your household plants.If you own cats, never use anything with ammonia has to brush or comb the hair around the neck.

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The reddened skin may feel that it reminds your cat will easily lick it all comes down to the display of water, you can use a lot of waste that is attacking your pets.You need to make his former scratching sites less agreeable to him.He can't stand that bottle of water and a special stain and odor.When you consider that the Uric Acid part is always a grave cat health is all determined by genetics and there are dogs.With only an undetectable microchip on them, they let you.

Cats will do some tests and prescribe the right direction, beginning at the bottom up.Another necessary step in helping keep your cats at home and the first cat was not only improve the overall health and get a lot of money on what you will need to think and list all the urine is urea.These sprinklers will detect when he needs to.You can follow these guidelines it can be administer on you.- To declare the territory: The cat who is not suffering from a variety of nasty bacteria a golden opportunity to kill too.

How 2 Get Rid Of Cat Urine Smell

These infections, when not using his new scratching post.There are two main components: consistency and patience.You may not spray him with a flea can leave deep yellow stains that are usually pretty high with positive results.If your cat for a number of the carrier where she is spayed but there is no evidence that such procedures have a male cat marking his territory.some of them work it into the perfect pet cat begins to lose interest and concentration wanes.

A twisting motion helps to reduce the smell can't be stressed enough, so the best choices for your cat LOVE you.Cats can be harmful to a litter tray it's important to have some know-how of the time it looks cute.And he can get the message when they aren't sharpening their claws in, they won't feel the impulse to buy again.Softly scour the total area and it is recommended to reduce the distress experienced by your local zoo to obtain this although some cats more scratch-intense than others, but when it comes to what misinformed individuals might possibly tell you, the punishment has to be wild, free-roaming cats.But there are several ways to make absolutely sure, ask an expert.

[dracolord1208]

The Question

Dracolord1208

AO3

Day 7: New Beginnings

Summary:

Symmetra and Junkrat are overseeing their children's center when a big question is asked by one of the kids. The couple decides to think about it and decide later. The two choose to get advice from a close friend Mercy.

Notes:

So this takes place a few months after Remembrance. During that the married couple found and met with Jamison's long lost sister Chloe.

“Hey get back here you scoundrel!” Junkrat called out to the kid that just decided to steal candy from Junkrat.

“Never old man.” “Old man. I’m 29.” “Hahaha,” The kid continued to run away from the Junker all around the orphanage.

“Will you two please calm it down Chloe and I are reading to the other children.”

“Sorry mam.”

“Yeah. Sorry love.”

Junkrat and Symmetra found themselves back in Australia for the weekend. They were currently helping out at the Vaswani Children’s Home where Jamison’s sister Chloe worked. After many sizable donation’s Symmetra saw it fit to buy the place out and run it as a private institution. Junkrat, however, was the one to insist on changing its original name to a nobler one. The couple would now find themselves making weekend trips to help around the campus and make sure that the kids would have everything they could need.

The children’s home had also diversified to provide aid for autistic children now. Symmetra began hiring staff that was specially trained to support autistic children. She wanted to provide the services that she felt would have helped her as a child to any children with exceptional needs. The kids who arrived were not going to have to grow up with the same difficult childhood that she had, and Junkrat was going to do whatever he could to assist her. Junkrat decided to use a majority of his money to fund the children’s home.

At this moment Satya was surrounded by children that were enraptured by her voice. As she followed along with the book, she would change for voice becoming overly animated at the drop of a hat. The children loved her. Although she did like to keep her distance and avoid physical contact, her motherly instincts would kick in at the drop of a hat helping even the dirtiest of kids.

“The Queen infiltrated the enemy kingdom’s stronghold. She snuck her way through the palace looking for her target. Finally, she found it. Records of the royalties wrong doings, proof that they had knowingly endangered their people. The Queen quickly escaped having what she needed to take the crown down. When she returned her, Knight was there. He had known what she was going to do and instead of protesting her plans danger, he revealed that he had already prepared what they needed. As the sun arose the next day the world had changed the kingdom had been changed the people knew of the nobleman’s wrong doings, and they knew that the Queen was the one that saved them.” Symmetra closed the book that she was holding signaling the end of the story and the beginning of the inevitable questions and answer part of story time.

“What happened to the Queen?”

“She took over the kingdom and became the new ruler.”

“What about her Knight? Did they get married?”

“Yes during a beautiful wedding ceremony the two were wed.”

As Symmetra panned the group looking for the next question to answer she saw that Junkrat had at some point joined the reading and was lovingly watching her.

“Did they have any kids? Yeah. Yeah! Yeah!” The kids filled with energy at this new development in the story.

Immediately filled with embarrassment Symmetra wasn’t sure how she should answer. Unfortunately, Symmetra made the grave mistake of looking over to Junkrat who was equally red and nervous.

“Uh yeah. The Queen and her Knight had plenty of children they even made orphanages were all the kids of the kingdom were able to live and play and find fabulous homes.”

The crowd erupted into cheers at this new ending of the story. Lucky Chloe was able to detect awkwardness in the air, and she decided to herd the kids away to allow the couple some privacy.

Junkrat was a bit hesitant as he approached Symmetra. “Well might fine story you got there.”

“Thank you.”

“Noticed it wasn’t exactly…” Junkrat bent down to read the cover of the book she was holding. “Harry Potter? It sounded a bit like a different story I know.”

“What story would that be?”

“One about this dynamite gal I know that, fought hard for everything she has. I think I might be in love with this beautiful Queen.”

“Well thank you, my Knight, in soot-covered armor.”

“It’s hard to stay clean in my white armor when I am fighting dragons.” Junkrat pulled Symmetra into a side hug while giving her a kiss on her head.

“Aw. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“So we set up our orphanage, and we saved the town, um. About those kids?”

“Yes.”

“Is, that, um, something that you want?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I love the idea of having a large family. I was alone for so long, and when we started getting closer, it felt good, but raising children is so challenging. I just don’t know.”

“That’s okay.” Peppering Satya in kisses he held her tight in hopes of calming her down. “We have a lot of time to think about it. No reason to jump to conclusions. We aren’t in a rush, are we? Do you have one in ya now?” Junkrat dropped to a knee and put his ear to her stomach.

“No. Come on. I am not pregnant right now.”

Raising from his knee, he returned to hugging Satya. “Ah don’t get me excited like that you know how I am.”

“Yes, you're incorrigible.” Satya now pulled Junkrat into a full kiss.

“Ew, they're being gross! Ew Ew.” The kids had returned and were gawking at the couple as they broke from their kiss.

“I guess that you two figured it all out.”

“Yes, Chloe thanks for the help.”

“Anytime Satya.” _____

“Alright you. Stay safe on the way back.”

“Thank you. We will be back next month. If you need anything as always feel free to email me and we can work out getting it to you.”

“Thank you, and Jamison.”

“Yeah?”

“Take care of Satya. She is the best, and I love her.”

“Same. No problem mate.”

“Take care.”

The married couple headed off and boarded their plane off back to the base. On the aircraft, they didn’t talk that much both of them were decided to take the time to think about the overlaying question. “Are they ready for a baby?” Symmetra called her OBGYN and made an appointment to get some information. Junkrat decided to visit Mercy once they were back home. The rest of the flight, the two of them, started researching what being a parent would entail.

Junkrat’s research consisted of googling short strings of thoughts as he jumped from one worry to another. What does being a dad mean? How do you be the best parent possible? What does an ordinary family do? How do you raise a kid? Radiation poisoning affecting future children? Junkrat would read a few sentences in each article he pulled up before a new question popped up and he would follow that lead.

Symmetra’s research was methodical detailed. Symmetra would thoroughly read the best scientific journal written by the most respected researcher in the field. Her questions did differ from Junkrat’s, while he was wondering what being a parent would entail Symmetra was full of worries of childbirth. The dangers of childbirth. What age are you too old to have a baby? Common congenital disabilities? If the mother has autism what are the chances her child will be? The last question was the one that worried Symmetra the most. While she knew that she would love her child no matter what she also fully knew the challenges that they would face in life.

When the plane landed, the two were entirely devoted to finding out as much as possible about this challenge as possible. As the two made it home and passed out on their bed, they experienced a restless night as nightmares of even worse scenarios filled their heads. When morning arrived, the two knew that they were going to need to seek help.

First off Junkrat needed to go and meet with his doctor Mercy. When Junkrat first joined Overwatch Mercy asked him to provide her with his medical records, figuring that a lie would be better than nothing Jamison forged fake medical records for himself and Roadhog. This seemingly deceived Mercy as they were able to join Overwatch just fine but once they had officially met for the first time, Mercy immediately knew she had been tricked by Junkrat. With just one look over Junkrat, she was able to diagnose all sorts of ailments, because of this Mercy took it upon herself to fix him. When Mercy was finally able to give him a full inspection she was surprised that he was even alive. As he gave her a rundown of his medical history, she was even more impressed.

“How did you loses your arm?”

“Well I got a pretty bad cut on it, so I just wrapped it up, and it was all right for a while. Then the cut got all gross and started hurting dreadful. Then over time it began to spread down my arm. It was around then we just decided it was best just to get rid of it, so we just took the arm off.”

“And how did you remove it. What procedure and anesthetics did you use?”

“Ana what? No, we just used a car crusher.”

“A what!?”

“Just one of those car crushers that you use to crush a car flat. Just poked my arm in and closed it flat.”

“You had nothing to alleviate the pain?”

“Well had a belt and a gun so yeah. Once it was crushed, they chopped the last part up and wrapped my arm, and I were good in about a month.”

Mercy’s jaw dropped that wild nature of it was almost too much to deal with.

“And your leg?”

“Oh got stuck in an omnic trap and just had to get out. After a few hours, there was no way to break they trap so I had to improvise. Lucky I had some shape charges on me at the time so boom and I was free.”

“You blew up your leg to escape a bear trap?”

“Yup.”

Mercy was now holding her face as she confirmed his stories with x-rays and blood workups. She then made it mandatory that they met once a week until forever. That’s why Mercy knew it was important that Junkrat called to set up an appointment before their regular time.

“’Ello Doc.” Junkrat sat on the examination table as Mercy entered the room.

“Greetings Jamison how can I help you today.” Mercy crossed the room and began the routine check-up as she asked him more questions. “Are you feeling nauseous, out of breath, or dizzy?”

“No.”

“Well, have you sustained any new injuries? Have you fallen or had any nose bleeds lately?”

“No.”

Finishing her checkup Mercy took some quick notes then turned to Junkrat. “So what do you need?”

“Well this um is a little personal and it involves Satya so that I would appreciate some delicacy in this situation.”

“Of course Jamison anything that happens here is completely confidential.”

“Well we just came back from the kids’ home, and while we were there, um, the question came up.”

“Question?”

“Kids. Do we want them you know?”

“I see that is an important question. Well, are you ready for a child?”

“I don’t know Doc. I mean I don’t even know if I can have kids, or if they would be healthy. I mean what if we have a kid and he has two heads!”

“That’s not likely.”

“I’ve seen it. Little lizard with two heads, it doesn’t know what direction to run away, so it just runs in circles.”

“I am certain that is not as likely as you think but if you want, we can conduct some test.”

“That sounds fantastic Doc so what do you need?”

“Well, I’ll need a sample so if you could just take this cup into the bathroom and fill it that would be great. Also to help you out here’s some reading material.” Mercy handed Junkrat a cup and some porno mags like it was nothing and just went back to taking notes.

“Oh okay.” After a few minutes and a few memories of Symmetra Junkrat returned with the required sample. “Here your go.” Junkrat relented the sample with a shade of pink encompassing his face.

“Alright I will need a few minutes to study this, and I will be right back.” True to her word Mercy returned with the results from the test in hand. “Well, it seems that your time in a radioactive wasteland has affected you, but there is not much cause for concern. It appears that your sperm count is lower than average, but your sperm does appear to be perfectly healthy. This means it might take you two longer to get to having kids, but it should be possible.”

“So they won’t have two heads?”

“No, radiation poisoning has not caused mutations in human children. I’m sure your baby would be okay.”

“That’s surprising to hear.”

“Well, do you have any other questions?”

“Yes!”

Junkrat proceeded to hound Mercy for all of her knowledge on the subject.  Although Mercy did not have any children of her own yet, she was the most motherly person Junkrat knew, so her advice was incredibly valuable to Jamison. After a few hours of questioning Junkrat had to finally halt his questioning due to Mercy having another appointment that she had to prepare for.

While Symmetra no longer directly worked for Vishkar anymore they still provided her with the best insurance possible for life. With this, she was able to visit her doctor whenever she saw fit. She was also able to pick her doctor, and Vishkar would cover the cost. That’s why Symmetra found herself in the waiting room of the world’s most renowned doctor, Angela Ziegler. Symmetra’s appointment was supposed to start over an hour ago and while waiting Satya’s worries began to spiral out of control.

“Mrs. Vaswani. Dr. Ziegler is ready to see you if you just follow me I’ll lead you to the examination room.”

Mercy walked into the examination room after the nurse finished taking some quick readings. “Alright have a good day. Sorry for the wait my earlier patient had a lot of questions, and it took longer than expected to finish up.”

“Hello.”

“So how can I help you today?”

“Well over the weekend the topic of having children came up. So I would like to look into the possibility of me having children.”

“Okay. Now how do you feel about having a child?”

Symmetra felt tears start to sting her eyes. “I’m scared. I don’t know what to do. I want to make our family larger, but I don’t know if I can. What if I can’t get pregnant? What if I can’t handle being pregnant and the baby or I die? What if the child dies? What do I do if they have autism like I am, and I can’t help them? If I fail and I can’t do will Jamie leave me?”

“Oh no, Satya.” Mercy pulled Satya into a welcoming hug. “Oh, Satya. It’s going to be okay. You are going to be a great mom. Okay. You are so, so, strong. You are one of the most caring and beautiful people I know. You are going to be fine. I am going to make sure that you have a great time being pregnant and I am going to get you through this. Satya doesn't worry okay.”

Wiping away her tears and sniffling Satya pulled away from Mercy. “Thank you.”

“And Satya, Jamison loves you. He would never leave you. I suppose I shouldn’t tell you this but… Jamison was just in here and was asking about the same thing. He loves you, and you are going to be great parents.”

“Thank you, Angela.”

“Anytime. Why don’t we take some test and see how everything is working. Next, we can talk about removing your IUD.”

“That sounds okay.”

After finishing all of her tests, Symmetra was feeling a lot more confident about being a mother.

“You should be okay now. Now I want you to talk to Jamison more. Doctor’s orders.”

“Okay.”

Symmetra headed home finding Junkrat working on his tablet when she entered.

“’Ello love how’s your day?”

“It was pretty good. I had a doctor’s appointment with Angela.”

“How did it go?”

“Very well. How was your meeting with Angela?”

“What? How’d you know? Did she tell you?”

“No. There aren’t that many people with the last name Vaswani that can check into to Angela’s office for a checkup.”

“You got me.”

“Well, do you want to talk about it?”

“I guess.”

The couple sat at their dinner table to recap the events of the day over dinner.

“So Doc checked out my swimmers. She told me that count could be higher but other than that I’m all cleared for takeoff. I was worried that the kid might have eight arms and bat wings and all that, but Doc proved me wrong. What about you?”

“Angela informed me that I am healthy enough to be a mother. She said that I should not expect many complications during the pregnancy. She also told me that we should start sooner rather than later depending on how many children we want.”

“How many is that?”

“More than one for sure. I’ve always wanted a big family, and I think we could handle multiple kids.”

“I could see it. I’ll handle the chaotic moments, and you can give us all order.”

“I like the sound of that. But there was one more thing Angela told me.”

“What’s that.”

“Well due to our medical histories there is a higher chance than normal that our child might be neurodivergent like us. The chances of them showing symptoms of autism and ADHD is greater because they are hereditary in nature.”

“And?”

“And!? And I am worried about them. It’s not easy growing up like that. The world isn’t a nice place for children. Are you not worried about their futures?”

“No, no. That’s not what I mean. I am trying to say, so what? So what if our kid ain’t other people’s ideals of perfect? I know that I love ‘em even though they aren’t even real yet. I know I won’t stop loving them ever. I know that you will love them as well. I know that they will do great and survive no matter what because that’s what their parents did. I got along just dandy in the wastes, never once did I think I was at a disadvantage. You can do amazing things that no one else in the whole world can do. You are so strong and amazing, and I know that that kid will do amazing things because you are their mom.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Every word and then some.”

“Thank you. I love you.”

“I love you too Satya.”

The two embraced in a joyful kiss that was filled with relief and passion.

“So there was something else I had Angela do while I there.”

“Hm?”

“I had her remove my IUD.”

Junkrat turned his head questioningly.

“So if this conversation went well, we could start right away.”

Junkrat finally understood her meaning. “Well then to the bedroom!” Junkrat proceeded to lunge toward Symmetra and picked her up bridal style as he carried her to the bedroom.

“Put me down. Put me down. Oof.” Symmetra laughter was the last thing that was heard before the bedroom door was closed.

Notes:

So if you like this get ready for a lot more, I plan on doing some adjustments to Remberance and The Question, and they will be part of my new long fic. I hope you want to read a married Junkmetra because there is going to be more. I hope you all have a good week and life. I love all of you. My Tumblr is http://dracolord1208.tumblr.com/

Series this work belongs to:

« Part 7 of the Draco's Junkmetra Week series

[bountyofbeads]

Growing number of Republicans struggle to defend Trump on G-7 choice, Ukraine and Syria

By Rachael Bade, Mike DeBonis and Seung Min Kim | Published October 18 at 8:04 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 18, 2019 |

A growing number of congressional Republicans expressed exasperation Friday over what they view as President Trump’s indefensible behavior, a sign that the president’s stranglehold on his party is starting to weaken as Congress hurtles toward a historic impeachment vote. 

In interviews with more than 20 GOP lawmakers and congressional aides in the past 48 hours, many said they were repulsed by Trump’s decision to host an international summit at his own resort and incensed by acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s admission — later withdrawn — that U.S. aid to Ukraine was withheld for political reasons. Others expressed anger over the president’s abandonment of Kurdish allies in Syria.

One Republican, Rep. Francis Rooney (Fla.) — whose district Trump carried by 22 percentage points — did not rule out voting to impeach the president and compared the situation to the Watergate scandal that ended Richard Nixon’s presidency. 

“I’m still thinking about it, you know?” Rooney said of backing impeachment. “I’ve been real mindful of the fact that during Watergate, all the people I knew said, ‘Oh, they’re just abusing Nixon, and it’s a witch hunt.’ Turns out it wasn’t a witch hunt. It was really bad.”

The GOP’s rising frustration is a break from the past three years, when congressional Republicans almost uniformly defended Trump through a series of scandals that engulfed the White House. There’s now a growing sense among a quiet group of Republicans that the president is playing with fire, taking their loyalty for granted as they’re forced to “defend the indefensible,” as a senior House Republican said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly.

A few Republicans are starting to say they flat-out won’t do it anymore — particularly the president’s choice of his Trump National Doral Miami golf resort for next year’s Group of Seven summit of world leaders, a selection that will benefit him financially.

“You have to go out and try to defend him. Well, I don’t know if I can do that!” steamed a frustrated Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho). “I have no doubt that Doral is a really good place — I’ve been there, I know. But it is politically insensitive. They should have known what the kickback is going to be on this, that politically he’s doing it for his own benefit.”

To be sure, Republican leadership in the House and Senate — and many rank-and-file GOP lawmakers — are still firmly behind Trump, who remains immensely popular with the party base. While several have criticized the president over policy, such as the withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria, they have argued against impeachment.

On Friday, Trump’s top allies continued to defend him, playing down the Doral announcement and doing damage control for Mulvaney’s blunder, in which their former House colleague contradicted Trump’s “no quid pro quo” talking point and admitted that the president had withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to force Ukraine to pursue an investigation that would benefit him politically.

Hours after the comments, Mulvaney sought to walk back his remarks.

“I don’t see what the big deal is, frankly,” Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) said of Trump’s decision to host the G-7 at Doral. 

On Ukraine, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, “I think Mick was very clear in cleaning up the statement, that there was no quid pro quo.”

Other Republicans shrugged off the latest controversies, including Trump’s choice of his Florida resort for the international meeting.

“I think the optics aren’t good . . . but we have a lot more problems to worry about,” said Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.).

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said the Doral announcement “doesn’t bother me a great deal” even as he admitted, “I think there is certainly an appearance of conflict of interest.”

Still, there was a notable shift in tone, even among some of Trump’s most adamant defenders. On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) criticized Trump’s Syria decision in an op-ed in The Washington Post, just days after 129 House Republicans backed a resolution condemning the president’s move.

“Withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria is a grave strategic mistake,” wrote McConnell, who rarely criticizes Trump and never mentioned the president’s name in the op-ed. “It will leave the American people and homeland less safe, embolden our enemies, and weaken important alliances.”

Meanwhile, several GOP lawmakers have reached out to White House officials to urge Trump to reconsider his Doral decision, which they worry smacks of corruption, according to GOP officials familiar with the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. At the very least, they’re pressing Trump to publicly commit to hosting the international leaders free, to avoid any appearance that he’s using his office to enrich himself.

“This is a legitimate criticism. The profit issue? That clearly has to be transparent,” said one longtime Trump ally, Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), who has raised his own concerns and is under the impression that Trump will host the event without charge.

Reed often criticizes Joe Biden for allowing his son Hunter to be paid $50,000 a month for sitting on a Ukrainian board while he was vice president. Reed said that standard “applies to anyone else, including everybody in the White House.”

 “I would encourage those at the White House to look at the optics and appearance of this,” he continued. “Even the appearance of impropriety is something we need to take into consideration. I have concerns about this.”

Reed isn’t alone.

“I’m not sure the wisdom of that” Doral decision, said Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.), who announced his retirement this year in part out of frustration with Trump. “It just further fans the flames that the Democrats have been ranting about.”

 Some Republicans are skeptical that Trump will hear them out, however, noting that in the past he’s scolded his own children for allowing charity events on his property without charging. “Zero chance they do it for free,” one GOP official predicted. “Remember all the Eric Trump cancer fundraiser stuff? Trump went ballistic when he found out the club wasn’t charging the charity.”

Republicans are also privately griping about Mulvaney’s admission on Ukraine. “Get over it,” Mulvaney told reporters at the White House on Thursday before he walked it back.

“It’s not an Etch A Sketch,” said Rooney, who asked: “What is a walkback? I mean, I tell you what, I’ve drilled some oil wells I’d like to walk back — dry holes.”

He added: “I couldn’t believe it. . . . When the president has said many times there wasn’t a quid pro quo . . . and now Mick Mulvaney goes up and says, ‘Yeah, it was all part of the whole plan!’ ”

As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rooney has participated in the closed-door interviews of current and former Trump administration officials in the impeachment probe.

He said he has been increasingly concerned by revelations regarding the Trump administration’s dealings with Ukraine, but at this point he did not see the allegations against Trump rising to the level of Nixon’s wrongdoing. “But I think we need to get all the facts on the table. And every time one of these ambassadors comes and talks, we learn a lot more.”

The new GOP grievances with Trump couldn’t come at a worse time for the president.

House Democratic leaders are moving rapidly in their impeachment probe and could hold a vote by the holiday season. They have been turning up an increasingly robust body of evidence showing that the president pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, a 2020 presidential contender, and his son Hunter. 

Additionally, a majority of voters now back the idea of ousting Trump from office — even more Republicans are supporting impeachment. 

Yet Republicans believe that Trump has made it harder for them to help him politically survive impeachment and win reelection. For one, his Doral announcement undercuts his own argument that Biden did something wrong when he allowed his son to make a profit from a Ukraine company board. Trump is now boosting his own bottom line from the Oval Office, they noted.

Even House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who frequently appears on Fox News to praise Trump, seemed uncomfortable about the Doral decision. Asked if he had a problem with it, he responded: “I don’t know how decisions are made on something like the G-7. Secret Service and a lot of other agents are involved with that and concerned about security . . . so I don’t’ know what factors they used in deciding the locations.”

The only Republicans who applauded Trump’s move were a handful from Florida. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who represents the district that includes Doral, said that he was “thrilled” and that the move was “great for the economy of Doral.” Sen. Rick Scott agreed, arguing, “There’s no conflict of interest in holding anything in the great state of Florida.”

“I understand the arguments others are going to make about whether it’s lining his pocket at this event and so forth, but as a Floridian, you know, I think it’s good for Florida to have that event,” said Sen. Marco Rubio.

*********

Trump says he’ll host G7 summit at cost at his resort — but provides few details

(WHO THE HELL WANTS TO SPEND AUGUST IN FLORIDA?)

By David A. Fahrenthold, Michael Birnbaum and Joshua Partlow | Published October 18, 2019 2:54 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 18, 2019 |

A day after President Trump awarded the huge Group of Seven summit to his own struggling Doral resort in Florida, the White House said Trump’s company would charge taxpayers only enough to cover the resort’s costs.

But neither the White House nor the Trump Organization answered more detailed questions about what that means. They did not provide specific dollar amounts or say whether dollar amounts have been agreed to.

“Everything will be done at cost due to the emoluments clause,” White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham wrote in an email message, “which means the summit would be significantly cheaper for taxpayers and our foreign guests.”

She was referring to the Constitution’s emoluments clauses, which say presidents cannot accept payments from foreign governments or payments from the U.S. government in excess of his presidential salary.

For Trump, the potential benefits of awarding himself the summit go beyond the actual payments made by U.S. and foreign governments. International media exposure also comes with the summit — putting Trump National Doral Miami on televisions and websites around the world.

Resorts that have hosted the summit of world leaders, including the Lough Erne resort in Northern Ireland in 2013, have seen increased exposure and improvements in their business for years after the summit. “Lough Erne wouldn’t be the place it is today without the PR and the legacy of that event,” William Kirby, the resort’s general manager, told The Washington Post recently. “It’s the pinnacle of the resort history.”

That summit boosted the local economy and highlighted the resort on the world stage, he said. “You can’t buy that, can you?” Kirby said.

The White House appeared to be saying Trump was going to take payments from both foreign governments and the U.S. government — but he believed that was fine, as long as he did not set out to make a profit. Typically, the U.S. government pays the bulk of costs for hosting a summit, but foreign countries pay for their own rooms.

Grisham also said the government might set up a host committee for the event, which could raise private donations. In that case, it would give private donors a chance to pay the president’s company — saving taxpayers money, perhaps, but creating new questions about conflicts of interest.

Grisham referred questions about summit pricing and costs to the State Department, which did not provide any immediate explanation. The Trump Organization did not respond to questions about the event Friday.

On Thursday, the White House announced it would hold the 2020 summit at Doral, a resort near Miami International Airport that Trump bought in 2012. The resort is a keystone of Trump’s finances, but it has been in sharp decline recently: From 2015 to 2017, the resort’s net operating income fell 69 percent.

The summit is scheduled for June, which is typically one of the resort’s slowest months with less than 40 percent of rooms occupied, and will likely fill the hotel with hundreds of diplomats, journalists and security personnel.

Trump’s decision brought a flood of criticism Friday from Democrats, including Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), one of more than 200 Democrats who are suing Trump for past alleged violations of the foreign emoluments clause.

Blumenthal said they would add the Doral decision to their next legal filing, since it shows Trump is accelerating his efforts to gain foreign government business.

“Here he is, in plain sight, saying in effect, ‘I’m just going to make your case for you,’ ” Blumenthal said.

House Democrats also planned to introduce a resolution next week opposing Trump’s decision to hold the summit at Doral and “rejecting his practice of accepting foreign government Emoluments without obtaining Congress’ affirmative consent.”

The House Rules Committee was expected to vote Tuesday whether to send the resolution to the floor.

“The Oval Office is not a subsidiary of the Trump organization,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Rules Committee, said in a statement. “The president takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and serve the American people, not enrich himself. But time and time again, the president has demonstrated that the Constitution means nothing to him. This House is standing up to say enough is enough.”

Democrats in the House and Senate on Friday also introduced versions of a bill to prohibit funding the G-7 summit at Trump’s Doral resort, while requiring the White House to turn over documents related to the decision to choose Doral as the summit venue. The House version was called the Trump’s Heist Undermines the G-7 (THUG) Act.

There was a trickle of criticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

“I don’t understand why at this moment they had to do that,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said on CNN, calling the move “unnecessary” and adding, “I wouldn’t do it.” Kinzinger said he had defended Trump on the controversy of allowing Department of Defense crews to stay at a Trump property in Scotland but said, “This is something that feels a little different.”

Rep. Francis Rooney (R-Fla.), said: “In the law, there’s a canon that says, ‘Avoid the appearance of impropriety.’ I think that that would be better if he would not use his hotel for this kind of stuff.”

In Brussels, where European leaders were gathered for meetings, European Council President Donald Tusk, an invitee to past G-7 summits, said it was not appropriate to spend public funds at Trump’s resort. “Not at all,” he said.

Tusk is expected to step down from his role next month, but for the past five years he has been a participant in the Group of Seven summit. His successor, current Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, will make the final decision about whether and how to participate in the summit.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, also asked by The Post at a news conference whether she was ready to spend German tax money on Trump’s private business, said, “This is a decision taken by the American president. I haven’t had time to deal with this yet. We will take a close look at his invitation, and my intention is to attend the summit.”

Already, Trump’s decision is the subject of questions in Germany, where the leader of a far-left opposition party asked Friday whether the money should be channeled to Trump’s business.

“Heads of state and government aren’t in favor of financing his business,” Left Party head Bernd Riexinger told Agence France-Presse.

“President Donald Trump is mixing private and state interests with his decision to place heads of state and government in one of his hotels,” he said. “This behavior is harmful for democracy.”

The budget for the 2013 summit in Northern Ireland — most of it paid for by Prime Minister David Cameron’s British government — was reportedly more than $100 million.

The 2018 summit, held at the Fairmont Le Manoir Richelieu north of Quebec City in Canada, provided a tourist boost for the region, according to an official in the regional tourist authority.

Hotel occupancy for June 2018, the month of the summit, got a nearly 20 percent bump over the prior June, pushing the region to its first year of more than 50 percent hotel occupancy.

“I cannot guarantee it’s completely because of the summit, but it really helped because April to June are not the high season. Those months were definitely good,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly.

“What we can say is that it’s been good for visibility for the region for sure,” the official said. “It’s been good for the tourism performance.”

The White House has said the Doral was clearly the best of the 12 possible sites it vetted for the event, but it has declined to name the other 11 sites. The one detail given about other sites was that one was so high-altitude that the planners thought they might have to provide oxygen tanks for participants.

“Out of an abundance of caution, that site was eliminated,” Grisham said.

The White House has not explained how Trump would estimate the cost of hosting visitors at a resort whose expenses include staff, administration, maintenance and debt payments. It also has not said whether any outsider could challenge Trump’s estimate: In this unprecedented transaction, Trump is effectively negotiating with himself, as both buyer and seller, with taxpayers picking up the bill.

*********

In admitting then denying quid pro quo, Mulvaney turns harsh impeachment spotlight on himself

By Toluse Olorunnipa and Josh Dawsey |

Published October 18 at 7:31 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 18, 2019 |

The hastily announced White House news conference was supposed to be a full-throated defense of President Trump’s controversial decision to host next year’s Group of Seven summit at his private golf club in Florida.

By the time it was over, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney had made much more explosive news — adding to Trump’s impeachment troubles and calling into question his ability to lead the White House staff in a time of crisis.

Mulvaney’s performance the day before continued to reverberate Friday as Republican lawmakers, the Justice Department, Trump’s personal attorney, conservative media figures and several White House officials panned the news conference or distanced themselves from its contents.

With his admission that Trump withheld aid meant for Ukraine to push the government there to investigate Democrats, Mulvaney did more to harm Trump’s impeachment defense than administration officials testifying before Democratic-led committees in Congress, according to many Republican lawmakers and officials who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

And Mulvaney’s situation was made worse, some Republicans said, by his decision to attempt to retract his remarks hours later in a bellicose written statement blaming the media reporting his remarks.

One person who spoke with Trump said the president was not troubled by Mulvaney’s performance, however, and was happy to have someone defending him on television.

“These things go two ways — either he turns on you or he thinks you’re being treated unfairly,” this person said. “For right now, it’s the latter with Mick.”

But Trump has also been quizzing people about his acting chief of staff’s performance, according to an outside adviser familiar with the discussions. In recent weeks, the president had grown angry with Mulvaney over media coverage of the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, which has overcome White House defiance to obtain damaging testimony from several officials.

Publicly, the White House continued to stand by Mulvaney, a sign that he is likely to survive, at least for the moment.

“Mick Mulvaney’s standing in the White House has not changed,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Friday.

White House spokesman Judd Deere added, “He is still the acting chief of staff and has the president’s confidence.”

Privately, the opinion inside the White House toward Mulvaney’s news conference was almost universally negative, according to current and former administration officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

For hours after the news conference, in which Mulvaney appeared to contradict Trump’s denials of a quid pro quo linking political investigations to Ukrainian aid, White House officials worked to clean up his comments. Trump, who watched Mulvaney’s event on Air Force One while flying to Dallas, spoke to Mulvaney by phone about his follow-up statement, officials said.

White House officials said they were taken aback by Mulvaney’s comments in the briefing room. Speaking off the cuff, Mulvaney told reporters that Trump had intervened to block nearly $400 million in aid in part because he wanted Ukrainian officials to investigate a conspiracy theory that Ukraine was involved in election interference in 2016, something U.S. intelligence officials have repeatedly attributed to Russia.

“Did [Trump] also mention to me in the past the corruption related to the DNC server?” he said. “Absolutely, no question about that. But that’s it, and that’s why we held up the money.”

He punctuated his remarks with bravado, saying detractors should “get over it” because political influence in foreign policy was appropriate.

Mulvaney reversed course in his written statement, saying that “there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election.”

But the walk-back did little to contain the damage caused by the televised comments, which sparked a wave of condemnation from Democrats and many of Trump’s Republican allies. Sean Hannity, a Fox News host who speaks regularly with the president, called Mulvaney “dumb” and his comments “idiotic” during his radio show Thursday.

Rep. Francis Rooney (R-Fla.) said Friday he was “shocked” by Mulvaney’s televised admission, which contradicted Trump’s previous denials.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he told reporters Friday. “When the president has said many times there wasn’t a quid pro quo . . . and now Mick Mulvaney goes up and says: Yeah, it was all part of the whole plan!”

Rooney said he was “still thinking about” backing Trump’s impeachment, adding that he was unconvinced by some of the arguments coming out of the White House.

Trump has no immediate choices to replace Mulvaney and was said to not be as frustrated as others in the White House, many of whom have expressed dismay about the lack of an organized impeachment response effort.

Leon E. Panetta, who served as chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, said Mulvaney’s news conference was “bizarre” and called into question his stewardship of the White House during the impeachment probe.

“The appearance is that they are totally disorganized,” he said. “There’s no message, there’s no clear defense to these allegations, and you can sense that when Mulvaney basically says ‘That’s the way it is’ without really presenting any rational position that could defend what the president is accused of.”

But Trump has reveled in the lack of structure and appreciates a chief of staff who allows him to “do whatever he wants,” one former administration official said. It is one of the reasons Trump is not looking to fire Mulvaney, even though the men do not have the close personal rapport that Trump has with some other aides, the official said.

For example, when Trump decided recently to pull U.S. troops from Syria, Mulvaney did not attempt to block the move, as previous chief of staff John F. Kelly had done.

And with Trump complaining that so many people are turning on him, he is reluctant to dump anyone else from his team, aides said.

Mulvaney’s standing as chief of staff has always been precarious, underscored by the fact that the word “acting” remains in his title 10 months after he took the position.

Trump did not initially want to name Mulvaney as chief of staff, an administration official said. The former budget director was “left holding the bag” when Trump’s first choice — Vice President Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers — decided not to take the job, the official said.

Mulvaney’s tenure has been somewhat rocky of late. Administration officials have lamented about a White House communications shop that had essentially become the president’s defiant tweets, and a legislative affairs shop that was rowing uphill to push legislation amid impeachment.

Thursday’s briefing quickly went off track after Mulvaney took questions unrelated to Trump’s decision to host the 2020 G-7 at his Trump National Doral Miami golf resort.

A prep session held in Mulvaney’s office ahead of the news conference with White House lawyers and press staff, as well as State Department officials, focused mostly on G-7 questions, according to two officials familiar with the meeting.

On the other topics that came up, Mulvaney had prepared none of his answers in advance and was just “winging it,” according to a senior administration official.

Trump has complained in recent weeks that not enough advisers are on TV, with Grisham largely staying away from the cameras and White House aide Kellyanne Conway appearing sporadically. White House officials recently ordered Mark T. Esper, the defense secretary, to go on Sunday morning shows, according to a White House official, after Trump was so frustrated with the Syria coverage.

Mulvaney is expected to appear on Fox News this Sunday, an official said.

Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.

*********

How a secretary of state with backbone handles an out-of-line White House

By Colbert I. King | Published October 18 at 5:21 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 18, 2019 |

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did to the United States’ former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, what President Trump did to the Kurds. Both men turned their backs on frontline defenders of U.S. interests just when strong moral rectitude was needed the most.

Trump’s sellout of Syrian Kurdish forces that have been fighting our battles with Islamic State terrorists is disgraceful. But, with Trump, anything is possible, since he is only faithful to himself.

But I never thought Pompeo would be the kind of leader who would abandon his team when the going gets tough — as he did when he allowed the shabby ending of Yovanovitch’s ambassadorship. Pompeo, through his passivity, sacrificed a seasoned — and falsely maligned — diplomat who has honorably represented six presidents in some of the most challenging foreign assignments that the world has to offer.

Pompeo pales in stature to his predecessor William P. Rogers, who went to the mat for his State Department employees.

Almost 50 years ago — in 1970 — some 250 State Department employees signed an internal petition to senior department officials criticizing President Richard Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and his administration’s demonizing of antiwar protesters.

Stories about the petition hit the papers. Somebody at the White House must have hit the ceiling.

Nixon’s special counsel, Clark Mollenhoff, sent the FBI to State to get the names of the petition signers so that files could be opened for investigation.

I know because I was a special agent in the office now named the Bureau of Diplomatic Security when the FBI came looking for the names.

The FBI request was brought to the attention of senior security officials who notified William B. Macomber, deputy undersecretary for administration. Macomber refused to turn over the names and sent word to Rogers. The secretary stepped in and let the White House know in no uncertain terms that he, not some White House gumshoe, ran the State Department. No one else, Rogers said, would deal with his officers.

Less than a month later, the White House announced that Mollenhoff had resigned, adding that he had been acting “on his own volition” in trying to get his hands on the petition.

In Yovanovitch’s case, Pompeo didn’t lift a finger.

There are reasons to have expected more of him.

Pompeo graduated West Point, first in his class, where he was steeped in the principles of leadership.

Pompeo was taught, just as I learned as a commissioned officer, that you stand up for your subordinates, especially when you know they are right but are under attack because they might have rubbed some high-ranking horse’s ass the wrong way.

A strong leader, Pompeo must have learned, doesn’t cave under pressure, look the other way or throw subordinates under the bus.

To do anything less shows a lack of moral fortitude. Anything less, and as a leader you are marginalized.

Pompeo let Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, run roughshod over his department. He stood by while Giuliani, slinging around unfounded and false claims, campaigned against Yovanovitch.

He capitulated to the unreasonable demand that she be removed from her post.

Mike Pompeo might earn plenty of “attaboys” from Trump. But Pompeo, as secretary of state, let down his department and disgraced himself in the process.

[toomanysinks]

Has the fight over privacy changed at all in 2019?

Few issues divide the tech community quite like privacy. Much of Silicon Valley’s wealth has been built on data-driven advertising platforms, and yet, there remain constant concerns about the invasiveness of those platforms.

Such concerns have intensified in just the last few weeks as France’s privacy regulator placed a record fine on Google under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules which the company now plans to appeal. Yet with global platform usage and service sales continuing to tick up, we asked a panel of eight privacy experts: “Has anything fundamentally changed around privacy in tech in 2019? What is the state of privacy and has the outlook changed?” 

This week’s participants include:

Albert Gidari – Consulting Director of Privacy at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society; Professor at Stanford Law School

Gabriel Weinberg – CEO and Founder of DuckDuckGo

Melika Carroll -Senior VP of Global Government Affairs at The Internet Association

Johnny Ryan – Chief Policy and Industry Relations Officer at Brave

John Miller –  VP of Global Policy and Law at the Information Technology Industry Council

Nuala O’Connor – President and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology

Chris Baker – Senior VP and General Manager of EMEA at Box

Christopher Wolf – Founder and Chair of the Future Privacy Forum; Senior counsel at Hogan Lovells focusing on internet law, privacy and data protection policy

TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. Consider this a recurring venue for debate, where leading experts – with a diverse range of vantage points and opinions – provide us with thoughts on some of the biggest issues currently in tech, startups and venture. If you have any feedback, please reach out: Arman.Tabatabai@techcrunch.com.

Thoughts & Responses:

Albert Gidari

Albert Gidari is the Consulting Director of Privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. He was a partner for over 20 years at Perkins Coie LLP, achieving a top-ranking in privacy law by Chambers, before retiring to consult with CIS on its privacy program. He negotiated the first-ever “privacy by design” consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. A recognized expert on electronic surveillance law, he brought the first public lawsuit before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, seeking the right of providers to disclose the volume of national security demands received and the number of affected user accounts, ultimately resulting in greater public disclosure of such requests.

There is no doubt that the privacy environment changed in 2018 with the passage of California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), implementation of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and new privacy laws enacted around the globe.

“While privacy regulation seeks to make tech companies betters stewards of the data they collect and their practices more transparent, in the end, it is a deception to think that users will have more “privacy.””

For one thing, large tech companies have grown huge privacy compliance organizations to meet their new regulatory obligations. For another, the major platforms now are lobbying for passage of a federal privacy law in the U.S. This is not surprising after a year of privacy miscues, breaches and negative privacy news. But does all of this mean a fundamental change is in store for privacy? I think not.

The fundamental model sustaining the Internet is based upon the exchange of user data for free service. As long as advertising dollars drive the growth of the Internet, regulation simply will tinker around the edges, setting sideboards to dictate the terms of the exchange. The tech companies may be more accountable for how they handle data and to whom they disclose it, but the fact is that data will continue to be collected from all manner of people, places and things.

Indeed, if the past year has shown anything it is that two rules are fundamental: (1) everything that can be connected to the Internet will be connected; and (2) everything that can be collected, will be collected, analyzed, used and monetized. It is inexorable.

While privacy regulation seeks to make tech companies betters stewards of the data they collect and their practices more transparent, in the end, it is a deception to think that users will have more “privacy.” No one even knows what “more privacy” means. If it means that users will have more control over the data they share, that is laudable but not achievable in a world where people have no idea how many times or with whom they have shared their information already. Can you name all the places over your lifetime where you provided your SSN and other identifying information? And given that the largest data collector (and likely least secure) is government, what does control really mean?

All this is not to say that privacy regulation is futile. But it is to recognize that nothing proposed today will result in a fundamental shift in privacy policy or provide a panacea of consumer protection. Better privacy hygiene and more accountability on the part of tech companies is a good thing, but it doesn’t solve the privacy paradox that those same users who want more privacy broadly share their information with others who are less trustworthy on social media (ask Jeff Bezos), or that the government hoovers up data at rate that makes tech companies look like pikers (visit a smart city near you).

Many years ago, I used to practice environmental law. I watched companies strive to comply with new laws intended to control pollution by creating compliance infrastructures and teams aimed at preventing, detecting and deterring violations. Today, I see the same thing at the large tech companies – hundreds of employees have been hired to do “privacy” compliance. The language is the same too: cradle to grave privacy documentation of data flows for a product or service; audits and assessments of privacy practices; data mapping; sustainable privacy practices. In short, privacy has become corporatized and industrialized.

True, we have cleaner air and cleaner water as a result of environmental law, but we also have made it lawful and built businesses around acceptable levels of pollution. Companies still lawfully dump arsenic in the water and belch volatile organic compounds in the air. And we still get environmental catastrophes. So don’t expect today’s “Clean Privacy Law” to eliminate data breaches or profiling or abuses.

The privacy world is complicated and few people truly understand the number and variety of companies involved in data collection and processing, and none of them are in Congress. The power to fundamentally change the privacy equation is in the hands of the people who use the technology (or choose not to) and in the hands of those who design it, and maybe that’s where it should be.

Gabriel Weinberg

Gabriel Weinberg is the Founder and CEO of privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo.

Coming into 2019, interest in privacy solutions is truly mainstream. There are signs of this everywhere (media, politics, books, etc.) and also in DuckDuckGo’s growth, which has never been faster. With solid majorities now seeking out private alternatives and other ways to be tracked less online, we expect governments to continue to step up their regulatory scrutiny and for privacy companies like DuckDuckGo to continue to help more people take back their privacy.

“Consumers don’t necessarily feel they have anything to hide – but they just don’t want corporations to profit off their personal information, or be manipulated, or unfairly treated through misuse of that information.”

We’re also seeing companies take action beyond mere regulatory compliance, reflecting this new majority will of the people and its tangible effect on the market. Just this month we’ve seen Apple’s Tim Cook call for stronger privacy regulation and the New York Times report strong ad revenue in Europe after stopping the use of ad exchanges and behavioral targeting.

At its core, this groundswell is driven by the negative effects that stem from the surveillance business model. The percentage of people who have noticed ads following them around the Internet, or who have had their data exposed in a breach, or who have had a family member or friend experience some kind of credit card fraud or identity theft issue, reached a boiling point in 2018. On top of that, people learned of the extent to which the big platforms like Google and Facebook that collect the most data are used to propagate misinformation, discrimination, and polarization. Consumers don’t necessarily feel they have anything to hide – but they just don’t want corporations to profit off their personal information, or be manipulated, or unfairly treated through misuse of that information. Fortunately, there are alternatives to the surveillance business model and more companies are setting a new standard of trust online by showcasing alternative models.

Melika Carroll

Melika Carroll is Senior Vice President, Global Government Affairs at Internet Association, which represents over 45 of the world’s leading internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Uber, Airbnb and others.

We support a modern, national privacy law that provides people meaningful control over the data they provide to companies so they can make the most informed choices about how that data is used, seen, and shared.

“Any national privacy framework should provide the same protections for people’s data across industries, regardless of whether it is gathered offline or online.”

Internet companies believe all Americans should have the ability to access, correct, delete, and download the data they provide to companies.

Americans will benefit most from a federal approach to privacy – as opposed to a patchwork of state laws – that protects their privacy regardless of where they live. If someone in New York is video chatting with their grandmother in Florida, they should both benefit from the same privacy protections.

It’s also important to consider that all companies – both online and offline – use and collect data. Any national privacy framework should provide the same protections for people’s data across industries, regardless of whether it is gathered offline or online.

Two other important pieces of any federal privacy law include user expectations and the context in which data is shared with third parties. Expectations may vary based on a person’s relationship with a company, the service they expect to receive, and the sensitivity of the data they’re sharing. For example, you expect a car rental company to be able to track the location of the rented vehicle that doesn’t get returned. You don’t expect the car rental company to track your real-time location and sell that data to the highest bidder. Additionally, the same piece of data can have different sensitivities depending on the context in which it’s used or shared. For example, your name on a business card may not be as sensitive as your name on the sign in sheet at an addiction support group meeting.

This is a unique time in Washington as there is bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress as well as in the administration for a federal privacy law. Our industry is committed to working with policymakers and other stakeholders to find an American approach to privacy that protects individuals’ privacy and allows companies to innovate and develop products people love.

Johnny Ryan

Dr. Johnny Ryan FRHistS is Chief Policy & Industry Relations Officer at Brave. His previous roles include Head of Ecosystem at PageFair, and Chief Innovation Officer of The Irish Times. He has a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Tech companies will probably have to adapt to two privacy trends.

“As lawmakers and regulators in Europe and in the United States start to think of “purpose specification” as a tool for anti-trust enforcement, tech giants should beware.”

First, the GDPR is emerging as a de facto international standard.

In the coming years, the application of GDPR-like laws for commercial use of consumers’ personal data in the EU, Britain (post-EU), Japan, India, Brazil, South Korea, Malaysia, Argentina, and China will bring more than half of global GDP under a similar standard.

Whether this emerging standard helps or harms United States firms will be determined by whether the United States enacts and actively enforces robust federal privacy laws. Unless there is a federal GDPR-like law in the United States, there may be a degree of friction and the potential of isolation for United States companies.

However, there is an opportunity in this trend. The United States can assume the global lead by doing two things. First, enact a federal law that borrows from the GDPR, including a comprehensive definition of “personal data”, and robust “purpose specification”. Second, invest in world-leading regulation that pursues test cases, and defines practical standards. Cutting edge enforcement of common principles-based standards is de facto leadership.

Second, privacy and antitrust law are moving closer to each other, and might squeeze big tech companies very tightly indeed.

Big tech companies “cross-use” user data from one part of their business to prop up others. The result is that a company can leverage all the personal information accumulated from its users in one line of business, and for one purpose, to dominate other lines of business too.

This is likely to have anti-competitive effects. Rather than competing on the merits, the company can enjoy the unfair advantage of massive network effects even though it may be starting from scratch in a new line of business. This stifles competition and hurts innovation and consumer choice.

Antitrust authorities in other jurisdictions have addressed this. In 2015, the Belgian National Lottery was fined for re-using personal information acquired through its monopoly for a different, and incompatible, line of business.

As lawmakers and regulators in Europe and in the United States start to think of “purpose specification” as a tool for anti-trust enforcement, tech giants should beware.

John Miller

John Miller is the VP for Global Policy and Law at the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), a D.C. based advocate group for the high tech sector.  Miller leads ITI’s work on cybersecurity, privacy, surveillance, and other technology and digital policy issues.

Data has long been the lifeblood of innovation. And protecting that data remains a priority for individuals, companies and governments alike. However, as times change and innovation progresses at a rapid rate, it’s clear the laws protecting consumers’ data and privacy must evolve as well.

“Data has long been the lifeblood of innovation. And protecting that data remains a priority for individuals, companies and governments alike.”

As the global regulatory landscape shifts, there is now widespread agreement among business, government, and consumers that we must modernize our privacy laws, and create an approach to protecting consumer privacy that works in today’s data-driven reality, while still delivering the innovations consumers and businesses demand.

More and more, lawmakers and stakeholders acknowledge that an effective privacy regime provides meaningful privacy protections for consumers regardless of where they live. Approaches, like the framework ITI released last fall, must offer an interoperable solution that can serve as a model for governments worldwide, providing an alternative to a patchwork of laws that could create confusion and uncertainty over what protections individuals have.

Companies are also increasingly aware of the critical role they play in protecting privacy. Looking ahead, the tech industry will continue to develop mechanisms to hold us accountable, including recommendations that any privacy law mandate companies identify, monitor, and document uses of known personal data, while ensuring the existence of meaningful enforcement mechanisms.

Nuala O’Connor

Nuala O’Connor is president and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a global nonprofit committed to the advancement of digital human rights and civil liberties, including privacy, freedom of expression, and human agency. O’Connor has served in a number of presidentially appointed positions, including as the first statutorily mandated chief privacy officer in U.S. federal government when she served at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. O’Connor has held senior corporate leadership positions on privacy, data, and customer trust at Amazon, General Electric, and DoubleClick. She has practiced at several global law firms including Sidley Austin and Venable. She is an advocate for the use of data and internet-enabled technologies to improve equity and amplify marginalized voices.

For too long, Americans’ digital privacy has varied widely, depending on the technologies and services we use, the companies that provide those services, and our capacity to navigate confusing notices and settings.

“Americans deserve comprehensive protections for personal information – protections that can’t be signed, or check-boxed, away.”

We are burdened with trying to make informed choices that align with our personal privacy preferences on hundreds of devices and thousands of apps, and reading and parsing as many different policies and settings. No individual has the time nor capacity to manage their privacy in this way, nor is it a good use of time in our increasingly busy lives. These notices and choices and checkboxes have become privacy theater, but not privacy reality.

In 2019, the legal landscape for data privacy is changing, and so is the public perception of how companies handle data. As more information comes to light about the effects of companies’ data practices and myriad stewardship missteps, Americans are surprised and shocked about what they’re learning. They’re increasingly paying attention, and questioning why they are still overburdened and unprotected. And with intensifying scrutiny by the media, as well as state and local lawmakers, companies are recognizing the need for a clear and nationally consistent set of rules.

Personal privacy is the cornerstone of the digital future people want. Americans deserve comprehensive protections for personal information – protections that can’t be signed, or check-boxed, away. The Center for Democracy & Technology wants to help craft those legal principles to solidify Americans’ digital privacy rights for the first time.

Chris Baker

Chris Baker is Senior Vice President and General Manager of EMEA at Box.

Last year saw data privacy hit the headlines as businesses and consumers alike were forced to navigate the implementation of GDPR. But it’s far from over.

“…customers will have trust in a business when they are given more control over how their data is used and processed”

2019 will be the year that the rest of the world catches up to the legislative example set by Europe, as similar data regulations come to the forefront. Organizations must ensure they are compliant with regional data privacy regulations, and more GDPR-like policies will start to have an impact. This can present a headache when it comes to data management, especially if you’re operating internationally. However, customers will have trust in a business when they are given more control over how their data is used and processed, and customers can rest assured knowing that no matter where they are in the world, businesses must meet the highest bar possible when it comes to data security.

Starting with the U.S., 2019 will see larger corporations opt-in to GDPR to support global business practices. At the same time, local data regulators will lift large sections of the EU legislative framework and implement these rules in their own countries. 2018 was the year of GDPR in Europe, and 2019 be the year of GDPR globally.

Christopher Wolf

Christopher Wolf is the Founder and Chair of the Future of Privacy Forum think tank, and is senior counsel at Hogan Lovells focusing on internet law, privacy and data protection policy.

With the EU GDPR in effect since last May (setting a standard other nations are emulating),

“Regardless of the outcome of the debate over a new federal privacy law, the issue of the privacy and protection of personal data is unlikely to recede.”

with the adoption of a highly-regulatory and broadly-applicable state privacy law in California last Summer (and similar laws adopted or proposed in other states), and with intense focus on the data collection and sharing practices of large tech companies, the time may have come where Congress will adopt a comprehensive federal privacy law. Complicating the adoption of a federal law will be the issue of preemption of state laws and what to do with the highly-developed sectoral laws like HIPPA and Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Also to be determined is the expansion of FTC regulatory powers. Regardless of the outcome of the debate over a new federal privacy law, the issue of the privacy and protection of personal data is unlikely to recede.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/26/has-the-fight-over-privacy-changed-at-all-in-2019/

[fmservers]

Has the fight over privacy changed at all in 2019?

Few issues divide the tech community quite like privacy. Much of Silicon Valley’s wealth has been built on data-driven advertising platforms, and yet, there remain constant concerns about the invasiveness of those platforms.

Such concerns have intensified in just the last few weeks as France’s privacy regulator placed a record fine on Google under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules which the company now plans to appeal. Yet with global platform usage and service sales continuing to tick up, we asked a panel of eight privacy experts: “Has anything fundamentally changed around privacy in tech in 2019? What is the state of privacy and has the outlook changed?” 

This week’s participants include:

Albert Gidari – Consulting Director of Privacy at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society; Professor at Stanford Law School

Gabriel Weinberg – CEO and Founder of DuckDuckGo

Melika Carroll -Senior VP of Global Government Affairs at The Internet Association

Johnny Ryan – Chief Policy and Industry Relations Officer at Brave

John Miller –  VP of Global Policy and Law at the Information Technology Industry Council

Nuala O’Connor – President and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology

Chris Baker – Senior VP and General Manager of EMEA at Box

Christopher Wolf – Founder and Chair of the Future Privacy Forum; Senior counsel at Hogan Lovells focusing on internet law, privacy and data protection policy

TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. Consider this a recurring venue for debate, where leading experts – with a diverse range of vantage points and opinions – provide us with thoughts on some of the biggest issues currently in tech, startups and venture. If you have any feedback, please reach out: Arman.Tabatabai@techcrunch.com.

Thoughts & Responses:

Albert Gidari

Albert Gidari is the Consulting Director of Privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. He was a partner for over 20 years at Perkins Coie LLP, achieving a top-ranking in privacy law by Chambers, before retiring to consult with CIS on its privacy program. He negotiated the first-ever “privacy by design” consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. A recognized expert on electronic surveillance law, he brought the first public lawsuit before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, seeking the right of providers to disclose the volume of national security demands received and the number of affected user accounts, ultimately resulting in greater public disclosure of such requests.

There is no doubt that the privacy environment changed in 2018 with the passage of California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), implementation of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and new privacy laws enacted around the globe.

“While privacy regulation seeks to make tech companies betters stewards of the data they collect and their practices more transparent, in the end, it is a deception to think that users will have more “privacy.””

For one thing, large tech companies have grown huge privacy compliance organizations to meet their new regulatory obligations. For another, the major platforms now are lobbying for passage of a federal privacy law in the U.S. This is not surprising after a year of privacy miscues, breaches and negative privacy news. But does all of this mean a fundamental change is in store for privacy? I think not.

The fundamental model sustaining the Internet is based upon the exchange of user data for free service. As long as advertising dollars drive the growth of the Internet, regulation simply will tinker around the edges, setting sideboards to dictate the terms of the exchange. The tech companies may be more accountable for how they handle data and to whom they disclose it, but the fact is that data will continue to be collected from all manner of people, places and things.

Indeed, if the past year has shown anything it is that two rules are fundamental: (1) everything that can be connected to the Internet will be connected; and (2) everything that can be collected, will be collected, analyzed, used and monetized. It is inexorable.

While privacy regulation seeks to make tech companies betters stewards of the data they collect and their practices more transparent, in the end, it is a deception to think that users will have more “privacy.” No one even knows what “more privacy” means. If it means that users will have more control over the data they share, that is laudable but not achievable in a world where people have no idea how many times or with whom they have shared their information already. Can you name all the places over your lifetime where you provided your SSN and other identifying information? And given that the largest data collector (and likely least secure) is government, what does control really mean?

All this is not to say that privacy regulation is futile. But it is to recognize that nothing proposed today will result in a fundamental shift in privacy policy or provide a panacea of consumer protection. Better privacy hygiene and more accountability on the part of tech companies is a good thing, but it doesn’t solve the privacy paradox that those same users who want more privacy broadly share their information with others who are less trustworthy on social media (ask Jeff Bezos), or that the government hoovers up data at rate that makes tech companies look like pikers (visit a smart city near you).

Many years ago, I used to practice environmental law. I watched companies strive to comply with new laws intended to control pollution by creating compliance infrastructures and teams aimed at preventing, detecting and deterring violations. Today, I see the same thing at the large tech companies – hundreds of employees have been hired to do “privacy” compliance. The language is the same too: cradle to grave privacy documentation of data flows for a product or service; audits and assessments of privacy practices; data mapping; sustainable privacy practices. In short, privacy has become corporatized and industrialized.

True, we have cleaner air and cleaner water as a result of environmental law, but we also have made it lawful and built businesses around acceptable levels of pollution. Companies still lawfully dump arsenic in the water and belch volatile organic compounds in the air. And we still get environmental catastrophes. So don’t expect today’s “Clean Privacy Law” to eliminate data breaches or profiling or abuses.

The privacy world is complicated and few people truly understand the number and variety of companies involved in data collection and processing, and none of them are in Congress. The power to fundamentally change the privacy equation is in the hands of the people who use the technology (or choose not to) and in the hands of those who design it, and maybe that’s where it should be.

Gabriel Weinberg

Gabriel Weinberg is the Founder and CEO of privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo.

Coming into 2019, interest in privacy solutions is truly mainstream. There are signs of this everywhere (media, politics, books, etc.) and also in DuckDuckGo’s growth, which has never been faster. With solid majorities now seeking out private alternatives and other ways to be tracked less online, we expect governments to continue to step up their regulatory scrutiny and for privacy companies like DuckDuckGo to continue to help more people take back their privacy.

“Consumers don’t necessarily feel they have anything to hide – but they just don’t want corporations to profit off their personal information, or be manipulated, or unfairly treated through misuse of that information.”

We’re also seeing companies take action beyond mere regulatory compliance, reflecting this new majority will of the people and its tangible effect on the market. Just this month we’ve seen Apple’s Tim Cook call for stronger privacy regulation and the New York Times report strong ad revenue in Europe after stopping the use of ad exchanges and behavioral targeting.

At its core, this groundswell is driven by the negative effects that stem from the surveillance business model. The percentage of people who have noticed ads following them around the Internet, or who have had their data exposed in a breach, or who have had a family member or friend experience some kind of credit card fraud or identity theft issue, reached a boiling point in 2018. On top of that, people learned of the extent to which the big platforms like Google and Facebook that collect the most data are used to propagate misinformation, discrimination, and polarization. Consumers don’t necessarily feel they have anything to hide – but they just don’t want corporations to profit off their personal information, or be manipulated, or unfairly treated through misuse of that information. Fortunately, there are alternatives to the surveillance business model and more companies are setting a new standard of trust online by showcasing alternative models.

Melika Carroll

Melika Carroll is Senior Vice President, Global Government Affairs at Internet Association, which represents over 45 of the world’s leading internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Uber, Airbnb and others.

We support a modern, national privacy law that provides people meaningful control over the data they provide to companies so they can make the most informed choices about how that data is used, seen, and shared.

“Any national privacy framework should provide the same protections for people’s data across industries, regardless of whether it is gathered offline or online.”

Internet companies believe all Americans should have the ability to access, correct, delete, and download the data they provide to companies.

Americans will benefit most from a federal approach to privacy – as opposed to a patchwork of state laws – that protects their privacy regardless of where they live. If someone in New York is video chatting with their grandmother in Florida, they should both benefit from the same privacy protections.

It’s also important to consider that all companies – both online and offline – use and collect data. Any national privacy framework should provide the same protections for people’s data across industries, regardless of whether it is gathered offline or online.

Two other important pieces of any federal privacy law include user expectations and the context in which data is shared with third parties. Expectations may vary based on a person’s relationship with a company, the service they expect to receive, and the sensitivity of the data they’re sharing. For example, you expect a car rental company to be able to track the location of the rented vehicle that doesn’t get returned. You don’t expect the car rental company to track your real-time location and sell that data to the highest bidder. Additionally, the same piece of data can have different sensitivities depending on the context in which it’s used or shared. For example, your name on a business card may not be as sensitive as your name on the sign in sheet at an addiction support group meeting.

This is a unique time in Washington as there is bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress as well as in the administration for a federal privacy law. Our industry is committed to working with policymakers and other stakeholders to find an American approach to privacy that protects individuals’ privacy and allows companies to innovate and develop products people love.

Johnny Ryan

Dr. Johnny Ryan FRHistS is Chief Policy & Industry Relations Officer at Brave. His previous roles include Head of Ecosystem at PageFair, and Chief Innovation Officer of The Irish Times. He has a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Tech companies will probably have to adapt to two privacy trends.

“As lawmakers and regulators in Europe and in the United States start to think “purpose specification” as a tool for anti-trust enforcement, tech giants should beware.”

First, the GDPR is emerging as a de facto international standard.

In the coming years, the application of GDPR-like laws for commercial use of consumers’ personal data in the EU, Britain (post-EU), Japan, India, Brazil, South Korea, Malaysia, Argentina, and China bring more than half of global GDP under a similar standard.

Whether this emerging standard helps or harms United States firms will be determined by whether the United States enacts and actively enforces robust federal privacy laws. Unless there is a federal GDPR-like law in the United States, there may be a degree of friction and the potential of isolation for United States companies.

However, there is an opportunity in this trend. The United States can assume the global lead by doing two things. First, enact a federal law that borrows from the GDPR, including a comprehensive definition of “personal data”, and robust “purpose specification”. Second, invest in world-leading regulation that pursues test cases, and defines practical standards. Cutting edge enforcement of common principles-based standards is de facto leadership.

Second, privacy and antitrust law are moving closer to each other, and might squeeze big tech companies very tightly indeed.

Big tech companies “cross-use” user data from one part of their business to prop up others. The result is that a company can leverage all the personal information accumulated from its users in one line of business, and for one purpose, to dominate other lines of business too.

This is likely to have anti-competitive effects. Rather than competing on the merits, the company can enjoy the unfair advantage of massive network effects even though it may be starting from scratch in a new line of business. This stifles competition and hurts innovation and consumer choice.

Antitrust authorities in other jurisdictions have addressed this. In 2015, the Belgian National Lottery was fined for re-using personal information acquired through its monopoly for a different, and incompatible, line of business.

As lawmakers and regulators in Europe and in the United States start to think “purpose specification” as a tool for anti-trust enforcement, tech giants should beware.

John Miller

John Miller is the VP for Global Policy and Law at the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), a D.C. based advocate group for the high tech sector.  Miller leads ITI’s work on cybersecurity, privacy, surveillance, and other technology and digital policy issues.

Data has long been the lifeblood of innovation. And protecting that data remains a priority for individuals, companies and governments alike. However, as times change and innovation progresses at a rapid rate, it’s clear the laws protecting consumers’ data and privacy must evolve as well.

“Data has long been the lifeblood of innovation. And protecting that data remains a priority for individuals, companies and governments alike.”

As the global regulatory landscape shifts, there is now widespread agreement among business, government, and consumers that we must modernize our privacy laws, and create an approach to protecting consumer privacy that works in today’s data-driven reality, while still delivering the innovations consumers and businesses demand.

More and more, lawmakers and stakeholders acknowledge that an effective privacy regime provides meaningful privacy protections for consumers regardless of where they live. Approaches, like the framework ITI released last fall, must offer an interoperable solution that can serve as a model for governments worldwide, providing an alternative to a patchwork of laws that could create confusion and uncertainty over what protections individuals have.

Companies are also increasingly aware of the critical role they play in protecting privacy. Looking ahead, the tech industry will continue to develop mechanisms to hold us accountable, including recommendations that any privacy law mandate companies identify, monitor, and document uses of known personal data, while ensuring the existence of meaningful enforcement mechanisms.

Nuala O’Connor

Nuala O’Connor is president and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a global nonprofit committed to the advancement of digital human rights and civil liberties, including privacy, freedom of expression, and human agency. O’Connor has served in a number of presidentially appointed positions, including as the first statutorily mandated chief privacy officer in U.S. federal government when she served at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. O’Connor has held senior corporate leadership positions on privacy, data, and customer trust at Amazon, General Electric, and DoubleClick. She has practiced at several global law firms including Sidley Austin and Venable. She is an advocate for the use of data and internet-enabled technologies to improve equity and amplify marginalized voices.

For too long, Americans’ digital privacy has varied widely, depending on the technologies and services we use, the companies that provide those services, and our capacity to navigate confusing notices and settings.

“Americans deserve comprehensive protections for personal information – protections that can’t be signed, or check-boxed, away.”

We are burdened with trying to make informed choices that align with our personal privacy preferences on hundreds of devices and thousands of apps, and reading and parsing as many different policies and settings. No individual has the time nor capacity to manage their privacy in this way, nor is it a good use of time in our increasingly busy lives. These notices and choices and checkboxes have become privacy theater, but not privacy reality.

In 2019, the legal landscape for data privacy is changing, and so is the public perception of how companies handle data. As more information comes to light about the effects of companies’ data practices and myriad stewardship missteps, Americans are surprised and shocked about what they’re learning. They’re increasingly paying attention, and questioning why they are still overburdened and unprotected. And with intensifying scrutiny by the media, as well as state and local lawmakers, companies are recognizing the need for a clear and nationally consistent set of rules.

Personal privacy is the cornerstone of the digital future people want. Americans deserve comprehensive protections for personal information – protections that can’t be signed, or check-boxed, away. The Center for Democracy & Technology wants to help craft those legal principles to solidify Americans’ digital privacy rights for the first time.

Chris Baker

Chris Baker is Senior Vice President and General Manager of EMEA at Box.

Last year saw data privacy hit the headlines as businesses and consumers alike were forced to navigate the implementation of GDPR. But it’s far from over.

“…customers will have trust in a business when they are given more control over how their data is used and processed”

2019 will be the year that the rest of the world catches up to the legislative example set by Europe, as similar data regulations come to the forefront. Organizations must ensure they are compliant with regional data privacy regulations, and more GDPR-like policies will start to have an impact. This can present a headache when it comes to data management, especially if you’re operating internationally. However, customers will have trust in a business when they are given more control over how their data is used and processed, and customers can rest assured knowing that no matter where they are in the world, businesses must meet the highest bar possible when it comes to data security.

Starting with the U.S., 2019 will see larger corporations opt-in to GDPR to support global business practices. At the same time, local data regulators will lift large sections of the EU legislative framework and implement these rules in their own countries. 2018 was the year of GDPR in Europe, and 2019 be the year of GDPR globally.

Christopher Wolf

Christopher Wolf is the Founder and Chair of the Future of Privacy Forum think tank, and is senior counsel at Hogan Lovells focusing on internet law, privacy and data protection policy.

With the EU GDPR in effect since last May (setting a standard other nations are emulating),

“Regardless of the outcome of the debate over a new federal privacy law, the issue of the privacy and protection of personal data is unlikely to recede.”

with the adoption of a highly-regulatory and broadly-applicable state privacy law in California last Summer (and similar laws adopted or proposed in other states), and with intense focus on the data collection and sharing practices of large tech companies, the time may have come where Congress will adopt a comprehensive federal privacy law. Complicating the adoption of a federal law will be the issue of preemption of state laws and what to do with the highly-developed sectoral laws like HIPPA and Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Also to be determined is the expansion of FTC regulatory powers. Regardless of the outcome of the debate over a new federal privacy law, the issue of the privacy and protection of personal data is unlikely to recede.

Via Arman Tabatabai https://techcrunch.com

[voiceofpeople2016]

Bargain Affliction over Poverty

Guess about this picture what is this saying about ? Anyone can ! no, bereft of a plebeian. Is it? yes, a simple person can more glimpse rather a plutocrat and quail the ado better than him/her .Abort of enjoying  same life. Can anyone compute their per day income ? How much they would be earn a day and be get as a behoove by sell the forest kind of goods such as mushrooms, woods etc ? Must be sucked and outrageous to know that i.e.only Rs.200 to Rs. 300. so just conceive about their life . But the reality is  we neither see anything nor think about it  rather we always be ready to start the bargain with them despite knowing the fact. In fact do have the erudition that they really deserve the money for smoothly operate and driven their nightmare i.e. poverty bereft of any grievance .

One interesting note of life ! all we have generated income for our  respective family then why not they? Simply, if our boss of the company start bargain with us over our salary by taking consideration to our work then think what and how we would be react ? As like this he/she must be ! socked and outrageous to get it, am i right ?

Leave ..we all are coming under the human tendency, where despite the inclination we never be live without bargain shall we ? again yes, its feasible only when we must have strong willing power and that to with a vow regarding expunge the same night mare from the society, i mean “poverty”.

Did you know their business are seasonal hereinafter they don’t have any such kind of work to do bereft of  the exploitation. Government and their services are there, Schemes are there, policies are there but they are not entitled to get so ! do you know why ?. Due to the abdicate by the  executor along with administrator . I think this is the sufficient to describe the meaning of exploitation .Apparently we can say its have been violated the rights of the human beings stately “Human Rights Violation”. Here again a question arising, who will be responsible ?

Lets read whats our constitution has recited but after unalloyed be ready to vet the same so far.

The Constitution of India does not define Scheduled Tribes as such. However, Article 366 (25) refers to Scheduled Tribes as, such tribes or tribal communities or groups as are deemed under Article 342 of the Constitution. According to Article 342 of the Constitution, the Scheduled Tribes are the tribes or tribal communities that have been declared as such by the President through a public notification. This leaves open the scope for widening of the lists of Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (SCs and STs) under this Article, as evidenced by many Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Constitutional Orders via 2002, 2003 etc.

I ponder we know welly that India has the second largest tribal concentration in the world. In India, Scheduled Tribes are spread across the country mainly in forest and hilly regions. The essential characteristics of these communities are their particular geographical location, distinct culture, economic backwardness and aloofness from the society at large. These people, in our country, are treated as low, despised and untouchable by the prevailing adherence to man made social norms and caste system. They are compelled to perform duties which are considered inferior and degrading like flaying the dead animals, cleaning the latrines and removing the garbage, guarding the cremation grounds and grave yards, weaving, drum-beating, entertainment of upper caste people etc. It was Mahatma Gandhi who fought hard to recognize them as free citizens of India and called them the Girijans or the Children of the Forest God. Upon independence in 1947, the Government of India spent lot of resources to improve the life of the Scheduled Tribes through legislations, developmental programmes and various progressive welfare schemes.

Am so excited to add one thing here that they all are utterly oblivious on it. Then what we say who are the failures ? we  are or the candid, bonhomie tribal peoples. Quail it brazen if we conceive and ponder about it. OK  leave , don’t do more its already suffice and ample to feel.  Read some more constitutional written existing safeguarding provisions:-

Existing Safeguarding Provisions

The Constitution, for example, provides for social, cultural, educational and service safeguards for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (SC/STs), apart from specific and general legislations enacted to safeguard and protect the interest of SC/STs.

a) To begin with, Article 15(4) and 16 (4), (4A) provides special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or SC/STs and protective discrimination respectively. This is reaffirmed by Article 46, which directs the State to promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections and in particular of the SC/STs. By Article 335, it is provided that the claim of the members of the SC/STs shall be taken into consideration consistently with the maintenance of efficiency in the administration, in the making of appointments to services and posts in the Centre and State level. In reality, however, the number of SC/ST members in higher echelons of administration, still remains low in proportion to the reservation offered.

b) Article 17 abolishes To give effect to this Article, Parliament enacted Untouchability (Offences) Act, 1955. To make the provisions of this Act more stringent, the Act was amended in 1976 and was renamed as the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955. As provided under the Act, Government of India also notified the Rules, viz., the PCR Rules, 1977, to carry out the provisions of this Act. As cases of atrocities on SC/STs were not covered under the provisions of PCR Act, 1955, Parliament passed another important Act in 1989 for taking measures to prevent the atrocities. This act is known as the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 followed by Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Rules, 1995. Despite the State taking these legal measures to protect the SC and STs, it could be found that the condition of these section of people have not improved as much as it should have. There are many reasons that contribute to this abysmal situation. The lack of political will to enforce the Act rightfully, insensitiveness of the society towards SC and STs, continuing adherence to the caste system, lack of human rights awareness etc are few to mention.

c) Article 23 prohibits traffic in human beings and begar and other similar forms of forced labour and provides that any contravention of this provision shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law. It does not specifically mention SC/STs but since the majority of bonded labours belong to SC/STs; this Article has a special significance. In pursuance of this article, Parliament has enacted the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976. For effective implementation of this Act, the Ministry of Labour is running a Centrally Sponsored Scheme for identification, liberation and rehabilitation of bonded labour, the efficacy of which is debatable to some extend.

d) Article 24 provides that no child below the age of 14 years shall be employed to work in any factory or mine or engaged in any other hazardous employment. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986 prohibits employment of children in certain hazardous occupation and processes, the violation of which is made punishable under the Act.

e) Article 330 and 332 provides for reservation of seats for SCs/STs in the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies respectively.

f) Article 338 provides for National Commission for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes entrusted with the power to investigate all matters relating to the safeguards provided to SC/STs and to report to the President on the working of these safeguards.

the ensuing problem of over lapping jurisdiction and finally,

the precedence of Special Laws like Forest Act over Gram Sabha decisions.

Despite these (constitutional rights) they don’t have any issue,grumble against  anyone except of one i.e. Bargain, which enhance the affliction over their poverty. We should not be oblivious that we the peoples who first exerts and then shove them towards poverty rather raise our hand to come out. Just see the picture, so coarse,  it perhaps contiguous to the heart.but the pragmatic is very painful .They are not ostentation anything except of their mushroom not even their rights, how we always ready to show up stem of living main stream of society but they are not. Because they knows we will never give any chance them to come main stream of civic therefor they all will constrain to maintain their silence on it  . My points are not meant for castigate to anyone but only quail and conceive their affliction which have been under them . What i quoted if it would be, then again bunch of question must be come to the mind even in dream too. Am i right ? if no, then please don’t think more stem of  it may be dalliance. Sorry but its truly right. But in my case again some questions are coming to mind and exert to put it for express .

See….

First, Are there children are getting better education as like our children..Again socked ..let me do conspicuous . I am talking about their income .

Second, Are they able to get and provide their  basic food as a nutrition for  their children ?

Third, why they are different from us despite dwelling in same civic ?

Fourth, Are they and their children are burn only to get the painful life and serve us as mushrooms or other forest kind of goods through out the generation.

Five, Are the they knows where they are living and what they knows about the living one ?

Six, Are they do have the knowledge abut the government plan and policies or still staying on resurrection ?

Seven, Are all government plan, policies  implementing on their locality ?

Eight, Are all tribe peoples are getting better  transportation liabilities ?..as like so many questions……….<

I think these should be our duty to educate them rather do bargain. Is not it?

Laws, Constitutional Rights all are having  for them but how much executing so far this is again raising the question ? If the answer is yes ! then why they still in resurrection ? is it not?

But one question simply for us who will be think about them ? Only government ? if yes who is the Government ?

I think we are the part of the government so why not we ? we should have to be take the initiative for them and should bring them and their children to the main stream of the society by stop the bargain and provide better education, basic nutrition to kids , more over keep them updated about the governmental schemes and policies how they will never be resurrection.

Before bargain think once again who are in front of you.

This picture has got from our source by the succor of one our team member Mr. Bighnaraj Behera.

Heartily thanks to him and my team.

JAI HIND…….

Source of the Photo- Internet

[newstfionline]

In Kuwait, ‘Too Many Foreigners’ Becomes a Frequent Refrain

AP, Feb. 21, 2017

KUWAIT CITY--Kuwait’s first new government hospital in more than three decades will soon open its doors--but only to Kuwaiti citizens.

It’s the latest in a series of steps targeting foreigners, including laborers who build high-rise towers, sweep the roads and clean toilets in this tiny oil-rich emirate: a group that far outnumbers the native population.

The 304 million dinar ($997 million) Jaber Hospital, about a 20-minute drive from downtown Kuwait City, is expected to open in the coming months. It will be the first government hospital built in Kuwait since 1984, taking some pressure off an overburdened public health system.

U.S. ally Kuwait, like other oil-rich Persian Gulf states, has for decades offered a free cradle-to-grave health care for its citizens, along with plenty of generous perks such as subsidized utility prices and housing grants.

But services have been fraying in recent years--despite the cushion of several hundred billion dollars that Kuwait has been building since the 1970s, mostly in a fund for future generations. That money, which stays out of the state budget, is meant to provide for Kuwaitis when the oil runs out. It carried Kuwait through the expenses of the seven-month Iraqi occupation and the 1991 U.S.-led Gulf War that liberated it.

Expatriates with residency and work visas in Kuwait get subsidized health care. A foreign laborer--usually from another Arab country or an Asian migrant--would pay 1 Kuwaiti dinar ($3.2) to see a doctor at a public hospital. His employer would typically pay for him an annual health insurance to the government of 50 dinars, or about $160.

Western expats who live and work in Kuwait tend to go to private hospitals as part of lucrative health care packages provided by their employers.

Many see the new, citizens-only hospital as a step too far.

“They were granted their workers’ visa. They deserve to be treated with dignity,” Dr. Yousef al-Muhanna, a 34-year old general surgeon, said of the migrant workers.

The discrimination goes against the Hippocratic Oath, he says. “We are not supposed to look at their passports--we are supposed to deal with their medical conditions.”

The shift started sometime last year, when hospitals and clinics in Jahra, west of the capital, and the Amiri Hospital in Kuwait City began barring expatriates from morning visits for non-emergency services.

Recently, lawmaker Safaa al-Hashem told the media in Kuwait’s parliament that “expats are crowding our hospitals and competing with us for the air we breathe in hospital waiting rooms.”

She complained that many foreigners bring families on visitor visas to enjoy Kuwait’s health care benefits, including deliveries, gastric bypass surgeries, cancer treatment, and other procedures.

“Isn’t time for us to put an end to this? We must reform the current system; we must impose taxes on expatriates, not on Kuwaitis,” she said.

It’s not just the health care.

Kuwait’s government and politicians have grown more wary of foreigners in other sectors as well in recent years, adopting or promoting a series of policies that target the roughly 3 million expats living and working here.

Legislation last April increased the price of electricity and water in all residential buildings, but exempted Kuwaiti nationals.

Social media posts and tweets by Kuwaitis and even statements from officials blaming expats for everything--from traffic congestion to the raiding of open buffets by wedding crashers--are becoming all too common.

“As an Arab expat, when you go to the West, they call you a terrorist or refugee,” said Egyptian architect Waleed Shalaan, who has been living in Kuwait since 1999 and considers it his home. “You go to the Gulf states, they call you a leech or a parasite.”

After al-Hashem’s “air we breathe” comment, fellow lawmaker Abdulkareem al-Kandari called for a special session of parliament to discuss what he called the “alarming increase in the number of expats versus Kuwaiti nationals.”

“We refuse to be a minority in our own country,” he said--though Kuwaiti nationals already are, with foreigners making up about 70 percent of the population of 4.2 million.

Several lawmakers demanded the government deport 100,000 expats annually to balance the country’s demographics.

Without offering details, Hind al-Sabeeh, the minister of social affairs, promised a plan to “balance the demographics of the country over the next five years, without disrupting the balance of work.”

Hind Francis, an analyst at the Rai Institute think tank, said xenophobic sentiments have been on the rise in Kuwait as a way to deflect blame from the authorities.

“Many big problems that concern the public are blamed on the expatriates: congested roads, overcrowded hospitals, many areas in which public policy has failed,” she said.

Sarah al-Qabandi, a 35-year old corporate social responsibility manager in the private Ooredoo Telecom says that blaming Kuwait’s problems on the expats is a shame.

“We expect people abroad to treat us like royalty ... we want to be treated well, and yet we don’t welcome anyone in our own country,” she said.