#//to shoulder one thousand years of injustice and corruption

[ofmoonlily]

CONFESS YOUR SECRETS TO ME AND I'LL TELL YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO HEAR

This does not have to be the end of you You did not deserve that. You did not deserve any of that. One of these days you will feel safe again, you will open your heart, and you will find it everywhere. Do not be afraid - there is so much love and warmth searching for a way to get to you.

tagged by: @ofengineers //thanks gurlie! <3

tagging: Anyone who wishes to do this and hasn't, please feel free to use me as the one who tagged you!

[airlockfailure]

Invictus AU Head-canons CG Commanders Edition: Fox

Canon portrays Commander Fox as duty bound and fearless. In Invictus I decided that wasn't going to be the case. Fox is still duty bound, but I chose to make him terrified of a lot of things, just incredibly good at hiding his fear from others.

He's overprotective of the Coruscant Guard (especially the shinies and the CCs) and close friends, worries all the time about his batchmates, is an arachnophobe (that's Lego comic canon), and like many other creators' head-canons Fox is prone to self-detrimental behavior. He's similar to the colloquial "mom friend" who goes "No one else is going to do it? Okay, I will" especially in regards to keeping parts of the Republic functioning. The Ingress? He streamlined refugee intake in order to 1. weed out CIS conspirators 2. make the workload on his men less cumbersome 3. make the workload on the nat borns less cumbersome and 4. Fox hates disorder. The prison system? He's been painstakingly weeding out the corruption and misuse of funding. The Republic is broke, after all, and they ought to prioritize war criminals over citizens trying to survive. (Fox is compassionate to a fault, and dislikes injustice.) The Senate? Fox does everything he can (and then some) to try and keep the CG and the clone army as a whole in the good graces of the Republic. He's not a politician. He's not...

He takes normal GAR stims (mega doses of caffeine) to keep going, but he also takes contraband stims that are illicit drugs and is somewhat too reliant on them. Why is he not addicted to them? He is, but Fox is brutal toward himself, and is repeatedly cut off cold-turkey from supply because he ends up injured or too busy. He usually hides in the med center in Myth's office when he's going through withdrawal (while still trying to get work done, damn it Fox). The last one he ever uses is in his fight with Dooku. He doesn't touch them again after that, and even stops drinking so much caf (because lightsaber versus guts equals digestive problems).

He's afraid of drowning, but taking inspiration from that one post discussing how the Force is an eldritch horror, the drowning phobia is a metaphor for his use of the Darkside. IMO the Darkside would be the natural state of Force users if they were not exposed to Jedi teachings. Jedi exist after thousands and thousands of years of trial and error learning how to mitigate the Force's negative affects on the user. Fox, having no training, and limited exposure to Jedi where he is not at odds with them (SKYWALKER), and constantly exposed to Palpatine, and relying entirely on instinct and emotion to power the fuck through every day, Fox is drowning in darkness. He's also preoccupied with saving other clones, and in his own opinion, sometimes selfishly so.

Why doesn't Sidious sniff Fox out? Well, Sidious is trying to sniff Fox out. Fox really only begins to use the Force in earnest after helping Slick. Prior to that, he's locked down, and accidentally does things due to strong emotions (resurrecting CT-2587 or being clairvoyant for brief moments when someone is in danger: see Dawn's situation at the start of Invictus). On top of that, Fox believes he's alone in his ability to use the Force. When Colt tells him that's not the case, and gives him intel on Slick, Fox mistakes Colt's words to mean that Slick is the only other Force-sensitive clone. Colt works on Kamino. He sees some weird shit. Colt knows 100% there's a shit ton of Force-sensitive clones. And it's the sheer numbers of them that help keep Fox hidden for so long. It's not until his showdown with Sidious that they fully recognize each other. Sidious has been hunting his nightmares, and Sidious does know about Slick.

I write Fox as a sex-positive asexual. Fox is tactile and shows physical affection toward other clones by hugging them, sharing his bunk or their bunk. He lets tired troopers sleep on his shoulder. He holds dying men until they pass (if possible, sometimes it's not safe). He's constantly offering comfort to those around him. He says he's not great with words, but for a clone, you could consider Fox silver-tongued. He can lie, and he can convince people to believe him. For the clones, usually it's the phrase "everything will be okay".

I ship Fox with Riyo (and headcanon Riyo as being about 23-25). Thorn is friends with Riyo first, via escorting Padme frequently. Riyo respects the clones. She faced her insecurities as a senator with the 501st and learned a few things about war, battle, and her distaste for callousness toward life. She can take care of herself (which is great because Fox is already juggling more than he can handle), but more importantly, in regards to Fox, Riyo wants to help the clones. She wants to help him help the clones. Fox has no voice in the Senate, so Riyo speaks for him. Fox is so starved of everything a normal human has, and Riyo gives him everything. He is not attracted to her, but he loves her.

It was initially Thorn's idea to get Riyo to ask Fox out for caf. Partly as a joke, and partly because Fox needs to stop working for five seconds. And then they became serious about it, and saved the Republic and the clones (and the Jedi).

Fox doesn't actually like the color blue (LOL) or red (he hates red, and blue he has the unfortunate association of the 501st causing more chaos for him to take care of sghsgskhfd). He likes what's described as "wine-dark" because he saw the ocean at sunset once on Kamino and it burned into his brain.

Fox's Phase I bucket belonged to another clone on Geonosis. Fox had to slice it's protocols because the clone wasn't a commander. The bucket is glitchy, prone to system failure and blue-screening, but Fox is attached to it. Thorn keeps it safe for him during the upgrade to Phase II. Fox's Phase II bucket is shattered in half by the end of the war because he gives Sidious a Force backed kov'nyn (headbutt).

Fox was officially adopted by the elderly Mandalorian Aren Kelborn who had been living among refugees on Coruscant. While Fox isn't sure he sees Aren as a father figure (more like a dangerous grandpa), his death is a major loss for Fox's mental well being, as he has to go back to saving clones on his own. Aren bequeathed Fox with his beat up Beskar armor, which Fox uses as a disguise when doing unsanctioned things.

It's called the Invictus AU based on the poem by William Ernest Henley, and because in the illegal gambling fights Fox was placing himself into to earn credits for decommissioned troopers, he held the moniker "Invictus" because he didn't feel comfortable being called "Mando" (he doesn't believe he deserves to be Mandalorian despite Aren's insistence and adoption). Fox has a tattoo down is spine in Mando'a that's a line from the poem (is there a space version of William Ernest Henley? This is fiction, so why not?)

I wanted to write Fox as undefeated. The only person who defeats Fox is himself.

Is Fox overpowered? Yes. But after all the crap people give him, I think he deserves to be.

[sephirothisaslut]

Who We Fight For

His brow scrunches, and his eyes shift under their lids.

His face expresses discomfort and he slowly wakes.

Where is he?

He hears a hissing sound, like the sound of depressurizing a gas chamber. A cough bubbles out his throat. Then another, then another. It builds till it grows to a heaving fit.

What is this place?

His vision returns slowly as he realizes he’s been lying down in what looks like a stasis pod.

Who is he?

He looks around and sees there are several other like him. Disoriented, dizzy, scared. Eyes scanning the room, he realizes there are tens more like him.

He winces as he feels his mind pulse. He-...his name.

Cloud.

He tests his name in his lips. It fits. And despite it’s unusual nature, he feels as if it’s his.

BANG!

His eyes snap to one side of the room. A man slammed the door open.

“Get up you filthy maggots.” The man growls.

Everyone immediately scrambles out of their own pods. Standing awkwardly. Somehow Cloud feels the need to salute. And observes that some other men and women do too.

“My name is Hojo. And I’m the Director of this lab. And there’s been a...problem...with the pod terminals.” The man sneers. “And so some of your memories have been fragmented during the healing process.”

Cloud stills, processing the man’s words. Pods, terminals, healing processes. These are words he recognizes. Things he’s seen. He tries digging through his mind, looking for anything other than his name. He remembers gunfire. He remembers he knows how to fight. He remembers a war.

So he’s a soldier. A soldier of whatever institute this is.

“Everyone, follow me.” Hojo barks, then swiftly marches out the door.

Everyone merely follows him. Cloud assumes that everyone is the same here. Soldiers. But before he steps to follow the group, he suddenly remembers.

Sunshine, earth, flowers so white they look like they glow. Red fur, the setting sun, and silver hair.

Cloud freezes. What were those? Fragments? Yes... But why do they feel like so much more.

He shakes his head. He can deal with those later. And so he follows the group out the lab.

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

“Hey Cloud!”

Cloud snaps his head up. “Reno, what do you want.” He grunts.

“Hey man don’t be that way. We’re chums! Best buds!” The red head hooks his arm around Cloud’s shoulders. His merry cheer reverberating through the hall.

“Fuck you Reno” Cloud rolls his eyes.

Reno is a Turk. Turks, Cloud learned, are spies. Unlike the infantry division, they wear black suits, and focus on missions involving stealth. They’re basically spies. They’re basically ShinRa’s dogs.

“Aww, you looove me” Reno’s eyes disappear as he smiles. 

“What do you want.” Cloud repeats. He has nothing against Turks. But for some reason. A part of him hates them.

Ever since he woke from that stasis pod, he hasn’t recovered any memories. But sometimes, his instincts would flare up. He distrusts most people in ShinRa, especially the Department of Research. His reactions to these instincts has caused him to retain a very bad track record.

“Nothing, just checking on you” Reno purrs.

“Then get off my back” Cloud says as he pushes Reno’s arm off. He walks away from the red-haired Turk, and leaves for his room.

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

“Lieutenant Cloud Strife. This is the 35th instance of disobedience! Do you not have any integrity as a member of the ShinRa infantry!” The Major scolds him.

Cloud stares back into his eyes stoically.

“Lt. Strife, why did you intercept the arrest order! Answer!”

“Sir, it wasn’t right” Cloud stands his ground. 

“And pray tell, lieutenant, what part of it was not right?” The Major leans forward. His appearance shows his displeasure. A mere lieutenant talking back.

“Sir, they were children. This case should be handled by the city’s department of welfare and not by the militia.” Cloud is stubborn. But he knows he’s right.

“Those weren’t children. They are thieves.” 

“Sir the were being forced! By Dino no less!” 

“Shut up! I’m adding insubordination to your record. With this, demotion is not far off.” The Major snarls. “Dismissed! Get out”

Cloud doesn't salute. He just leaves.

It’s been a year since he woke from that pod. A year since he’s started under ShinRa’s corrupt thumb.

At first he was convinced that ShinRa was in fact where he belonged. But after several missions. Missions where they were told they are to be facing armed rebel forces, but only to be met with juveniles with rocks. Missions where they were told to fight against invaders, but only to realize that they themselves are the invaders. Missions on slaughter, injustice, and brutality.

Cloud knew something was wrong. And he’s not the only one. Several of his comrades have noticed inconsistencies. Some of them have brought this issue up with the research department, and were take for testing.

They never returned.

Cloud knew when to keep quiet. He’s not stupid.

He marches toward his barracks. Blood boiling, hot as smelted iron.

He’s decided. He’ll find his own truth.

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

It happened on a patrol shift.

Thanks to numerous disobedience reports, he’s been demoted to a sentry guard. A lowly patrol officer.

The night was a dull as always. The glow of Mako suffocating the stars. His bio-data indicated he was born in Midgar. So why does he know what the stars look like. He’s never left the city as far as he knows. Maybe this is just another confirmation of ShinRa’s lies.

He looks up, somehow feeling lonely. His shift will end soon.

Then someone bumps into him.

“Ah, sorry about tha-”

“Cloud?” The hooded person asks. His voice trembling.

“You know me?” Cloud’s eyes widen. Someone who remembers him. Someone who knows him. Someone who can hopefully help clear the fog in his mind.

“What? Cloud you-” The man approaches, but stills as he sees Cloud’s infantry uniform. “You’re ShinRa? But you hate-”

“Look I don’t have time. My shift’s ending soon. And if I don’t go on time ShinRa’s going to suspect me even more.” Cloud hurriedly explains. “Do you know me? Do you remember me?”

“I-... Yes, I do. Cloud what’s happening-”

“Long story short, woke up in a ShinRa stasis pod with missing memories. And I’m not the only one.”

The man grows solemn. “How long has it been since?” He asks in a whisper.

“2 years approximately.”

The man breathes out. He pauses as if to think. And then he draws down his hood.

Long silver hair ties into a braid spills down. His eyes a beautiful emerald green. He’s much taller so Cloud could clearly the shadows casted by the man’s eyelashes. He looks otherworldly.

“Sephiroth” Cloud whispers. Then his eyes widen. That name felt instinctive to him. For some reason he knows this man’s name. 

The man chuckles. “So at least you know my name. But we need to talk about this. Can you meet me later?”

Cloud nods. His mind too stunned to vocalize an answer. 

“Good. Go to the train graveyard at midnight. I’ll wait for you there.”

Before Cloud cold say goodbye, the man already walked away. His replacement already there informing him to go. Cloud returns to his barracks. 

On his way there, he ponders about the man. He’s seen him before. He knows him. He feels as if he is important to him.

“Sephiroth” Cloud whispers again. The name feels smooth on his lips. As if he’s said it a thousand times before.

He snaps out of reverie. He resolves to find the truth later tonight. For now, he’s going to take a nap.

But before he could enter his room, he was stopped by the Turks.

“Heya Cloud! We need to talk.” Reno waves.

Cloud tenses. It wouldn’t be strange if it were only Reno. But Rude, Cissnei, and even Tseng is there. He knows something���s wrong.

Before Reno reaches for him, Cloud runs.

They chase after him.

Cloud resolves. He’s confirmed.

He’s leaving.

He’s finding his own truth.

[sambinnie]

1. Happy Mabon! Every autumn, I forget that the darkness comes clanging down in a great rush in the mornings. One day, I am greeted by a pinking sunrise. 48 hours later, it’s so dark on my run to the river that I have to stop a passing runner and check the time, in case my disturbed sleep sent me dressing and leaving the house at 2am. This summer may not have given us those mornings where it’s so hot I can barely get out of the water, where those early hours feel like full silent days carved out just for me to sit in the light and wait for everyone else to wake up, where the only extra thing I put on to run home is my trainers — I look at my waiting winter gear, neoprene socks and gloves, head torch, two more thickening jumpers, hat, thermal mittens — but every season, every day, is beautiful.

Today we go early for celebrations, and the water is silky, and Orion hangs over us with his phallic sword dangling and Betelgeuse winking on one shoulder. The near-full moon spotlights us and I feel almost ready for the shortening days.

2. Hilary Mantel continues to be a literary god. How does she write with that clarity? How can I ever speak with her calm good sense and wit? 

3. We have two main problems at the moment, as far as I can see. a) What we’re doing (“curating” our lives; twitter spats; purity spirals; division and isolation; wanting ‘debates’ that can only be won or lost; encouraging people to buy more things; trying to buy our happiness; letting marketers tell us how we feel about the world rather than encouraging major moral lessons from throughout the ages to challenge us on our weaknesses; refusing to accept that life is suffering; asking self-care to be a plaster for everything we don’t have) and b) what we’re not doing (joining together to stand against those with more money and power; protecting the people who have even less power and voice than we do as a matter of course; learning from history; protecting nature above all else; prioritising going for walks; learning to repair things and campaigning to make things repairable; having a basic belief in human dignity for all, not just those with whom we agree; accepting that truly, we are all different and no amount of shaming or disgust will change that; working to shape our societies, culture, economies, production, food supplies and communications around improving — not just sustaining — the air, water and land, and fighting to ensure all of those new shapes protect women and children).

Individualism has morphed into something so completely self-destructive that we’ve forgotten we need nature more than anything — literally, more than anything — and we need to unionise and unite and put aside differences and work together even with people we don’t like. 

Because when there are wicked people in power, when it’s genuinely exhausting to think about all the corrupt, venal, toxic, divisive, false, and cruel things they have done since coming to power, those people love to watch everyone below pointing their fingers at one another, saying, You, You’re The Enemy, You’re The Problem, while corrupt populist leaders rub their bellies and chuckle at another promise broken, another mass death on their hands, another building site on a protected forest. Do you understand the stakes here? Do you understand that it’s actual survival? It’s not about being right any more, it’s not about besting someone in the argument. It’s about having decision makers who can not only ensure there is still food to eat and air to breathe, but that relations both within a country and between countries are built on care, and support, and compassion, and believing in human dignity. And while it sounds wishy-washy and hands-clappy it’s the schmaltzy, sentimental truth. It’s the only one, really. 

If we instead continue to believe every single day that my feelings are the most important, that my beliefs are the right ones, that I’ve got to prove those baddies there are evil and awful and wrong, then honestly, what the fuck? If we’re happy to live in a country where hostile architecture is the starting point for all public builds, where we send refugee boats away from our shores, where affiliate links are a career goal, where we haven’t stormed the Daily Mail offices with accounts of all our lovely immigrant friends and family and had a huge feast together and compared our long and tangled family trees, then come on. It’s only a race to the bottom if we all keep running. 

Because, pressingly, whatever the spark of a major global conflict — assassination, fuel shortages, hyperinflation, invasion — the kindling is almost always a populace fed pure hatred for months, for years, until they can’t even taste it anymore but are ready to spew it out again, and are ready to use another populace as the receptacle. And hatred is brewed up in silence and isolation, and in the ashes of bridges burned between disparate groups. 

And on that note, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, mainly because I don’t believe governments are generally competent enough to manage Grand Plans, but it’s annoying that technology and social trends and culture have developed in such a way that no one knocks on anyone’s door for a chat as a matter of course now, that it’s a given that a ringing phone triggers anxiety, that it’s not the norm for cups of tea with your neighbours, that we don’t know each other’s neighbourhoods, that we don’t even talk on the phone, with live words and intonation and synchronised laughter, but in text, in WhatsApp chats, in tapped out words and symbols that we know can be screen-grabbed and misinterpreted, that we know are kept, filtered and sold by the tech companies. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just a reality that every single one of us can choose to do differently. 

Sometimes exactly the right thing comes along at the right time. All of us here watched About a Boy at the weekend, a film which is so wonkily weighted and oddly rhythmed, but a perfect depiction of everything I’m banging on about here. Hugh Grant’s character likes being alone. He’s happy that way. It suits him. It’s his choice. Then, between one thing and another, he finds himself drawn into a world of a suicidal single mother, a duck-murdering young boy, more single mothers, more tricky teens, plus exes and mothers-in-law and awkward support groups. And it turns out that actually, being with people is better. Being uncomfortable often develops you as a person. Constantly prioritising only yourself produces a waxen, pointless baby. Making shared sacrifices might just be the point of being alive. Remember that to be human is to be flawed. That no one is ever completely right, and no one is ever completely wrong. That the boring stuff makes us feel good, and the glossy stuff, if all we strive for is gloss, doesn’t. 

If you want anything practical, here are the things that have really helped me over the last few years:

Writing a letter or email regularly to my MP, to CEOs of organisations, to anyone I want to communicate my strong feelings and how I’d like things to be done better. Tweeting eats your soul. It’s a horrible myth the media pretends is important. It really, really isn’t.

Inviting people to go in front of me in queues, in traffic, getting on to buses and trains. It lowers my stress levels right down.

Learning the names of my neighbours and people I meet regularly on walks and letting them learn mine. (I definitely haven’t just decided I loathe a neighbour because they cut a bird-hatching tree down in their garden on the last day of the year it was legal to do so. It’s fine.)

Joining a few political parties, and the closest thing I have to a union

Making something, anything — everything can be done with love, and learning to not get sucked into the capitalist conceit of having to make it perfect, sellable, exhibitable is a genuine gift to yourself; making a cake or a film or a coaster and not putting it on social media, letting it be ugly or serviceless and loving it anyway. I felt extremely overwhelmed the other evening, but instead of doom-scrolling I knitted a… I don’t know, something flat and woollen, and it helped to have my hands and eyes working on directionless introspective creation. 

Trying to stop hating. Every time I want to tell a negative story in my head about someone, I attempt to turn it into something positive: how unhappy that person must be, what they must be missing out on. It’s so nauseatingly Pollyanna-ish, and of course it isn’t always successful, and of course every single day brings a hundred thousand examples of cruelty and injustice and wickedness, but the alternative only makes my life feel worse, so why would I indulge that? 

Teaching myself the names of birds, trees, flowers, clouds and constellations. I’m still at the most basic levels on all of these, but the difference one feels in the world when you can name things  — let alone use them and know their stories — is a very real sort of magic. (For that reason I hope to read this book very soon.) This episode of The Cut is also good on the wonder and power of learning the names of the weeds that grow in your nearest pavement crack. 

4. Creating anything is always a gamble, isn’t it, but writing a book you actually like for once and seeing it slowly and beautifully sink to the bottom of a river never to be seen again is ever so slightly crushing. However, it turns out even Thom Yorke feels that way, so I am comforted. 

5. I’m sure I’ve mentioned plenty of these before, but if you want some suggestions of where to find joy, here are my favourites from the last year or so:

I was given Lucy Easthope’s book, When the Dust Settles, for work recently, and I was surprised and delighted to discover the most uplifting, hopeful, human and rightfully angry book I’ve read in a long time. Do yourself a favour and preorder it. I bought this other book for my own birthday, gave it to a housemate to give to me, forgot about it, and was delighted to later unwrap He Used Thought As A Wife. Laughed a lot, cried twice. Marvellous. 

Now even the youngest housemate here can recite John Finnemore sketches and sing the songs. Has also taught them various composers, gods, logical fallacies and gothic story tropes. Also v funny. Oh, Kate Beaton! Her two books (Hark! A Vagrant and Step Aside Pops) are a bit like a comic-book version of Finnemore, but swearier and sexier and utterly unsuitable for all the housemates who have read it and been educated about the Brontes, Katherine Sui Fun Cheung, Tom Longboat, Nancy Drew, Ida B. Wells, Sacagawea, and the Borgias. 

Had to give Inside a restraining order against me for the sake of us all, but Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade is a masterpiece of writing, acting, sound design and optimism. Spy is dumb action comedy polished to perfection, and Yasujirō Ozu’s Good Morning seems like the inspiration for almost all US arthouse films since 1990, and is also beautiful, funny, thoughtful, and good. 

Taylor Swift’s Evermore, like all brilliant albums, isn’t completely perfect. But most of the songs are. And Hole’s classic Live Through This is still just ideal for turning up very, very loud after a tricky day, for the enjoyment of any neighbours who may have hacked down a bird-friendly tree on the last day of February. 

Watched both series of Liam Williams’ Ladhood when I had a week off this summer, and really relished the location, the intention, and the writing. More please. 

Miles Jupp and Justin Edwards continue to be my comforting bedtime listening in In and Out of the Kitchen. Has it ruined Nigel Slater for me? Well, a bit, but no more than any of us deserved. 

I thought this would be a book I’d mumble through the first chapter of, then let get buried in my To Read pile, never to re-open. Instead, I found Whatever Happened to Margo? laugh-out-loud funny, drily written, and full of humanity. Excellent Women has made me want to read everything written by Barbara Pym, a goal I am slowly but surely working towards. 

6. I’ve spent the last few years trying to find hazelnut trees, and finally found a copse between a car park and a play area, full of nuts the squirrels hadn’t noticed. Now I’ve found them, the spell has been cast and I see hazel trees everywhere, on walks and on pavements and running along motorway slip roads. A tray of green and brown frilled hazelnuts now dries with the laundry. They are so beautiful. 

[skeletorific]

How do you think the Beforus Ancestors(Aradia, Tavros, Sollux, Karkat, Nepeta, Kanaya, Terezi, Vriska, Equius, Gamzee, Eridan and Feferi)were like? I love your Alternian Ancestors stuff so far and was curious what you Interpretation of the Beforus ancestors were.

oh HELL yes I am about this.

Aradia Megido, the Tombkeep: I see Aradia as being born a bit later than the others, while the coddling laws are at their strongest. Rather than put up with that, as quickly as she can she removes herself from Beforan society to the very outskirts. Like their Alternian counterparts, Beforan’s are often avoidant of the notion of death. However, in their case, it is not because death is a failure of the dying, but a failure of those around them. It is not seen as a natural cycle but something to be abhorred and feared at all costs. As such, tombs are kept, but they are far away from the rest of civilization and usually talked about in hushed tones. Aradia grows up among these tombs, befriending the local ghosts and considers them her own coddling charge. She guards the tombs from any who get too curious, or more often, from well-meaning government officials looking to tear down monuments to such “nastiness”. What they find instead is an angry little girl with powerful psiionics. She becomes something of a bedtime story for young grubs, even long after her passing. They say she still haunts the halls.

Tavros Nitram, the Menager: In parallel to his obsession with Fiduspawn, I see Beforan Tavros as being some variety of animal handler, using his fully fledged wings (and his bronzeblood bankroll) to travel the world and collect rare and exotic creatures to his own plot of land, to tend to and train. Some know him as a kindly soul, treating all beasts with the utmost love and dedication. He seems like some kind of fairy tale figure, surrounded on all sides by animal companions who he communes with. To others, this is reckless ecosystem mixing, but then, what do scientists know anyways. He prefers the hero title a bit more, as it aligns more with his intentions anyways. Eventually one of his expeditions ends poorly, with him being confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. Outwardly he dies content to let his coddler and his animal friends care for him for the rest of his life, but there’s a restless spirit that he passes down to his descendant.

Sollux Captor, The Dronebee: Completely and utterly unremarkable in every way. Sollux contented himself with working his function as a goldblood. His technical ability was fostered at every turn by a Beforan education system eager to see a lowblood embrace their “natural talents”, but while he made minor waves in the programming circles in which he moved with his often unique approach to coding, to most he was just one worker among thousands, very valuable of course! Every worker is valuable :) But ultimately.....not worthy of notice. Which is fine: that’s how Sollux likes it, and more than that if left him time to pursue more personal projects, such as a little game later known as sgrub. Just because he’s not vocally complaining doesn’t mean he’s not compiling a list. From his perspective, Beforan civilization is a ticking timebomb anyways. Why shouldn’t he be the one to start the countdown?

Karkat Vantas, the Advocate: Look, I know we all love revolutionary Karkat, but I think something we forget is that Karkat was pretty pro-system even as late in the game as Act 6. So, for the Beforan model.....well, every system needs its bootlickers. Karkat Vantas becomes a mouthpiece for some lowblood lobbying groups, acting in vocal support of the Empress’s coddling plan. Its not all love of power: legitimately there is a part of Karkat that tries to see how this is good. Healthy. The needs of his friends are being met, they’re safe, and attended to. Surely all of that is worth a little......infantilization, right? He deals with a lot of criticism from other lowbloods for being a sellout, and though he does his best to cultivate a calm unflappable demeanor so craved by Beforans, I guarantee Beforus has more than a few Grubtube compiliations of Vantas meltdowns that Kankri watches when he needs a good cringe. As he got older he slowly began to question the system he’d spent his whole life building, but ultimately lowbloods don’t live long enough for those kinds of regrets.

Nepeta Leijon, the Believer: What, you think clowns have the monopoly on weird religious communes? Nah. To be fair to Nepeta, her commune’s status as a “cult” is probably more indicative of Beforan prudery than anything else. Her sect, the Righteous Assembly of Withdrawn Renegades (or RAWR for short), is dedicated to the principles of free love and a return to the natural. Within the massive tunnel and cave system in which they live, trolls are free to strip themselves of signifiers like caste and clan and live as the gods intended: covered in dirt, chasing something furry, and flirting furrociously :33. While Nepeta in life insisted there was no leader it was her effect on people that kept them coming back for more, and while the commune purrsisted after her eventual death, ultimately its membership dwindled. Meulin was brought up among some of the last vestiges of it, and some of their old hideouts have been inherited by the Lost Weeaboos.

Kanaya Maryam, The Prioress: Literally, the prior. One of the earliest trolls, widely considered the Matriarch of Trolls in some sense. In her time she revolutionized many of the practices of auxiliatrices, ensuring greater safety for the grubs and greater care for the mother grubs. Many of the norms now in place for jadebloods are in large part due to her own influence. Despite her farreaching influence (and the fact that she left behind a journal of her practices), not much is known about her personal temperament. Quick readers may catch a certain dry sarcasm behind her words, and the especially studious scholar may note slight reference to a few great lovers (and a few great disappearances, *cough* rainbowdrinker *cough*. Her greatest secret is her brief and tumultuous kismesis with Vriska Serket, notorious Mafiosa, but only a very few historians have ever uncovered it. In part, her long shadow may have contributed to her descendant’s eventual anxiety regarding her prescribed role,

Terezi Pyrope, the Gumshoe: Beforan justice is tricky. As opposed to Alternia, there are in fact actual laws in place that aren’t just “don’t fuck with highbloods”, but in many ways its almost more corrupt. More often than not the courts are more concerned with petty infractions than it is with actual injustice, and furthermore, inter-caste tension remains a huge concern that bubbles up in violence. After a few years badgering olives for traffic tickets while watching actual fully fledged crime families get off scott free, well....Terezi had had enough. She took her pursuit of justice into the real world, working as a private detective for hire. She’s notorious for her, erm....quirks, but she’s a fastidious hunter and a careful investigator when she wants to be. She brings em back alive. USU4LLY >:).

Vriska Serket, the Mafiosa/Mapm8ker: Let’s be clear, a lot of Vriska’s society was laid on top of her and it was abuse from which she struggled to free herself. However, what does one do when freed from society, but seek to shake things up a bit. She’s still a thief of Light, make mistake, and she slowly works up the ranks from card shark working the tables to in charge of a small army of foot soldiers, smuggling mindhoney to goldbloods (who have been restricted “for their own good”) and sopor slime to clowns. She’s the flamboyant head of her own criminal empire, with the code of only stealing from those she deems worthy and a reckless approach to life

However, most of that isn’t generally known. And to the outside world, she’s just a simple cartographer, travelling the world to assemble some nice, safe, boring maps. Indeed, when her journal was finally unearthed by her descendant, she couldn’t help but wonder if these exploits were true, or simply a story her ancestor liked to imagine herself into on her off days. Tough to say.

Equius Zahhak, the Showpony: Alright, y’all knew I couldn’t stay away from that one. Equius was something of a puzzle to his descendent when Horuss actually went back through his (meticulously kept) caste records. By all accounts, he was an intelligent, capable, hardworking man. A tinkerer in his off hours, he was a pioneer in the field of robotics, and by all accounts not romantically unsuccessful. And yet, the man never seemed concerned with making a name for himself. Instead, over the course of his long life, you could perpetually find him at the shoulder of someone more powerful and important than he was. Was he....a bodyguard? Trophy husband? Butler? Hard to say, but there he was. Trotted out like the loyal steed he was.

Gamzee Makara, the Borrower: A peculiar legend of clownery regards a strange “hobo looking motherfucker what will wander into your hive and be all and snatching up your most secretous things for the messiah’s wider purposes”. So far as is known, he is not malignant, although its not unknown for a troll to occasionally disappear while running after him to retrieve their stolen items. Even without that possible threat, its usually not worth it to chase after him: the things he takes have a way of ending up back in your hands, one miraculous way or another. Gamzee is an itinerant monk, wandering the countrysides. Some passerby he’ll occasionally offer aid to, or proverbs. Which might be helpful if anyone could decipher what they mean. Ultimately he’s a happy man, if prone to fits of temper and bouts of melancholy. Still, as he notes, he’s got motherfucking friends all over these globes :o) what’s a motherfucker gotta be lonely for?

Eridan Ampora, the Magician: Well.....the Empress doesn’t exactly need Orphaners. As such, the violets are largely left to their own devices. Given they’re often prone to creative endeavours, Eridan found his own outlet. He became renowned as an illusionist, and at one point his shows were capable of drawing large and massive crowds, who would gasp in awe at his tricks and wonder if the violet really did have a trace of magic in his blood. He seemed to like the idea, eventually penning a popular grubling children’s series about a boy with those very abilities (which eventually found its way into the young hands of his descendent). However, celebrity wasn’t necessarily the best mix with Eridan’s temperament. He was prone to some truly disastrous quadrant outings, as well as developing several more addictive habits to drown out the oddly oppressive loneliness that permeated him. These bad habits were only worsened by the worst thing to ever happen to Eridan Ampora: the internet. With access to videos of his performance, most were pretty easily able to spot the trick of it, and hell hath no fury like a cyberbullying teen going after a b list internet celebrity. He took it as a sign to swear off the craft forever and lived the rest of his life on book residuals, alone, drunk, and miserable

Feferi Peixes, Her Highness: Not as much to say about this one, as Feferi is the one we have the most information about. Like it says on the tine, she instituted the coddling system on Beforus. This was widely considered a Bad Idea by those victimized by it, but you couldn’t pay anyone in Feferi’s court to tell her that. The Empress is sweet tempered and excitable, it’d be like telling a child 12 perigree night is cancelled. Perhaps the great irony is that as Feferi gets older, the thing that frustrates her most is that it feels like no one takes her seriously as a person. Merely as a figurehead. Still, she lives her life on Beforus ultimately convinced this is what’s best for the greater good. 

[tearsofthemis]

Tears of Themis : Chapter 1 “Social Snobbery” Part 12

[Previous Part] | [Masterlist] | [Next Part]

▌Location- QingPing Restaurant, First Floor

MC: “Mr. Fang, you…”

(Fang Yuan’s sudden admission that he was the one who broke the security camera was far from what Xia Yan and I anticipated.)

Xia Yan: “Mr, Fang, is it safe to assume that you were already aware that this food poisoning incident was intentional? The culprit at hand is Lu HaiYang.”

(Fang Yuan quietly sat down at the table.)

Xue XinRan: “Grandpa Fang… It’s been so long, why are you still protecting that ungrateful scumbag! Like the saying goes, ‘give him an inch and he’ll take a mile’, you’re too kind to him and now he’s taking advantage of it!”

Xia Yan: “Miss Xue, what did Mr. Fang tell you?”

(XinRan turned to Fang Yuan silently, bit her lip and turned away angrily. Fang Yuan sighed, but it was clear that he had no intention to tell us more. His reluctance to open up to us made me think of the family portrait I found on his bookshelf, and the photo of Lu HaiYang behind it.)

MC: (That’s right, it was Lu HaiYang! The boy in the photo resembles Lu HaiYang! Is this the reason as to why Mr. Fang would rather shoulder the blame?)

MC: “Pardon me for asking, Mr. Fang, but we found your family photo on the bookshelf, and a photo of Lu HaiYang was behind it… Are you willing to shoulder the blame just because Lu HaiYang looks like your son?”

(Fang Yuan looked at me in shock, then sighed.)

Fang Yuan: “How did you know…”

(I retrieved the photo frame from the bookshelf and passed it to Fang Yuan.)

MC: “The boy in the photograph… is he your son?”

Fang Yuan: “That’s right... Fang Xuan was our only son.”

MC: “Where is he now…”

Fang Yuan: “Twenty-seven years ago when he had just turned eighteen, he was accepted to his first choice university and begged us to let him go backpacking alone to celebrate. It was supposed to be a joyous occasion for him, but who could have known that the tour bus would get into an accident as it was rounding a tight mountain bed, and he would never came back home… QingPing and I decided to sponsor students, partially in memory of our late son. We wanted to reward all the hardworking students who achieve their dreams of going to university, almost as though they can go on in place of Fang Xuan. Unfortunately, QingPing fell ill from the shock of losing her son. Who would’ve known that two years later, she would leave me as well…”

MC: “My condolences, Mr. Fang…”

Fang Yuan: “QingPing loved to cook, and she left behind her recipes. I quit my day job and opened this restaurant in hopes that more and more people would come to love her cooking as well. HaiYang was originally one of my employees, he wanted to work part-time and prepare for university. I would often see him hang back and study in the restaurant when we closed for the day, he was hardworking like Fang Xuan in that regard. Naturally, I wanted to help him, to take away some of his financial burdens. I won’t lie and say that I don’t have a soft spot for him compared to all the other students I’ve sponsored in the past.”

Xia Yan: “Lu HaiYang was a righteous and studious kid back then, wasn’t he.”

Fang Yuan: “Of course. HaiYang would never sabotage me and intentionally poison others, he was forced to by that corrupt company!”

MC: “MeiWeiKa forced his hand? How do you know that for sure?”

Fang Yuan: “It all started when he was hired by the company a year ago.”

~~~Flashback~~~

Lu HaiYang: “Grandpa Fang, y-you gotta help me, they’re going to fire me…”

Fang Yuan: “How did this happen to you, my boy?”

(Lu HaiYang knelt in front of Fang Yuan and sobbed. His face was swollen, and purple bruises were starting to form under his eye. Someone had beaten him up.)

Fang Yuan: “Get up, get up. Who did this to you, I’m going to call the police!”

Lu HaiYang: “W-wait! Don’t call the police, I.. I did this to myself.”

Fang Yuan: “You… hit yourself!? W-well why would you…”

Lu HaiYang: “I couldn’t reach the sales quota the company set for me by five hundred thousand dollars. As my punishment, I had to hit myself fifty times in front of the whole department. The company said it was meant to be a lesson. If I didn’t hit myself hard enough, they would cut my salary under the pretense of not rectifying my wrongs, and not striving for improvement.”

Fang Yuan: “How outlandish! What your company did to you… is against the law! Go and resign, HaiYang. We have to take them to court!”

Lu HaiYang: “I can’t do that, Grandpa Fang! You don’t understand just how hard it is to find a job, especially after I’ve just graduated. I have to start from somewhere and climb my way up to the top. I didn’t stay long at other companies. If I resign now, no one will want me as an employee! I don’t want to move back home, back to the shoddy village farms, I want to stay in Stellis City… “

~~~Flashback ends~~~

MC: “MeiWeiKa company has committed severe crimes, he should have listened to you and resigned so he could pursue legal action!”

Fang Yuan: “HaiYang was scared to be homeless, his drive to provide a better future for himself is understandable. I was scared at the time when he showed up in that sorry state, so I caved and agreed to help him with what I could. He asked me to purchase MeiWeiKa’s membership at a price of two thousand dollars a month. I agreed.”

Xia Yan: “That was the beginning of the end, right? Lu HaiYang kept on pressing you to buy add-on services, like that VIP membership.”

Fang Yuan: “That’s right. MeiWeiKa’s VIP membership costs thirty thousand per month, it’s more on top of that if you want advertising space on their app. There was no way I could afford it. After I refused to upgrade my membership, work pressure began to build on HaiYang. Since then, he has become twisted and unscrupulous. MeiWeiKa is the root of all our problems, falsifying bad reviews and hiring idle-men to harass and cause trouble for us restaurant owners. The restaurant next door has experienced similar treatment.”

MC: “Have you guys considered filing a class action lawsuit?”

Fang Yuan: “We don’t have any evidence… or the kind of influence that MeiWeiKa has. Everyone online would side with the company, I could do nothing about it except watch as LuYang followed their lead and became one of their lackeys. Actually, since the health department gave their verdict, I already knew that HaiYang was the one who sabotaged the water supply. But…”

Xia Yan: “That’s why you hosed down the water container, and swept the restaurant meticulously of any pesticides, and broke your own security camera… all to protect Lu HaiYang. If you are this certain, then our culprit is the man himself?”

Fang Yuan: “W-well I-”

Xue XinRan: “Grandpa Fang! If you let this slide, the restaurant will be filed as a health hazard, and the restaurant will have to shut down! Then no one will ever get to taste Grandma Fang’s recipes ever again…”

Fang Yuan: “I don’t want to stay quiet to the injustice I faced, but I don’t want HaiYang to go to jail. He’s still young and has his whole life ahead of him, he’s only made a couple bad decisions. But if he’s incarcerated, his life might as well be as good as over!”

Xia Yan: “But Mr. Fang, this lawsuit could be the push Lu HaiYang needs to be set on the right path again, won’t it be beneficial for everyone if MeiWeiKa is punished by the law for what they’ve done? Lu HaiYang forced to sabotage QingPing Restaurant, could be the first of many spearheads that’ll expose MeiWeiKa’s unethical business practices, as long as Lu HaiYang could turn around and testify…” 

Fang Yuan: “You don’t understand, young man! I’ve definitely thought of convincing Lu HaiYang, but that company isn’t one that I can anger!”

MC: “But sir, you’ve never asked us to stop our investigation today. Aren’t you at least a bit hopeful that perhaps we can help? As long as Lu HaiYang is willing to cooperate with us, I can defend him against the prosecutors…”

Fang Yuan: “Young lady, you’re a lawyer aren’t you? I’ve already guessed as such. You must have concealed your identity because XinRan told you that I’m not fond of lawyers, right…”

(I hadn’t even realized that I had let it slip!)

MC: “I apologize, Mr. Fang…”

Fang Yuan: “Actually, I’m not against hiring a lawyer, I was only afraid that lawyers would prosecute HaiYang... I thought that if I tidied up the restaurant, your investigation would be futile. XinRan would give up the case, and perhaps I would pay less for the settlement; it would be a good thing. But I underestimated your abilities, and I underestimated XinRan’s perseverance. When we were upstairs just now, I told XinRan everything that I have just told you both, she tried to convince me to speak with you. I understand that you have good intentions of helping me, but I cannot give up HaiYang’s future so… my decision is that I will not hire lawyers for the trial. I thank you for your time and your service.” (Just as Fang Yuan dismissed us, he turned to head up the stairs once again. I wanted to plead with him and say something - anything that would get him to change his mind. As I opened my mouth, the restaurant’s door opened. Who would come to the restaurant at a time like this? I turned towards the door... It was Lu HaiYang.)

-------

[Previous Part] | [Masterlist] | [Next Part]

——-

《CREDIT》 Translator & Editor: @humi-and-co​  《未定事件簿》Tears of Themis is a 2020 Chinese otome game by 米哈游Mihoyo. All original credits go to 米哈游Mihoyo.

《 VOICE ACTORS 》 Xia Yan | Jin Xian: https://weibo.com/riceranger Lu HaiYang | Zhang Pei: https://weibo.com/u/1937059462 Xue XinRan | V17-Su Wan: https://weibo.com/u/2925530143 Fang Yuan | Zhao Yang

[neirawrites]

AUGUST EVENT: Your Antagonist’s Backstory

Name: Zana Rahimi

WiP: Phantom Limb (intro)

Week 1 (- August 2nd): Introduction

This scene isn’t the part of the novel, but it is canon and it takes place shortly before the start of the story (mild spoilers ahead). 

TW: systemic homophobia, assault (unrelated to it), terrorism 

If she was born two millennia later, she would have been a doctor, helping people and healing the sick, just like her mother before her; that was always her only goal, even if some didn’t see it that way. But, she knew her path was the right one and nothing anyone could say could deter her from it. Not even the soft sobs of a man, hunched on a waiting room bench, in front of the hospital room he wasn’t allowed into.

His name was Kristian Kapikul and his state, and the state of his lover on the other side of that wall, were her fault, but she was the one with the power to make it better.

-Kristian,- she said in her calmest voice, approaching the sobbing man who looked up at her, his eyes red shot, his shirt still covered with blood of his lover. They met already; she was a patron of many talents from across the land, but he probably couldn’t remember her. She didn’t blame him. One of the curses of immortally was the fleeting nature of her existence in the minds of others.

-My name is Zana Rahimi,- she continued, as he stood up to greet her, wary on his feet, like he might fall any second. –I am oh so very sorry about what happened to Fatmir, but the doctors assured me he would get the best care available.-

He still didn’t say anything, wiping the snot off his face with the sleeve of his designer shirt, so she continued.

-Come, let’s go into his room.- She put her hand on his shoulder, to indicate they were supposed to move, but he was still too shocked to react.

-They told me…- he started, his eyes wide in fear, but she shook her head.

-They told you wrong,- she said. –Just because you are not legally family, doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to see him. I will not stand for that kind of bigotry. I have talked to the head of the hospital and we have worked it out. She will personally apologize to you for the way her staff treated you two very soon, so we don’t have much time alone.-

She took care that her warm smile never leaves her face even for a moment. She was a people person, especially when it came to young men and women down on their luck. He just needed a little time.

Soon enough, Kristian nodded and the two of them made their way to a white room where a previously handsome man with dirty blonde hair laid on the bed, hooked to a respirator, white as the sheet behind him. See through liquid dropped from a bag handing above him into his arm, but the amount of blood he lost would be difficult to replace. Pure humans were so fragile. One stab in the leg was all it took.  

-Fatmir will be ok,- she told Kristian as she sat on one of the chairs next to the unconscious man, even if she wasn’t sure of her statement. If he died in the next few hours, he wouldn’t be gone, but would become a part of something greater, a part of the new world. Still, Kristian didn’t need to be bothered with such concepts right now. He needed hope and she was there to give it to him.

-Thank you,- he finally said, as his carefully practiced persona came out. –For everything you’ve done for me. But, why?-

-Because you are Kristian Kapikul, Serbia’s most famous cellist. Because he is Fatmir Suljagich, Bosnian football representative. And, because, in a way, what happened here was my fault,- she said.

-No, he was in the kitchen and fell on the knife. I told that to the police, I didn’t do anything to him!- he insisted again, but she didn’t need to be convinced.

-I know, because I know who did. Izeta Suljagish, his grandmother. The one who has been dead for over a decade, right? I know you can’t tell that to anyone, but I know the truth,- she told him. Sergej briefed her on all of this as soon as he realized what had happened. The more of the dead, the stronger they became, but very few were violent. Still, it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle.

Kristian turned as pale as his lover, but she took a deep breath and, for a few moments, drifted off to the world of the dead, just to let him know this wasn’t a prank of some sort. She became invisible, but also invincible. Maybe she belonged to the world on the other side more than she would like to admit, but she liked the real one better. That was why she fought so hard to save it.

-What are you?- he asked, his eyes wide in terror as she turned back to her normal form.

-I am a philanthropist. A world traveler. And I am half dead,- she said in the most casual tone possible. It was her reality, for millennia now. Being on the edge of the living and the dead was the core of her existence, ever since her mother brought her father from the other side for just one night. –I’m not like Fatmir’s grandma who attacked him tonight,- she continued. –She died, but I was born like this, long, long time ago. Me and ghosts, we are connected. I need them as much as they need me, but sometime, they lose control of their emotions and tragedies like this happen. That is why I’m sorry.-

-Why do you need the ghosts?- he asked.

-Because we live in a world that isn’t fair, where love isn’t legal, where corrupt politicians rule the planet they are not equipped to handle. We live in a world full of injustice and tragedies and I need these ghost to change that.-

This was the tricky part. She didn’t want him to ask more questions. Over the years, she learned most people didn’t think ends justified the means. She didn’t want him to learn she was the one behind the terrorists attack that killed grandma Izeta in the first place, as well as the one that crippled his best friend and killed the love of her life only few months ago. At least not yet. They weren’t the only ones. On her quest to save the world and to unite the worlds of the dead and the living, she had already sacrificed the lives of over a thousand people. Those were the ghost people encountered these days, but, on the New Year’s Eve, when the clock strikes midnight, it will all come together. She will bring an end to the concept of death itself.

But maybe Kristian wouldn’t listen. Maybe he would turn on her, like others did before, without realizing she was the only one who could bring down the barrier between life and death and bring about the age of peace. Humans were sometimes blind to the bigger picture.

She had her family, people who knew her whole plan, her sons and daughters she rescued from the life of drugs and petty crime for the sake of survival. They listened to her words, saw her truth and were willing to die for it. Some already have, and, for their sacrifices, she would forever be grateful. However, she didn’t need Kristian’s loyalty. All he needed to know was that she was doing the right thing.

But, he didn’t ask more question, just like Sergej told her he wouldn’t. A polite young man, a great addition to her collection. In his eyes, she saw only gratitude. Grateful people; those are the ones who she needed on her side and she knew she made another ally.

-Thank you,- he repeated, pulling her into a hug she didn’t ask for, but didn’t mind, even if she will be covered in blood now too. –How can I ever repay you?- he asked.

-You don’t need to, my boy,- she said. –I only did the right thing, but if it ever comes the time I need your help, I am sure you will be there for me.- He nodded, still crying.

-Anything!- he said and she smiled.

-For start, take care of him for me,- she said, brushing a lock of Fatmir’s hair, matter with blood, out of his face. –As for the rest of it, we will make it up as we go.-

....

did you know that my favorite villains are the mom/dad kind, who are can be really sweet, help individuals, but also commit war crimes? 

I love Kris too, he is a mess and a bootlicker, but he just wants to be accepted and he is far from villain, but this seemed like a nice scene to write, after not writing for weeks. 

Hope you liked it. 

[charmingpplincardigans]

An angel and a demon share a drink on an anniversary, 34 AD.

I’m writing an Aziraphale POV follow up to What’s Done In the Dark, and while I like this scene, I don’t think it belongs in it, so here *dusts off scene and gives it a spit shine* please take this slice of pure celestial emotion as it is. I’ll have to write several of these feelings back into the fic in a different way, but enough of it will have to change due to setting change that it felt a shame to just trash the like five really good lines in it. I hope someone else finds them as lovely as I do. ❤❤ 

Aziraphale felt the love the minute it took shape. 

He and Crowley were together again at the foot of a hill under the stars. It was the least amount of time they had ever gone between meetings. They hadn’t planned it, they had both just come to investigate the same open wound in the fabric of the universe on the same night, the anniversary of the death of a carpenter. Crowley had already been there when Aziraphale showed up--sitting with his legs crossed, feet and ends of his robes buried in the sand as if he had been there for days and it was starting to cover him over as the landscape naturally shifted, face tilted to the sky. 

Crowley always had his face tilted to the sky. Aziraphale wanted to know if he was searching for something or simply waiting. He didn’t think he was allowed to ask. 

There were two jugs of what was probably some kind of ferment half buried in the sand next to Crowley. 

“Do you mind?” Aziraphale asked. “Or should I go elsewhere?” 

Crowley turned his head to look into Aziraphale’s face. He was still looking up, but had had to lower his gaze from the stars to the earth to get there all the same and it made Aziraphale feel condescended to. Crowley’s thin lips were pulled into a straight line. One eyebrow arched in a half-formed question. He didn’t ask it. Instead he turned back to his stargazing. 

“I don’t own the place,” he said after a beat.

Aziraphale decided to interpret that as an obtuse acceptance rather than a denial. He sat on the other side of the jugs and faced the opposite direction as Crowley so that when they both looked up the space between them became an empty vase made of night. 

"It's where they bring the corrupt and the wicked," Aziraphale said as he tucked his robes around his legs. "Your side might as well lay claim." 

The look Crowley answered that bit of small talk with could have lit a fire over the whole spill of the Dead Sea. Now that Aziraphale was closer he could see the demon's golden eyes were rimmed with red. He debated whether he should ask what was wrong, but decided that he'd done enough damage already.

Crowley took up one of the jugs and took a long pull from it. Then he held it out to Aziraphale, who accepted. It was a sort of ale apparently. Not Aziraphale's favorite, but not half terrible, all things considered. 

"You can feel it, can't you? The emptiness? I assume that's why you're here. I'm surprised there aren't more of you here to investigate."

Aziraphale could feel it, but he hadn’t been drawn by it. On the contrary, he’d been repulsed by it, which is why he was here. He wanted to investigate what it was the universe seemingly didn’t want him to see. Probably if there were any other angels close enough to feel it they were heeding the black ebb of it as a warning, but it was his duty as an emissary to the Earth to know and understand these things, so here he was. 

The desert chill was starting to seep over him. At least, he hoped it was from the desert and not anything more malevolent. 

"Makes it an odd place for you to be then,” he said. “Someplace where you expect there to be many angels. Considering how you told me they usually react to your presence."

"We," Crowley said. 

"I'm sorry?" Aziraphale asked, confused. He took another drink from the jug. Judging by the state of Crowley's mood, he had some catching up to do.

"We for you and being here, not they. Since you're one of them. The whole heavenly host are a package deal, yes? Same actions, same intentions, same holy decree to follow." 

"We are all hands of the same body," Aziraphale said. "But we do not all have the same orders."

"S'a lotta hands," Crowley said. "Sounds grotesque when you say it like that."

"Well, it can be, quite." Aziraphale set the jug back between them. "But I think we're both used to that by now."

Crowley nodded and took up the other jug, which he cradled in his lap. "Four thousand years and every time I think I've seen everything they're capable of, they manage to surprise me." 

"The humans you mean? They are many more hands than either of us can lay claim to. Many more heads."

"Many more hearts," Crowley agreed. He took another long pull and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. 

Aziraphale hummed in response. "What does it feel like to you?"

"Sorrow," Crowley said. "It feels like a sorrow so deep it's ripped a hole into all the layers of existence. Down to the light in the stars."

"Hm. It feels like love to me. Bleeding and darkly grieving, but love nonetheless." 

"Two halves then. I wonder who they belong to."

"Maybe they belong to God. She was his heavenly father after all."

A haunted look of grief crumpled Crowley's face for half a moment and he dipped his head so that his long, curling hair could hang around him like a curtain. He was silent, except for one shaky inhale, and then he seemed to push it away. If Aziraphale hadn't been looking at him, had instead been looking at the stars, he would have missed it completely. He wondered what other secrets he had missed by taking his eyes from the demon.

Crowley shook his head, short and quick, as if to rid himself of the emotion, and lifted his face to the night. He flipped his hair back behind his shoulder with his hand and left his fingers tangled in it at the side of his neck, as if he’d been distracted mid-motion by a movement off in the distance. Aziraphale found himself wanting to know if it was soft, or if it was heavy, or if it was warm. He looked down at his own hands.

"When would God have learned to care about those who fulfilled Their prophecy?” Crowley asked. “Haven't They been too busy punishing people for simply living up to the flaws in Their design?" 

Aziraphale thought about this for a moment. Not because he needed to wonder at God's feelings on the matter, but because he'd never considered Crowley's. The demon was made entirely of questions. He and Aziraphale had rarely met throughout the whole history of time when Crowley was not working out some holy injustice or infernal puzzle with is mind. His whole being felt like want. What he wanted Aziraphale didn't know, but he had never supposed it mattered much if he ever found out. Crowley was a being of just as much power as him, surely if there were things he wanted he could manifest the getting of them. Except, perhaps, things that were out of his reach. The stars did feel so far away when one's feet were on the ground.

"Maybe they're his?" Aziraphale ventured, meaning Jesus. "Maybe he left them behind, felt them so deeply in this place they became real." That really had been a bad deal, but above his pay grade.

"Tangible," Crowley said. 

"Yes, you're right. Real isn't a meaningful measure. Tangible."

Crowley sat silently for the better part of an hour and Aziraphale sat with him. Crowley looked at his hands. He looked at the sky. He looked at the jugs between them. He looked at the sky. He looked at Aziraphale's hands where they rested, folded neatly in his lap. He looked at the sky. He looked at the sky. He looked at the sky. His eyes were so bright they might be mistaken for stars themselves. Aziraphale didn't know if that was meant to be a kindness, or a justice rendered in the light of his ruined existence, that kept him as a shard so far away from all of his coveted starlight. 

"Why do you never try to smite me?" he asked, eyes still tilted up. 

"Why would I?" Aziraphale asked.

"Because the others do. Because we're different. Didn't you get the memo? We're at odds." 

"Oh, I'd much rather keep it even if it's all the same to you," Aziraphale said. "Dreadful work, smiting. Makes such a mess." 

And you're so beautiful, he thought. It would be a shame to keep that from the world.

As thoughts went he knew that one was objectively disgraceful in the true meaning of the word. There was no reason for him to keep running into this enemy agent, to let him continue his work, except that it made Aziraphale's own work more interesting. And, when they ran across each other, his personal hours as well. Crowley was a bit wicked, but Aziraphale hadn't sensed anything about him that took pleasure in the truly evil. Mostly he took pleasure in changing fashions and new things people did with grapes and the night sky. All of those things, in Aziraphale's book, were good. Or if not good, worldly, common for their lack of grace and therefore not worthy of condemnation. So, it followed to reason, neither was Crowley. 

The smile that split across Crowley's face was the exact opposite of the grief from an hour before. A sense of relief flooded the area around them, Crowley letting go of this fear he had apparently been holding that Aziraphale might decide to do him in after all. He'd had that fear, but he hadn't let it guide him over his curiosity. Aziraphale was so intensely fascinated by that juxtaposition of feeling that he was about to cross over the border of the emotion and into smitten. What did any of that mean? What bravery was at work in this demon and why hadn’t God seen fit to keep him? 

That was when the love hit him. The wave of it overwhelmed him, but it didn't seem to have a direct source the way much of the love he felt did. Perhaps it was a side effect of the ghostly echo of the murdered son. Or perhaps it was his own and it was merely being bounced back at him like a refraction, like lamplight over water. Either way, the vase between them filled.

The lines of Crowley's body had relaxed entirely. He looked so loose Aziraphale thought he might slip back into snake form any minute and just curl up there in the sand. He did nothing to indicate that he had felt the change in emotional temperature, so Aziraphale did not ask him about it. 

Aziraphale did metaphorically hold his hand in it for as long as he could, until it got too hot to keep touching it. It was love, but like the tear it felt like it had been mixed with something dark and roiling. There was a different kind of aura around it, an aura of desire, which meant that it couldn’t be coming from Aziraphale. Or at least, he didn’t think it could. He thought about what he knew of desire, both human and angelic. He thought of two lovers from before the world they were sitting on had a name, one murdered and one destroyed. He thought about how, for angels certainly, desire’s end was death, and then he let his fear overtake him. 

He pulled away from the feeling of it, even though it pulled back at him instead of pushed him away. He felt the stretch of his aloofness tear like a muscle as he went and he gasped with the pain of it. 

Crowley looked at him, sharp and quick. “Are you okay?”

“I will be,” Aziraphale said. He took up his jug again. 

Crowley nodded, accepting the lie, and tilted his face back to the sky.

[newcathedrals]

ao3

title: where angels fear to tread

pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley

word count: 12896

summary: One demon and one very old café wait for Aziraphale to make up his mind.

After thousands of years of walking its surface, Aziraphale loved the world; he most especially adored its little nooks that felt like extensions of himself. He was part of his bookstore in SoHo, a piece of scenery in St. James’ Park, and a regular patron of café Procope. (The Library of Alexandria was magnificent too, until, well.)

He’d stumbled upon the café accidentally, after a delightful play at La Comedie Francaise in 1690. Feeling a bit peckish, he crossed the narrow street and entered the café immediately across from it. It wasn’t called café Procope, then; the chef still went by the name Cuto. But inside he found a noisy café of actors, writers, and artists crowded around small tables. It felt alive, exuberant, like they didn’t pay any mind to anything besides the quality of a new play or the tone of a young singer who’d just begun their career. The café smelled of coffee and tobacco, and the walls were paneled with dark wood. It was altogether more pleasant than most he’d ever visited in Paris until then, and he breathed a sigh of appreciation as he sat down.

Coffee was still a more recent introduction to Europe, and Aziraphale ordered a cup of it gratefully. He was surprised when only moments later a young man sat down next to him without any warning.

“I saw you in the audience, didn’t I? Did you like the play?” He asked. Aziraphale squinted to make him out- it was an actor, from the show he’d just seen. The angel brightened.

“Yes, yes, it was fantastic!” he said. His mouth stumbled over the french vowels a little, but he was fluent enough. Aziraphale was constantly frustrated with that he was only completely fluent in English and old Hebrew after six thousand years on Earth. That was one of the fascinating things about humans, though; an angel could turn his back for a couple of decades and turn around again to find twenty new words in a language. By the time he’d learned to speak and read Latin fluently, they’d already moved on to another five or six languages.

“Ah, you’re English?” the actor asked.

“No. Well, yes, in a way.”

“They have good plays, in England.”

“Ah, yes. Shakespeare was a favorite. It hasn’t really been the same, though, since he passed. It’ll be a while until someone that magnificent comes along again.”

They talked for a while as they drank coffee, and Aziraphale appreciate talking to someone who knew so much about the arts- his name was Francois, he learned, which was always a good name to hear. Aziraphale had always been fond of humans and their incessant naming since the garden of Eden. Francois was one of the French’s best names, in his humble opinion, for its similarity to the name they gave their nation.

They ate dinner together, after the coffee, then wine. Aziraphale loved talking to humans, especially ones like Francois. He suspected that his affection for the ways of the species was getting out of hand, but he couldn’t quell the fondness for them that continued to grow over the centuries. The fondness was only comparable to one other -and far more fickle- love of his.

Love. Aziraphale’s mind was wandering; he returned to focusing on Francois’ thoughts on the French playwright Molière. His care for humanity was safer, at least, than the other.

///

“S’ nice,” Crowley said.

The Arrangement brought them to Paris in 1701. There was some meddling to be done in politics, for both of them, and there was no reason why they couldn’t cut costs and travel together.

(There were, in fact, a plethora of reasons as to why an angel and a demon shouldn’t share a voyage. Aziraphale pointedly refused to think about these reasons.)

When they got to the city, they booked a nice hotel room. Nice in Paris in the 1700’s often really meant not absolutely filthy, but the room was actually quite well furnished and clean.

Small, but bearable.

“There’s only one bed, though,” Crowley mentioned. Aziraphale could feel his ears going pink. Having a human form was incredibly useful, but came along with the downside of less control.

“Ah, yes, well,” Aziraphale said, stepping towards the door. “I’ll just ask them if they have another room available.”

“Don’t bother, it’s not a problem.”

“It’s not?”

“‘Course not, Angel,” Crowley said. Aziraphale’s blush bloomed to cover his entire face and neck. Just as it was creeping down his chest, Crowley snapped his fingers. In an instant, Crowley performed a demonic miracle: one large bed became two, with a meter or two in between them.

A demonic miracle, indeed. Aziraphale forced himself to smile.

“Well done. Saves the trouble of trying to get another room, at least.”

“No problem,” Crowley said. And it shouldn’t have been a problem, but Azirapahle’s poor human stomach sinking told him that he felt otherwise. In a human body, one could not hide from their emotions. If a person didn’t want to think about love or hate or any of the in-betweens, the body reacts as if it has an allergy.

“Dunno about you, but I’m not in the mood to corrupt a cabinet official right now.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “And I’m not prepared to wake another cabinet official up to the injustices of his office.”

“Dinner, then?”

Aziraphale brightened up slightly. “I think I know just the place.”

Out on the street, Aziraphale hailed a carriage. When a driver pulled to the side to oblige them, Crowley wrinkled his nose in disgust.

“What an ugly thing, carriages,” Crowley said. “You’d think they’d come up with something better by now.”

“Would you rather walk?” Aziraphale replied, gesturing towards the filthy avenue outside. Horse manure and human waste stained the cobblestones of nearly all of Paris’ narrow streets.

Crowley managed to look even more disgusted by the alternative. “Nah.”

“As I thought,” Aziraphale said.

Café Procope looked almost identical to how it had when he’d first discovered the spot and three years ago when he’d visited again. The main difference, though, was that it finally had a name. When they stepped out of the carriage, Crowley looked up at the new sign.

“You’ve been here before?” Crowley asked.

“Yes, twice now. It’s been around for quite a while, for human standards.”

They stepped inside and took a seat. It was a little less dark than the last time he’d been in, and evening sunlight illuminated the front. They found a small table towards the back, and sat down.

The dining room was just as lively as it was the times he’d been in before, except perhaps more affluent- artists and actors now mingling with the lower level aristocracy instead of solely putting on shows for them. Maybe it was a tiny form of progress taking place in France’s rigid social class structure. When he mentioned this to Crowley, the demon only shrugged.

“Or they’re just bored, is all. Kings and queens like to keep jesters around, you know.”

Aziraphale huffed. “You always assume the worst.”

When they sat like this, facing each other, knees knocking into one another’s under the table, Aziraphale had to quite literally face the ugly truth in front of him: he’d fallen for a demon. (Crowley, of course, was far from ugly. Aziraphale found him visually pleasing from head to toe, which was part of the whole problem.)

Angels weren’t meant to have any feelings towards humans, aside from a mild benevolence. There were no rules for feelings about demons, but Aziraphale suspected that this was less of a minor oversight and more of a situation so unthinkable that no celestial authority thought to make a rule about it in the first place.

They ordered rosé and bourbon, respectively. Crowley held up his glass for a toast.

“ Santé , angel.”

Despite being immortal, Aziraphale felt as though he could die in his chair that very second.

“ Santé ,” he replied meekly. Crowley was talking about something else, now, but Aziraphale could only half-focus. His mind had gone elsewhere, somewhere far too human.

“Are you alright?” Crowley asked. Like the humans, he couldn’t keep his emotions hidden for long at all.

He nodded. “Might we get un gratin dauphinois ?”

“Dunno what that means, but alright.”

They took a carriage to return to their hotel, stomachs full of wine and bread. The sun had set, leaving the sky bespectacled with stars. Paris was still a dark city at night, then. The lack of frequent enough oil lamps hung up kept criminals safe, but also provided a better view of the night sky.

“You don’t see em’ like this in London,” Crowley said, tipping his chin up towards the carriage window. Aziraphale was still surprised, sometimes, at how similar their lines of thought could be.

“No, you don’t,” Aziraphale sighed. They were close, now, sitting thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder. There wasn’t a reason for it, the rest of the carriage was empty. But being drunk, Aziraphale had learned, was an excuse humans often used to be close to one another, and Crowley and himself had fallen into their habits quite easily. Thousands of years alongside them could do that to an angel and a demon. Aziraphale felt a loose red curl touch his temple, and the bizarre urge to reach and run his hands through Crowley’s hair gripped him. Thousands of years alongside Crowley, and he’d think that restraint would become easier and not more agonizing.

///

They got their jobs done. It took longer than he’d thought it would, to convince the politician that actually working to benefit the people he represented was an idea that he should engage with. Crowley, in turn, found the official to be far more kind-hearted than most who work in the government ever are. They complained about this to one another in the cramped hotel room, though Aziraphale pretended to mind a little more than he really did. A week spent with Crowley didn’t feel like an inconvenience at all, though he pouted and played along. (That wasn’t really lying , was it? Just acting, and Aziraphale adored the theatre. If his acting was lying then Aziraphale might’ve been the most disobedient angel in Her universe for the last six thousand years.)

When they returned to London a little less than two weeks later, jobs finished, Aziraphale felt that same uneasy longing that always came with splitting apart from Crowley. He knew, that in terms of eternity, a few months or even years away from one another was not a long time. And yet, his half-human heart ached as if it was a final farewell.

The beginning of the eighteenth century was a pleasant few decades. He did his angelic works, as it was his duty, but became even more immersed in the affairs of mankind. He learned the gavotte and tended to hang around those with similar taste as himself. It was in its way morbid, though, to become close to humans. They were so delicate; their morals and beliefs changed quick and they seemed to die even quicker. Still, Aziraphale enjoyed their company, even if it was short-lived. He and Crowley met in London, for the most part, and occasionally other parts of their isles. Every time he wasn’t around for a while, Aziraphale found that engaging with the troubles and joys of mankind was a good enough distraction.

After a year or so of pondering he decided that it’d been about four thousand years, give or take a few centuries. Maybe it’d been since the beginning, when he’d outstretched his wing to protect Crowley from the first thunderstorm. It never got any easier. If anything, little by little, it had grown farther and farther out of his control.

It had been six months since they’d met when Aziraphale decided to ask Crowley if he cared for a non-work related excursion. Most of their communication since their business trip to Paris had been strictly work-related, with a few relaxed dinners here and there.

Aziraphale talked him into it, in 1753. It didn’t take much convincing to make Crowley agree that they “deserved” a little time off. They’d taken a few vacations over the millennia, most lasting only a few days for fear their respective sides would realize how useless they both were to the ethereal and occult causes. They’d never noticed though, and Aziraphale didn’t see the harm in playing human for a while. They discussed the details over tea in London.

“Greece, maybe? It’s been a while.”

“Perhaps…” Aziraphale replied, but he didn’t really mean it. The country had wonderful views and great food, but it was far too hot for his taste.

“Well, Germany’s an option.”

“Don’t they have a war on?”

“Everyone’s got a war on,” Crowley replied. They sat in silence for a moment, thinking.

“Ah,” Crowley said. Though he was wearing his sunglasses, Aziraphale thought he could see his reptile eyes flash behind them. “I know where you want to go.”

“Where?”

“France. It’s always France.”

“Not always,” Aziraphale shot back. “But it’s nice, isn’t it?”

“It’s alright. Too many rats, for my taste..”

“Rats are everywhere.”

“France it is, then.”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be France.”

Crowley smiled as he shook his head. “This many years, and you think that I can’t tell when you’ve made up your mind?”

He could have melted, then, into a pool of angelic goop. Instead, he held himself together as best as he could and attempted a normal smile.

“France, then.”

///

They arrived in the evening as the city was fervently trying to finish its tasks before the night shut its workers in. Though they’d discussed taking a boat and a carriage the human way, they decided that demonic and angelic transport would be far more convenient, though awkward. Before the age of communication by telephone whenever angels or demons had to move from one place to another on earth, they’d go through their respective realms. They were like shortcuts, really. The only issue was when beings on either of their sides asked questions. Something demons and angels have in common is that they tend to be nosy.

They met in the Jardin des Tuileries, with Aziraphale falling unceremoniously to the ground from heaven above, much like an apple falling from a tree. The sun was dipping below the trees at the edges of the garden, dappling the grass with shifting shadows of leaves. He stood up to find that he’d landed upon a beautiful array of poppies.

“Louis won’t be too happy about that,” he muttered. Aziraphale walked the paths as he waited for Crowley to sprout from the earth. There were guards posted along the edges of the garden, but Aziraphale used a little angelic miracle to make himself unnoticeable. He turned towards a patch of grass where it sounded like a tree was being pulled up from its roots. He grew from the soil like one of his beloved plants.

Crowley dusted the dirt from his coat. “Remind me to never do that again.”

“I agree. Though boats are unpleasant as well, the way they just threw me down here is despicable.” He helpfully brushed off a clot of debris from Crowley’s shoulder. “Might we try-”

“Café Procope?” they said simultaneously.

“I’m truly that predictable?” Aziraphale said.

“Eh, a bit.”

They passed the royal guards without issue and stepped onto the street. It was a warm May evening, just a little bit on the side of too hot; renaissance painting clouds hung in the sky, streaked with pink from the setting sun. They walked along the Seine and across the Pont Neuf side by side; Azirapahle watched the sunset along the entire route. If Crowley’s eyes had settled on him and stayed there, the angel pretended not to realize. He didn’t want to break the majesty of it, the soft and shivery feeling it left on his neck and face. Crowley was always a good listener, keeping his attention on Aziraphale when they were together. He appreciated it, often craved it; there are few things that feel better than being heard and understood by someone who wanted to hear and understand him. It was unsaid, of course, he feared to acknowledge it would ruin its power somehow. Some things were better left unsaid, he had learned in his long life, even if it was difficult knowledge to keep alone.

The decor had changed since he’d last been in. It’d somehow become even more opulent, huge mirrors lined the walls, and the trimmings inside were painted in gold. Plants now grew on the balcony, fragrant blossoms which helped the street below smell just a bit better. It was as popular as ever, if not more- the tables were still crowded and smoky. Despite this, there was suddenly a free table for two when they walked in. After ordering red wine, Crowley smiled.

“Do you remember that pomegranate wine we had in Egypt?” he asked. Aziraphale smiled wistfully.

“Never found another like it, really. It’s been so long but I can still remember the taste.”

“You almost got bitten by a crocodile, on the bank of the Nile.”

Aziraphale frowned. The memory still unnerved him; being eaten would undoubtedly be an awful way to be discorporated. “I don’t see how it’s my fault that they blend into the sand so well.”

“I had to pull you away, and you thought I was going to try and discorporate you.”

“I didn’t know better, then. We hadn’t known one another for very long.”

“Guess you’re right. Still, I knew you’d never try to hurt me.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“Oh, I did. The day I met you I did, when you told me that you gave the humans your flamin' sword.”

Aziraphale winced. Every time he was reminded of the object, he felt an unpleasant shiver down his spine. “If you’d give them a sword, I knew you’d never try to kill me.”

“Because I didn’t have a proper weapon?”

Crowley laughed. “Because you’re kinder than the rest of them, really.”

His hand was shaking slightly as he picked up his wine glass. He was translucent, Crowley could see every thought and feeling muddled together within him. He knew, he realized. He knew, maybe before Aziraphale himself even did. Saying it, just then, wouldn’t have been to much effect. It had been said before, in a thousand indirect ways that all added up to I would not know what I am without my knowledge of you.

They drank quietly. It had all been said already, hadn’t it? Aziraphale was thinking, and Crowley was watching him think. He wished suddenly that he could pull the glasses off of his face and look at him in the eyes directly, just to make sure he saw what he felt in his eyes.

“Do you want to take a walk, angel? The table will be right where we left it when we return,” Crowley said. As always, he said it and it was true. They stepped out from the crowded space into open air, twilight left the sky a soft lavender hue.

“This way?” Crowley asked. Aziraphale nodded. The street was mostly empty, aside from a few water carriers with large pails on their backs. The silence nearly became too long, but as Aziraphale was about to make a frivolous comment Crowley took his hand in his, lacing their fingers together.

“Oh.” was all he could manage. They continued walking down the street, and Aziraphale’s attention honed in completely to their point of contact. Crowley’s hand was surprisingly soft, he didn’t expect it for some reason, and he was pleasantly cool to the touch. The air felt ethereal, pure and- heavy footsteps, a power unlike the kind Crowley radiates, or his own. With a start, he dragged Crowley into a narrow alley.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and then put both of his hands to Crowley’s throat.

“Foul demon!” Aziraphale cried out. His voice was shaky, unconvincing. Still, he continued. “You thought you could try to spread evil here without my knowledge?”

“What-”

“Let this be a lesson to you about meddling in earthly affairs!” Aziraphale said. Crowley’s eyes widened with the realization. He bolted down the alley and twisted around the corner, as Aziraphale instantly created a flash of ethereal light and a pile of ash on the cracked cobblestones below him. The sound of footsteps bounced around the narrow street and off of its walls from the mouth of the alley.

“Aziraphale,” Gabriel said. His faux, even tone put a pit in his stomach. “Did you just smite the demon Crowley?”

“I did,” Aziraphale answered. He attempted a smile that wilted before it could even come to be.

Gabriel clapped him on the shoulder with a prideful gaze. He was to be called a liar, to be cast out from heaven’s good graces. The angel froze under Gabriel’s touch.

“You know, Aziraphale, I’m glad you’re our guy down here. You really get into the weeds, going after the demons.”

He didn’t realize he had stopped breathing until he started again. “Thank you, Gabriel. Why- why did you come here? Now?”

If the question was defensive, Gabriel didn’t notice. “I saw that you used the transport system, and wanted to check-in. It’s been a few centuries! You went from Great Britain to… what’s this place called again?”

“France.”

“Ah yes. France. ” Gabriel said it like one would say a word when they weren’t quite sure of the definition. “Anyways, I see that you’re getting a lot done here.”

Aziraphale nodded in response. He was numb in both his head and heart.

“Well, keep discorporating, keep up the good fight, alright? I’ll see you soon.” With another pat on the back and a flash of blinding light, he evaporated into thin air. Aziraphale leaned against the stone wall behind him, tipping his chin up towards the sky above.

Thousands of years had passed and that was the time Gabriel chose to grace him with his presence. He straightened up and smoothed out the front of his coat.

It was for the best, he decided. He thought of holy water and hellfire, the crowded halls of the damned and the vast empty atriums of the saved.

///

He climbed two staircases to reach their little room. There was really no reason to share, but they’d decided to come to France on a whim, and Aziraphale didn’t have much time to make arrangements. (Of course, another room could’ve helpfully become unbooked on the same floor. It didn’t.)

When he tried the door, it was already unlocked. Crowley was relaxing on the bed, a book in his hand. From his posture, he had not a care in the world, but Aziraphale knew well that the demon never read books.

“Are you alright?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley’s eyes peeked up over the flimsy book he was purportedly reading. He doubted it was anything more than blank pages, if Crowley had created it by way of a demonic miracle. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. It was-“

“Awful timing, on that angel’s part.”

“Precisely.” he replied.

“Well-“ Crowley said. “-we could just go out for a little stroll again if you’d like.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“It is pretty dark. But what do an angel and a demon have to fear from some petty criminals?” Crowley tossed the book aside and sat up.

“We have a lot to fear, Crowley!” Aziraphale said. His voice was shaking, another downside of the human form. Crowley was watching him behind his glasses. Any hint of happiness was smoothed from his features.

He paused, steeling himself. “I know,” Crowley said. “But isn’t it worth the risk?”

“You don’t know what they’d do to you.”

Crowley scowled. “Of course I do.”

“You don’t.”

He’d seen what holy water did to demons, before. Thousands of years before, but the memory still chilled him. He imagined Crowley doused with the same substance, suffering the writhing agony that comes before obliteration. It didn’t matter what he wanted, or even what he felt.

“Answer me,” he said. Crowley sat frozen in place, expressionless. Somewhere in the back of his mind Aziraphale wondered how he had so much control.

Aziraphale took in a shaky breath. “I don’t know.”

The room seemed to freeze, as Crowley’s uncaring gaze morphed into something like pain for an instant. As soon as he’d blinked, the demon was just as he was before.

“Right. Well. I think I’ve got some demonic deeds to do, really. Best get on with it.”

“We could still-“

“Nah, it’s alright. We’ll have dinner another time.”

Nothing more to say. Aziraphale forced his expression into a tight-lipped smile. “See you soon?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, already striding towards the door. He paused with a hand on the doorknob. “And, angel.”

“Yes?”

“If you ever make up your mind, will you tell me?”

The door creaked as Crowley shut it. He heard footsteps down the hallway, then the sickening sound of nothing at all. Aziraphale was alone. More alone, perhaps, than he’d ever been.

///

“See you soon” is a very relative statement, especially for a frustrated demon. It was a very lonely set of decades for Aziraphale at the end of the eighteenth century. The angel tried to keep himself busy. He strayed from London far more than previously, popping in to Berlin, Stockholm, and Amsterdam when the emptiness felt particularly wide. Paris was still one of his favorite places, though there seemed to be a discomfort brewing in the city that he couldn’t quite muster up the effort to look into. He went to Le Procope mainly to drink and brood, which he’d become particularly good at. He’d like to tell Crowley about it; the demon would find it quite funny.

“Might as well paint your wings black yourself,” Crowley would say. “You’re practically a demon already. ‘Brooding’ is a third of the job description.” Then Aziraphale would huff and frown like it was not even a little funny. But Crowley wasn’t there, and he was the whole reason the ruminating kept going on and on anyways.

On a particularly dower day in London, Aziraphale decided that a crêpe from Le Procope might just be the perfect distraction. The café was still there, despite everything, and wasn’t that somehow hopeful? Little in Aziraphale’s life was consistent, humans shifted and changed far too fast for his liking. Crowley had been a constant since the dawn of the Arrangement, but now Aziraphale wasn’t sure it’d ever be the way it was again. He wished that Crowley could understand why they couldn’t. Friendship, perhaps, was still dangerous, but they’d made it so far without being thrown into the void. Le Procope, though, was sticking around quite longer than he’d expected.

Crêpes, he thought. That’ll sort me out.

Though he wanted crêpes, Paris had other plans. Bloody, gruesome, and awful plans. Plans that would put him in a pile of paperwork, and in quite a lot of pain, seeing how the guillotine’s blade had been dulled by the necks of hundreds, if not thousands. He stared despairingly down at the iron cuffs that bound him. There was something so awful about knowing that he could escape the cell in seconds, but still being unable to do anything to stop himself from being decapitated.

Humans. Horrible, awful, ugly humans, nearly every one of them.

“Animals,” he muttered.

“Animals don’t kill each other with clever machines, Angel. Only humans do that.”

And there Crowley was, heaven- well, hell -sent. Aziraphale just barely had the good sense to stop himself from collapsing into his arms.

“Oh, good lord,” he said.

In the midst of a revolution, they had crêpes. And despite all of the chaos, they were quite delightful.

///

They returned, blissfully, to their normal pattern. Aziraphale was almost surprised at how easy it was. There were no awkward conversations, or even any references to what almost been possibly discussed a few decades before. The angel was glad for it, of course, and yet the same pervasive longing still rested in his chest like walking pneumonia. There was much more pleasure in it than illness for the most part. He liked the way they bickered back and forth, and did something that might look a bit like flirting when they’d been drinking; but it weighed heavy on him all the same.

The humans he met in the nineteenth century were perhaps the most interesting of the species that he’d befriended so far, which was a positive. He was especially fond of a British writer named Oscar, who visited Le Procope often.

They had lunch often. Far less dinners, then, that was the only difference. Lunch was quite alright as well, though. Lunch had more boundaries than dinner, the lines were sharper while dinner’s often blurred.

Good enough, though. And safer, Aziraphale thought. When Crowley asked him for a morning stroll in 1862, he thought it would turn out to be a fine day, they might even have breakfast and lunch together. He even remembered to buy bread this time, for the ducks, but it didn’t turn out to be a breakfast and lunch day at all.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Crowley said, and no good sentence ever started that way. “What if it all goes wrong?”

Then he handed him a scrap of paper. His blood ran cold, his heart fell into his stomach. His worst fear, worse than being burned in hellfire. Crowley, melting, drowning.

Crowley, destroying himself. It was unthinkable, but now he was thinking of it.

“Out of the question,” he said.

To which Crowley had the audacity of replying “Why not?”

A universe without Crowley. Even when they hadn’t seen each other in decades, Aziraphale couldn’t envision it. That would not be a universe worth living in. He’d known this, too, as long as they’d had the Arrangement. But in perhaps the same way that he knew he loved Crowley, he never faced it directly, the same way that humans averted their eyes from the sun for their whole lives. Now he was staring the truth right in it’s blinding center.

Now Crowley was requesting it, like it was some sort of solution.

“I don’t need you, angel, ” Crowley said. It wasn’t the way he often said it, it was an accusation- too high and mighty, holier than thou - he wished he could explain it, tell him he was wrong, tell him there was no point to an existence without their lunches and dinners and arrangements. No point at all, not for him.

When he stormed away, he almost felt a little bit better. He’ll be safer, he thought. Without their friendship, their Arrangement. So there wouldn’t be any more lunches with Crowley, bickering matches with Crowley. But there would be a Crowley, at least.

The decades following were longer and heavier than any he had yet to endure. But there was a Crowley, somewhere. He even saw him sometimes, walking past his bookshop. A flash of red hair and dark attire, that was all, it could’ve even been his mind playing tricks on him, but it made him feel better to imagine those serpent eyes keeping watch of him.

///

He hadn’t known of the demon he’d seen die. The creature was nameless, defenseless. God had already let the angels have their autonomy, and they took it with pride. Without a sense of self, Aziraphale did what he could and what he knew was right; served God. As he walked the halls and atriums of their plane, all washed in white and iridescence, he thought of nothing else. as there was not a single other thought to occupy him.

The white room he’d was open to the discomforting saturated blue of their realm’s sky. He approached a semicircle of angels, with tumbling robes the same hue as their floors and walls and all else. In front of them lay an angel curled into themselves, silent as their eyes stared blankly into what was not to come.

Demons, then, were any angels who had even suggested a different idea or approach to existence itself. No dark attire or ashen faces, no cunning smiles. No red hair. Just an angel, still an angel, with gashes on their back where wings were torn from their body.

An angel miracled a refilling silver chalice into his dainty hand and held it above the angel. Aziraphale watched with the same stare as the others as holy water was poured onto skin which burned, melted, dissolved to become part of what does not exist. He’d never heard screams before.

After, the angels dispersed to return to their assigned duties, and Aziraphale did the same. It was not until he had touched his feet to earth that he saw the angel’s -demon’s- agonizing end with anything other than righteous justice.

He didn’t know the angel’s name or their offense. All he knew, and couldn’t forget, were the screeches of life being dragged into irresolvable nothing.

All he knew was that he could imagine Crowley curled up much in the same way, the bones of his shoulder blades exposed by butchery.

He would not let Crowley have the chance of doing the same to himself.

///

He saved him, again, like some sort of guardian demon . Aziraphale was starting to suspect that Crowley’s heroics weren’t just coincidences, but what could he say? As they stood in the middle of the ash and rubble, Aziraphale wished to pull his sunglasses off and hold his face in his hands and look into those serpent eyes hard and see what lay there.

The books. His stomach dropped to his feet. Hundreds of years of collecting and preserving, obliterated in seconds.

And then- Crowley pulled the leather bag from the dead nazi’s grasp.

“Little demonic miracle of my own,” he said. “Lift home?”

As they walked away from the destruction he felt as though his human body might explode like the church, remain as gushing blood and unwound entrails and his bursting human heart right in the middle of it. Exposed to the dust, ash, and smoke, right in front of Crowley. It would be a strange thing to explain to the folks upstairs -just a bit of a mistake, fell in love with one of the damned is all- he made it to Crowley’s car with skin and bones intact. Aziraphale forced himself back to the present as he sat down in the passenger’s seat. Cars were far too fast for his taste, but they were better than horses. He was about to mention this to Crowley when his gaze stopped him from speaking.

“I’m going to let it go,” Crowley said, voice even.

“Let what go?”

“The holy water. I’ll let it go.”

“You will?”

Crowley turned the key and the car grumbled to life. He didn’t like how loud they were, either. “Think I understand, now. Why you won’t do it.”

Aziraphale let out a sigh of relief. It felt like he had been holding his breath for decades, without even realizing. “Good. It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m still gonna get it, ‘course, but I’ll get it myself.”

Aziraphale narrowed his eyes. “You’re trying to scare me.”

“Scare you? I just saved your life!”

“Well, it won’t work. You can’t frighten me into bringing it to you.”

Crowley shrugged. “I’m really not trying to. I might die, though. Forever- dissolved-into-oblivion-die.”

“Stop it!”

Silence. The streets were void of life as the city cowered in fear, huddled around a radio and holding a candle. At least Crowley’s horrendous driving wasn’t likely to kill anyone that night. His unconcerned taunting brought him into a cold sweat.

“You could slow down a bit.”

“Nobody’s around, angel.”

Decades had past, and they were back to where they always were. Their same pattern, the same bickering, the same banter. It was like reading a book he’d already read again and again, an old good book that’s been loved to pieces.

“We should catch up. Have a little rendez-vous . It’s been years and I have no idea what you’re up to.”

“I’ve been sleeping, mostly, love a good nap,” he said. A pause “Are you suggesting France?”

He wasn’t, he just liked kitchy little phrases. But now he was thinking about Paris, and that little alleyway that must still be there. The war was on, but he knew Le Procope was still open. Always open.

He swallowed. “Best not.”

“Right,” Crowley replied. “Well. Whenever you make up your mind.”

He remembered the same phrase, from that little inn room.

“Yes, well. You can drop me off at the bookshop, please.”

Crowley nodded. “We’ll have lunch soon, yeah?”

He smiled a little. “Yes.” Crowley had missed him. It was more satisfying to know than he’d expected it to be. “I hear the Ritz is quite good.”

“Oh? There, then.”

When Crowley slowed to a stop in front of the bookshop, Aziraphale picked up the bag of books from the floor. He opened the door and stepped out.

Light reflected off of Crowley’s glasses. His expression was unreadable; Aziraphale was woefully out of practice in terms of Crowley’s miniscule tells.

He said it, before he could force it back down. “I’m still thinking. About it.”

Crowley raised his eyebrows. “You are?”

“I am.”

London was more silent than it had ever been. No bombs, nothing at all. Even Crowley’s car seemed to fall silent for a second, holding its breath along with the angel and the demon.

“You are,” Crowley repeated.

Aziraphale suddenly felt the urge to flee. “Well. Thanks, again.” He heard the “shaddap!” through the window.

The angel watched from the sidewalk as Crowley drove away, tires screeching against the potholed street. He couldn’t help but smile to himself. The loneliness was already slowly seeping out of him, togetherness filling up the spaces that it once made home again.

///

“Isn’t this scrumptious?” Aziraphale asked. He used the edge of his fork to cut off another morsel of strawberry cake.

“Yeah, wonderful. Very sweet,” Crowley said, also taking another bite.

“Not too sweet, though. Just right.”

“No, ‘course not. Couldn’t have that, could we?”

The Ritz had been absolutely delightful, to the point that Aziraphale was ready to welcome it into his heart as another one of his favorite places. The massive dining hall was rich and full, bathed in every shade of gold and yellow. Crowley even seemed particularly pleased, and Aziraphale tended to enjoy restaurants far more than he did.

It took longer to have lunch together than he’d expected. But a war does complicate things, for humans and immortals alike. When Crowley stepped into his bookstore with a hopeful smile, though, he knew that it was finally the right moment.

“I missed this, a bit,” Aziraphale admitted. It seemed like a safe enough phrase.

“Hm?”

“I missed having lunch.”

Crowley still looked confused. “Surely you’ve had lunch since we’ve last eaten together.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. He’d just discovered that recently, when speaking to an annoyed young woman attempting to buy one of his books. He promptly began to roll his eyes at least once a day from that moment forward. “I meant having lunch with you.”

Crowley grinned. “Oh, I know. Just wanted to hear it.”

Aziraphale pursed his lips and shifted his gaze, but his heart was blooming in his chest. It felt like home at last.

///

They were having lunch, again. Aziraphale tried not to analyze how he had begun to divide up his six thousand years of life into categories: the before lunch era, the lunch era, the dinner era. Then there were the gap years. Now it was the lunch renaissance, and he couldn’t be happier. (Surely he could be happier. He was reminded of this every time they sat side by side in his bookshop, sharing a bottle of wine.) They didn’t speak of holy water, or Paris, or any centuries-old cafés. He’d almost forgotten the bloody blessed water until he found out about Crowley’s foolish plan to steal it from a church. Crowley had even hired goons to help him retrieve it. Didn’t he see it in that church before, just sitting out like a bird bath?

Without even meaning to, Crowley had forced his hand. Aziraphale took one of his favorite thermoses to the church only a few blocks away. After using a tiny miracle to make himself unnoticeable, he filled the thermos and hoped to God that it was the right decision. Well, God would probably not approve at all, so he tried to ignore that too.

He sat in Crowley’s car, nervously tapping his shoes against the floor. He’d thought every moment of getting out and running away ‘till he saw him. Walking the way he always did, hips and legs first, his torso following. A bit like gravity didn’t matter to him at all, which was likely the case.

He still felt uneasy when he handed the holy water over. The look on Crowley’s face was almost worth it, all of the angles softened by undeniable gratefulness. It was poison, and Crowley was thankful for it.

“Should I say thank you?” Crowley asked. He to look away, through the windshield. It was unbearable, the tenderness in the way he said it. The pressure he felt in his chest was only continuing to build, more and more with each passing decade, far past the point where Aziraphale thought he might just combust. It was a kind of guilt or regret; he became painfully aware of how every moment would be different if he’d give in, or simply walk away a final time.

“Better not.”

“Well, can I drop you anywhere?”

“No, thank you.”

He still couldn’t meet his eyes fully. It was infuriating, sometimes, how his own gaze could not be covered while Crowley could keep his constantly guarded.

“Don’t look so disappointed. Perhaps one day we could, I don’t know, go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz.” Return to Le Procope, he wanted to add. To that little alleyway.

With that same soft expression, Crowley tried again. “I’ll give you a lift. Anywhere you want to go.”

He was so close, close enough to cradle his jaw in his hand. That was what he wanted to do, wasn’t it? It felt like a cruel trick, to love a demon. Crowley had asked him why God put the tree of knowledge into the garden of Eden, when it was such a temptation. Then he became what he questioned, so close Aziraphale could hold him in his hands, so close he could almost taste without ever taking a bite.

“You go too fast for me, Crowley,” Aziraphale said. He stepped out before he could steal another look, could try to gauge his reaction. He walked down the dark street, bumping into drunken and jolly people. Alone, once again.

///

A few months later, Aziraphale asked Crowley if he’d like to go on a walk. The demon agreed, and they met on the corner by Aziraphale’s bookshop. He still had bangs, but his hair had grown a bit longer, had a little more curl to it. He wondered if it was intentional or accidental, though Crowley was always particular about his hair. Aziraphale quite liked when it was longer and curlier; he still remembered the gleaming red coils that fell down his back as they stood on the garden wall, that first time. Once or twice he thought of mentioning it, before remembering himself. Besides, it was amusing to see it change nearly every time he saw him.

They walked the streets of London side by side, talking and observing the humans around them. Humans were always in such a rush, Aziraphale wondered what such an existence would be like.

“It must feel like you’re always running out of time,” Aziraphale said.

“Hm?”

“To be human. They haven’t got very long, that must be why they’re always in a hurry.”

Crowley nodded thoughtfully. “Must be at least a little thrilling, though. To only have one life.”

“Or terrifying. There’s not really a way to rectify anything, once you’re gone.”

“They do what they want too, though, most of them. They see what they want and they take it. They dream, they do. Right or wrong be damned, they go right on ahead.”

Silence. Aziraphale knew what he meant, what he was implying. For a second, he imagined what it’d be like to be human. Him and Crowley, human together. He supposes he could own a bookshop. Crowley could… be an investment banker, or some other sort of legal criminal. Something nefarious. They could even live together, above the bookshop. He supposed that he’d actually have to attempt to sell books, then, as he would need an income. But he wouldn’t have a large collection at all, in that case, because he couldn’t have been around for hundreds of years collecting them.

No miracles, demonic or otherwise. No ethereal or demonic transport. No good or bad deeds to perform. Just Crowley and Aziraphale.

“It’d be nice, then, to be human,” Aziraphale agreed. “No need to worry about so many rules. Well, until they’re dead.”

“Yeah, but who cares about that? It’s just dying.”

“Dying is not something to joke about, Crowley.” He bit the inside of his cheek. “I shouldn’t have ever given you holy water.”

“Well, I’d much rather be obliterated than burn in hellfire for eternity, wouldn’t you?”

He shivered at the thought. “I suppose so.”

“You suppose so,” Crowley repeated.

Aziraphale scowled. Every time their conversations drifted towards such subjects, he was reminded of how much separated the two of them. There was a deep chasm between their realities that was rarely breeched and could never be mended.

“Oh!” Crowley said, still smiling despite Aziraphale’s obvious annoyance. “There’s something I forgot to tell you. You’ll be proud of me.”

Rarely any good ever came from the sentence “you’ll be proud of me” if Crowley said it.

“What?”

“I saved Le Procope.” He said, wearing that clever little smile he usually reserved for admiring his own devious tricks and plans.

“What?”

“I went to Paris on my own about twenty years ago. I’d overheard that Le Procope was going to be closed, and possibly turned into a hotel.”

“No,” the angel gasped.

“Oh, yes,” Crowley confirmed. “But I stopped it.”

“How?”

“I bribed the owner, of course. Now she has enough money to retire on a Greek island.”

“Did you really?”

“Yep.” He grinned.

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said. Then, right in the middle of London, taking up the sidewalk, he pulled him into his arms. Crowley’s arms snaked around his torso and held him there. He smelled strangely of freshly ground peppercorn, spiced and warm. He held on a few seconds longer than he knew was appropriate. (Though, for an angel, avoiding smiting a demon in a kilometer radius is likely seen as monstrous.) A couple humans took notice, but he paid them no mind.

“Well,” Aziraphale said. “Thank you.”

“You’re proud of me, then?” Crowley asked. He looked incredibly pleased with himself, standing up a little straighter as they continued walking.

The angel nodded. “I’m not sure bribery is quite the right way to go about things, of course, but all the same. That café is very special to me.”

“I quite like it too. Good crêpes.”

“Ah, I’d love a crêpe.”

Crowley shrugged. “It’s not too late for breakfast. Or we could call it brunch.”

“The crêpes just aren’t the same here,” Aziraphale sighed.

“Paris, then?” Crowley asked. There was that same hopefulness, that undeniable want in his tone. Every time it revealed itself, Aziraphale’s heart only grew more sore.

“Perhaps a more English breakfast would do. Eggs benedict, maybe?”

Crowley’s shoulders sunk just a little. “Right, English breakfast. Wouldn’t mind some eggs myself.”

Was this what they would be, forever? Forever wishing and hoping, side by side? Stealing breakfasts and lunches and hugs like they were criminal acts? He’d never desired to be human before, though he’d always been fascinated by them. Now, though- eighty or ninety years would be a long enough lifetime after all, if he could live how he’d like to.

///

On the phone, Crowley had said it was important, serious. As he strolled towards St. James’ Park, he’d hoped that Crowley had begun to consider lunch as vital as he always had.

But Crowley didn’t, in fact, want to discuss lunch. He told the angel of the antichrist as if it were an unfortunate situation, not truly the end of days. Even Aziraphale couldn’t truly picture it. He couldn’t envision an end; the world and Crowley were constants. Once again his thoughts turned to 1753, to that alleyway in Paris, to Gabriel, to what was inevitable. The urge to say something, to decide, remained right behind his tongue. “If you make up your mind, will you tell me?” Crowley had said. But it wasn’t his choice at all.

“We will win, of course.”

Crowley smiled incredulously. “You really believe that?”

“Obviously.”

Even as he said it, his heart sank. With no Hell, there would be no Crowley. One came with the other. Crowley rattled off his favorite composers, which he knew Aziraphale coveted.

“And that’s just the start of what you’ll lose if you win. No more fascinating little restaurants where they know you, no gravlax in dill sauce…”

Aziraphale wasn’t listening anymore. He could feel the slight breeze through his short curls, could see the expectant ducks waiting for bread along the wire fencing. He could almost see the Procope. The yellow light of its chandeliers spilled out onto the cobblestones, flowers and vines hung from the balcony. His favorite fascinating little restaurant, where they used to know his name, before Crowley had asked him to make up his mind.

This would be their end, then. The decision was made for him. It was almost a relief to have it over and done with.

“We’ve only got eleven years, and then it’s all over. We have to work together.”

Crowley still had hope, then. Aziraphale didn’t expect it, though it made sense. Those who have already fallen cannot be made to stoop any further.

“No.” He refused and denied. It was lunch that got him. He’d never said no to lunch, and if Crowley asked it was as inevitable as the ineffable plan.

///

Taking care of the antichrist seemed like it would be a decades-long nightmare. Instead, it was oddly comforting to keep watch of the boy. Despite his evil parentage, he truly did just seem to be a little boy. A moody little boy, sure, but a boy all the same. He also liked gardening, despite the unruliness of the vines and spiny weeds that seemed to pop up overnight. (“All they need is a good thrashing,” Crowley once said. Aziraphale refused to take his advice, though he had to admit that the demon’s potted plants were always flourishing.) The task also made it necessary to meet with Crowley weekly to discuss the boy’s development and compare notes.

“He’s been mischievous lately. I saw him burying figurines in the vegetable plot,” Aziraphale said disdainfully. He’d just planted chives, which were fragile before they properly took root.

“Mischievous doesn’t mean evil, angel. They’re two very different things.”

“Surely it’s just a very early precursor to true malice.”

“Dunno about that,” Crowley said. “You’re mischievous yourself.”

“I’m not!”

Crowley shrugged. “You’re currently having coffee with a demon.”

“Hush,” Aziraphale muttered. “I fear his disposition is inevitable. What if this is all futile?”

“Now, I never knew you to be a cynic.”

“Every day now, I feel as though we’re running out of time.”

Crowley took another sip of coffee. “Maybe we are.”

“Don’t say that.”

“You can say it, and I can’t?”

“Precisely.”

Crowley’s mood was dampened. “Finish your drink, angel. We should be getting back.”

With a sinking heart, Aziraphale finished the latte and stood. Every day, they creeped closer and closer to the end of the world, unless their experiment on Warlock succeeds. If either side won, he would lose. It was either eternal damnation or eternity without book shops and cafés, parisian or otherwise, and Crowley. Both results were terrifying to even contemplate.

Aziraphale blinked, and Crowley had transformed back into his nanny attire. He quite liked the hair, curly and red like his hair should be. With an exaggerated sigh he did the same. They returned to the mansion as an unrefined gardener and a goth middle-aged woman. An odd couple indeed.

///

Crowley was dressed in white for the birthday party. Aziraphale quite liked him in white, it’d been a few decades since he’d worn another color than black and dark grey. His hair was short, but that was the fashion for men at the time. He never really understood fashion, anyways. He liked clothes of course, with all their clever buttons and ruffles. But the constant change in human’s whims seemed unnecessary, and he gave up keeping track of it all long ago. He’d found clothes he’d liked and stuck with them, sometimes for centuries.

Crowley stared at him as he set up his performance. Aziraphale attempted a smile and utterly failed, while Crowley’s scowl deepened in response.

Eleven years of efforts led to the boy who he watched making fun of one of his party guests for the boy’s scuffed shoes. Crowley’s influence seemed more apparent in the boy than his own. Maybe the demon was just too good at his job, and Warlock would name the hell hound “throat ripper” or something just as stomach-turning.

If there was any time to put his heart in order and tell Crowley how he felt, it was far gone. At the very least, they’d spent their last years on Earth working together, being together in the ways that they could. The war would start and end, and they’d know that they’d tried their best to avoid it.

Later, covered in cake and custard, Aziraphale looked at Crowley in the passenger seat of his car.

“No dog.” Crowley said.

“No dog.”

“Wrong boy.”

“Wrong boy.”

It was funny, then, at the end of days, that he felt a twinge of hope. It wasn’t over yet, they were still together.

///

They were doing something about it, at least. Perhaps if they found the right boy they could- well, they hadn’t quite figured that part out yet- but they’d do something, surely. They started at the place where it all started, the hospital. The last thing Aziraphale expected to happen was to be shot, and particularly not with a blue paintball.

“Look at the state of this coat,” he said. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knew it was silly to be upset over an article of clothing when Earth was coming to an end as they knew it.

Still. “I’ve kept this in tip-top condition for over 180 years now. I’ll never get this stain out!”

Crowley frowned and circled him to survey the damage.

“Well, you can miracle it away.”

“Yes, but…” he sighed. “I would always know the stain was there. Underneath, I mean.”

Crowley looked at the stain for a second more, before leaning towards him. With an exhale the stain evaporated into dust and floated away.

Aziraphale beamed. Despite the fact that it was the end of it, the world had never seemed better to him. “Thank you.”

At the dawn of armageddon, it seemed idiotic that he’d ever kept it secret at all; it was love. Maybe it’d taken him thousands of years to accept it, but when the end came near he knew it well enough. There was not a single other force more important, for humans or demons or angels or God. There was love, and there was everything else.

They’d have to survive. If Aziraphale wanted his existence to mean anything, he had no other choice. He picked up the weapon to observe it. If they were going to make it far enough for any of it to matter, they’d have to work at it.

///

It seemed simple, for just that moment. Then Crowley ran into that poor woman, and Aziraphale found the book. The book. He took it into his arms and didn’t tell Crowley. Part of him feared what he’d find inside: scared that the prophecies of Agnes Nutter might be false, and absolutely terrified that her visions could be true.

When the angel that readeth these words of mine, in his shop of other men’s books, then the final days are certes upon us.

He refused to get up from the chair until he’d scanned nearly every prophecy. Page after page after page. Some seemed like complete gibberish. Others were as clear as day, absolutely indisputable historical events, some that he’d even witnessed himself.

For better or for worse, Agnes did not describe the actual end of days, who would win. There was hope, still. A tiny particle of hope the size of a grain of dust that swirled around his bookshop, yes, but all the same.

///

“Have a nice doomsday,” Crowley had said. Aziraphale felt cold and empty as he continued to pour over Agnes Nutter’s nice and accurate prophecies. It’ll be fixed soon enough, he thought. With a shaking hand he brought his mug to his lips, taking a sip of chamomile. There wouldn’t have to run; they could go back to the way it had been. There had to be a chance.

Nearly every cell in his human form wanted to accept Crowley’s offer. It could just be the two of them, together. Eternity with one another, not as demons or angels- just as themselves.

Aziraphale craved it, could already imagine it, but the gravity and love held him steadfast to the planet. He wanted their lives on Earth even more and couldn’t flee as it burned. He couldn’t give up on his fascinating little restaurants, or the rest.

It’d all go back to normal, he was sure of it. They hadn’t lost yet. He’d turn towards the light, however cold and unforgiving it was.

The war could be avoided if only he could convince the angels. Weren’t they meant to be the beacons of light and hope, the saviors of humanity? He’d always bickered about the nature of angels with Crowley, about how they might adhere to some arbitrary rules but when it really came down to it they always stood for peace.

He had to try. From his bookshop, he called upon Gabriel to meet him. Though he could’ve used more angelic methods, the telephone did the job just fine.

Out of breath, he explained to him the situation. The prophecies, the real, true, promising prophecies that didn’t say that there had to be a war, or that anyone had to win.

“I just thought there was something we could do,” Aziraphale said.

“There is,” Gabriel replied, and Aziraphale’s spirits lifted for a millisecond. “We can fight and we can win.”

“But there doesn’t have to be a war.”

“Of course there does! Otherwise, how would we win it?”

The spark of hope died in him just then. There was no way around it. The angels he was a part of, the angels that he’d defended to Crowley for years didn’t care about humanity at all. There was just the plan, that was all. And how could it be otherwise? Besides himself none of them had ever interacted with actual humans on a personal level, aside from a few missions as messengers.

Was that all he was? Another adherent to an ideology and system that oftentimes made no sense at all? If their goal wasn’t good, then what were they even there for? He stood in the middle of the walking path. Bile rose in his throat, beads of sweat formed on the back of his neck. Both burning hot and ice cold, he began to walk home. His home would be gone, soon. It was, of course, ineffable.

No. He shook his head, and began to mutter to himself. No, it wasn’t possible. It could all still be sorted. What was Gabriel? Just another angel. A powerful one, but an angel all the same. Aziraphale began to mentally recall a ritual he’d learned long ago, far before he’d made earth his home. Yes, it was a solution. God would understand, would see why this was all unnecessary.

Aziraphale turned when he heard tires screech to a halt on the sidewalk beside him.

“Angel! I’m sorry, I apologize, whatever I said I didn’t mean it. Work with me, I’m apologizing here. Yes? Good, get in the car.”

He forced himself to stay rooted in place. Crowley continued to speak, a rush of words that sounded so blessedly hopeful-

Could he give all of it up, for Crowley? All of his books, his favorite foods, the authors and poets and painters he loved to converse with throughout the eras. When that was done away with, could he live just as himself, just with the being standing in front of him.

Perhaps. But he couldn’t give up, not yet.

“I’m quite sure if I can just reach the right people then I can get all this sorted out.”

Crowley stepped forward. He still smelled like freshly ground pepper, fresh and bright and so close that he would only have to move his hand a few centimeters to be able to grab his wrist and let himself be whisked away. Alpha Centauri. A star system that sounded more like a fairytale land than an actual place they could reach.

“There aren’t any right people, there’s just God, moving in mysterious ways and not talking to any of us!”

He would talk to him, make him understand.

“That won’t happen. You’re so clever- how can somebody as clever as you be so stupid?”

Aziraphale felt that awful pain again, like the network of systems that kept his organs functioning were pulling apart from each other, collapsing under their own weight. This would be forgotten, after he’d stopped the war from happening. Crowley would apologize, and he would too, he decided. It would all be set right.

“I forgive you,��� he said. The man -demon- in front of him would say the same soon enough. He had to believe it.

“Oh,” Crowley muttered, like the air had been forced out of him. In an instant, he set his jaw and flounced back towards the car.

“When I’m up in the stars, I won’t even think about you!” he yelled. Aziraphale tipped his chin up as his eyes filled with tears.

“I’ve been there,” a man said, voice filled with sympathy. “You’re better off without him.”

“I’m not,” Aziraphale admitted in response. It was a realization that he’d come upon the instant he said it. Far after the man had continued walking, he brushed a tear from his eye with a sleeve.

“I’m not,” he repeated. His body worked on muscle memory as he made his way towards the bookshop. He could picture the correct sigil perfectly, and could only hope that he could repeat the same pattern in reality as it was in his imagination. The sky continued to darken as he rushed past humans, who seemed to be in just as much of a hurry as he was. His stomach churned as he thought that their hurrying could end horrifyingly soon. He kept his head down and eyes focused on his shoes, to make it more bearable. It would be impossible to see their faces, to watch their expressions. The world was about to end, and they had absolutely no idea. The angel only looked up when three of his own kind crowded against him at the mouth of an alleyway. Desperately, he tried to explain, to make them understand.

“Don’t think your boyfriend will get you special treatment in hell. He’s in trouble too.” Uriel said. Crowley had said it, but to hear it from angels was somehow more horrifying. He and Crowley were being cast out by their own kind. They were the same at last, yet in the most disfiguring way.

Uriel held him against the wall by his coat. Their eyes looked so flat, like cold stones. Not angry, or spiteful; an absolute apathy.

“We’re the good guys,” he said, but he didn’t believe it. The three shot up into the heavens, leaving him on the grey street. Humans bustled past, oblivious to what was to come. Despite their rushing about, he was absolutely alone.

///

There was nothing left to do. Metatron said what Gabriel said. If God thought differently, They refused to show otherwise.

Crowley. Their side, the only side he had left. The only side Crowley had left, too, after what Uriel had said. His stomach dropped to think of what demons do to those that betray them. He bolted for the telephone, dialing Crowley’s number with shaking hands.

“Hello? I know where the anti-” he stopped, Crowley was talking over him. “I know who you are you idiot, I telephoned you. I know where the antichrist-”

“Yeah, it’s not a good time, I’ve got an old friend here.”

An old friend? He was Crowley’s old friend.

He turned to find Sargent Shadwell approaching him, tools of exorcism in hand. The last thing he could handle at that very moment.

///

“Aziraphale?” Crowley asked. He kept coming in and out of focus, his voice sounded far away, but it was him.

“Afraid I’ve rather made a mess of things,” he said. “Did you go to Alpha Centauri?”

“Nah, I-I changed my mind. Stuff happened. I lost my best friend.”

Perhaps it was the “old friend” he’d mentioned on the phone before. Aziraphale didn’t let himself dwell on it. “I’m so sorry to hear it.” They didn’t have time to talk about any of it, if they wanted to have a chance.

“Listen, back in my bookshop there’s a book I need you to get.”

Crowley frowned, rested his head in his hand. “Your bookshop isn’t there anymore.”

“Oh?”

“I’m really sorry, it burned down.”

Aziraphale paused. Without a body, he thought he couldn’t feel emotions the same way he had, but it was still there, that awful inexplicable sorrow. Without organs or bones or nerves, he could still feel it.

“All of it?”

“Yeah. What was the book?”

“The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of-”

“Agnes Nutter! Yes, I took it!” He held the book up, voice filled with hope.

They would go together and stand side by side. They would go down as their own side, if they had to. He thought of saying it. But no, best not. They still had a chance, they still had to believe. Not in Lucifer, or even in God, but in themselves. In whatever they had made together in six thousand years.

///

In the end, it was Adam who saved them. Adam, who fought for their side. Adam’s father stood where Satan once was.

Just a boy, and he fixed everything. He was just as Crowley and Aziraphale were. Not ethereal or demonic, evil or pure. He was just a person, and everything that came with that. Sure, he and Crowley were immortal beings who were created near the beginning of time, but they were, when it came down to it, people.

Two people that had more time. Aziraphale stood in the glow of the sun peeking out from dispersing storm clouds, relief filling his soul.

He looked at Crowley. More time. However much it was, it would be enough.

///

As they sat on the old wooden bench waiting for the bus, the fear slowly trickled out of him. He could still feel that warmth that he knew was the boy’s doing. It was all around him, like a warm fog, in his head and his heart.

He could’ve said it, just then. Crowley’s facial expression was agonizingly unreadable as he passed him the bottle.

“Angel,” he said, and Aziraphale could hear it a trillion more times. “What if the Almighty planned it like this, all along. From the very beginning?”

Planned them ? It sounded ridiculous but was entirely and beautifully possible.

“Could have. I wouldn’t put it past her.”

It was waiting to spill out of his mouth, all of it. He almost wanted Crowley to say it instead, but he didn’t forget.

If you ever make up your mind, will you tell me?

The postman came to collect all of the objects. Once again, he gave his sword to a human. He’d spent milenia questioning the choice, but now he knew that it was the right one to make if it led him all the way here.

When the bus came into view, his heart lifted. Home. Everything could return to the way it was.

“I suppose I should get him to drop me off at the bookshop.”

“It burned down, remember?”

His home, ash.

“You can stay at my place, if you’d like.”

“I don’t think my side would like that.”

“You don’t have a side anymore. Neither of us do. We’re on our own side.”

To hear it from Crowley had everything click into place. Our side.

“Have you still got your mobile phone?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley patted at his jeans pocket. “Yeah, right here. Why?”

Aziraphale snatched it from his grip. “We’ve got to go somewhere.” Though the device was largely unfamiliar to him, he managed to open up the keypad and type in a very familiar number.

“Where?” Crowley asked, but it was too late for the angel to give a response.

“Bonsoir?” a woman’s voice asked.

Aziraphale’s heart was pounding too hard for him to even attempt French. “Yes, hello. I’d like to make a reservation.

“For what day, monsieur?”

“Tonight.”

“I’m sorry, I’m afraid we’re going to close soon and aren’t serving any new customers tonight. If you’d like I-”

“Well, it’s-” he paused. “It’s quite important. Let me just-” he took Crowley by the hand, interlocking their fingers together. He detested this method, but it would have to do. He squeezed his eyes shut and forced them through the call. His stomach lurched as though his stomach might be left on the bench while his body fell through the telephone connection. He only opened his eyes when he heard a woman yelp and jump out of her chair. They were crammed into a tiny office with a terrified restaurant manager. Just as she was about to let out a horrified scream, he reached out to put a hand on her shoulder.

“No, no. It’s alright. You think this is just an everyday thing, don’t you?”

She looked confused for a second, then relaxed. “Oui, bien sûr.”

“Crowley, make them reserve a table for us,” he whispered loudly.

“I- yeah. Can you, uh, hold a table for two?” Crowley asked.

“Not a problem,” she answered with a smile.

“Thank you, really. This means more than you can imagine.” He realized he was still holding Crowley’s hand, and used it to pull him through the office door. It was quite awkward to force their way through a bustling kitchen and out into the first floor of the dining room.

“Café Procope,” Crowley said. “Why are we here?”

“Will you just wait a minute?” Aziraphale asked. He pulled him towards the front entrance and out onto the street. It was a warm Paris night, tourists and locals passed the restaurant cheerfully, hand in hand. They didn’t look so strange together, on such a street. Just like two human beings in love, in a city that was known for the feeling.

Aziraphale’s eyes flicked to the mouth of the alleyway right next to the restaurant. He stood with his back against the wall.

There was so much to say. Six thousand years of explaining and apologizing. Six thousand overwhelming and indescribable years stood between him and kissing Crowley. Now that he let himself think about it, it took over every thought, leaving no room for any speech or proclamation at all.

He reached up with nervous hands and took Crowley’s glasses off. His eyes were shockingly yellow, nearly golden in the fading light.

He swallowed. “Crowley,” he began, not even sure of how he was going to end the sentence as he started it. “I realize now that I’d made an awful mistake nearly three hundred years ago. I should’ve-”

Before he could finish his sentence Crowley had pushed his lips against his and broken away just as quickly. Then again, once more, and then he stayed there. Aziraphale rushed to hold onto his narrow hips, to bring him closer. Every sense both human and angelic focused on Crowley as one of his hands moved from his jaw to his blonde hair. They only broke away when Crowley was gasping for air.

“I forgot-” he breathed, “that I need to do that-”

“Do what?” Aziraphale asked.

“Breathe.”

Both laughed, already breathless, still holding each other. Crowley pushed his face into Aziraphale’s neck, his hands gripping his forearms like he never intended to let go.

“Let me get this right,” he said, voice muffled by the angel’s collar. “So all it took, for you to make up your mind, was the world to nearly end.”

“Oh bugger off,” Aziraphale responded. It tickled when Crowley laughed against his skin. He picked his head up to look Aziraphale in the eyes.

“Angel, I would’ve waited six thousand more years if you’d needed me to.”

Aziraphale kissed him again, just for a moment. “Dinner, then?”

“Do you think they serve beef bourguignon here, these days? I remember that they had a great beef bourguignon.”

“Let's find out, shall we?”

They moved from the shadows near the alleyway into the warm glow of light. They walked towards the waiter, who most certainly had seen them kiss in the always only a few meters away.

“I believe we have a reservation?”

“A table for two? This way, messieurs.”

Crowley took his hand again as they climbed the stairs to the second floor.

///

Aziraphale woke to the quiet sound of breathing, and movement underneath him. He suddenly realized that he’d been sleeping with his head on Crowley’s bare chest. After a millisecond of surprise and borderline panic, he relaxed again. He could hear the drumbeat of Crowley’s heart through his skin and took comfort in the rhythm.

“You’re awake?” Crowley muttered. Aziraphale tipped his head up to look into his serpentine eyes.

“Yes, I’m afraid. I quite like sleeping. It’d been a while, as well.”

“Isn’t it great?” Crowley said through a yawn. Aziraphale lifted his head when he noticed something different about the demon.

“Your hair,” he said. “You’ve changed it.”

Crowley smiled, all teeth. He proudly shook his head to make his curls bounce. “Do you like it?”

It was the same rich red hue, but shoulder length and magnificently curly. Aziraphale couldn’t resist reaching his hand up to card through it. The curls smoothed out as he ran his fingers through them before bouncing cheerily back into place when he pulled his hand away.

“Why, it’s gorgeous.” he continued to watch the curls straighten and curl back up again and again. He couldn’t take his hands out of it even if he wanted to. “Did you know that I adored your long hair?”

“Y’ told me yourself, last night. You had quite a bit to drink, didn’t you?”

Aziraphale blushed, which was an odd thing to do when you’re already naked and laying on top of another being. Physical bodies were mysterious in their ways.

“Perhaps I did, but if there’s ever been a time to celebrate…”

“This is it,” Crowley finished.

Despite hating that he had to, he detangled his fingers from Crowley’s hair and sat up.

“You remember where we are, don’t you?”

“Of course I do… it’s…” Aziraphale’s eyes quickly scanned the opulent room. “The Ritz Paris, isn’t it?”

“That inn we’d stayed at the last time had closed, thought this was the next best choice.”

Silky curtains let in soft light, illuminating beautiful ornate artworks hung on the cream-colored walls.

“This is…” he didn’t quite have the words.

“Nice?” Crowley tried. Aziraphale shot him a look of distaste.

“What, you can’t say I’m wrong!”

“No, but it’s more than nice.”

“Doesn’t mean it's not-not-nice.”

Aziraphale’s gaze softened as he looked at Crowley’s lean shoulders, his jutting collarbone.

“To think, all of this happened because you asked me why God didn’t keep the tree of knowledge on the moon.”

“It’s a fair point, don’t you think?”

Aziraphale smiled. “I suppose so.”

Even as he nestled his head into the crook of Crowley’s arm, he let out a sigh.

“They’ll come looking for us, soon, and it won’t take them long.”

“I know, 'been thinking about it. I might’ve figured out Agnes Nutter’s last prophecy.”

“You have?”

“Yeah, I’ll explain.”

A pause.

“Crowley?”

“Yeah, just give me a minute.” He moved his hand up to rest in the angel’s blonde hair. Was he an angel anymore? He thought. Was Crowley still a demon? What were they if they’d been cast out from their own kind?

“We’re together,” he said aloud and closed his eyes.

Crowley entangled his other hand with Aziraphale’s. “Yeah. Together.”

“At last.”

“At last.”

[peraltasames]

from now on

post-prison jake and amy fluffy timez @fourdrinkamy u have turned me over to the light i’m finally posting something with (mostly) no angst!!

title from the greatest showman song

read on ao3

It’s the little things that make Jake feel like he’s really home again - watching TV while eating the takeout dinner they order after Amy burns the first one; Charles sending him a dozen photos of Nikolaj and Genevieve in the span of an hour; Holt’s voice yelling “Peralta!” after he spills hot chocolate all over important paperwork. These small, seemingly insignificant moments of his everyday life are what he craved most while in prison, even more than the vindication of arresting Hawkins or the satisfaction of being a free man.

Still, three weeks out of Jericho Supermax there are things that are different than before. He eats less and wakes up earlier, used to the rigorous schedule enforced by the prison guards. It’s a little harder to sleep at night when somewhere in the back of his brain, there’s the fear that the past few weeks have been a dream he could wake up from at any moment. He’s also still on desk duty, spending his days filling out forms while he watches exciting cases pass him by.

And then there’s Amy, his ray of light through any of the remaining darkness. On the three-week mark of his release, Jake comes home to her sitting on their bed, pieces of paper sprawled everywhere.

“What’s all this?”

Her head jolts up from where it was previously buried in a binder, her pursed lips spreading into a smile.

“Just looking over the life calendar,” she answers casually, scooting over to make room for him to sit next to her. “Making sure everything’s still on track.”

He glances over the array of her hopes and dreams for the future, plans for her advancement to becoming the youngest captain in the NYPD. It’s meticulously organized down to weekly tasks designed to help her reach her goal on time. It dawns on him that two months spending every moment of free time on getting him out of prison might have shifted her plans.

“Ames, I-“

“Don’t you dare apologize, Jake,” she interjects with a cautionary look. “Besides, I’m barely behind. I still solved as many cases as I normally would’ve while you were gone, even with your case as my primary focus.”

Jake furrows his eyebrows, trying to do the math of that in his head. “How is that possible? Did you even sleep?”

Amy goes silent, her eyes shifting away from him and back to the binders. Jake immediately catches his mistake, his arms wrapping around her from behind in an attempt to heal the wound he just opened. She confided in him on his second night home (the first was mostly relieved kisses and passionate reunion sex) about her many, many nights lying awake with no way to know if he was safe or when he was coming home.

“Sorry, babe,” he murmurs, lips pressed to her shoulder. “Why don’t we put this stuff away for tonight?”

She sighs, leaning back into his chest and holding his hand where it rests on her ribs. “Okay.”

He helps her reorganize the papers into their respective binders and place them back on the shelf, then silently retires to the kitchen to make them each a cup of tea. She curls up on the couch in fleece pajamas and beckons him over to join her, to which he happily complies.

“How were Gina and Iggy?” Amy asks him once they’ve settled into a comfortable position, sipping her tea with her head on his chest and pulling the blanket draped over both of them further up to cover her entire body. He adds Amy always being cold to his mental list of things he didn’t realize how much he missed.

“Good, Gina hugged me and told me how much she missed me and then immediately blamed it on the new mom hormones and made me run like three errands for her.”

She laughs softly, the sound filling his heart with unbridled joy. “Sounds like Gina.”

Jake puts his mug down to properly hold her, one hand rubbing her back while the other rests on her legs. This is at the top of the list of things he did realize how much he missed, the thing he spent every waking moment in his cell (along with most of his dreams) thinking about.

“Nine months,” she says after a moment. He looks down at her quizzically, completely stumped as to what she’s talking about. “When I was looking over my calendar, I realized…almost a month with me undercover in Texas, six months in Florida, two months in prison. We’ve spent more than a third of the time we’ve been dating apart.”

It feels like someone’s wrapped a fist around his heart. He hates, despises the universe for doing everything it can to separate him from her. It’s a cruel injustice that they will never get those nine months back, that they’ve spent so much of their relationship having to make up for lost time.

“I’m never leaving you again,” he swears, punctuating the promise with a kiss to her forehead. “I swear to god, Ames, never.”

He’ll add an extra layer of security to this vow in two weeks when he pulls off the ultimate Halloween heist, and he’ll swear to it again when he says “I do” six months after that. Even now, though, with only an unspoken understanding that they will spend the rest of their lives together, he can tell that she believes him.

“Good. Because I’m never letting you go.”

She shows him how literally she means it by curling both arms around his chest and hugging him tightly.

“Perfect, that means you’ll watch Die Hard 3 with me.”

She groans against his chest, her grip on him unwavering. “Babe, you know that’s my least favourite one.”

“What if I give you a massage while we watch it?”

Her face lights up at his offer. He knows for a fact that she’s sore from working a case in the field the past few days, though she hasn’t talked about work with him much since he’s been on desk duty.

Jake grabs the remote and turns on the TV, already displaying the main menu of the DVD he optimistically popped in before heading into their bedroom to find her earlier. She turns her back to him and sighs with relaxation as he begins to rub her shoulders, something he’s gotten really good at it over the years they’ve been together judging by how frequently she asks him to do it and the sounds she makes while he does (sounds that he’s already very familiar with, though he’s usually doing something very different with his hands when he hears them).

“I love you,” she says twenty minutes into the movie, when she’s decided to give him a break and lean back against his chest so he can press intermittent, lazy kisses to her head. He’s heard her say it a thousand times, including through the speaker of a crappy cell phone every night in prison, and every time he thinks it could never sound any better. Every time, Amy proves him wrong.

“Love you too, babe.“ He doesn’t think that he ever manages to make it sound as good as she does, but the way that she immediately turns in his arms and kisses him is all the validation he needs.

All the mob bosses and corrupt cops in New York City couldn’t drag him away from her again.

[verdigrisprowl]

Uhm... AU... where war never happened?

It's literally just the functionist universe.

No I'm joking.

Somehow this turned into vigilante hero AU whoops enjoy.

1. In canon, Prowl was like "uhhh as an enforcer I'm qualified to say that the enforcers and senate suck and need to clean up their behavior?" and the Decepticons were like "yes, that's correct, and we will accomplish this by murdering all of them, all of their supporters, all of their supporters' friends, anyone who ever interacted with their supporters' friends--" and Prowl went "ohhhkay that's too far" and switched back to siding with the senate because the alternative was so much worse. Sooo, if the Decepticons weren't stirring shit Prowl would've kept on going "HEY! we collectively suck and need to stop sucking!" until he was executed, fired, or sent in for shadowplay. He escapes the Institute where he was sent for shadowplay and when the senate is like "WHAT, WHAT THE FUCK, HOW??" mnemosurgeon trainee Tumbler is like "gosh, I-I just don't know, it happened so fast, he simply overpowered me, there was nothing I could do at all, can't imagine why he wasn't restrained properly--"

2. Now Prowl is like, Cybertronian Batman. Except poorer. He fights crime by night and tries to right the social injustices that lead to crime by day. He's definitely broken into a couple senator's houses to expose their corruption in ways they can't sweep under the rug. Ratbat and Proteus are in jail now and the entire senate fragging detests Prowl. They're like "WHY HASN'T HE BEEN STOPPED" and head of enforcers Orion Pax is like "gee... I, I just don't know... he keeps slipping through our fingers... so slippery... I don't know how he does it... he's just, too good for me..."

3. Among Prowl's other supporters: Senator Shockwave and the house of Ambus are secretly funding him. A whole mess of scientists are eager, at risk of their own punishment, to keep him stocked with new attention deflectors, armor, nonlethal weaponry... Just about everyone who's passed through the Jhiaxian Academy has been or is willing to be his sidekick for a mission or two: dude who turns invisible, dude who breaks stuff by touching it, dude who makes forcefields, dude who teleports, dude who reads minds... He'a got a nice little social network.

4. Due to Prowl's frametype being mass produced, he can easily walk around in public just by repainting himself because millions of Cybertronians look identical to him. Sometimes one of his lookalikes will be arrested under suspicion of being him and more and more often they'll be like "ha, yeah, I sure am Prowl, frag you." He's got a dozen little hideouts and each one has dozens of different cans of paint colors so he can just redecorate himself and go out. He's gotten in with a Seeker who bounces between common street con artist and low-level politician who lives and breathes cold constructed kibble mods, and so can help switch out Prowl's parts to make him even harder to recognize. It's still nerve-racking as hell, though, wandering around in public in broad daylight to get fuel and equipment, knowing nothing has changed except the color of his paint and the shape of his shoulders, and hoping he won't be recognized.

5. Eventually enough corrupt senators are kicked out and new, more progressive ones are moved in that they give Prowl a pardon, a medal, and invite him back into the enforcers. He goes "That's nice and all but I don't trust like that, I'm sticking to the underground and continuing vigilanteing until I know you're serious about all this. Call me again in fifty thousand years."

Bonus: movies are made about him. He's popular. Everything is nice.

[theadmiringbog]

RULE 1 / Stand up straight with your shoulders back

RULE 2 / Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping

RULE 3 / Make friends with people who want the best for you

RULE 4 / Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today

RULE 5 / Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them

RULE 6 / Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world

RULE 7 / Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)

RULE 8 / Tell the truth—or, at least, don’t lie

RULE 9 / Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t

RULE 10 / Be precise in your speech

RULE 11 / Do not bother children when they are skateboarding

RULE 12 / Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

--

RULE 1 / Stand up straight with your shoulders back

If a dominant lobster is badly defeated, its brain basically dissolves. Then it grows a new, subordinate’s brain—one more appropriate to its new, lowly position. Its original brain just isn’t sophisticated to manage the transformation from king to bottom dog without virtually complete dissolution and regrowth. Anyone who has experienced a painful transformation after a serious defeat in romance or career may feel some sense of kinship with the once successful crustacean.

--

Among the chimp troupes he studied, males who were successful in the longer term had to buttress their physical prowess with more sophisticated attributes. Even the most brutal chimp despot can be taken down, after all, by two opponents, each three-quarters as mean. In consequence, males who stay on top longer are those who form reciprocal coalitions with their lower-status compatriots, and who pay careful attention to the troupe’s females and their infants. The political ploy of baby-kissing is literally millions of years old.                

--

“In my kingdom,” as the Red Queen tells Alice in Wonderland, “you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place.”                

--

If you have a high status, on the other hand, the counter’s cold, pre-reptilian mechanics assume that your niche is secure, productive and safe, and that you are well buttressed with social support. It thinks the chance that something will damage you is low and can be safely discounted. Change might be opportunity, instead of disaster.                

--

If someone is badly hurt at some point in life—traumatized—the dominance counter can transform in a manner that makes additional hurt more rather than less likely. This often happens in the case of people, now adults, who were viciously bullied during childhood or adolescence. They become anxious and easily upset. They shield themselves with a defensive crouch, and avoid the direct eye contact interpretable as a dominance challenge. This means that the damage caused by the bullying (the lowering of status and confidence) can continue, even after the bullying has ended.                

--

When the wakening occurs—when once-naïve people recognize in themselves the seeds of evil and monstrosity, and see themselves as dangerous (at least potentially)— their fear decreases. They develop more self-respect. Then, perhaps, they begin to resist oppression. They see that they have the ability to withstand, because they are terrible too. They see they can and must stand up, because they begin to understand how genuinely monstrous they will become, otherwise, feeding on their resentment, transforming it into the most destructive of wishes. To say it again: There is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrated, and strength of character. This is one of the most difficult lessons of life.                

--

Maybe you are a loser. And maybe you’re not—but if you are, you don’t have to continue in that mode. Maybe you just have a bad habit. Maybe you’re even just a collection of bad habits. Nonetheless, even if you came by your poor posture honestly—even if you were unpopular or bullied at home or in grade school—it’s not necessarily appropriate now. Circumstances change. If you slump around, with the same bearing that characterizes a defeated lobster, people will assign you a lower status, and the old counter that you share with crustaceans, sitting at the very base of your brain, will assign you a low dominance number. Then your brain will not produce as much serotonin. This will make you less happy, and more anxious and sad, and more likely to back down when you should stand up for yourself. It will also decrease the probability that you will get to live in a good neighbourhood, have access to the highest quality resources, and obtain a healthy, desirable mate. It will render you more likely to abuse cocaine and alcohol, as you live for the present in a world full of uncertain futures. It will increase your susceptibility to heart disease, cancer and dementia. All in all, it’s just not good.                

--

Thus strengthened and emboldened, you may choose to embrace Being, and work for its furtherance and improvement. Thus strengthened, you may be able to stand, even during the illness of a loved one, even during the death of a parent, and allow others to find strength alongside you when they would otherwise be overwhelmed with despair. Thus emboldened, you will embark on the voyage of your life, let your light shine, so to speak, on the heavenly hill, and pursue your rightful destiny. Then the meaning of your life may be sufficient to keep the corrupting influence of mortal despair at bay. Then you may be able to accept the terrible burden of the World, and find joy.                

--

RULE 2 / Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping

Perhaps Heaven is something you must build, and immortality something you must earn.                

--

You need to consider the future and think, “What might my life look like if I were caring for myself properly? What career would challenge me and render me productive and helpful, so that I could shoulder my share of the load, and enjoy the consequences? What should I be doing, when I have some freedom, to improve my health, expand my knowledge, and strengthen my body?”                

--

RULE 3 / MAKE FRIENDS WITH PEOPLE WHO WANT THE BEST FOR YOU                 

When people have a low opinion of their own worth—or, perhaps, when they refuse responsibility for their lives—they choose a new acquaintance, of precisely the type who proved troublesome in the past. Such people don’t believe that they deserve any better—so they don’t go looking for it. Or, perhaps, they don’t want the trouble of better. Freud called this a “repetition compulsion.”                

--

Are you so sure the person crying out to be saved has not decided a thousand times to accept his lot of pointless and worsening suffering, simply because it is easier than shouldering any true responsibility? Are you enabling a delusion?                

--

Vice is easy. Failure is easy, too. It’s easier not to shoulder a burden. It’s easier not to think, and not to do, and not to care. It’s easier to put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today, and drown the upcoming months and years in today’s cheap pleasures. As the infamous father of the Simpson clan puts it, immediately prior to downing a jar of mayonnaise and vodka, “That’s a problem for Future Homer. Man, I don’t envy that guy!”               

--

RULE 4 / COMPARE YOURSELF TO WHO YOU WERE YESTERDAY, NOT TO WHO SOMEONE ELSE IS TODAY                 

You are either a success, a comprehensive, singular, over-all good thing, or its opposite, a failure, a comprehensive, singular, irredeemably bad thing. The words imply no alternative and no middle ground. However, in a world as complex as ours, such generalizations (really, such failure to differentiate) are a sign of naive, unsophisticated or even malevolent analysis. There are vital degrees and gradations of value obliterated by this binary system, and the consequences are not good.                

--

The world allows for many ways of Being. If you don’t succeed at one, you can try another. You can pick something better matched to your unique mix of strengths, weaknesses and situation. Furthermore, if changing games does not work, you can invent a new one.                

--

But winning at everything might only mean that you’re not doing anything new or difficult. You might be winning but you’re not growing, and growing might be the most important form of winning.                

--

When the internal critic puts you down using such comparisons, here’s how it operates: First, it selects a single, arbitrary domain of comparison (fame, maybe, or power). Then it acts as if that domain is the only one that is relevant. Then it contrasts you unfavourably with someone truly stellar, within that domain. It can take that final step even further, using the unbridgeable gap between you and its target of comparison as evidence for the fundamental injustice of life.                

--

You set the following goal: by the end of the day, I want things in my life to be a tiny bit better than they were this morning. Then you ask yourself, “What could I do, that I would do, that would accomplish that, and what small thing would I like as a reward?” Then you do what you have decided to do, even if you do it badly. Then you give yourself that damn coffee, in triumph. Maybe you feel a bit stupid about it, but you do it anyway. And you do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. And, with each day, your baseline of comparison gets a little higher, and that’s magic. That’s compound interest. Do that for three years, and your life will be entirely different. Now you’re aiming for something higher. Now you’re wishing on a star. Now the beam is disappearing from your eye, and you’re learning to see. And what you aim at determines what you see. That’s worth repeating. What you aim at determines what you see.                

--

What would your life look like, if it were better? What would Life Itself look like? What does “better” even mean?                

--

Everything you value is a product of unimaginably lengthy developmental processes, personal, cultural and biological. You don’t understand how what you want—and, therefore, what you see—is conditioned by the immense, abysmal, profound past.                

--

Faith is not the childish belief in magic. That is ignorance or even willful blindness. It is instead the realization that the tragic irrationalities of life must be counterbalanced by an equally irrational commitment to the essential goodness of Being.                

--

Notice something that bothers you, that concerns you, that will not let you be, which you could fix, that you would fix. You can find such somethings by asking yourself (as if you genuinely want to know) three questions: “What is it that is bothering me?” “Is that something I could fix?” and “Would I actually be willing to fix it?”                

--

If you find that the answer is “no,” to any or all of the questions, then look elsewhere. Aim lower. Search until you find something that bothers you, that you could fix, that you would fix, and then fix it. That might be enough for the day.                

--

What if you allowed yourself a glass of wine with dinner, or curled up on the sofa and read, or watched a stupid movie, as a reward? What if you instructed your wife, or your husband, to say “good job” after you fixed whatever you fixed? Would that motivate you? The people from whom you want thanks might not be very proficient in offering it, to begin with, but that shouldn’t stop you. People can learn,                

--

Ask yourself what you would require to be motivated to undertake the job, honestly, and listen to the answer. Don’t tell yourself, “I shouldn’t need to do that to motivate myself.” What                

--

You are, on the one hand, the most complex thing in the entire universe, and on the other, someone who can’t even set the clock on your microwave. Don’t over-estimate your self-knowledge.                

--

Do this every day, for a while. Then do it for the rest of your life.                

--

You are less concerned with the actions of other people, because you have plenty to do yourself. Attend to the day, but aim at the highest good. Now, your trajectory is heavenward. That makes you hopeful. Even a man on a sinking ship can be happy when he clambers aboard a lifeboat! And who knows where he might go, in the future. To journey happily may well be better than to arrive successfully….                

--

Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.                

--

RULE 5  /  DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN DO ANYTHING THAT MAKES YOU DISLIKE THEM                 

Children are damaged when those charged with their care, afraid of any conflict or upset, no longer dare to correct them, and leave them without guidance. I can recognize such children on the street. They are doughy and unfocused and vague. They are leaden and dull instead of golden and bright. They are uncarved blocks, trapped in a perpetual state of waiting-to-be.                

--

RULE 6  /  SET YOUR HOUSE IN PERFECT ORDER BEFORE YOU CRITICIZE THE WORLD                 

if one parent abused three children, and each of those children had three children, and so on, then there would be three abusers the first generation, nine the second, twenty-seven the third, eighty-one the fourth—and so on exponentially. After twenty generations, more than ten billion would have suffered childhood abuse: more people than currently inhabit the planet. But instead, abuse disappears across generations. People constrain its spread. That’s a testament to the genuine dominance of good over evil in the human heart.                

--

When the hurricane hit New Orleans, and the town sank under the waves, was that a natural disaster? The Dutch prepare their dikes for the worst storm in ten thousand years. Had New Orleans followed that example, no tragedy would have occurred. It’s not that no one knew. The Flood Control Act of 1965 mandated improvements in the levee system that held back Lake Pontchartrain. The system was to be completed by 1978. Forty years later, only 60 percent of the work had been done. Willful blindness and corruption took the city down.                

--

A hurricane is an act of God. But failure to prepare, when the necessity for preparation is well known—that’s sin. That’s failure to hit the mark. And the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).                

--

The ancient Jews always blamed themselves when things fell apart. They acted as if God’s goodness—the goodness of reality—was axiomatic, and took responsibility for their own failure. That’s insanely responsible. But the alternative is to judge reality as insufficient, to criticize Being itself, and to sink into resentment and the desire for revenge.                

--

RULE 7  /  PURSUE WHAT IS MEANINGFUL (NOT WHAT IS EXPEDIENT)                

for dust you are and to dust you will return. (Genesis 3:16-19. KJV) What in the world should be done about that? The simplest, most obvious, and most direct answer? Pursue pleasure. Follow your impulses. Live for the moment. Do what’s expedient. Lie, cheat, steal, deceive, manipulate—but don’t get caught. In an ultimately meaningless universe, what possible difference could it make?                

--

Benjamin Franklin once suggested that a newcomer to a neighbourhood ask a new neighbour to do him or her a favour, citing an old maxim: He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged. In Franklin’s opinion, asking someone for something (not too extreme, obviously) was the most useful and immediate invitation to social interaction. Such asking on the part of the newcomer provided the neighbour with an opportunity to show him- or herself as a good person, at first encounter.                

--

RULE 8  /   TELL THE TRUTH—OR, AT LEAST, DON'T LIE                 

Taking the easy way out or telling the truth—those are not merely two different choices. They are different pathways through life. They are utterly different ways of existing.                

--

Typical calculated ends might include “to impose my ideological beliefs,” “to prove that I am (or was) right,” “to appear competent,” “to ratchet myself up the dominance hierarchy,” “to avoid responsibility” (or its twin, “to garner credit for others’ actions”), “to be promoted,” “to attract the lion’s share of attention,” “to ensure that everyone likes me,” “to garner the benefits of martyrdom,” “to justify my cynicism,” “to rationalize my antisocial outlook,” “to minimize immediate conflict,” “to maintain my naïveté,” “to capitalize on my vulnerability,” “to always appear as the sainted one,” or (this one is particularly evil) “to ensure that it is always my unloved child’s fault.” These are all examples of what Sigmund Freud’s compatriot, the lesser-known Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler, called “life-lies.”                

--

What did she know about her fifty-two-year-old self, when still a teenager? Even now, many years later, she has only the vaguest, lowest-resolution idea of her post-work Eden. She refuses to notice. What did her life mean, if that initial goal was wrong? She’s afraid of opening Pandora’s box, where all the troubles of the world reside. But hope is in there, too. Instead, she warps her life to fit the fantasies of a sheltered adolescent.                

--

A naively formulated goal transmutes, with time, into the sinister form of the life-lie.                

--

If you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself. That does not only mean that you suppress who you are, although it also means that. It means that so much of what you could be will never be forced by necessity to come forward. This is a biological truth, as well as a conceptual truth. When you explore boldly, when you voluntarily confront the unknown, you gather information and build your renewed self out of that information. That is the conceptual element. However, researchers have recently discovered that new genes in the central nervous system turn themselves on when an organism is placed (or places itself) in a new situation. These genes code for new proteins. These proteins are the building blocks for new structures in the brain. This means that a lot of you is still nascent, in the most physical of senses, and will not be called forth by stasis. You have to say something, go somewhere and do things to get turned on. And, if not…you remain incomplete, and life is too hard for anyone incomplete.

--

If you’re lucky, and you fail, and you try something new, you move ahead. If that doesn’t work, you try something different again. A minor modification will suffice in fortunate circumstances. It is therefore prudent to begin with small changes, and see if they help. Sometimes, however, the entire hierarchy of values is faulty, and the whole edifice has to be abandoned. The whole game must be changed.

--

Error necessitates sacrifice to correct it, and serious error necessitates serious sacrifice. To accept the truth means to sacrifice—and if you have rejected the truth for a long time, then you’ve run up a dangerously large sacrificial debt.                

--

“Did what I want happen? No. Then my aim or my methods were wrong. I still have something to learn.” 

That is the voice of authenticity. 

“Did what I want happen? No. Then the world is unfair. People are jealous, and too stupid to understand. It is the fault of something or someone else.” 

That is the voice of inauthenticity.                

--

It is not too far from there to “they should be stopped” or “they must be hurt” or “they must be destroyed.” Whenever you hear about something incomprehensibly brutal, such ideas have manifested themselves.                

--

it is necessary to aim at your target, however traditional, with your eyes wide open. You have a direction, but it might be wrong. You have a plan, but it might be ill-formed. You may have been led astray by your own ignorance—and, worse, by your own unrevealed corruption. You must make friends, therefore, with what you don’t know, instead of what you know. You must remain awake to catch yourself in the act. You must remove the beam in your own eye, before you concern yourself with the mote in your brother’s. And in this way, you strengthen your own spirit, so it can tolerate the burden of existence, and you rejuvenate the state.                

--

Nietzsche said that a man’s worth was determined by how much truth he could tolerate.                

--

You are by no means only what you already know. You are also all that which you could know, if you only would. Thus, you should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are. You should never give up the better that resides within for the security you already have—and certainly not when you have already caught a glimpse, an undeniable glimpse, of something beyond.                

--

In His human form, Christ sacrificed himself voluntarily to the truth, to the good, to God. In consequence, He died and was reborn. The Word that produces order from chaos sacrifices everything, even itself, to God. That single sentence, wise beyond comprehension, sums up Christianity.                

--

Every bit of learning is a little death. Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn as something better. Sometimes such deaths virtually destroy us. In such cases, we might never recover or, if we do, we change a lot.                

--

Set your ambitions, even if you are uncertain about what they should be. The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity.                

--

If you bend everything totally, blindly and willfully towards the attainment of a goal, and only that goal, you will never be able to discover if another goal would serve you, and the world, better. It is this that you sacrifice if you do not tell the truth. If, instead, you tell the truth, your values transform as you progress. If you allow yourself to be informed by the reality manifesting itself, as you struggle forward, your notions of what is important will change. You will reorient yourself, sometimes gradually, and sometimes suddenly and radically. Imagine: you                

--

Perhaps it is better to conceptualize it this way: Everyone needs a concrete, specific goal—an ambition, and a purpose—to limit chaos and make intelligible sense of his or her life. But all such concrete goals can and should be subordinated to what might be considered a meta-goal, which is a way of approaching and formulating goals themselves. The meta-goal could be “live in truth.”                

--

If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise.       

--

RULE 9 / Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t

Memory is a tool. Memory is the past’s guide to the future. If you remember that something bad happened, and you can figure out why, then you can try to avoid that bad thing happening again. That’s the purpose of memory. It’s not “to remember the past.” It’s to stop the same damn thing from happening over and over. I thought,                

--

If I had been the adherent of a left-wing, social-justice ideology, I would have told her the first story. If I had been the adherent of a conservative ideology, I would have told her the second. And her responses after having been told either the first or the second story would have proved to my satisfaction and hers that the story I had told her was true—completely, irrefutably true. And that would have been advice.                

--

You can be pretty smart if you can just shut up.     

--

RULE 10 / Be precise in your speech

We see rocks, because we can throw them, and clouds, because they can rain on us, and apples, to eat, and the automobiles of other people, to get in our way and annoy us. We see tools and obstacles, not objects or things.                

--

Here’s the terrible truth about such matters: every single voluntarily unprocessed and uncomprehended and ignored reason for marital failure will compound and conspire and will then plague that betrayed and self-betrayed woman for the rest of her life. The same goes for her husband. All she—he—they—or we—must do to ensure such an outcome is nothing: don’t notice, don’t react, don’t attend, don’t discuss, don’t consider, don’t work for peace, don’t take responsibility. Don’t confront the chaos and turn it into order—just wait, anything but naïve and innocent, for the chaos to rise up and engulf you instead.                

--

Why refuse to specify, when specifying the problem would enable its solution? Because to specify the problem is to admit that it exists. Because to specify the problem is to allow yourself to know what you want, say, from friend or lover—and then you will know, precisely and cleanly, when you don’t get it, and that will hurt, sharply and specifically.                

--

But you will learn something from that, and use what you learn in the future—and the alternative to that single sharp pain is the dull ache of continued hopelessness and vague failure and the sense that time, precious time, is slipping by.

--                

RULE 11 / Do not bother children when they are skateboarding

Women have a strong proclivity to marry across or up the economic dominance hierarchy. They prefer a partner of equal or greater status. This holds true cross-culturally.184 The same does not hold, by the way, for men, who are perfectly willing to marry across or down (as the Pew data indicate), although they show a preference for somewhat younger mates.                

--

Any hierarchy creates winners and losers. The winners are, of course, more likely to justify the hierarchy and the losers to criticize it. But (1) the collective pursuit of any valued goal produces a hierarchy (as some will be better and some worse at that pursuit no matter what it is) and (2) it is the pursuit of goals that in large part lends life its sustaining meaning.                

--

We experience almost all the emotions that make life deep and engaging as a consequence of moving successfully towards something deeply desired and valued. The price we pay for that involvement is the inevitable creation of hierarchies of success, while the inevitable consequence is difference in outcome. Absolute equality would therefore require the sacrifice of value itself—and then there would be nothing worth living for.                

--

We might instead note with gratitude that a complex, sophisticated culture allows for many games and many successful players, and that a well-structured culture allows the individuals that compose it to play and to win, in many different fashions.                

--

There are only two major reasons for resentment: being taken advantage of (or allowing yourself to be taken advantage of), or whiny refusal to adopt responsibility and grow up. If you’re resentful, look for the reasons.                

--

Agreeable, compassionate, empathic, conflict-averse people (all those traits group together) let people walk on them, and they get bitter. They sacrifice themselves for others, sometimes excessively, and cannot comprehend why that is not reciprocated.      

--      

RULE 12 / Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

I started with my thoughts about my son. She had asked, like everyone in her situation, “Why my husband? Why me? Why this?” My realization of the tight interlinking between vulnerability and Being was the best answer I had for her. I told her an old Jewish story, which I believe is part of the commentary on the Torah. It begins with a question, structured like a Zen koan. Imagine a Being who is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. What does such a Being lack?211 The answer? Limitation. If you are already everything, everywhere, always, there is nowhere to go and nothing to be. Everything that could be already is, and everything that could happen already has. And it is for this reason, so the story goes, that God created man. No limitation, no story. No story, no Being. That idea has helped me deal with the terrible fragility of Being.                

--

Perhaps that is true prayer: the question, “What have I done wrong, and what can I do now to set things at least a little bit more right?”

[caeliri]

Rising Tides, Crashing Skies

[[ This story takes place in January of this year, prior to the ending of the events surrounding the Symphony of Silvermoon!]]

Beyond the walls of Silvermoon the scattered seeds of chaos came into full bloom. Even in the Dawnspire, peace was evasive, and in the shadow of multi-colored banners of the houses that bent the knee to House Truefeather, unrest still haunted the stone-lined streets. Those who had not fled to the Evergrove to seek refuge within the Dreaming Gardens remained in the Citadel itself, settled in alleys and causeways less used, out of sight of the supposed King’s retinue, and unhappier for it; in the wake of unrest that rocked the capitol, less light was laid upon their plight, their lords and ladies heads were turned ever towards the crimson-stained streets of Silvermoon, waiting with baited breath for the tide to turn a thousand ways, each calamitous in its own way.

It was a crime Dame Caeliri Dawnsworn was guilty of herself.

In the aftermath of Baal’s attack on the Dawnspire, she’d forgone returning to the shattered remnants of Summerglen - heart too heavy to face the fel-ravaged ruins of a home once wreathed in sunlight and spring blossoms - and turned her eyes towards Silvermoon, and allies with more social sway and coin to aid her cause. Just like all of them, she’d been swept away in the flood waters of a citizenry divided and enraged. The crimson cobblestones of Silvermoon were bathed in blood, and for the first time in her short life she was aware of it, and she was frightened.

When Telchis called his bannerlords home to the Dawnspire to stand at his side and ready themselves for the days to come, she’d gone willingly away from the worry of the city, hoping that the rolling hills of Quel’thalas’ countryside might pry away the lingering fear and ease the tension that held her slim shoulders ever taut.

It had not.

The appearance of the Sun King’s retinue, in lieu with conversations had in the past week, only served to unnerve her further, and though she’d stood tall at Telchis’ side, drenched in the colors of a brilliant dawn - the colors of her fresh-forged lineage - stalwart and proud against the oppressive air that seemed to ensconce the throne room, the armor she’d encased herself in could not uproot the anxiety that thrummed through her veins. Though the meeting with the so-called-King’s retinue was short, throughout the tense moments she often found her sea-green eyes wandering to the place where Tyril Sunspear should have stood, clad in gold and sable, a statuesque figurehead of justice and honor, and to see his space filled - even by familiar faces - made her heart ache.

Released from the tense meeting with the Sun King’s courier, Caeliri picked her way through the rubble-wracked streets of the Dawnspire, plated boots picking a careful path in elsewise aimless wandering. She could have retreated to the infirmary, her home away from home, where she was Dawnward Dawnsworn, a skilled mender and a steady, hopeful, helping hand to those who had seen better days - but being in those hallowed halls required an attention to the weak and wounded that she could not give, and she would never stand to offer those who suffered less than her whole, undivided, unmuddled attention.

Instead, the upheaved streets gave her an avenue to attend her thoughts where there was little chance she would be bothered.

What would they do, if the Sun King came to demand the Lord of the Dawnspire and all his vassals take a knee and swear their allegiance?

What would she do - betray her oaths and take a stand, or fall in line to preserve her words, and sacrifice her beliefs for a promise made? Which was worse; to be an oathbreaker, or to compromise the beat of her heart and see injustice flourish due to inaction?

Parapets once proud and stalwart littered the lower reaches of the Citadel, destroying homes and business in their fall; an irony, perhaps, but one lost on the woman of twenty-one summers.

She had no faith in this would-be King or the future he seemed keen to forge; a future of isolation, cruelty and oppression that promised no deviation from the current course, where those in power spat pretty lies upon the citizenry to veil their own misdeeds. Caeliri did not believe this man whose blood bespoke some supposed right to rule would free them from corruption; the key to the shackles that bound the people of Quel’thalas would simply change hands, and never find use or offer freedom.

“HEY!”

Her head snapped up, sending a sea of cinder-colored hair right into her light of sight; in the space of time it took her to lift her hand and sweep it away, her path was blocked by a shoeless sin’dorei whose ruddy, freckled cheeks were flush a shade of scarlet that put the streets of Silvermoon to shame. His lips were pulled back in a near feral flash of teeth, and there was no kindness in their bearing.

Already her mind was wheeling, trying suss out what she’d done to offend the stranger who barred her path, and the words that left her lips were bright but hesitant, struggling out beneath the wave of frantic thought, “Can I… help you…”

“Yeah, you can help me -- by getting off your ass and getting to work,” the man snarled, drawing in air to force his chest to seem broader, his shoulders higher; they were of a height, Caeliri and this stranger, but he was thicker built - his only option to be imposing was to puff up like a peacock.

“I’m… sorry,” she ventured, caught off by the anger snapping on every syllable - but she didn’t get to finish.

“You’re sorry?” His words became harsher, honed down to a vicious, venomous edge, bitterness and mockery both shining through the sharpness,  “Doesn’t look like you’re sorry, galavanting around the city in all your fine clothes while we’re sitting in our own shit, starving.”

Caeliri’s lips moved wordlessly, eyes wide and blinking as she fumbled for words-

“Sorry doesn’t put food in our bellies or roofs over our heads.” There were eyes on them now, a dozen, perhaps more, from dirty faces on the roadside, perched atop downed parapets or crouched in the shadow of the ruined monoliths, exhaustion tugging at their eyelids. Their drooping lids, however, could hardly hamper the bitterness that swam in the blazing green sea of their gazes.

Her belly churned quite suddenly, every set of eyes upon her forming a craggy, sharp stone in her gut. They plunk, plunk, plunked into her belly, sending bile foaming up along her innards and Caeliri could feel herself shrinking back.

They were, all of them, refugees from Summerglen; they had come to the Citadel in panic and pain as Baal’s armies carved their dreadpath through the Dawnspire, and here they had remained, among the ruins of the capitol, eager for the remnants of their ruined lives. She recognized them not by the patterned vests and simple, bright clothing they wore, but by the loss that haunted the edges of their eyes, and the burning hot guilt she felt gush through her veins. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips as the man carried on, all of his anger and helplessness and loss and grief boiling over on to her in a roaring wave she could not run from.

“Some fuckin’ Kin’taris. You abandoned us. You left us to die!”

She hadn’t.

She hadn’t meant to.

She was following orders- the Archon’s orders - to remain where she was stationed in the Citadel proper to fend off the oncoming assault. Summerglen should never have been a target of the demon’s warpath, it had seemed safe enough at the start, when Baal’s forces drove hard against the Evergrove and the Anchorage. She’d sent word to her soldiers to rally, to guard the borders, to evacuate the citizenry and they hadn’t left. They’d been too proud, too stubborn, too untested against the looming tide of violence; Summerglen had never seen war come to its shadowed vales, and like the lady who led them, they were blinded by their ignorance.

What more could she have done?

“Where the fuck have you been?! Not a person, not a single one, seeking their Kin’taris has heard a peep from you from since we came! You came sweeping down from your high tower like some fairy-fucking-tale princess, with all your pretty promises and platitudes, and then what?!”

Caeliri winced - hard. Her face contorted into a grimace, and her shoulders rose as if warding off an oncoming blow, but it had already been dealt. Pretty promises, platitudes, it was the same thought she had of the Sun-King and the noblesfolk of Quel’thalas, the very people she’d swore to oppose.

That was how this man saw her; that was how the people of Summerglen saw her.

Ice and fire took turns running rampant through her veins, the sickness in her gut seeming to fuel the flashes of disparate temperature as they raced from ear-tip to toe-tip, causing sweat to stipple on her lower back and scarlet shame to flare across her cheeks. Her eyes were eager for the ground, for the tips of her polished boots or the uneven stone below, but she held them even - and blessedly held the tears she felt begin to prickle behind her eyes at bay.

Caeliri had allied herself with the Reformers, stood against the Imperialists, gave her heart and soul to seeing the corruption of Quel’thalas at last be brought to heel, and those who abused the weak and disenfranchised pulled down from their high, lordly perches -- for what? What did that matter if her own people sat in stasis, surviving on the scraps of the Citadel’s generosity, eeking out a half-life in the shadows of their once-great capitol while she played hero halfway across the country?

“Then--” she interjected at last, though her voice was soft and meek, a mouse’s squealing against the man’s roaring rage, trying, desperately, to offer some defense, to make him understand her thoughts, her desires, her intentions, “--I joined my countrymen in assuring the nobility--”

“We’re your countrymen! You left us to suffer!”

She hadn’t.

She hadn’t meant to.

She had been ashamed, awashed in grief, for the lives lost, for the damage done, for all the dreams - hers and those of the townsfolk of Summerglen - that died the day Baal’s army diverted their path through the wood, keen on wreaking as much havoc and devastation as their wicked hearts desired. There had been nothing she could do -- she’d rode out to try and join the fray, but it was not a battle to be won.

It was a massacre.

And in the aftermath, when she passed into the smoldering vale to view the ruined remnants of her home -- she saw the bodies, broken, buried, bled, their blood swimming through the spaces between the cobbles, like crimson fingers reaching desperately through the veins of the city. She’d smelled the sulfur, the scorched skin, the burning hair, and seen the festering fissures carved into the earth. Agony was hot on the air still, the remnant sounds of spirits caught in their final moments echoing in her ears like a thousand nails drawn against slate.

“Do you even give a shit?”

A lump had long formed in her throat, a thousand words she wanted to spit back at him held at bay, balling around one another, over and over, until they were a tightly wound mass of writhing words and withheld sentiments. All of her defenses, all of her fear, all of her own perceptions, she held them behind her thinned lips, kept them captured and subdued, and forced a phrase up through the thicket in her throat, until it came hard and fast onto her tongue and leapt from her lips, steadfast and true; “What would you have me do?”

Silence swelled between them, tense and awkward, and the man who stood across from her clamped his mouth shut, both blonde brows diving down into deep furrows just above his fel-green eyes.

“...What?” The word was warbling on his tongue, steeped in uncertainty and confusion.

“I can not undo what has been done.” Drawing in a deep breath, Caeliri lifted her chin a fraction of an inch, staring the man down. She was aware of the glimmer that glinted in the sea-green spanse of her irises, but it was all she could do to hold the tears at bay; she could no more undo her expressiveness as she could unmake all her mistakes.

“I can not turn back the hands of time and stop Baal’s armies from marching on Summerglen - I can not ride out to the village and drag every man, woman and child from their home. I can not unspend the days I have spent making allies with men and women who have the means and the morals to put their gold to good use in efforts of restoration and revitalization. So tell me - what would you have me do?” There was a waft of anger at the edge of her voice, but the question was not mocking or cruel - it was frustrated, but earnest.

“I want you to do your job,” he spat back, bristling now that words were finally coming back his way.

“My job is to serve the people of Summerglen, the people of the Dawnspire, and the people of Quel’thalas -- tell me, what ails you most? What can I do, in this moment, to serve you?”

Her response caught him off-guard, left him standing there, his anger dampened - but not extinguished - and his face cycling through a spectrum of emotions that were hard to place. Another silence passed between them, interrupted by the swelling murmur of the attention they had drawn, but Caeliri was unrelenting; ever the first to speak, the first to strike down silence and fill the air with whatever words she could fathom, regardless of their needs or purpose, she held fast, waiting for his response.

“We just… want to go home,” he conceded at last, the heat in his voice reduced to a simmer, “we want to rebuild our lives, bury our dead, and just… pick up the pieces. Your soldiers won’t let anyone past the city gates.”

“Summerglen is …. Unsafe, still,” she ventured, voice even and calm, “but if that is your desire, I beg you wait a few weeks more -- once the village is safe… we will begin to rebuild. This I swear to you,” she lifted a hand, crossing it over her heart, and bent neatly at the waist into a deep bow the left her hair sweeping against the stones at their feet.

Rage reduced to a rumbling from a roar, the man sucked air in through his teeth, flicking his eyes away; when she rose up to her full height once more, his face was screwed up tightly, his shoulders tight and taut, and his hands wormed their way into his pockets. “Believe it when I see it,” was all he added, before skulking back to the others, whose attention slowly faded from their Kin’taris, returned to their own internal affairs.

Drawing in a deep, quaking breath, Caeliri turned from them, back up the path from whence she’d come, strides long and powerful and swift, eager to be away from the sharp bite of shame still snapping at her cheeks, and to put her promise into motion.

Returning to her rooms, in the Citadel, Caeliri slammed shut the door in her wake, moving with purpose to the small writing desk pressed against the wall below the window. The sound startled her phoenix from her reverie, making Grace swivel her head to scrutinize Caeliri with one glowing, white eye. The crest of feathers along her head rose up, curious and agitated all at once; she could feel the tense that twisted through Caeliri’s guts, and she did not like it.

More so, she did not like whoever made her mistress feel that way.

Caeliri slid her fingers over the upturned feathers, smoothing through the licking flames unburnt, smoothing and soothing the phoenix all at once. No more comfort was offered, though - her hands were quick to grab parchment and paper, pulling the pale sheet into the shaft of light the window let splay across the deep cherrywood desk. With a breath, she put pen to paper, and wrote:

“Citizens of the Dawnspire, Soldiers of the Sunguard, Once more I must beg you to aid me…”

All Things; Peace - pt. 1 All Things; Peace - pt. 2 Ruin Rising Tides, Crashing Skies A Cry for Help

[craniodad]

Dear Craniosynostosis: A renewal of a letter

Three years ago I wrote a letter to Craniosynostosis. I was so proud to have it published in The Mighty. It is about a conversation that I have with cranio from time to time. Reflecting on what I felt, and how I feel now.  Today, I update it a little. For Craniofacial Awareness Month, Kati and I have been posting vlogs answering questions about Craniosynostos. Every day on our YouTube channel, and even here on the sidebar. Yep, 30 questions that we have been asked, with answers that come from experience. Some of our conversation drummed up this letter. We decided that I would read this for one of the final vlogs this month. However, in order to do this, I wanted to bring it to the now. I did not want to leave it behind, collecting dust. So, without further ado. Below the break is the updated letter to Craniosynostosis. Dear Craniosynostosis, When I first met you, I hated you with every fiber of my being.  I felt that you took something away from me. In your own, special way, you exacted every ounce of fear and inadequacy out of me. You brought it forward for the world to see.  In an instant, that seemed to take forever, you seemingly took what was to be one of the most beautiful moments of my life, and you riddled it with fear. You corrupted it with doubt and a never-ending list of unknowns. We met on April 10th, 2012 at 8:36 am. That very moment is seared on my heart and soul. My wife and I prepared for nine amazing months for that moment. I had visions and dreams of what life was going to be like when my daughter was born.  The illusions of grandeur that countless books are written about. Watching my beautiful daughter grow up, holding her in my arms. Someday walking her down the aisle to join her beloved. Having the quintessential father/daughter relationship that every dad longs for. However, because of you, the moments that these visions, hopes, and dreams became instead a myriad of storms, worry, and doubt. I had never known of you, craniosynostosis, yet you found it fit to thrust yourself into my daughter’s life, with little regard. Even worse, after barely getting to know you, I learned that you meant my sweet little girl was going to be in the NICU. A place of nightmares for all new parents. It was there that I further learned that there would be many, many surgeries to come. Somewhere in the whirlwind of doctors, nurses, and specialists I came to understand something. That the picture perfect life that I had hoped for my daughter was not going to exist. I fell weakly to my knees, and cried, for hours because of this. Not out of some injustice to me. No, purely out of what I thought you were stealing from my daughter.

Your presence, craniosynostosis, is evident.

For almost six years you have been making your presence known.  The confused look that many, even some doctors, give us when they first hear your name. The lavender-ish hue that has taken over our family’s wardrobe. We are constantly reminded that you are there. That you will be there, forever. You cause some to be stricken with discomfort, because of her appearance. Their lack of understanding causing them to recoil. Or, the most heartbreaking, move away from her. The reactions that you have caused have pulled from me grossly misplaced anger. A fire that burns with the fire of a thousand suns longing to burst forth.  Only to be choked back by fighting tears and a forced smile. Your involvement in my daughter’s life has resulted in nine painstaking surgeries. Nine times that I have had to face the veneer of the same room and the macabre that it entails. My God, how much I hate that room. Nine times in our lives that minutes have ticked across the clock like days, and ceaseless prayers have been uttered.  Our hearts never beating out of fear of breaking. Nine times that endless days have been taken away from my little girl’s life.  Days that she should be running around and playing. That the world should be filled with the sounds of her laughter. Carefree days of blessed childhood. Not hooked up to machines. Recovering from her body being cut open and parts of her fixed. Nine times that I have been on the verge of a total breakdown, feeling like a crumpled tissue in a trashcan.  Nine times that I have had to hold fast to my worries and thoughts to be there for my daughter and the rest of my family. Countless times that we have walked into a doctor’s appointment wondering if we were going to be told to get ready for another round. Nearly six years of vacation time being spent in the PICU. Not at the beach, camping, visiting family, experiencing the world. I needed to teach my three year old son to say your name. Craniosynostosis. A name that I could not say for the first six months of knowing you. For all of these reasons, and the ones that I have not listed… I have hated you.

But six years is a long time, dear craniosynostosis.

Dear cranio (I can call you that now) over time I have grown to love you. Looking back, I cannot fully explain how I came to this place.  However, I realize that by you taking all of my gut-wrenching fears and feelings of inadequacy, and putting them out there, you have compelled me to become something that I may have never been. You have made me a better dad. You have provided me with countless chances to see my beautiful, amazing, daughter be strong when she had no choice. Letting me know that she is going to be even more so as she grows. Nine times you have shown me that I can, much like my daughter, be strong.  Nine times you have let my wife rest her fears upon my shoulders and allowed me to carry the burden for her.  You have not given me a choice in this, just like you did not give my daughter that choice. For nearly six years you have given me time to watch my daughter show us all how strong she is, and in turn how strong I am.  You have freed me from meaningless trips to the beach and replaced it with time that I never would have had.  You have slowed my tongue and increased my knowledge on things that no parent should ever need to learn, but many would benefit from. Nine times, in fact all the time, you have taught me to value the moments like they are the last, to strive for every minute of every day to contain an hour of love. Hearing my three year old son say "Craniosynostosis" makes me smile. Seeing how he loves his sister eclipses so much doubt from my mind. Slowly, but surely, those illusions of grandeur that I thought were lost, are coming back. Re-framed with you in mind, but even more amazing.

Craniosynostosis, you have not broken me, or my daughter.

In the forges of your angst, you have hardened me, to be the rock that my family, and especially my daughter, can find strength, love, support and compassion when they have exhausted themselves, and any other time that they need it. You have shaped and molded me into a strong and unyielding force, much like you did my daughters skull. You have formed me into the father that my daughter not only needs, but deserves. I am no longer afraid of you cranio. In fact, I see your involvement in my daughter’s life, and in turn my own, as a badge of honor… and I display it proudly.   Regards,   Cranio Dad You can always read more here: http://bit.ly/2wmtahZ

[him-e]

Which are your top 5 book!Sansa moments and why?

i.

The rasping voice trailed off. He squatted silently before her, a hulking black shape shrouded in the night, hidden from her eyes. Sansa could hear his ragged breathing. She was sad for him, she realized. Somehow, the fear had gone away.The silence went on and on, so long that she began to grow afraid once more, but she was afraid for him now, not for herself. She found his massive shoulder with her hand. “He was no true knight,” she whispered to him.

Okay, this is a classic. It is early in Sansa’s journey, she still has to undergo the massive character evolution of the later books (and learn the True Face of Official Chivalry and what it will do to her), and yet she’s already moving past her initial assumptions, holding the Beast’s gaze with resolve and dignity, seeing the abused child in a man that legitimately terrifies her, acknowledging his legitimate anger, understanding that what really wounded him wasn’t his brother’s assault per se, but the fact that Gregor was never punished for it, but upgraded to “ser”. With that “he was no true knight”, Sansa defends the true ideal of knighthood against impostors, and already implicitly denounces (and challenges) the profound injustice of a society that rewards violent, cruel men and corrupts noble ideals. And, “somehow, the fear had gone away. […] she was afraid for him now, not for herself”—this eleven years old harmless little girl is suddenly no longer scared of [one of the most terrifying men in the seven kingdoms] the Hound, but worried and sad for him, and I think it’s amazing.

ii.

She threw back the shutters and shivered as gooseprickles rose along her arms. There were clouds massing in the eastern sky, pierced by shafts of sunlight. They look like two huge castles afloat in the morning sky. Sansa could see their walls of tumbled stone, their mighty keeps and barbicans. Wispy banners swirled from atop their towers and reached for the fast-fading stars. The sun was coming up behind them, and she watched them go from black to grey to a thousand shades of rose and gold and crimson. Soon the wind mushed them together, and there was only one castle where there had been two. She heard the door open as her maids brought the hot water for her bath. They were both new to her service; Tyrion said the women who’d tended to her previously had all been Cersei’s spies, just as Sansa had always suspected. “Come see,” she told them. “There’s a castle in the sky.“ 

I just love this passage; the beautiful prose and imagery, the (relevant to the bigger picture) symbolism of there was only one castle where there had been two, how it perfectly encapsulates Sansa’s imaginative, romantic nature and transformative gaze on reality. A trait that is both a hindrance and an asset, as we see in various instances.

iii.

What are you looking at?” Joffrey said. “This is what I wanted you to see, right here.”A thick stone parapet protected the outer edge of the rampart, reaching as high as Sansa’s chin, with crenellations cut into it every five feet for archers. The heads were mounted between the crenels, along the top of the wall, impaled on iron spikes so they faced out over the city. Sansa had noted them the moment she’d stepped out onto the wallwalk, but the river and the bustling streets and the setting sun were ever so much prettier. He can make me look at the heads, she told herself, but he can’t make me see them.

Another early passage, another classic, one that was nicely adapted on the show too, but I can’t not pick it because it’s such an iconic and character-defining moment for Sansa—both a turning point in her attitude and one of her first victories against her oppressors. Sansa gives no angle here for Joffrey to play. Outwardly compliant and submissive, she however doesn’t give him the satisfaction of letting him see her suffer, as he was certainly anticipating. She chooses not to see. Again, the transformative gaze; it becomes a shield, a full coat of armor. 

But shortly after that: A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, “Maybe my brother will give me your head.” And: The outer parapet came up to her chin, but along the inner edge of the walk was nothing, nothing but a long plunge to the bailey seventy or eighty feet below. All it would take was a shove, she told herself. He was standing right there, right there, smirking at her with those fat wormlips. You could do it, she told herself. You could. Do it right now. It wouldn’t even matter if she went over with him. It wouldn’t matter at all. So. Much. Anger. SO MUCH HATRED. I love Sansa when she’s like this, and I thank GRRM for writing her in such a relatable way. She first utters something INCREDIBLY defiant, then coldly considers committing regicide then and there, not bothered at all by the likely collateral damage of her dying too, whether she goes down with Joffrey or she’s executed later. It doesn’t matter. “Those fat wormlips.” Her disgust for Joffrey knows no limits, and I love it.

iv. 

Sansa threw a plain grey cloak over her shoulders and picked up the knife she used to cut her meat. If it is some trap, better that I die than let them hurt me more, she told herself. She hid the blade under her cloak.

She’s just found ser Dontos’ message, that she doesn’t know yet is from ser Dontos. She is in turmoil the whole evening, paranoid about everything (including her bedmaid), torn between wanting to meet her mysterious ally in the godswood and suspecting this is nothing but a trap orchestrated by her own captors to test her loyalty; she goes to bed, but then some kerfuffle near the walls tells her she might take advantage of this distraction and reach the godswood unnoticed. And so she goes. She chooses to meet the author of the letter, who might as well be ser Ilyn Payne and behead her on the spot (as she indeed fears). Clever girl, she brings a knife, and will not hesitate to point it at ser Dontos when he approaches her. “If it is some trap, better that I die than let them hurt me more”. It reminds me of:

and then they say Sansa is “passive”. No. It’s that her situation only allows her a minimal wiggle room. But when she finds a loophole, she goes for it. (also, sad reminder that Sansa has been feeling lowkey suicidal since Ned’s death.)

v.

They made a tall tower together, kneeling side by side to roll it smooth, and when they’d raised it Sansa stuck her fingers through the top, grabbed a handful of snow, and flung it full in his face. Petyr yelped, as the snow slid down under his collar. “That was unchivalrously done, my lady.” “As was bringing me here, when you swore to take me home.” She wondered where this courage had come from, to speak to him so frankly. From Winterfell, she thought. I am stronger within the walls of Winterfell. 

the whole snow castle scene is beautiful and poetic and symbolic, but I’m picking this moment in particular, in which Sansa, almost intoxicated by her rekindled connection with Winterfell, finds the courage to directly question Littlefinger—Littlefinger who just decided to invade her own private moment of remembrance of her childhood, who played word games with her, who took advantage of her desperation, who lured her in this strange place with the false promise of taking her home. I don’t want to read a sexual metaphor in Sansa’s breaking the tower—rather, this is Sansa destroying something she created with Littlefinger’s (unwanted and intrusive) help, and throwing it in his face. Foreshadowing? Only a gentle and playful teasing? I don’t know, but there’s a lot of subdued anger in this gesture alone, and it’s also a moment of sharp lucidity. Shortly after this, LF forces a kiss on her and she notes how he “sounds like Marillion” (i.e. an attempted rapist). She questions the fact that she could as well be his daughter, and protests that he should be kissing Lysa, instead. 

This moment, followed by the icing on the cake of Sweetrobin’s destroying the castle and throwing a fit, is the catalyst for so many things in Sansa’s arc. It’s an eye-opener on the nature of her relationship with Petyr (it makes it clear to both Sansa herself and the reader that Petyr is sexually attracted to her, and perfectly capable of acting on it, despite Sansa’s age). It makes Sansa temporarily break the spell of the Eyrie and decide to be proactive about her situation, at any cost (I will tell my aunt that I don’t want to marry Robert. […] She wasn’t a beggar, no matter what her aunt said. She was thirteen, a woman flowered and wed, the heir to Winterfell. Sansa felt sorry for her little cousin sometimes, but she could not imagine ever wanting to be his wife. I would sooner be married to Tyrion again. If Lady Lysa knew that, surely she’d send her away… away from Robert’s pouts and shakes and runny eyes, away from Marillion’s lingering looks, away from Petyr’s kisses. I will tell her. I will!) But it also unleashes Lysa’s anger on her, which in turn leads to Lysa’s death and Sansa’s complete descent in Littlefinger’s underworld as Alayne. So, a lot of things going on here.

(Sansa has a lot of small & quiet Fave moments, so it was hard for me to just pin it down to 5. I just chose the ones I felt like discussing the most. Also, sorry for the late answer, but I needed to take a break from writing meta.)

[ericfruits]

Stone-carving villagers make Indian officials jittery

AT A crossroads outside the hamlet of Hakadua, in the state of Jharkhand, a small and solemn group of villagers gathers around a slab of rock erected near a sacred grove. Under the noon blaze a white-whiskered priest and a troupe of young women in red saris murmur, sing and place cups made of folded leaves at the base of the rock, which is covered on both sides with inscriptions. These include passages from the constitution and the PESA act of 1996, which is supposed to ensure self-governance for people living in “tribal” areas, such as this. An elderly participant has trouble reading the text, but no difficulty explaining the locals’ grievances. First, to the extent the state is present in the area at all, it is incompetent, corrupt and domineering—in effect abrogating PESA and other laws meant to protect tribal interests. Second, they fear their land is being stolen. Mining companies, keen to get at coal and other riches underground, run circles around tribal leaders in court. The upshot is that the villagers want no part of India any more: the inscribed monolith is, in effect, a declaration of independence.

Hundreds of such monoliths have been erected outside tribal settlements in recent months. The consecration of one near the village of Omto is followed by a rally of some 2,000 tribal men carrying primitive weapons. Most shoulder bows and arrows fletched with chicken feathers. Others bear wicked-looking axes and spears, and a few have fashioned crossbows out of surgical tubing and bamboo bolts.

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These men see themselves as descendants of Birsa Munda, a 19th-century tribal leader who fought a brief but fierce guerrilla war against the British. Independent India has adopted him as a nationalist; Jharkhand’s main airport is named for him. But Omto’s headman hails these modern-day Mundas with cries of “Our village, our rule!” and “Out with India!” The current leader of the monolith-raising movement, Joseph Purti, waves a thick copy of the constitution above his head as he speaks. “They are imposing citizenship on us,” he says of the Indian state, urging a boycott of all government institutions.

Tribals, arguably the most neglected of India’s many minorities, make up almost 9% of its 1.3bn people. Between 1947 and 2000 roughly a quarter were displaced. Some 40% of those living in tribal villages are malnourished. Many live along the line that separates north India from south, and regard themselves as the aboriginal inhabitants. Their ancestors somehow managed to live in India for thousands of years without becoming culturally Indian. Many of their languages are primordially distinct, as different from Hindi as Basque is from French. Some tribals are Hindu and others Christian, but many persist in forms of worship that predate both religions—such as erecting large stones to mark undertakings of great significance.

Jharkhand’s chief minister has promised to crush Mr Purti’s movement (two days after the rally, a criminal complaint was filed against everyone present). Its previous leader has been arrested on charges that include making “assertions prejudicial to national integration”. The government has accused the activists of wanting to cultivate opium poppies and of propagating Maoist revolution.

For years the authorities have conflated the campaign for tribal rights with India’s long-running Maoist insurgency. The terms “Red Corridor” and “the tribal belt” are used interchangeably. But the insurgency has largely been suppressed over the past decade by a ferocious military campaign, without snuffing out tribals’ complaints of injustice. Maoist ideology plays no visible role in the monolith movement.

Meanwhile stone slabs have started catching on in the neighbouring states of Chhattisgarh and Odisha. The security services can hardly be happy about that. It may be fair to label the movement “anti-national”, a favourite term of abuse these days. But at least it is not violent, if “not exactly non-violent”, in the words of an intellectual sympathiser. Indeed, all the angry tribals are asking is that the government respect its own laws and undertakings. The ferocious response to such an innocuous request is telling in itself.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "Revolution rocks"

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