#I promise this was late game I didn’t just immediately get the your a fascist achievement

[businessboybrick]

Me playing disco elysium: hmm these political dialogue options aren’t great but this one sounds anti-imperialist so let’s go with that

Game: congrats, you unlocked the fascism thought cabinet

Me: Oh

[sirensmojo]

"KINDRED", 4 - Thomas Shelby x Reader.

Warnings: Swearing, romance, violence, guns, drama, slight smut(“slight”?)

Word Count: 5k+

AN: When it’s a reader and Tommy scene, it’s Tommy POV.

❰ ​Previous Chapter

Tommy leaned backwards on his desk chair, a cigarette stuck in between his index and middle fingers. He was looking at the ceiling as if its colour brought to him answers to the multiple questions that had been clouding his mind lately.

Since the day he and Y/N kissed, he noticed she had been avoiding him. She didn’t even send him the weekly book she usually dropped at the office.

He didn’t understand her, and each time he tried to put back together the pieces to get a clear view of her character, the memories of the smell of her hair brought him somewhere else. And whenever he would dare to close his eyes too long, he would taste her lips again.

Even if she chose to stay away from him, he entered her world once and appreciated it so greatly it had printed into his spirits, like a hand in wet cement.

He allowed himself to shift his thoughts to Mosley from time to time, the d-day was approaching and with it, the time he’ll take the lead of the British fascist party.

(...)

The only way Lizzie found to see her husband these days was to come back in business as Tommy’s secretary. He told her she wouldn’t have to work when they got their daughter, Ruby, but he was rarely home, and when he was, his mind was elsewhere.

Even after promising to let her in sometimes, she struggled the most to read him, but despite all, she was deeply in love with him. She had to make the effort and reach for him.

He didn’t agree with her taking back her job at first and she knew exactly why, as being responsible for her having a baby, he had to take care of her, at least he felt like he did. He was undeniably a murderer, cut-throat gangster, but he had convictions and rules to stick to.

This morning began as normal as any other for the Shelby company limited, Lizzie was occupied with papers as Tommy locked himself in his office.

The door opened, Lizzie’s gaze instantly got up, searching for who might that be. When her gaze met the figure, her jaw dropped. ‘Not again’ she thought. This scene reminds her of the time May Carleton came in here only to entice her Tommy.

She knew he didn’t owe her anything, but he could’ve waited at least a day or two before calling another woman. Not even twenty-four hours earlier Tommy was fucking her in some alley in the cold, probably thinking about a woman he knew before France. But he said he was fucking her, Lizzie, and not his lost teenage lover, even if she knew better.

Tommy and his cock.

That May Carleton was walking so confidently in front of Lizzie, she probably thought she was the one to own Tommy’s cock. If only she knew. She glared at her so strongly that May avoided looking at her at all costs.

The woman that just passed the door didn’t look her way, too occupied walking straight to the doors of Tommy’s office with the arrogance of an army.

Lizzie’s eyes went from her seemingly very expensive shoes, up her green pants suit in which pockets she kept a hand, to her suit jacket that fell perfectly on her waist as the end of which was drawing the woman’s hips. Her leather belt marked, even more, her waist and its golden details matched the imposing blue pearls necklace along with the large same looking earrings.

As soon as the woman entered the room, the atmosphere switched, her figure called the eyes, not only due to her ostentatious jewellery collection but also by the woman’s charismatic aura. Even the clicking sound her heels made on the hard ground was full of power. Anyone could hear the confidence in each of her steps, which made Lizzie gasp.

As a moth attracted to light, Tommy got out of his office, a cigarette hanging on his lips. He pressed a shoulder on the door frame, his eyes fixed on the woman walking towards him.

He was indeed waiting for her.

His deep blue eyes weren’t examining the woman’s form in an enticed way, he was solely looking at her face, a thing that made Lizzie’s heart ached because she understood there might be more than sexual attraction between them.

Lizzie knew her husband. From the way he dawdled on the woman’s face to the little waving of his shoulders, she just knew.

The atmosphere again had changed, Lizzie was now oppressed by their two presences, the warm and powerful one of the stranger and the usual cold and disconcerting one of her husband, one completing the other.

As her heart didn’t want to admit it yet, a burning look was exchanged by the two pairs of eyes, and confirmed the obvious her brain already knew, Thomas had found his match, and it wasn’t her.

(...)

Tommy took off his shoulder from the door frame and stood straight as he humidified his lips. The librarian walked to him with her usual unreadable face and when she was close enough, she grabbed his cigarette off his fingers taking her time to make their skin touch as much as she could. Her eyes were still deeply in Tommy’s as millions of sparks animated the tips of his fingers.

The man coughed and turned to Lizzie, motioning his hand to the woman behind the desk, in an attempt to ignore the sparks. “Mrs Y/L/N, meet my wife, Lizzie. Lizzie, it’s Mrs Y/L/N, the librarian I work with at the House Of Commons.” He had sensed the intense look of his wife since Y/N came closer to him.

“Mrs Shelby! I am so honoured to meet you, I heard about your typewriting skills, writing eyes closed, eh? I could never.” Y/N gave a warm smile to Lizzie that squinted her eyes in anticipation. His wife didn’t believe in what the librarian just told and he was sure Y/N knew it too.

“Yeah? Well, I never heard of you.” Lizzie spitted.

“It’s because you don’t keep company with my people.” She had the audacity to take a puff on the cigarette she stole earlier from Tommy looking his wife straight in the eyes.

Even if Y/N’s voice was calm and solemn, it was clear it was an attack. The implication made Lizzie gritted her teeth as she got up and joined them. Tommy rubbed a hand on his own face knowing exactly what she was going to do.

She stood behind the librarian. “And what business do you have here in Birmingham if you work in London?”

“You’re husband,” Y/n responded, not even turning to her. She bypassed Tommy and opened the door’s office before disappearing behind them.

Lizzie followed her with her eyes before looking up at her husband. “The fuck is she doing here? Are you going to fuck her, Thomas?”

“No, Lizzie. Am not going to fuck her.” He responded exhaling deeply.

“Yeah, take me for an fucking idiot.” She walked to the desk to grab her hat & coat. “That’s all you’re good for anyway. You fucked all Birmingham and now London, huh?” She sneered before shaking her head walking to the exit.

“Lizzie.” He called, but the woman had already closed the door.

Tommy raised his brows and sighed before turning to the office where he marked a pause. It was another type of storm he had to face now. He finally opened the door and got in, only to find Y/N seated behind his desk, in his chair.

“Tommy Shelby, OBE, what a pleasure to meet your family.”

“It was quite a show you put out there.” He closed behind him.

When he turned back at the room, she was walking toward him, but she already was pretty near.

“So you fucked all Birmingham already, hum? Trying to expand your activities in London?” Y/N leaned on him, she was so close he could smell her breath and he wondered what was her fucking problem. She ignored him for days after they kissed and here she was again, pushing him to the edges. It was almost as if it was a game for her. And if it was, she was winning all the damn rounds.

“And you? What’s with the attitude?”

“What are you talking about.” She took a step back.

“You have been busy this week, eh?” Tommy walked to the counter and poured whiskey in two glasses.

“Well, the man you have your little brother watching, he talks.” She loosely let out. “The bookmaker Billy Grade, the one that conducts the football betting business” She paused looking at Tommy’s surprised expression. “He doesn’t like Arthur.”

“To who?” Was the simple question he needed an answer to.

“I made moves with Mosley so, yes, it had been a busy week, Thomas.”

At the revelation, Tommy’s eyes squinted. If there was one thing he learnt with Grace was to make sure his feelings weren’t a shackle to business.

“I’m not betraying you, no need for these wrinkles at the corner of your eyes. But you gotta know he’s offered me the South.” She went to the counter and took the glasses before sitting in one of the chairs in front of his desk, one cup in her hand, the other she put on one of the numerous files covering the desk.

Tommy went sitting in his armchair. He lit a cigarette and held one to the woman that declined.

“Only like to take yours.” She gave as an explanation.

“How come he offered you the south?” He ignored her comment.

“North’s Mc Cavern’s, Middle’s yours, South’s vacant. But I have another plan for the South, and you might agree with me as well.” A rictus took place at the corner of her lips, as Tommy looked at her, curious. “Mr Solomons. I know he wrote you that he’s still alive.”

Tommy’s lids fluttered a couple times, he didn’t say anything. How could she know so much all the time? Was she listening to him or something? He for a second thought it might be her spying on him on the phone but this idea went away almost immediately.

She wasn’t Grace.

“He and I are great friends. Not as if he really has any, but do I?” She muttered utterly to herself.

Tommy coughed and leaned back on his chair, making himself comfortable.

“What’s with you, Tommy?” Asked the librarian, and he himself couldn’t put a finger on what was going on. It was always that way when she was around, but everything intensified when they leaned their breath as one and connected together.

His mind was so full of thoughts that had nothing to do with business that it was hard for him to concentrate. But for some reason, he just couldn’t push those thoughts aside.

He wanted her, he yearned for her to touch him the way she did that night, to intertwine their fingers together again and forget about Mosley for an instant, just one. Tommy humidified his lips again as raising his eyebrows, it was like his lips were always dry or incomplete. Her lips belonged on his. He raised his gaze to her in distress.

“You want to come to me house, Tommy? Again?” Her voice resonated in his head, her words taking him by surprise.

“Huh?”

“Have a drink or two, meet my cat...” She went on, looking intently at his soul hiding behind his icy blue iris.

He didn’t recognize her, but did he even know her? It seems not. Every time they meet, she puts another mask on. Somewhere in his soul, he believed it wasn’t a good idea, that thing they shared. But he knew he couldn’t turn away and break the partnership. Not now. Not only could she be hard to beat if they turned to enemies, but he also needed her, she was part of his business now. She was too precious an ally for him to withdraw from the deal.

As he didn’t respond, she drank from her cup, finishing its countenance in one go. “I’ll ask Arthur then...replace his Linda.” She added looking up to the ceiling innocently.

“The fuck did you say?” He hustled to spit as watching her without blinking.

Her gaze went back on Tommy, a playful gleam animating her pupils.

“What do you say?” She sent him back the ball. It was indeed a game for her, and he knew once again she would be the winner because he wouldn’t say no.

He tried to escape her game by coughing it away and smoked his cigarette. “How are you going to bring up Alfie Solomons with Mosley?” He went back on business, but the woman didn’t seem ready yet to give up.

She got up and grabbed the phone with one hand as the other was dialling a number. She sat at the corner of the desk, turning toward the Shelby brother and the phone. Tommy watched her movements closely, curious about how she was going to handle him dismissing her offer.

He couldn’t even hide the fact her stubbornness did something to him, even if he repressed any desire for her. It was as if they were the principal characters in the regency era drama he ended up devouring as it was the book Y/N was reading on their first meeting.

He was so deep in thought he didn’t hear the librarian asking the cable woman to put her in connection with the individual she intended to reach.

“Yeah, Arthur, it’s me. I wonder if you would wa--” Tommy had heard enough. He hung up the line and fixed the phone for what feels like centuries, slowly realizing what his reaction meant.

The Y/E/C eyes woman remained silent, a silence that felt heavy on Tommy’s conscience. He straightened back and leaned on the back of his chair, glancing at the ceiling.

He was done with those games. He couldn’t believe he dove into her crude farce head first, and now he had to face her because she had been staring at him the last minute.

“You’re a devil.” He let the words lazily slip between his lips.

“Call me Lilith.” She spiritedly exclaimed. Tommy’s eyes went to her face at that exact moment.

“So you’re jew, eh? That explains why you know Alfie, but contradicts the fact you and Mosley are close.” Tommy thought out loud. According to his memories, Lilith was a demon of the jew tradition, which led him to his conclusion.

The woman instantly smiled, seemingly very content about the Shelby head struggling to catch her.

“Fair enough.”

“You come to my house?”

“I was talking about the comparison.” He paused, looking at her blankly.

She sighed.

No doubt she was annoyed by Tommy’s behaviour, but she won way too much at their little game. It was about time Tommy won. It was unusual of him to be that shallow but it was their intimate space, so he didn’t care.

(...)

Gina couldn’t see anything when the abductors took her out of the car to lead her down some stairs into what she surmised to be a cellar, she already had a piece of cloth hiding her vision and one in her mouth, preventing her from screaming.

She was petrified and the fact the individuals didn’t say a word, neither during the ride nor once in the room didn’t help her. She could feel heavy drops of sweat rolling down her forehead as dried tears itched the corners of her eyes.

The place was colder than what she remembered a cellar to be. Flashes of her childhood coming back to her from time to time.

“THREE… TWO… ONE… ZERO. I’M COMING GINA!” Her cousin shouted from the kitchen where they last saw each other. The little girl used to come down in the cellar to hide when playing hide and seek with any member of her family, from her cousins to her father.

As her mother was severely ill, she couldn’t play with Gina, but her father always did. When not leading the believers to sing the praises of the Almighty at the local church, he was both a father and a mother to her.

Although her mother & herself loved each other more than anything, she soon stopped seeing her. When at first her father let Gina visit the room of her mother once a day, it decreased from once a week, to once a month to simply never.

Despite the child doggedly asking for her mother, he remained unyielding and managed to keep his daughter away from her mother for her own sake.

It was only when growing older and after the death of her mother that Gina understood her father’s demeanour. He was desperate not to let his daughter watch her mother die.

This time, the cellar didn’t feel familiar and it’s not a joyful feeling that resides in her. Her body reacting to the cold, she was shivering as goosebumps appeared at the same time as she heard footsteps coming her way. Her blood boiling like hot water, she struggled to breathe.

“Call her father.” Gina heard a female voice she had never heard before. She listened to footsteps receding before a whimper escaped her throat.

“Well, you heard the woman, let her talk.” The voice ordered. And just like that, her mouth got freed. “Go on.” The female voice seemed to address her directly.

“What do you want with my father?” She managed to say after she moved her jaws to get rid of the piece of cloth’s taste.

“He’s an old friend.”

“Can’t you just call like normal people instead of abducting his child?” Gina murmured, not totally relieved from the fear. She wanted to appear unmoved and plucked all the courage left in her to get an untroubled voice.

“I know you, Gina.” The voice started, getting closer. “You alright? You’re trembling.” Well, it seems like all the effort she put in wasn’t enough, her true emotions were discovered.

“You know me, huh? So you know as soon as you detach me I’ll assault you and spit right in your face, right?” She angrily let out, she didn’t accept to be defeated nor seen while being vulnerable and defenceless.

But it seems like the individual challenged her, because she heard someone pass behind her and loosen the cords holding back her hands. At the same moment, the piece of cloth blinding her fell on her collarbones.

Before her, stood straight a woman with a closed face, her facial traits weren’t aggressive, but in her eyes, Gina could swear she saw in there an untamed fire. Her brown eyes slid to a sitting white dog near the stranger, it looked like a wolf, even its huge size reminded her of the fierce beast she read about as a teenager.

It was ridiculous to see this situation unleashed the least probable memories of her youth into her mind as vividly as yesterday.

“Who are you? What do you want?” The woman before Gina mimicked her voice, a smile drawing on her lips. “They always ask the same questions.” She shrugged her shoulders seeing Gina’s surprised expression. The freshly Gray woman closed her mouth that was slightly open in an “o” shape and clenched her jaw.

“Well, I need your father to come here, in England. And you,” she tapped Gina’s end of nose, “you’re the thing that’ll make him travel the world all the way to Birmingham. To my greatest pleasure,” She patted her own chest before motioning to Gina, “and much to your displeasure.”

Gina didn’t even know what to say, she used the time the woman spent talking to massage her wrists as the cords were tied very tight. Her gaze dawdled on the woman in front of her, she was wearing a very long purple coat to which two buttons situated at the waist of its owner were closed. She also wore black lace gloves with ostentatious golden rings above the fabric. The diamonds of her rings were blue, matching her earrings. When the woman turned to the side to pat her dog’s head, Gina noticed she had braided her hair in a single braid that fell on her back.

The woman crouched down for her eyes to be at the same level as the dog’s ones, one of her hands scratching its head. “One single word and it attacks you, so you better behave.” She turned her head to Gina, warning her. The blonde woman glared at the other before glancing toward the dog in anticipation.

Y/N got back up and turned her back to Gina as she started to walk toward the stairs. “Get comfortable, it’s your new home for a few days.”

“What, you’re leaving me in this? With the dog?” She screamed at the Y/H/C haired woman.

“If I were you, I’d avoid screaming, Gina doesn’t like too loud noises.” She waved goodbye as answering without even glancing toward Gray.

“What?” Gina asked, confusion in her voice.

Y/N chuckled a bit before turning around, her index went from the dog to Gina, “Yeah, meet your twin.” She walked backwards a couple of seconds before turning back to the stairs and climbing them.

(...)

House Of Commons, London.

The door of Tommy’s office abruptly opened on an angry Michael.

The Shelby brother that was pouring himself some whisky glanced at his cousin. “Michael.” He welcomed.

“Where the fuck is my wife, Tommy?” Gray asked, frowning.

“What?” He squinted his eyes.

“Where. The. Fuck. Is. My. Wife.” Michael spitted each word, looking straight into his older cousin’s eyes.

Tom blinked a couple times, not understanding the request.

“Days ago when coming back from the fucking restaurant some fucking people took her.” The younger Gray calmed a bit, seeing that Tommy truly didn’t know what he was talking about.

“How did they look?” Tom asked, concerned. Even if Michael might have betrayed him, he was family still and anyone jeopardizing the life of a member of the Shelby clan or someone related to them should taste the sweet fondles of death’s fingers.

“Men in fucking black.” Michael started to pace up and down, both his hands passing over his face. “I’m getting mad, Tom, me head fucking all over the place...” He continued.

“Men, no women?” Tommy brows raised, he had to ask. He remembered the conversation he had with that librarian when she was telling him she thought Gina was the weakness and force of his cousin and that she might do something about it.

“No.” Michael stated firmly. Tommy’s tensed shoulders relaxed. “Or..” Tommy raised his brows. “I don’t know, Tom. Fuck.”

“We’re going to find her, Michael. Stay in your hotel room, stay put, near the phone, right?” The Shelbys' head tapped his cousin’s shoulder before leaving the office.

(...)

He stopped the car near the portals and got out, a cigarette hanging on his lips. Tommy walked the pointlessly long alley, by-passing a ton of fountains and trimmed bushes of different forms and shapes.

The fair distance gave him time to rethink everything that concerned Y/N and his relationship with her. If she truly was behind the disappearance of his cousin’s wife, he would have to deal with her, meaning going to war, which was far from the plan since he entered politics.

He knocked on the door without waiting any further once he joined the principal door. He was looking intently at the windows trying to see a silhouette through it or an ignited light of some sort, but nothing.

The door abruptly opened, making a loud noise and the figure of the librarian was to be seen. Tommy raised his hand to her face, pointing his gun at her, but when her body was fully visible thanks to the moon shining, he blinked, bewildered.

His eyes dropped on a Y/N only dressed with an emeraude lace nightgown. The top was all see-through, but it didn’t stop him from cocking the gun and hold it steady in between her eyebrows. Even though he was here because he suspected her to have turned her back to him, his body reacted a whole different way to the view. His heart started to pounder in his chest as a warmth suddenly took prisoner his upper body. He swallowed in an attempt to dismiss the feeling ready to burst out.

“Missing our start?” She let out, not even pretending to be scared or shook by the situation. As a matter of fact, in their second meeting, Tom indeed pulled a gun at her, how could he forget that. Nobody ever had the nerve to threaten him on his own doorsteps, but of course, she did.

“Where’s Gina?” He ignored she was half-naked along with her remark.

“What the fuck, Thomas?” One of her eyebrows raised in confusion. “What’s happened?”

Tommy switched the position of his fingers, putting his index right on top of the trigger to make known he knew she was lying.

As she felt the danger, the woman banged the door on Tom’s face and not even a second later, he heard bullets being fired as he saw holes drawing through the door. The time stopped, or at least everything appeared as slower.

He instinctively put his arms over his head and kneeled as other bullets were being fired, he managed his way to the wall of the mansion, staying down.

“Fucking hell, Y/N!” He shouted his lungs out, his ears whistling due to the bullets’ noise.

“Remember when I warned you, Thomas. You pull a gun, I shoot!” She accentuated the last part, her tone underlined by anger.

“Why did you take her?” He kept his head close to the wall as shaking it, trying to totally recover his hearing.

“You should’ve asked that when you could, Sergent Major.” She calmly stated.

Tommy could hear she was re-loading her gun.

He looked at the gravels under him and recognized the bullet belonging to a rifle. He frowned, wondering how come she got a rifle.

“No. Put down the rifle, I'm throwing me gun.” He said loudly before dropping his gun in the grass far away from him, his weapon made a muffled noise while encountering the ground.

He didn’t hear anything for a minute that seems to last hours. The night breeze came fondling his face, helping him to ease his breath as the silence made him fully recover his hearing.

The front door opened, and Y/N peeked through. Only one of her Y/E/C eyes was to be seen, and even if her pupil was dilated due to the adrenaline, her look seemed concerned. “Are you hurt?” She solemnly asked, she, as well, being out of breath.

Tommy shook his head on both sides before he managed to stand, helped by the wall.

“You mad woman.” He closed his eyes as taking a deep breath in, knowing she wouldn't try to kill him tonight. When he opened his eyes again, she was in front of him, barefoot on the gravel.

“Sorry… I tend to lose my shit when I’m in danger.” She placed the rifle hanging around her neck to her side, a hand holding it still.

“You weren’t. I wasn’t gonna fucking shot, just trying to scare you.”

“...Well you angered me.” She hesitated in even giving him an answer. She finally decided she didn't need the rifle anymore and went placing it against the wall.

“Not fear, eh?” He teased, and she shook her head as a response.

“Why the fuck did you take Gina away? Michael’s all over the place, he even came to me. The boy’s fucking losing it.”

“Well, firstly, he deserved a little reminding he was still a boy as you correctly underlined,” she raised her brows looking at him, “secondly, after further research, I found it I know her father. Long story short, he’s the only one to be able to deal with her uncle if we don’t want any blood spilt.”

“Fucking was about to spill me gut on your doorstep, the fuck you care about spilt blood, Y/N?” He furrowed his brows as agitating one of his hands, motioning to the ground beneath their feet.

“Yeah,” she acquiesced, “not me that cares about fucking family. It’s you.”

That’s when he realized how serious she took their partnership. When he thought she was solely doing what fitted her best, she indeed took into consideration Tommy's convictions. She took seriously the fact he didn't want the family to be hurt. And although he ranged on her side regarding scaring Michael a bit to make him realize something, he never thought of Y/N to be tough enough to act with as much strategy as ruthlessness. She definitely outdid him in this case.

This sudden realisation aroused something in him. She cared. Even if the care she gave was nonetheless peculiar and typical to her character, she did what she could with what she had right? And right now she was working with him with as much resilience and fierceness as she would do with her own organisation.

“If it was up to me, fucking bullets to the head for both of ‘em and we done.” She dismissively worded as looking afar. “Where’s your gun?” She lazily looked back at him.

Tommy hesitated a short period of time before he grabbed her wrist and pulled her against himself. She didn’t push him away as he neared his face near her, she was the one sealing their lips together. This time, none of them were eager for the other, their kiss was light, soft and pure, contrasting with the chaotic situation they put themselves in.

The blue-eyed man slipped a hand on her back, fondling her skin above the piece of cloth covering her body while she reached for the button of his pants under his coat.

The atmosphere switched, not even seconds earlier it was love talking, now it was a whole another emotion ruling them.

Tom started to walk toward the door, forcing her to walk backwards. When she understood what he intended to do she murmured a soft “No.” and he opened his eyes darkened by desire and urge, looking into hers that were screaming for sex.

A smile grew on her lips as she went sticking her back to the nearest wall, her fingers strongly gripping on the man’s tie. He didn’t break the eye contact and joined her, flattening one of his hands on the cold wall. The warmth of his longing for the woman added to the coldness of the night were mixing together so well he felt a little dizzy.

He couldn’t think about how often he imagined them during their first time or how often he tried to picture Y/N’s curves in his head but his body somehow knew how much he wanted this. His hands were dawdling on any portion of her figure he could find, gulping each piece that was giving to him as if she was the first woman he’d ever touched.

Each kiss enticed him a bit more and whenever he closed his eyes he could literally see fireworks exploding everywhere in him. And whenever he would open them, he would find Y/N looking intently at him, her expression revealing everything she could never tell him, her feelings for him as well as her deepest fear, frustrations & beyond, her eyes being the messenger of the immensity of a soul, to another.

She quickly got to his bum she previously teased with one knee before reaching for his length.

Her cold fingers struck it a few times before she came aligning him with the distress for feeling him inside.

Once he was perfectly aligned, she released him and reunited her lips to his, where they belonged, giving him the green light. He thrust slowly at first, letting her some time to get used to his size. She murmured a low “Tommy...”, her legs encircling his hips as he grabbed one of them firmly. He was keeping her as close to him as possible, making sure their bodies were as connected as their souls were. He ultimately began to come and go, increasing his pace as time passed by.

Her high pitched moans came directly to his ears, the best sounds he’s heard out of his entire life without a doubt.

Following Chapter ❱

[mintjamsblog]

Tommy comes to Margate again and somehow ends up playing a game of chess with Alfie despite knowing only very little about it and somehow it turns into a game of strip chess and Tommy pretends to be Very Mad About It.

This one rather got away from me I’m afraid....

First of all, Tommy is good at chess. Very good. I mean it’s a game that requires strategy and subterfuge, that requires a player to think at least ten steps ahead. Tommy was born for it. He hasn’t, however, played it all that often. Certainly not as often as Alfie has played it lately. Well, you have a lot of time on your hands when you’re dead. He has one board set up in the corner just for an ongoing game between him and Olly. They play via the telephone, mostly, the odd half hour when he visits, but mostly it’s calls. They keep a careful track of each others’ place via grid references. Alfie’s even taken to playing with the delivery boy from the grocery shop on occasion, when he’s craved something a little more intellectually stimulating than shooting birds. 

Which is why it is particularly galling when Tommy has wiped out one bishop, a knight and a rook within the first two dozen moves. 

But Alfie can bide his time because he is nothing if not patient. The exact opposite of Tommy. Tommy is playing like he cannot get this game over with quick enough. Which is not the point with chess, now, is it? And the thing is Alfie can see it coming. Can see him getting cocky, so fucking sure of his abilities that his concentration is slipping. A lot like what happened with that fascist to be honest, and that didn’t end well. 

He can sense Tommy’s growing impatience as he slowly considers his next move. He’s not going to rise to it, Tommy came here so Tommy can damn well wait, but an idea is brewing in his mind.

”Alfie, just play your next move.”

Alfie just strokes at his beard. Another few minutes pass.

“Stop stroking your chin and get on with it.”

“My chin, yeah. One of the few bits of my face left undamaged. Quite fond of it as it happens.” 

“Alfie, just play your goddam move or I’m gonna play it for you. S’fuckin’ obvious.”

“Did you know that chins, right, are uniquely human?”

Tommy just raises his eyebrows in a gesture that says what the fuck? He doesn’t actually roll his eyes, but he’d like to, Alfie can tell.

“Not even our nearest relatives, the apes, possess a bony protuberance beneath their teeth, which is interesting bec….” he doesn’t finish the sentence because Tommy has got out of his chair, reached over to Alfie’s side and moved his remaining knight to cover his queen. It has left Alfie, unusually, speechless. I mean it was exactly the move Alfie was going to make, eventually, but that doesn’t make what Tommy’s done any less mother-fucking rude.

“Well that is just very unsporting Tommy. Very fucking unsporting indeed. Gonna have to be some sort of penalty for that.”

Tommy is leaning back in his chair again with an amused expression on his face. He purses his lips and looks out of the doors momentarily and when he turns back he actually has the semblance of a smile on his face. “A penalty?” he says, reaching for his cigarettes.

“Yeah, mate. A penalty,” he repeats, feigning interest in the horizon for a moment. “A forfeit, if you will.”

“What kind of penalty, Alfie?”

“Think you’re gonna have to lose something, Tommy. Let me see. The jacket should do it.”

“Alfie, it’s fucking chess. I’m not taking my clothes off.”

“And the waistcoat, yeah. That can go too.”

“I’m not taking anything off unless you take one of my pieces.” 

“Oh yes you are, mate,” he says, voice low and gravelly now, because he’s fucking onto something here.

There’s a long pause. Tommy’s lighting a cigarette but his eyes don’t stray an inch from Alfie’s. “Fine then,” he says suddenly. He clamps the cigarette between his teeth and roughly shrugs off his jacket, undoes his waistcoat. “S’not gonna help you win though,” he says, reaching over and playing his next move, swiftly.

Alfie surveys the board for a long time. He knows exactly what move he’s going to make but he’s enjoying Tommy’s agitation. Eventually he leans forward and takes one of Tommy’s pawns. “Shoes,” he says, without looking up.

He listens as Tommy reaches down and angrily undoes his laces. He mutters something indistinguishable as he kicks of the brogues before returning to the game in hand. He moves his queen.

Alfie cracks his knuckles loudly and then switches his king with his remaining rook.

“You can’t do that,” Tommy immediately interjects.

“Fuckin can mate, it’s called castling.”

“I know what it’s called, Alfie, but you can’t do it. You’ve already moved your king.” He’s goddam right of course, sharp as a knife that boy, but Alfie’ll be damned if he’s gonna admit it.

“No I haven’t,” he immediately replies.

“Alfie, you did it right at the start, when you were in check.”

“Nah, you’re dreaming it, mate. Must be getting on a bit, losing your memory.”

“I am not fucking dreaming it. Alfie you…”

“Trousers,” Alfie growls.

“You what?”

“Trousers. Off.”

“I came here, believe it or not, to talk business.”

“Oh, did you now? And you’ve never talked business without your trousers on, hmm?”

Tommy has the decency to blush slightly at that statement. Whilst looking endearingly pissed off.

“Stop complaining like some schoolgirl who’s been outsmarted by the class bully. Miss, miss, she cheated,” he mimics in a high pitched voice, which makes the change of tone that follows all the more effective. “Get them fucking off.”

The mocking has the desired effect; Tommy stands up and churlishly removes his woollen slacks, throwing them furiously over towards the fire.

Before he has a chance to sit back down Alfie tips up the chess board and lets all of the pieces slide noisily to the floor.

“Fucking hell, Alfie.” Tommy huffs. He looks genuinely exasperated, angry even, which is rather satisfying on a number of levels.

Oh dear, looks like you’ve lost a few more pieces,” Alfie says, voice ludicrously sincere. “Shorts,” he says, nodding decisively towards Tommy’s pelvis. 

Tommy glares at him furiously but Alfie can see the cogs whirring, weighing up the options. He slides out of the cotton underwear until he’s gloriously naked from the waist down. Well, apart from the socks and garters, but that all rather adds to the effect. 

“Now get the fuck over here and pick those up,” Alfie orders. When Tommy hesitates he decides to add a little incentive. “And if you’re a good boy, I won’t have to belt you while you’re down there. Be terribly hard to explain those noises to the nurse. She’s only in the parlour.”

Tommy drops to his knees at that, starts picking up the pieces as Alfie unbuttons his own trousers. He slaps them carelessly back on the coffee table where they proceed to roll off all over again. Alfie watches for a moment, amused, but impatience finally gets the better of him.

“For fucks sake, just get over here, I have something else you can attend to.”

Then he reaches over and grabs Tommy roughly by the hair, forcing him to crawl the last few inches towards the edge of the sofa.  He pulls Tommy’s face into his groin and leans down to glare. 

“Don’t worry, love, you’re still good for something,” he coos as he forces his half hard cock into Tommy’s mouth. “And you can fucking look at me while you’re warming my cock.”

Tommy lets out a muffled groan of frustration, as Alfie’s intention becomes clear. He starts to lick underneath the head and suck his cheeks in. Alfie grips his chin, hard  and tilts him upwards slightly. “Did you misunderstand me Tommy? I want you to warm my cock. Not suck it.” Tommy stills his tongue obediently, his eyes burning with absolute fury.

“There, there,” Alfie tuts, tapping his cheek gently as he settles himself back against the sofa. “A little lesson in patience will do you the world of good, Thomas.” He reaches for the book on his side table and proceeds to read to himself.  He can feel Tommy’s breath pulsing, sharp and fast, against his pubic bone. It’s like a gift from the fucking gods. 

Ten minutes have passed before Tommy dares to protest. He licks again, long and slow, and it takes considerable restraint on Alfie’s part not to rut straight into his mouth. He doesn’t. Instead he reaches down and slaps Tommy’s cheek, daring him to try again. 

When another ten minutes have passed he shifts his hips slightly, reminding the man at his feet that he is still watching. “D’you know, I fancy a cup of tea, Tommy,” he says innocently. Tommy moves as if to pull back but is swiftly held in place with a ringed hand in his fringe. “No need for you to move, lovely, I have staff for that, even here. Nurse!” he shouts abruptly. “We’ll take tea, in the living room please.”

“Right you are Mr Solomons,” comes the reply from deep in the house. 

And if Tommy looked furious before he looks downright livid now. Or maybe it’s terrified. Hard to tell when he’s on his knees with a cock in his mouth. “You stay where you are for the next five minutes and I’ll let you get up before she comes in,” he says, without releasing his hair. “Can I trust you Tommy?” he asks quietly. “Because good boys get a reward?”

Tommy nods, just barely, cheeks flushing at the promised praise. The minutes tick by achingly slowly, Alfie feigning deep concentration in his book. When he hears footsteps approaching down the corridor he bucks his hips, signalling Tommy’s freedom to move. Alfie simply places his open book over his lap and smirks as Tommy scrabbles desperately for his clothes. There isn’t time, of course, he’s still on his knees when the nurse arrives, almost hiding behind the sofa.

“Don’t mind him, he knocked over the board,” Alfie offers, charmingly. “Just picking up the pieces aren’t you, Mr Shelby? My back’s not up to it you see.”

The nurse’s eyes flicker towards Tommy just briefly, and if she notes his state of undress she ignores it. “And you can go now, dear, once that’s poured,” Alfie says, “No need to stay until eight.”

When she leaves the room Tommy glares at him through gritted teeth, his entire face flushed red. “You fucking, fucking, cunt…”  he hisses, but somehow they’re on each other within seconds, kissing deeply, angrily. And when the front door closes, the nurse has left, they stumble into the bedroom like a pair of desperate teenagers. The sex is hard and angry and satisfying, Tommy bent over the edge of the bed as Alfie slams into him, telling him how well he has done. When they later move onto the bed Tommy takes out his frustration on Alfie’s back, nails scraping hard and deep. It only spurs Alfie on to fast, to harder, which is no doubt exactly what he intended. They come together in a medley of grunts and curses and teeth and nails that finishes with a crushing embrace. 

“Haven’t seen you so angry at me in a long time,” Alfie mumbles.

“You’re a cheat and a bastard,” Tommy replies as he lights a cigarette.

"I know. That's why you love me."

“She could fucking tell anyone.”

“Who, Dorothy?” 

“Don’t give her a fucking name, that just makes it worse."

“She’s partially sighted ,” Alfie says, biting at a nail. “Can see fuck all bar what’s under her nose.”

Tommy slaps him so hard across his chest that it really should hurt, but all he can do is laugh. And laugh. And reach over to kiss Tommy gently. “Did as you were told, anyway though, didn’t you? Such a good boy.”

“Fuck off,” is all Tommy can say.

[kaile-hultner]

Dialogues With A Dreg, Part Four

Spoilers for Destiny and Destiny 2 ahead.

Hello, Guardian.

Let’s drop the allegory for a while. I don’t think it was working to begin with, and I prefer to speak plainly instead of in prose.

I love the game you serve as the protagonist in, at least mechanically. Part of the reason I’ve put nearly a thousand hours in piloting you around and clicking on enemy heads is because I’m chasing that satisfying “pop” when something’s brain explodes after I get them with a linear fusion rifle. I guess it’s better than being addicted to drugs or alcohol or video games with gambling mechan- oh shit god dammit wait, fuck, there’s Eververse here, I forgot.

Anyway, Destiny 2 has my full buy-in when it comes to gameplay, as I think it’s grabbed many folks in its three-year lifespan. I’m not as big a fan of the many modes to choose from in the game, and I think the story – when looked at holistically – is more-or-less a wash. But one aspect I can’t ignore is one I’ve tried to reason out in these Dialogues: Bungie, the game’s developer, wants me to live at least part-time in this world, and there are certain ramifications that come with that.

I first noticed these ramifications during the Faction Rallies in D2Y1, when it asked me to pick a faction and fuck shit up across the solar system. I picked what I thought was the coolest-looking faction, a group of (it turned out) thanatonautic, neoliberal warmongers calling themselves Future War Cult. They basically killed themselves over and over to see the future, and as a result they want Guardians everywhere to become absolute war machines. But as far as I could see, they were a “better” option than the other two factions: Dead Orbit, who just wanted to get the fuck out of the solar system and away from the Traveler, our slumbering charge, and New Monarchy.

New Monarchy is the MAGA hat gang of Destiny 2. They want to keep humanity safe by locking them inside the Last City, forming an eternal Guardian-led kingdom, and ruling with an iron fist. Yeesh.

In my first Faction Rally, I fought hard for FWC. I liked the gear they were giving me, not to mention the guns I could earn from them. They had an aesthetic I liked, and the story of thanatonautics is interesting enough for me to want to know more about how all that worked. But I didn’t like the insistence that we “reclaim” the far-flung reaches of the solar system, as if they belonged to us inherently. I didn’t like the ramping-up, constant drumbeat for war they were throwing out. Even if Lakshmi-2, FWC’s leader, seemed like the eye of a hurricane – calm, yet clearly still dangerous – the hurricane she was the center of was starting to irk me.

I’m sorry to say I didn’t drop FWC in subsequent Rallies, even if I wasn’t as enthusiastic about them as I was initially. If I could pick again, though, I know now I’d pick Dead Orbit. They had it the most right, plus Peter Stormare plays Arach Jalaal, the faction’s leader, which is just cool.

But the winner of pretty much every rally was New Monarchy. I couldn’t see the appeal, even if you stripped the clear trump-ass bullshit away. But a LOT of other Destiny 2 players fought for them, and they were the victors constantly. Bungie took the Faction Rally away in D2Y2, but it basically put me on an inexorable thought track to where we are today.

Simply put, I think the world that Destiny 2 is advocating for is at best a fascist one. At worst, we’re talking about reinstating the divine right of kings. Not only does mortal humanity lose in this bargain, but every other living creature inhabiting our solar system suffers for it as well.

Now, Guardian, I can see that this is an unwelcome statement to hear. I get it. After spending the entire five years of your existence thanklessly putting around the solar system and killing gargantuan, god-level threats to humanity and life itself, watching some nerdy, doughy writer cast aspersions on everything you do probably extends past irritation and into wishing you could shoulder-charge me into Glimmer particles. But I want to be clear: yours isn’t the only video game world – or even the only sci-fi world in general – that does this. As Nic Reuben (the original Destiny 2 fascism warner) put it in his 2017 post on the subject, Bungie writers are “blindly following a set of culturally encoded science-fantasy tropes”:

“‘True leaders are born. It’s genetic. The right to rule is inherited.’ Any time you play as a really, really ridiculously good looking person killing mobs of ugly things for a vaguely defined reason, you’re witnessing this kind of ideology first hand.”

One thing I would like to point out, though, before we continue: Guardian, I know you personally. I’ve fought as you across the stars. I know you don’t inherently want to rule over anything. You are intentionally a blank slate, you never voice your own desires except for that one time when a possessed Awoken prince killed your best ramen bud, and I want to believe that the only thing you want — which is the only thing I want — is to race Sparrows on Mars. But the version of you I play as is not the only version of you that exists. There are over a million of you. And aside from that million iterations of you that exist in this game world, there are others who absolutely want to rule. It’s high time to interrogate this world.

Fantasy Space Fascism: The Game

In his book Against the Fascist Creep, freelance journalist and Portland State Ph.D candidate Alexander Reid Ross defines fascism as “an ideology that draws on old, ancient, and even arcane myths of racial, cultural, ethnic, and national origins to develop a plan for the ‘new man.'” He continues:

“Fascism is also mythopoetic insofar as its ideological system does not only seek to create new myths but also to create a kind of mythical reality (ed. emphasis mine), or an everyday life that stems from myth rather than fact. Fascists hope to produce a new kind of rationale envisioning a common destiny that can replace modern civilization. The person with authority is the one who can interpret these myths into real-world strategy through a sacralized process that defines and delimits the seen and the unseen, the thinkable and the unthinkable.

“That which is most commonly encouraged through fascism is producerism, which augments working-class militancy against the ‘owner class’ by focusing instead on the difference between ‘parasites’ (typically Jews, speculators, technocrats, and immigrants) and the productive workers and elites of the nation. In this way, fascism can be both functionally cross class and ideologically anticlass, desiring a classless society based on a ‘natural hierarchy’ of deserving elites and disciplined workers. By destroying parasites and deploying some variant of racial, national, or ethnocentric socialism, fascists promise to create an ideal state or suprastate – a spiritual entity more than a modern nation-state, closer to the unitary sovereignty of the empire than political systems of messy compromises and divisions of power.”

Ross, A. R. (2017). Against the Fascist Creep. AK Press.

The Destiny franchise begins with you, a freshly-reborn Guardian, shooting and punching your way through a hive of vaguely-arachnid aliens your Ghost companion calls “Fallen.” You find a decrepit jumpship deep in the heart of the Old Russia Cosmodrome, which your Ghost fires up and uses to take you to the “last safe city on Earth,” a walled metropolis underneath the Traveler. You first meet with the Vanguard triumvirate, Titan Commander Zavala, Warlock Ikora, and Hunter Cayde-6, and then, after completing some tasks for them, you are granted an audience with the Speaker (voiced by Bill Nighy):

“THE SPEAKER: There was a time when we were much more powerful. But that was long ago. Until it wakes and finds its voice, I am the one who speaks for The Traveler.

“You must have no end of questions, Guardian. In its dying breath, The Traveler created the Ghosts to seek out those who can wield its Light as a weapon—Guardians—to protect us and do what the Traveler itself no longer can.

“GUARDIAN: What happened to it?

“THE SPEAKER: I could tell you of the great battle centuries ago, how the Traveler was crippled. I could tell you of the power of The Darkness, its ancient enemy. There are many tales told throughout the City to frighten children. Lately, those tales have stopped. Now… the children are frightened anyway. The Darkness is coming back. We will not survive it this time.

“GHOST: Its armies surround us. The Fallen are just the beginning.

“GUARDIAN: What can I do?

“THE SPEAKER: You must push back the Darkness. Guardians are fighting on Earth and beyond. Join them. Your Ghost will guide you. I only hope he chose wisely.”

Bungie. Destiny. Activision Entertainment, 2015.

This introduction to the world of Destiny is… shockingly reductive. Even playing the campaign when this happens, my first thoughts were, “wait so we’re not even smart or good enough to hear the children’s scary stories about the history of this world? what the fuck?” But over the course of years, we find out more and more about the so-called Golden Age of Humanity, the tools humans built with implied assistance from the Traveler, the various rich families and corporate megaliths that consolidated power over people across the solar system in the years and decades leading to the arrival of the Darkness and the ensuing Collapse.

Not only that, we start to get a pretty clear image of what life was like immediately following the Collapse. Humanity was almost driven to extinction, and the people left alive after this apocalypse soon wished they were dead. The Traveler “defeated” the Darkness but in the process put itself into something similar to an emergency reboot mode. It deployed the Ghosts, who resurrected people who could, as the Speaker put it, “wield its Light as a weapon,” but the first of these “Risen” were nothing short of horrific. They used their Ghosts’ regeneration and resurrection powers to become regional warlords, subjugating what few mortal people remained, draining the desolate wastes of what few resources they had, and basically sealing the deal on the “Dark Age” brought on by the Collapse. It wasn’t until the advent of the Iron Lords that these warlords were defeated and the “age of Guardians” could begin, but even the Iron Lords did some pretty heinous shit – like use a whole town of mortals as bait to lure in a band of warlords on the run.

But when it comes to creating a mythical reality, the Speaker has his formula down pat. Don’t get too bogged down with details, paint the conflict in stark good vs. evil, literal “Light vs. Darkness” broad strokes, and mythologize the actions of Guardians (but most importantly, our Guardian). And oh, what fodder for mythology we are.

By the end of the first campaign, we’re the hero who severed the connection between the Hive, the Vex and the Traveler and tore out the heart of the Black Garden. By the end of The Taken King, we’ve slain a god-king. In the Rise of Iron expansion, we stop the spread of a virulent nanoparticle with murderous intent called SIVA in its tracks, using nothing but our fists. In Destiny 2, we become the Hero of the Red War, the one who put an end to a Vex plot to sterilize all worlds, and who killed a Hive Worm God. We avenge our fallen Hunter Vanguard, we kill a Taken Ahamkara. We are the hub on which the spokes of history are turning.

In terms of video game power fantasies, I really truly can’t imagine a better-feeling one. It’s basically pure uncut dopamine being transmitted directly to the pleasure centers of the brain, one Herculean feat at a time. And if we were the only Guardian, if we were not part of a larger world, if everything around us was in a vacuum, I don’t know if I would be writing this article. But Bungie has been very clear about wanting to make a world where our actions do materially affect our surroundings. As such, we are essentially a walking propaganda tool for the Consensus, a pseudo-democratic government over the Last City, consisting of faction leaders, the Vanguard and the (now-presumed-dead, hasn’t been replaced) Speaker.

The Consensus wants badly to declare the advent of the New Golden Age, a time in which Humanity can finally emerge from under the shadow of the Traveler to pick up where it left off prior to the Collapse. The problem we supposedly face is the never-ending onslaught of Enemies. Four alien species showed up on our doorstep after the Collapse, all seeking to finish us off (according to the Speaker): the Fallen, the Cabal, the Hive/Taken, and the Vex.

Of the four-ish races of enemy, only one can said to be truly, deeply “evil” in the sense the Speaker intends: the Hive and Taken, led by Taken King Oryx and his sisters Sivu Arath and Savathun, the only force in the galaxy more fascist than the Guardians. The Vex are a race of machines whose only focus is on making more of themselves, a threat similar to SIVA. The other two alien forces, the Fallen and the Cabal, are certainly antagonistic toward Guardians but our initial reasons for fighting them are, frankly, butt-ass stupid. Basically, we fight them because they’re there. They have the audacity to land on planets that “belong to us” and scavenge resources from them. Until the Red Legion showed up on Earth, we basically only ever fought Cabal on Mars, and there’s really no reason as to why.

The Fallen, or Eliksni, on the other hand, end up coming off more as the tragic victims of our flippantly rampant genocidaire practices than actual “enemies.” They’re probably the weakest alien species we come up against. Their backstory involves them living in peace under the Traveler before their entire society was caught up in a Collapse-like “Whirlwind” and destroyed. Rather than give them Guardians, like it did with us, the Traveler instead just up and peaced out, leaving the Eliksni for dead against the maelstrom of the Darkness. The surviving “Fallen” got in their skiffs and desperately chased the Traveler across the heavens, stratifying the remnants of their society into “houses” and developing religious devotion to machines like Servitors in the process.

They tried to take the Traveler back at the Battle of the Five Fronts and Twilight Gap, and lost. Their armies were shattered, and we’ve been nonchalantly killing them en masse ever since. They are the “parasites” our Guardian must exterminate, along with the Hive, Cabal, and Vex. When we make friends with, or even simply allies with, a Fallen (like Variks the Loyal, Mithrax the Forsaken, or the Spider), it is made clear almost immediately that this 100 percent doesn’t change the relationship we have with the Fallen as a group. Variks is absolutely subservient to Mara Sov and the Awoken. Mithrax wants to create an Eliksni House that bows down to Guardians and Humanity for being “better stewards” of the Traveler than the Eliksni was. The Spider makes it clear that he only wants to grow his crime syndicate, but that we can help him out if we want. Never once does the Vanguard or the Consensus reach out to these allies and try to broker peace. And in-game, we simply don’t have an option but to fire on and kill Eliksni in droves. Kill or be “killed,” right?

When it comes to Humanity itself, while we never get a chance to actually leave the Tower and walk through the streets of the Last City, there are at least hints as to the deep class stratification at work here. You can’t get much more on-the-nose than an ivory tower of immortal beings overlooking an enclosed human race. Guardians atop humanity, the Speaker above the Vanguard over the Consensus over the people, and you, the very fulcrum on which history pivots, functionally over everything else. But in the mythical reality of this game, it’s really the Traveler über Alles, and humanity underneath the Traveler has become a wonderful, diverse melting pot without class, without fear. An ideal state where the walls keep Darkness at bay and humanity can discover the joys of tonkotsu ramen yet again.

A Light Story Vs. Lore Steeped in Darkness

Destiny has a reputation, unfairly earned, for being an okay game with a bad story, or at best a nonexistent one. The story isn’t really all that bad, it’s just poorly implemented up front, and I think my willingness to engage with the game’s world to the extent that I have is a testament to how powerful and evocative some of the beats in Destiny’s writing truly are. If we dissect the game we can separate the writing of the “story” from the writing of the “lore,” and in watching the plot develop over the past few years, we can see a gradual unification of these two areas start to occur.

This is helped greatly by third-party resources like Ishtar Collective, and by mechanical decisions Bungie made in D2Y2. Adding the lore back into the game with Forsaken was a good idea; choosing to fully integrate the lore into the world starting with Season of the Forge was a great one.

A side-effect of this lore-plot unification is a dismantling-in-real-time of some of the game’s most beloved and widely-spread legends, like the legend of Shin Malphur and Dredgen Yor. Even our personal legend is challenged in this way, and it’s a really neat way that Bungie writers new and old are critically engaging with their work. But it also really throws into stark relief some of the issues I’ve laid out in this article so far.

Take, for example, the lore book “Stolen Intelligence.”

Presented to us as intercepted secret Vanguard transmissions, “Stolen Intelligence” shows us exactly what the Vanguard really thinks of our actions, and what their goals really are. It was part of Season of the Drifter, which overall had a “trust no one” vibe to it, but some of the entries here are BLEAK, y’all.

Here’s an excerpt from the first entry, titled “Outliers.”

“Fallen armed forces continue to fall back from active fronts across Terra. Factions of House Dusk remain active in the European Dead Zone. Throughout the rest of the globe, refugee attack incidents have dropped by more than 70 percent since the conclusion of the Red War – largely attributable to depressed Fallen and human populations rather than any significant change in interspecies relations.

[…]

“The recent trending emergence of so-called “crime syndicates” (cf. report #004-FALLEN-SIV) is emblematic of the continuing destructuralization of Fallen society. Likely an artifact of multi-generational colonization of human strongholds, this agent believes that because these syndicates have no relation to indigenous Fallen culture, young Fallen are appropriating and imitating human mythology in absence of a strong cultural heritage of their own.

[…]

“VIP #3987, another former confederate of the Awoken, is a lesser-known personality known as Mithrax. Scattered field reports suggest that like #1121, #3987 styles himself a Kell of the so-called “House Light,” an otherwise unknown House apparently founded by #3987 himself. We have secondhand accounts that Mithrax has engaged in allied operations with Guardians in the field, though we have not as yet been able to corroborate these accounts with any degree of veracity. This agent is inclined to treat these reports with a healthy degree of skepticism until otherwise confirmed, as they may be propaganda from Fallen sympathizers in the Old Russian and Red War Guardian cohorts. We have requested intelligence records from the Awoken which may further clarify the matter.

“In addition, whatever the findings of said intelligence records may be, it should be stressed that one or two sympathetic outliers cannot be relied upon to erase the wrongs of past centuries, nor should their good-faith efforts to correct the sins of their forbears be taken as sufficient symbolic reparation.

[…]

“We have come too far to pull our punches now.”

Bungie. Destiny 2: Forsaken – Season of the Drifter. Lore Book: Stolen Intelligence. Outliers. Activision Entertainment, 2019.

Here’s another piece of “Stolen Intelligence,” about our relationship with Cabal Emperor Calus:

“Related to the above, #3801’s aggressive propaganda campaign appears to have been successful. Despite #3801’s recent inactivity, sentiment polls captured in the Tower at regular intervals over the last several months indicate that he has successfully swayed a significant percentage of the Red War cohort to believe that he may be a potential ally. Given our history with the Cabal as well as the events of the Red War itself, this is shocking and perhaps attributable to a case of mass traumatic bonding.

“It is my strong recommendation that the Vanguard pursue a reeducation curriculum before #3801 invites any Guardians of the City to defect to his service, a possibility which we have documented in multiple previous reports.”

Bungie. Destiny 2: Forsaken – Season of the Drifter. Lore Book: Stolen Intelligence. Passivity. Activision Entertainment, 2019.

Other entries detail the efforts of the Vanguard from keeping ostensible “conspiracy theories” from being published in the Cryptarchy’s journals; show the apparent oddity of mortal-Guardian “integrated neighborhoods;” and discuss the ongoing surveillance of the Drifter, a rogue Lightbearer who has survived since the early Dark Ages and who uses Darkness-aligned technology to run a PVEVP game called “Gambit”.

There are many other stories like these, scattered throughout the lore. Stories of Cryptarchy students being banished for making fun of New Monarchy’s leaders, of Guardians messing with Hive technology being burned alive and killed fully by the Praxic Order for their crimes of experimentation. Stories like these wouldn’t happen – couldn’t happen! – to our Guardian, because they’re too important, but are seemingly everyday occurrences to less consequential members of this society. In the real world, we’d call that an increasingly oppressive police state. In Destiny 2, it’s just flavor text.

There was a degree of narrative complexity added to Season of the Drifter that hadn’t been in the game prior. The entire season was essentially boiled down to “which side are you on, the Drifter’s or the Vanguard’s,” and in our path to make a choice, we heard from various bit players in our world. The Drifter told us his story in greater detail than perhaps we needed (and how much of it is true is debatable), but his story is also the story of a less morally-pure Guardian class. Everyone from the warlords to the Iron Lords did heinous shit to humanity while the Drifter watched, and it hardened him. The Praxic Warlock Aunor goes all in on her adherence to the City’s propaganda and ideology, trying to show us how untrustworthy the Drifter is. She ends up revealing more of her order’s goals than perhaps was wise.

This narrative complexity is nice, but it still betrays the game in a fundamental way. We now have the documents. We know what Guardians are actually about, and how they’re not exactly shining beacons of unwavering good like the Speaker would have had us believe. Regardless of declining Fallen activity, of a shift in Fallen culture, of actual living Fallen who want to ally with Guardians, the Vanguard is still adamantly pursuing “extirpation,” which is a fancy way of saying genocide (I’m not kidding, it literally means “root out and destroy completely”). We know the Vanguard and the Praxic Order have a hard-on for exile, reeducation and information suppression.

On top of everything, the narrative complexity was not met with any kind of mechanical complexity. Even with proof that the Vanguard wants to kill every Eliksni in the system, conscientious objectors don’t get to opt out. The narrative path that forks between the Drifter and Aunor converges again by the end of the quest. The “conspiracy theorist” that has been trying to publish paper after paper detailing exactly how the Nine worked with Dominus Ghaul to sneak his fleet into City airspace undetected was proven right by lore WE FIND IN THE GAME, but that doesn’t change our combat relationship with the Cabal remnants anywhere in the system, and homeboy still gets his papers rejected.

Ikora and Zavala, our remaining Vanguard members, insist repeatedly that Guardians are not a warfighting force, that the Vanguard and the Consensus is not an authoritarian organization. But everything we do says otherwise.

“A peace born from violence is no peace at all.”

Guardians do not get to choose their paths in the world of Destiny 2. The paths laid out before them lead to a life of warfare, of pain, of endless murder. Ostensibly, they are agents of good, trying to beat back the forces of evil, but if you look too close you see that really they’re just a bunch of indiscriminate killers with a mandate from the Orb God. Desperate to get out from under the heels of warlords, the Guardians created a fascist society, and adding insult to injury they pretend it’s a democratic, free one. Killing the Fallen is genocide, but you can literally never stop killing them because the game won’t let you. The only right way to play at that point is to turn off your console and go outside.

Destiny 2 isn’t the only video game to fall into this trap. As Nic Reuben said in the follow-up piece to his first story on how Destiny 2 is fascist, “I’m not saying Destiny is propaganda, just reliant on some of the same narrative tricks that make propaganda so powerful. At the same time, I don’t think that it’s too much of a stretch to say that games like Call of Duty make certain assumptions about what is justifiable, righteous slaughter and what is terrorism. Replace modern military hardware with future tech, replace terrorists with alien races that have traits synonymous with cartoon portrayals of traditionally marginalized social groups, and you’re effectively playing through the worst aspects of Call of Duty with a new coat of a paint.”

There is one glimmer of hope in the game. One sliver of lore that gives us pause and helps make the game bearable in its current state. It comes in the form of Lady Efrideet, former Iron Banner handler, youngest member of the Iron Lords, and a Guardian in self-exile from the City, the Vanguard, and its fascist dogma.

Lady Efrideet is one of the most fearsome Hunters in the Destiny universe. She is known as one of the best marksmen, if not the best one. She is impossibly strong, having once thrown Lord Saladin bodily off a mountain into a Fallen Spider Walker, destroying it. And she is also one of the only named pacifist Guardians who isn’t a member of the Cryptarchy. Her story is the story of the fall of the Iron Lords, as well as the beginning of the SIVA crisis, many years before our Guardian’s rise is documented.

But it isn’t SIVA or the Iron Lords that we’re interested in. Instead, we know that after SIVA was sealed away, Efrideet snuck away from Earth. She saw the deaths of everyone she knew and her will to fight was shattered. If this was the result of fighting for the Traveler, she didn’t want any part in it. So she took to the stars. In doing so, she ended up in the far reaches of the solar system, beyond even where we currently roam. It turns out, a small enclave of other Lightbearers, hesitant or unwilling to use their powers to kill, had also fled to this part of the system and had established a colony. It’s there that Efrideet resides, and it’s there I’d like to go.

Unfortunately, our Guardian is too “important” to the vast tidal forces at work in the Destiny universe for us to be able to leave for the outer reaches whenever we want. Because we are the hub on which the wheel of history turns, and there is no escaping that now, if ever we could. We are death, the flattening of a complex and intricate universe into one of simple shapes, the sword logic in a human/Awoken/Exo body. We are needed for the plans of the Nine/Mara Sov/Hive Queen Savathun to come to fruition. When or if the Darkness ever does come back, we will be the force that faces it and, win or lose, shape our future afterward.

Sometimes it’s nice having a video game place your character on a linear track. Games like Half-Life or Titanfall present to us simple choices in otherwise-complex story environments: progress, or die. Our characters are not immortal, but they have help from the technologies around us, are tenacious, are resourceful, are quick to adapt to changing situations. In Destiny, we simply exist. We can’t truly die. Even when it comes to the rules of the game, our immense “paracausality” causes us to shrug Darkness Zones off as mere inconveniences where other Guardians have died their final deaths. Because we are necessary. The Vanguard and Consensus need us to justify their horrific fascist policies. The great forces at work in the background need us to work as a pawn. Even Bungie itself needs us, powerful, trapped beings with a sense of right and wrong but no agency to actually act on those ethics, to continue its game.

I haven’t preordered Shadowkeep yet. For once I’m glad we’re not focusing on the Fallen or the Cabal. Going to the Moon means we’ll pretty much just be dealing with Hive, to say nothing of the unreal Nightmares we’re supposed to face. But I’m still undecided as to whether I even want to order Shadowkeep in the first place. If Lady Efrideet can go to the edge of known space and live peacefully with other pacifist Guardians, maybe I can put my controller down and step away, once and for all. It would be nice to have the extra space on my Xbox One’s hard drive. Other games exist to be played, and having the time and energy to do so would help me here, with No Escape.

But even then. I’m not expressing agency as a Guardian, but rather as the person who controls you, Guardian. While I go off to play other games, you sit and wait in stasis. Even if I don’t play, there are a million iterations of you willing to commit genocide daily for cheap rewards (shoutouts to the sixtieth Edge Transit drop in my inventory this month alone). Sure, it’s just a game. But this is what having a dynamic world means in practice. There are consequences to your actions. There always have been.

There is no reason why Humanity couldn’t share the Traveler’s gifts with, at the very least, the Eliksni. There is no reason why we couldn’t just ignore the Cabal in a state of mutually assured destruction, given how small a faction the Red Legion was relative to the Cabal army’s full size. Of the two remaining enemies, the Vex are less evil than they are simply a thing that wants the universe to be like it, and that’s threatening to diverse life throughout the universe, not just Humanity. The Hive/Taken are the true enemies in the game, but even they are directed, pawn-like, by their Worm Gods.

There is, likewise, no reason why the Risen had to organize in the fascist context they did. They could have created a society in which everyone could come and go freely, where ideas and actions could be given and received absent interference, where a true “golden age” could have sprung up naturally simply by living together harmoniously and using the Light the Traveler gave them to create, rather than destroy.

But that’s not how this story shakes out.