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chick-from-nz · 4 years

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Paper, Scissors, Rank (Ch: 5)

CHARACTER/PAIRING: Modern!Carrillo x Army!OC (eventually)

WARNINGS: maybe some swearing, military slang, more military talk, spelling and grammatical errors. Flippy floppy points of view and tenses. Could be very OOC/AU for some. Carrillo may not be narcos accurate as this is an AU. Some OC x OC

AUTHORS NOTE: bit of backstory in this chapter, warning if you don't like blood, theres some but its not overly descriptive. Other than that, bit of Carrillo, bit of OC. bit of everything really. shorter chapter

WORD COUNT: 2.4k

CHAPTER: 5 OF ?

TAG LIST(OPEN): @girlpornparadise @1zashreena1 @xxidontwikeitxx @nicke0115 @allalngthewtchtower @lettherebrelight

Greyson stayed slumped against the wall longer than necessary, hopelessly trying to bring her heart rate back to normal after the frankly, overwhelmingly hot, interaction with the Colonel. Yes she was ecstatic that she had been chosen for his team, but she wasn’t really able to process that information after the mess he had left her in. She was panting like a dog in heat, unbearably turned on, and sticky in places she hadn’t been in a very long time. Whatever he had just done to her, she wanted more of it. Lots more of it. He had opened a gateway into all things filthy and it frustrated her to no end.

Pushing herself into the upright position was no easy feat, but she knew she needed to work out her frustration even more after that interaction with the Colonel. No, she thought, maybe from now on I should call him Carrillo, since he is now my boss and all. The thrill of that settled low in her stomach and had her heart jumping at the thought. Grunting she pushed herself towards the gym with haste, before she could follow the mounting temptation to follow the Colo--- Carrillo, down the hallway to finish what he started.

Glancing around the gym she made note of the equipment. A few boxing bags, a couple of dumb bells, a bench press and other various things she could not name. Not the best of gyms but it would do. Stripping out of her long sleeve camo shirt she was left in her army issue green t-shirt, a shirt that was usually reserved for occasions such as this. She made the hasty decision to shuck off her boots and socks leaving her barefoot, before rolling her pants legs up a few inches to rest a rough inch below her knee. A much more practical workout attire.

Forgoing the weights as they weren’t her style, Greyson focused on the bags hanging in the middle of the room. Now this is where she would have fun. Coming from a generational military family had meant that her father had wanted her ‘fighting fit’ as soon as she was able to walk. By the time she was five years old she had been enrolled in martial arts and kids cadets. By age twelve she had won three championships in the sport and taken home the drill trophy at the cadet school. She couldn’t have made her father prouder, until the moment she won nationals for kickboxing, taking home the trophy and quite substantial prize money. That was the moment she knew she wanted to fight for a living, not as a pro kickboxer but as a soldier like her father was, she was only fifteen at the time.

At age seventeen she enlisted in the army, only to be denied on medical grounds and put on a two year stand down. From then on out, her father didn’t pay her any notice, always stealing himself away from the ‘disappointment’ of the family and being deployed for months at a time on purpose. Being the only child, and being denied access into the only service her family thought fit to serve in, made her feel like a useless waste of space.

Even while feeling like the worlds biggest disappointment she still pushed herself to her limits, training seven days a week for up to four hours a day, trying oh so desperately to make her father proud of her. At nineteen she didn’t want to become a regular soldier, she wanted to become an officer, but that would require her to wait another two years to be the minimum age to enlist. So she waited, kept training hard. She took shooting lessons at the local range, would do weighted pack runs three times a week and spend hours out in the bush at night teaching herself survival techniques. All the things she could hope would help her when she finally made the cut.

When she enlisted again at twenty-one, they denied her on the grounds that ‘she didn’t have enough life experience’, so this time, instead of letting it get to her, she doubled down on the training. And finally, when she reapplied again at twenty two years of age, she was accepted and began her first day of training a mere week after her twenty third birthday. Yet, she was still one of the youngest of the cadets she enlisted with, the eldest, Cadet Monroe, being thirty two years of age. It baffled her why someone would join as a cadet at that age when she knew the LT. Colonel, and possibly the Colonel himself, was younger than the cadet.

Pushing those thought from her mind Greyson began her workout, spending a small amount of time to warm up, before jumping straight into combination drills on the bag that she had learnt many years ago. She was able to switch off at this point, the years of doing the same routines over and over had drilled this into her muscle memory. She was all fluid motion and hard calculated strikes at her age. Briefly her thoughts return to the situation that had occurred mere minutes ago in the hallway. The way the Colonel’s body had been so tightly pushed against her had her breathing increasing, far from being exhausted she threw more weight into her strikes.

Damn that handsome bastard of an officer for working me up like this. This is the kind of shit that shouldn’t be getting to me anymore! , and with one last frustrated huff Greyson threw her hardest punch yet, yelping from the force of landing on the bag. She pulled her hand towards her chest to examine it. From the look of it, there was no damage done other than a few bruises covering her knuckles, not an unusual feeling for the cadet. She just wish she had been quick enough to land a hit of that smug face that was now haunting her thoughts more so than ever.

-------

Carrillo had finally made it to his intended destination, Lt. Colonel Sinclair's’ office. There was small doubt in his mind that the man residing within the office had been playing upon His cadets’ emotions during the course of her training. He wasn’t a stupid man by any means, he had put two and two together after witnessing the moment that occurred between himself and Greyson at the training yards. The smug smirk the Lt. had sported while walking past him that day had planted a seed of disrespect towards the man.

Carrillo didn't bother to knock on the man's door before barging in, he was in fact the senior officer in this situation so the LT. could suck it up.

Sinclair stood up in a hell of a rush, not really sure as to who would be bursting into his office at this time of day, he had half expected to see Cadet Greyson standing there waiting to apologize and finally accept his attention, instead he was greeted with the stone faced Colonel from Columbia. “Ah Sir, good to see you again, I gather that your time on the base has been productive, congrats on forming your team. Now, what can I help you with, Sir ?”

“It has been brought to my attention that you were not forthcoming about the information regarding the cadet that I have selected, rather you lied to the cadets while claiming you had not yet been informed yourself, is this true Lieutenant?”

“I... uh... what Sir. I don’t know where you got that bullshit from but that is not the case, I held Greyson behind to give her the good news but she stormed off before I could tell her” The lieutenant cleared his throat to cover his mounting embarrassment at the situation before him. He definitely wasn’t above lying to cover his tracks and throw the Colonel in front of him off the scent of his essentially illegal advances at the cadet mentioned. He was greeted with a raised eyebrow and a knowing look on the Columbians face.

“I think it's safe to say you can cut the shit, Sinclair. I know all about your advances toward Cadet Greyson. I fail to see why you would lie about it considering the rumors' brewing in the Cadets barracks tonight. That and might I mention the encounter I witnessed between you and Greyson just a few days ago. There was nothing professional about that!”

“Look, Sir” The Lt. Colonel spat, making his way around his desk to make himself look bigger, “Frankly it's none of your damn business which cadets I chose to associate with or not. Greyson can make up her own mind about what and WHO, she wants. And let's face it, they graduate in a little over a week now. The cadets are fair game to the rest of the corps now” The borderline insubordination coupled with the hungry grin cemented exactly what the Lt. Colonel was trying to obtain. The realization had Colonel Carrillo’s stomach turning at the thought. If he was this open and honest about his intentions then HIS cadet was in a very rocky situation.

Clearing his throat and taking a rather large step toward the lower ranked officer before him, the Colonel fought off the need to punch the smug man in the face. But there was no point in doing that, lest he chase off the Cadet from his team, he still was unsure of her exact feelings for the man currently before him. He tilted his head back to stare down his nose at the perverse man before him. Crowding just ever so close to the man to make him uncomfortable.

“I suggest you stay the fuck away from that recruit, Lieutenant. She is part of MY team which now makes her, MY responsibility and henceforth, MY cadet. Keep your filthy hands off her or I'll have you charged for unwanted advances, then it will be goodbye senior rank and back to junior officer you go. Understood?” The Colonel declared, fully expecting the man before him to back down, except defeat and allow him to carry on with his evening. The exact opposite occurred.

“I think there is something you just don’t quite get, Sir” the Lt. Colonel scoffed, “That girl out there, that stupid young cadet, will believe anything that is fed to her. How do you think I got her wrapped around my finger in the first place” He laughed off the end of his sentence, pushing at the Colonels’ shoulders in order to get past him to sit back down behind his desk. “As far as I'm concerned, you don’t have a single claim on that cadet until she accepts your proposal to join your team..” he trailed off before delivering the most sarcastic “SIR!” he could muster. Shoulder shaking as he chuckled away to himself.

-------

Greyson had pushed herself to the point of over exertion. Working out at a hundred percent capacity would do that to a person, even if she was used to endurance training. Combining the work out with her mental and previous physical exertion had been enough for her to drop to the mats after a solid hour of hammering the training bag. Her knuckles of her left hand were thoroughly bruised but the knuckles of her right hand were a bit more worse for wear. A deep gash had formed over the knuckle of her index finger, the bloody pouring steadily from the gash, the rest of her knuckles on that hand were marked with much smaller gashes, a minimal amount of blood coming from the cuts. It looked like she’d killed someone.

Cradling her hand to her chest she made her way to the bathroom adjacent to the gym. She turned the tap on, waiting for the water to run clear before thrusting her hands under it to clean off the blood, barely flinching at the sting that came from cleaning out the gash. The sink turned a faded crimson from the amount of blood being washed from her hands. She felt numb, unbearingly so, it seemed the week had finally caught up with her, she felt as though she could curl up in a ball right now and wake up a week later. So lost in her own thoughts and mesmerized by the blood flowing from her hands and into the sink, she failed to notice the presence behind her until it was too late. One minute the cadet is watching her blood flow down the sink, the next her vision is fading to black.

-------

Carrillo was fuming, muscles taught, hands curled tight and ready to release upon the man before him. His jaw was clenched so tight he could hear his teeth grinding together. He took a step towards the man with the full intent of knocking his flat onto the floor, black out cold. And he would have too, if it wasn’t for the frantic knocking followed closely by Cadet Calliope all but throwing himself into the room.

“Sir, come quick, it's Greyson” Calliope exclaimed. There was a frantic tone in his voice that snapped both men out of their grudge match.

Carrillo spun to give the young man his full attention, before nodding at the recruit, “Lead the way Cadet” . They followed the cadet through the twists and turns of the hallways leading towards the medics bay. Upon seeing both officers the nurses rushed them through to her room. And there, laying almost deathly still, was Cadet Greyson. Gash above her eyebrow being stitched together as Carrillo watched on from the door. She looked nothing like the strong cadet he had seen perform all week. She looked fragile, too fragile. Not wanting to watch any further he pushed past Sinclair who was standing directly behind him, mouth agape, hands shaking and look like he might collapse himself.

Carrillo grabbed Calliope by the arm, pulling him down the hallway and into a spare room. He rounded on the cadet, finger pointed and eyes ablaze, as he hissed, “Explain to me exactly what you know Cadet, and don’t you dare leave anything out”

Cadet Calliope gulped, mouth suddenly dry. Well here goes nothing, he thought

#horacio carrillo #horacio carrillo x oc #horacio carrillo x reader #narcos fanfic #modern au #paper scissors rank #chapter 5 #narcos

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robyndehood · 3 years

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My Son's Story (pt. 1)

DISCLAIMER: I Know it's a bit of a long read, but it's important. Please read. I promise it isn't boring. Thank you!

Hi Everyone,

Intro

This is my first real attempt at Tumblr. Please contact me if anything I post violates a rule or is not considered appropriate. Anything I post, I truly mean no harm nor offense to anyone. But I need to write daily again to regain my gift and share it with the world. I have been working on my version of the "great American novel" for years. As a child, I was well on my way to becoming a successful author, but people had other ideas for my career path - and to put it bluntly - my contribution to society. Writer's block set in and then what was second nature to me - creative writing, became a lost skill. Or maybe a distant memory. Writers know that half the struggle as an artist is the dilemma of our own aspiration towards perfection. But nothing is perfect. It is a social construct and the antithesis of true beauty.

The Ultimate Birthday Gift

So, that said, let's talk about my son. He's three - he's actually turning four in December. He was born on my birthday and has been the greatest gift that I have ever received. I won't pretend that he is perfect or even generally compliant with my directions. But he's loving. He's empathetic. He's brilliant. He's beautiful. And most of all, he is the sweetest person I have ever met.

I am going to go slightly off-topic for a bit; just to paint the full picture. I don't want to ramble and I am definitely a believer that a short and to the point message is almost always far superior to a long and complicated message. But bear with me because this snippet of the backstory is essential. And my son's story is important.

Appalachia

We live in Pittsburgh, part of the Appalachian Mountain Range. There is no other way to say it than the unadulterated, ugly truth of it - Pittsburgh is racist. Very racist. Beyond that, there is a general lack of common courtesy to outsiders, customers of businesses, other patrons in stores, etc. And the rudeness, is actually pretty much unrelated to the racism. It sounds strange and surely, minorities who are on the receiving end of it would certainly assume that racism was the reason why they said "excuse me," "thank you," etc. and about half the time are ignored like they're a ghost. But don't get it twisted - there are many times the aforementioned behaviors by many Pittsburghers IS induced by racism AND a lack of common courtesy and manners. You see, their deep-seated tribalism is indoctrinated into many Pittsburghers so completely from a young age that they know no different. It would be difficult for them to understand this article and I'd bet anyone ten bucks that if enough PIttsburghers read this post - they will attack my analysis of Pittsburghese culture as though the post itself is a blitz on the entire city.

Brown or White?

I am latin and there aren't many latins in Pittsburgh. But when we moved to Pittsburgh when I was in seventh grade, people knew my last name. Summer had just passed and I do get brown. I can get brown very quickly in the right type of sun and I get brown eventually in the sun that exists in cloudy and northern Pittsburgh. In seventh grade, some boys decided it would be funny to call me "estupido," and up until two years ago, I avoided sun exposure that would reveal my "brownness" like the plague.

Subversive, Subconscious, and Secret Racism

So, not long after I started that strategy, I was treated as white. (Side note: latins can be any race; but it seems that societal constructs are seeking to change this long accepted designation and categorize latins as some in between, brown race and not an ethnicity. To be honest, I am ok with that and now proud to be latin.)

The reality of being treated white in Pittsburgh for many years was that I learned what white people actually said when they were only with other whites. The most common thing that was said was one white person mumbling to other white people that someone was a "dumb n******" or a "dumb monkey." I've heard white adults refer to children who were black as "n***lets." But it was always this crocodile smiling through their teeth behavior. They'd never dare say it to a black person. Instead, they'd just indirectly discriminate against them.

I do have to mention that by no means do all Pittsburghers behave this way. It's just too many of them. I don't know the percentage, but if I had to guess I'd say - 50% plus.

Yes, Racism Happens All The Time Even if You Don't See it Happen

Many white people will tell you that racism is gone because they don't ever observe it and Obama was president - a black president. Therefore, everything is now over. I can admit that I have experienced my share of discrimination when my skin darkens. But I had no clue how bad it was for black people out here until my son became the recipient of the ugliness of it all. To me, racists are by definition ignorant cowards; so it makes sense they'd pick on a small boy whose only family is his mother.

Evil Always Starts Slowly

If one reviews history, every evil dictator or regime began slowly chipping away human rights. By the time the citizens realized the dire state of their country, it was too late. Their freedoms were already taken away and mechanisms to fight back had also been methodically erased.

When my son was born - a boy who is half African (his father (if you want to call him that since he is basically not involved) is from Ghana); no issues arose for the first two and a half years. But then the indirect discrimination started. The same rules that applied for white children didn't apply to him. I could give so many examples. But let's just say, as a rambunctious boy, if my son mimicked a white boy's same rambunctious behavior, we were confronted and the white family was not confronted.

One day I made an appointment for my son's hair to get cut at Philip Pelusi. They made the appointment knowing that he was only two and a half. The receptionist let me know that the stylist was a "Grade A Stylist," so I would have to pay more. I was fine with paying more; cool. After the appointment was made, I mentioned to the receptionist that my son was mixed race. We ended the call and I began to get my son ready to leave. Within ten minutes, the salon called back and informed me that they didn't/wouldn't cut my son's "type of hair." I promptly returned the call and explained his hair was curly, that's all. They blatantly lied and told me that the stylist doesn't cut ANY curly hair. Right. So, if a white lady came in with curly hair she would be turned away? I doubt it. Either way, the stylist is "Grade A." She is also licensed to cut hair by the state. Shouldn't a requirement for state licensing require one to know how to cut all "types of hair"?; I saved the recording, by the way, and still have it.

As months progressed, little by little wherever my son and I went in "white areas," we felt hostile vibes. Other incidents occurred that couldn't be proven as racial discrimination, but I knew. Whites behaved as though my son didn't deserve to be around them.

Southern Hospitality

We traveled down south a few times in the past year. Yes, some of the south is very racist still to this day. But not where we drove. Suddenly people responded when we said "excuse me," "thank you," etc. No white families prevented my son from playing with their children. No one told me my son was a nuisance or put out that vibe.

The Lesser of Two Evils?

But we had to come back each time because we live here and I've been working my way out of the projects that I have lived in for four years. Shootings. Open drug use and sales. The smell of crack in the hallways. Infestations in other apartments that come our way no matter what we try. People peeing on the hallway floors. Yes, seriously. Young children being encouraged to bully and beat up other kids. Children stealing or attempting to steal my son's toys because their mothers buy them none. Gamgmembers as young as twelve.

So, I concluded: "yes, we will move, but until then, we only sleep in our apartment and we do not play at the projects' playground." I figured IF I saved a certain number of money since I have a car that I saved for and bought last year, we would make it in our new, chosen city (Tampa or Jacksonville).

But then the racism against my son in the "white playgrounds" became worse. One day he was playing with a five year old boy at an indoor playground. The mother had no issue with it. The father of the boy arrived half an hour in, promptly scooped the boy away from my son, and told his son that he had told him he was not to "play with n*****s." My son couldn't understand why he could no longer play with his new friend and kept calling to him, "friends again!" while sobbing because he thought he had upset the boy. I had to leave with my son because of it.

Another time, a ten-year-old boy taunted my son on an outdoor playground and called him a "dumb monkey." My son first attempted to yell, "I NOT DUMB MONKEY," a few times; but the boy persisted and even smirked in my direction. My son ran to me and asked me to make the boy stop. No parent in sight and again, I just had to leave with my son.

Enough is Enough

Finally, last month or so, my son and I were at our usual laundromat doing laundry. We had finished. My son skipped a few steps in front of me and tried to open the glass door but couldn't push the bar to open it because of his height. He placed (yes, placed..lightly) his foot on the door to try to give it a bit more of a nudge. I was a few seconds behind him so just pushed the door open and we went to our car to load our clean laundry into it. In retrospect, I saw an older white male go next door to the beer store right after we walked out of the laundromar. The beer store employee approached us as I loaded my laundry into my car and then intended to leave.

The beer store employee told me he was getting "reports that kids were kicking glass." He said kids. Plural. And what he said made me envision a bunch of grade school kids kicking around broken glass on the sidewalk or parking lot. I responded calmly that "I have one kid and he's been with me the whole time. He wasn't involved." The beer store employee wanted drama to transpire. It was obvious. He said in a threatening manner: "Just so you know, I have cameras." My son and I exchanged glances because we were confused. What kids? Kids were kicking glass. Where? What glass?

Again though, I calmly responded that my son wasn't involved and he should check his cameras. He told me he was calling the cops. So I got my three-year-old son in his car seat and set a time limit of ten minutes to wait. We weren't running when he didn't do anything. The cops of course showed up about a minute later. It's ridiculous because in our projects (different police department than the laundromat police department), there have been shootings where children were outside playing when several clips were emptied into crowds and the police station is a block away. I know people called and it took an hour for them to arrive on scene.

Long story short, the laundromat cops knew it was a bullshit call. The supposed "kicking glass" was because my son placed his foot on the door to try to open it when we were LEAVING. The police eventually informed us that was the alleged "kicking of glass." There was no kicking that happened. The door wasn't even dirtier, let alone damaged because my son tried to use his foot to open the door. Lightly, by the way.

Even though the police were kind to my son, for the next week, my usual gregarious child was terrified to go anywhere. He eventually told me it was because "the cops will chase me and take me to jail because I bad guy now."

He's over it now. Mostly.

But we still have to pick between the craziness of playing at our aforementioned projects or going to a "white playground" and risking my son being rejected. It's usually a 50/50 shot that he will be rejected. If he gets rejected, he gets very upset.

Again, these are problems we never faced on our travels down the southern eastern seaboard. We didn't get treated like this at the destinations or on the journey by car to and from the destinations.

I knew we were living in an extremely racist and rude area, but one day I found this. It's a map delineating the results of a study conducted by Google and others regarding the level of racism in different parts of the country.

I already knew this much. But it's good to know I'm right that we are in the worst part of the U.S. for racism and the kindness we received traveling to those certain southern states was no illusion. And I did ask locals before I found this map if I was right that people are kinder to all colors in whichever given area.

Not the Worst Thing That Happened But the Last Straw

People talk a lot about Karens these days. This lady looked like she jumped right out of a Karen meme. My son was two feet away from her while we waited in line and she said as obnoxiously as possible: "Can you handle this? Please get him out of MY space." Yeah, I didn't let it go. At all. Her argument was that she said "please" so it's OK to make my son feel like a "this" and not a little boy. I held him while he sobbed. Long story short, I decided right then anywhere has to be better than this.

It isn't me just knowing people are being nasty to my son and I'm upset. He understands. He had an evaluation for something and he tested very well. He cried about each of these incidents. He just wants to make people smile and make friends.

So, next month we are going for it. I'm no where close to the aforementioned goal. I have some savings. We may end up in shelters at first after savings dry up in a few weeks. But we cannot survive up here. Nor can we advance here.

Side Note

I wrote this mostly to inform others of the status quo and reality of racism and the real effects it has on one tiny boy. And I know it will just get worse if we stay since it's this bad already.

But if you anyone knows of any resources to help us get on our feet in a month in Tampa or Jacksonville (Tampa is my first choice, but either one.) I have applied for housing, even though I didn't and don't want to go back to projects; but I'd take one down there over watching my son endure so much pain any day of the week.

Ok, so final part: I'm going to say upfront I feel extremely awkward with this paragraph because this isn't my way (years before my son was born I was homeless for a stint and never sat with a sign or a cup. Just couldn't do it), but for my son, I'm going to drop my cashtag here. Everyone is struggling and I know there are people with much worse problems. I appreciate anyone who has read this far and can help spread the reality of what I wrote about. That's the reason for the article; but if help is received at all because of it, we would be grateful but it's definitely a far second most important reason for the post. Here it goes, for my baby, in case it'll change his life and give us that better foot up, here it is: $RobyndeHood

#black love #blm #race and politics #kids #parenthood #parenting #latinboys #latin women #writers on tumblr #black lives matter #black stories #nonprofit #karens

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dibleopard-writes · 4 years

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Training Montage

Ao3 (recommended)

Description: Anakin was the Chosen One and therefore the best padawan anyone could ask for, especially Master Obi-Wan. He was so good, in fact, that he had plenty of time for shenanigans or, as he privately referred to them, Shenanakins. Force, he was clever. Several snippets from the training of Anakin Skywalker. Author’s Note: Fanfiction, in 2020? It's more likely than you think. I'm working on several Star Wars projects right now, and here's one that is far less structured with far less need for in depth planning. Original Upload Date: 2020-08-27 Fandom: Star Wars Prequels (post TPM, pre AotC) Characters: Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, various side characters Rating: Gen (or T for language) Warnings: Swearing, Canon-typical Violence Word Count: 6490

Chapter 1 of ??

Chapter 1: Moles? In My Mine? It's More Likely Than You Think.

At the age of five, Anakin resolved to never be the kind of moody teenager spacers complained about. At the age of twelve, he decided that not only was that naive of him, but that he would get a head start and be moody right that second.

This change of heart was mostly due to Obi-Wan, who was refusing to take any missions offworld with him even though Anakin got his own lightsaber a whole three weeks ago and was therefore completely qualified.

“Having a lightsaber doesn’t help diplomacy, Padawan,” said Obi-Wan, completely missing the point.

“So don’t choose diplomatic missions! I bet there are hundreds of pirates hanging around… I don’t know, Batuu.”

“Batuu has smugglers, not pirates, Anakin–”

“– And?! We can arrest smugglers–”

“– And anyway, it would be irresponsible of me to take a padawan as young as yourself into a confrontation like that.”

“I’m not nine anymore! I’m not some dumb initiate, I can handle pirates.” If he was the first in his classes to fight pirates, he’d be able to hold it over them for ages. Even Iepa would have to respect him, smug son of a–

“I was still an initiate when I was your age.”

“Well I’m sorry you sucked, but that doesn’t mean I can’t go on missions.”

By this point, Master Obi-Wan had his head in his hands, almost hiding the beard he was trying to grow in order to look more authoritative. Anakin didn’t think he’d respect him any more with a beard than without, but it did make him look less like a clueless teenager so maybe he could fool the senior padawans.

“Look, if I took you offworld, not only could you get hurt or cause a diplomatic incident, but Master Windu would be on my back about it.”

Anakin muttered, “I could take him.”

“What was that?”

“I said you wouldn’t be able to shake him.” Anakin believed both statements emphatically. Sure, Mace Windu was the Master of the Order and invented an entire lightsaber form, but Anakin was the Chosen One, which basically made him the best. That being said, if Master Windu put his mind to it, he could be annoyingly stubborn in his pursuit of wrong-doers.

“My point exactly, and if he decided I was irresponsible – which I would be – we’d both be Temple-bound for months.”

“Oh, so you get to leave and I don’t?”

“Yes, but I’m sure you noticed I haven’t left because I’ve been too busy looking after you.”

“And what an amazing job you’ve been doing.”

“Watch your tone, young one.”

“Tell me, Master, do you remember any of my allergies?”

“Allergies?” Obi-Wan stopped for a second, with a look of genuine concern and guilt working its way over his face as he failed to recall information that Anakin had never given him.

“Yeah, I’m allergic to you and your banthashit!”

“Language, Padawan!” There was something resembling anger in Obi-Wan’s glare, but to acknowledge that would be sacrilege and also a suggestion that Anakin cared, which he didn’t. To prove this, he stormed into his room and used the Force to slam the pneumatic door as pneumatic doors rarely do.

Force, Obi-Wan could be insufferable sometimes.

...

After an hour of staring at the ceiling, Anakin came to the decision that the only real resolution to this conflict was running away and being a Jedi without Obi-Wan to bring him down.

Fortunately, he had spent the last two years building his very own ship and had already put it through an entire test run without anything breaking. Between his technical expertise and thorough testing, the ship was probably the best in the entire Temple hangar.

First though, putting his stealth skills through their paces in order to get there. One doesn’t survive nine years of slavery without knowing how to move silently. The swoosh of the door may have been a bad start, but his slow navigation of the common room more than made up for it. Sure, Obi-Wan was in his own room, probably, like, crying over getting owned so hard, but if Anakin had made even the slightest mistake, he would have come running and demanded a ridiculous amount of meditation on respecting others. The stakes could not have been higher.

He crept out of their rooms and into the corridor, shushing the mouse droid that seemed to regard him judgmentally despite its lack of eyes. From there, it was a simple matter of carrying himself with unquestionable confidence along a convoluted path to the hangar. He passed a few senior padawans with dead eyes and piles of holopads in their arms without raising suspicion. Man, was he good at this.

The hangar was probably the best place in the Temple. Warm Temple stone met flame retarding durasteel in a way that shouldn’t have worked as well as it did. Several decade-old speeders lined up against one wall next to a small fleet of cargo ships and fighters. All of them were horrendously out of date and well worn in the way that a lot of the Temple’s technology was. When Anakin asked why the Jedi insisted on having such terrible tech, Obi-Wan had said something vague about budget and not being materialistic. It was unconvincing at best and Anakin had really shown the whole Order up with his latest project.

After his no-doubt legendary podracer was left on Tatooine, Anakin had taken all of six months to set his sights on building a starfighter that could take him to every system in the galaxy. Obi-Wan, relieved to find a hobby that would promote focus, had pulled some strings and Anakin had aimed akk-dog eyes at the Temple mechanics that he had been tailing for months until they let him at the skeleton of an old Delta-7. Aethersprites never came with their own hyperspace engines, but he could work with that. Annoyingly, the sublight engines in the hangar were nothing like the ones on a podracer so he had to spend a humiliating few weeks with an old mechanic to get them installed and working. On the positive side, there was an astromech droid fitted directly into the ship that could give him diagnostics and occasionally a mechanically-themed joke. The jokes were hit-or-miss but the droid was good.

Two years of sterling work had made the Delta the best ship in the Temple, and it could far outpace any of the speeders in Coruscant’s skylanes. Now, as he made his way ever-so-innocently towards it, he couldn’t help but admire the way the smooth paint looked among the chipped facades of the rest.

R4-P3 chirped a greeting as he hopped in and prepped the starter engines.

“Hi, P3, fancy going on a trip?”

“THERE WERE TWENTY-SEVEN TRAFFIC CODE VIOLATIONS DURING THE PREVIOUS FLIGHT.”

“Me too, buddy. See if you can find one of those hyperspace rings lying around here.” Ignition was smooth. Vertical repulsors engaged. Landing gear retracted. So far, his plan was flawless. A blip appeared on his screen, indicating the nearest hyperspace ring. Latching onto the ring was not something he had ever practiced before, so he assumed the strange rattling noise was normal.

As he ascended, chatter buzzed into the comm system.

“What’s that P3?”

The chatter cleared into actual sentences as P3 adjusted the frequency.

“-ing is not fitted properly. Repeat, Aethersprite Delta-7 please identify yourself-” Anakin flicked it off. Trust traffic control to kill his flow.

“PLEASE KEEP TO DESIGNATED SKYLANES,” bleated P3, taking up the burden instead. Anakin dodged a passing CorSec speeder.

“Will do,” he lied, “While I find one, you wanna do the hyperspace calculations?”

“DESTINATION?”

“Uh…” He hadn’t thought that far. Tatooine was probably weeks away, Naboo had way too much water just lying about– Where else had he been? Oh, that’s right: nowhere, because Obi-Wan didn’t care about him. “Batuu?” He could probably beat up a few smugglers in the name of justice before the Jedi caught wind of it. Talk about selfless heroism.

He hit the upper flight levels and powered through into the mesosphere. Considering the thin air at this altitude, there was a lot of turbulence. The shaking was beginning to make his arm buzz and it became a disproportionate effort to keep the control-stick level.

“LIGHTSPEED CALCULATIONS COMPLETE,” announced P3.

“Great, just in time,” replied Anakin, flicking some switches, at least three of which were relevant, “I’ll just make the jump now.”

As he pulled the jump ignition, P3 began screaming and the rattling grew louder. The pinprick stars became needle-thin lines became the whirl of blue and white he hadn’t seen since the last journey from Naboo. On that trip, the pilots hadn’t let him in the cockpit during the initial jump, so this would probably have been way better if not for the awful clatter of the hyperdrive and the eventual tear of engines sputtering out of commission. Maybe that was why he had never seen anyone make jumps in-atmosphere. Or perhaps the issue was related to the ring’s latching mechanism. Really, it was anyone’s guess.

P3’s wails had become spluttering, staticky sobs, which was honestly a poor display in a droid with no fear subprogram. The ring flew off the Aethersprite, plunging it back into normal space with a roar.

“Well that sucked,” Anakin said indignantly. His flying had been flawless, too!

P3, between choked bleeps, lit up the speedometer – the hyperspace ring was no longer pushing them beyond the light limit but neither had any reverse-thrusters been engaged, leaving them at a healthy constant speed of only-just-slower-than-light, which was probably fine – and the scanner – there was a planet about thirty light-seconds in front of them, which was probably less fine at their current speed.

“Okay, so it still sucks,” Anakin amended.

He slammed on the brakes and almost blacked out as G-force slammed on him in return. Rude. His old pod-racer never had this issue. He tried easing their deceleration more slowly, which involved less blacking out but also made slowing to pedestrian speeds before hitting the planet somewhat less feasible.

No matter; Anakin was an expert pilot and even more skilled at having incredible luck. This would be easy.

Within twenty seconds, they hit nature’s drag chute: the atmosphere. P3 tried to draw Anakin’s attention to their steep angle and high speed as if these weren’t things that Anakin already knew. They did seem more relevant when the entire ship’s hull flew alight, however, so he attempted to shallow out their descent.

The control-stick was uncooperative and everything began to shake as he tugged it as far back as he could. How was he supposed to pilot if the ship refused to do what he wanted it to do?

After five long seconds, the heat died and they plunged into a cloud bank. Everything past the tips of the Aethersprite’s wings was obscured by a white thicker than Obi-Wan’s skull, which was impressive if disorienting. He felt the control-stick hit full lock and a few of the many warning indicators seemed appeased.

Another five seconds, and P3 stopped screaming about their speed and started screaming about their altitude. The clouds remained steadfast.

“I’ve made an executive decision,” declared Anakin, “As captain of this ship, I say we attempt what we in the industry call a ‘terrain-assisted braking maneuver’.”

P3 did not respond particularly coherently, which Anakin chose to interpret as a vote of confidence. It did wonders for his self-esteem.

In a blink, the clouds vanished and a deep green forest appeared. P3 squeaked. Anakin grimaced. His hand was losing all sensation from gripping the control-stick so tightly, still in full lock, but their downwards momentum still overpowered the thrusters even as the Delta’s nose finally rose above the horizon. He gunned the accelerator away from the surface and his body felt heavier than the ship itself.

The ship jolted as it made contact with the treetops. Anakin switched to reverse-thrusters as the nose once again pitched downwards. Slugshot snaps crackled around them as trees snapped against the ship. He scrunched his eyes closed and braced.

Soil and splinters erupted as they collided with the ground. Anakin lurched painfully into his safety straps. P3’s voice cut off. The grinding of earth against hull slowed them to a stop and Anakin fell back against his seat.

Smoldering wiring filled the cockpit with an awful acidic smell so he tugged his straps off and pushed his way out after only a second of shaky breathing. Anakin was nothing if not practical.

“Do you think it’s gonna blow up?” he asked P3 from a safe distance. P3 seemed not to appreciate the thought but ran cursory diagnostics anyway.

As he waited, Anakin looked behind the ship and saw the gaping furrow they had left in the ground. Further away, a clumsy cut ran through the trees and a couple of wisps of smoke trailed lazily into the milk-blue sky.

All in all, an impeccable landing. The forest had looked well dull before anyway, and now it had a sick scar. You’re welcome, forest.

P3 decided that nothing was about to explode, but that the ship was fully inoperational, even if Anakin just wanted to take it on a spin to the nearest mountain range. He acquiesced that the assessment seemed about right, but also loudly proclaimed that P3 was a killjoy and a coward. P3 didn’t seem to care. Anakin kicked a clod of earth in defiance.

The ground was covered in small, stiff leaves from the pointy-looking trees around them. They were waxy little spits that more resembled star stripes than anything useful for photosynthesis. As he knelt to pick some up, he realised that the entire forest smelt like them – a fresh, emerald sort of smell. They were pretty incredible, for leaves; Anakin had certainly never seen anything like them. He shoved some in a belt pouch.

Now that he was looking at the ground, he noticed wooden, grenade-like things peppered amongst the leaf litter. This forest kept on getting more and more curious. Unfortunately, none of them would fit in his pouches. Jedi really needed some good pockets that could fit any important scientific discoveries in them. It was a severe oversight, in Anakin’s humble opinion.

Something rustled abruptly, snapping Anakin out of his Jedi-like contemplations, seed-pod still in hand. He scanned the surrounding thickets. Plants, plants, leaves, plants, thorny plants…

Claws!

A blur of red flew at his face and he stumbled backwards, tripping over a bush. Batting the wild beast away from his face, he felt himself fall further than anticipated through the undergrowth into empty air. For a suspended moment, all he could see was blue sky and grey rockface. Then his back collided with something that promptly gave way and let him fall onto solid stone.

Perfect.

...

Obi-Wan Kenobi was walking at an unpanicked pace through the halls of the Jedi Temple and casually inspecting child-sized nooks and crannies in a manner completely befitting of a master who knew exactly where his padawan was. He had been doing this for half an hour and wasn’t shaking in the slightest.

He was just doing a routine inspection of the gap between a bronzium statue and a wall when Master Windu walked past, stopped, watched Obi-Wan innocently test the screws on a ventilation covering, and said, “Knight Kenobi.”

Obi-Wan sprang upright. “Master Windu.”

“Have you lost your padawan?” Was he really that obvious? No, that couldn’t be it; Master Windu was just unusually perceptive. Perhaps shatter-points were giving him away – nowhere was it written that they didn’t highlight underperforming masters. Even so, it was probably wise not to confirm anything. The last thing Obi-Wan needed was a council member judging his guardianship skills.

“Oh no, not at all. I know exactly where he is.”

Master Windu’s expression was as flat as Anakin’s heart rate would be once this was over. Shatter-points were dirty snitches.

“Thank you for your concern, Master,” added Obi-Wan, respectfully.

Master Windu looked at him dead in the eye for a solid five seconds. Obi-Wan had seen him level a similar look at Qui-Gon several times in the past, and found it unnerving to now be the target. However, Qui-Gon’s experiences taught him that it was best to ride these looks out like a bad spice trip, i.e. with as little motion as possible. How either of them knew what a bad spice trip felt like was irrelevant.

The five seconds were up, only having been slightly uncomfortably stretched, and Master Windu blinked.

“Well,” he said, dryly, “Good luck with your endeavours, Knight Kenobi, whatever they may be.” With one spare glance to the ventilation covering, he continued down the corridor.

Obi-Wan was not naive enough to think himself completely free of suspicion but he was hopeful that nothing would come of it until he could thrust Anakin by the shoulders into Master Windu’s personal space and say ‘See? I have him right here!’ in a serene and Jedi-like manner as if he had nothing to prove. Of course, he would like to prove his capabilities anyway. Just as soon as Anakin was present…

He closed his eyes and fumbled for the Master-Padawan bond that connected him to Anakin. It wasn’t usually strong enough to get much other than vague impressions from, but now it seemed to be stretched thinner than usual, only telling him that Anakin was alive. That was a relief to know, to an extent, but also concerning since there was so little to point him in the right direction. He poked the bond and felt nothing.

Why had he taken on a padawan? Padawans get into fights and then run off and make you worry and then the Council finds out and then you have to try and justify it all and –

Obi-Wan sighed. Running a hand over his beard, he peered down the hallway that Master Windu had taken. Empty. He could probably make it to the comms centre without any more councilmembers calling him out.

Probably. He was hopeful.

...

“Hilari? Is that you?”

Anakin looked up from what appeared to be a now-dismantled porch tarp and saw an old man opening the door to its attached house, carved into rock. A tooka was watching him from behind the man’s legs. It meowed indignantly.

“I’ve told you, the awning isn’t designed for tookas.”

“Myaeeh,” complained Hilari.

Anakin, frazzled from both of his unplanned descents and shocked out of his irritation, opened his mouth to apologise because yes, Obi-Wan he is capable of apologising when a middle-aged twi’lek woman materialised.

“Wohrin, what– Oh! Who’s your young friend?”

“You’ve met Hilari before, Mahj–”

“No, the young man covered in your porch. Blond?”

The man, Wohrin, gave Mahj’s left lek an exasperated look. His eyes were pale the same way Blind Man Mikah’s had been in the bookmaker’s in Mos Espa.

“Mahj,” he said slowly, “I don’t know what colour your hair is, let alone that of whoever it is you’re referring to.”

Mahj shook her head. “I don’t have hair, Wohrin.”

“What?!”

Another twi’lek, who could have been anywhere between fifteen and thirty years old by Anakin’s poor judgement, appeared in order to chip in:

“Yeah, she lost all of her hair when the sky turned red!”

Anakin squinted at the sky… no, it was definitely still blue. Wohrin looked equally confused, which was somewhat reassuring. Somewhat.

“Keht!” snapped Mahj, “Stop lying to people! And no, Wohrin, you know I’m twi’lek; of course I don’t have hair.”

“Twi’leks don’t… Why am I only just learning this? Was no one going to tell me–”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Anakin effectively drew the growing crowd’s attention back to himself. That felt better. Wohrin blinked, only now registering that the crash hadn’t been his tooka after all. “I was in the woods and something jumped out at me and I fell through your… thing.”

“Oh, well,” huffed Wohrin, “Easily done I suppose.”

Anakin clambered to his feet and hopped away from the mess, feeling only slightly guilty.

“Hey what’s with the weird rat-tail, kid?” came a voice from the crowd.

Anakin fixed the human who had asked with a patronising look. He found such looks were incredibly effective when used by children – especially those younglings he was stuck in aurebesh lessons with three years ago. Kriffing infuriating.

“It’s not a rat-tail, it’s a braid. And it shows that I’m a padawan.”

“A what-a-wan?”

“Oh, I know what they are,” chimed another bystander, “One of them beat up my cousin on Alsakan. They’re like really small Jedi.”

“You mean an apprentice?”

“Yeah, only I don’t think they do carving work.”

“Not all apprentices learn stonemasonry, genius.”

Another crowd member interrupted: “Hey, cadaban, have you come to help with the beast?”

That triggered a fervour in the onlookers, all snapping their attention back to him with loud expectation.

“... The what?” Anakin wasn’t sure he liked the way this conversation was going.

“The beast!” exclaimed the crowd.

“It’s massive–”

“–Taller than me–”

“–Big claws–”

“–In the quarry–”

“–The mine–”

“–Tentacles–”

“–Blue–”

“–Hang on, I thought it was red–”

“–It’s invisible–!”

“–No, it’s not, it’s–”

“–Firebreathing!”

“Hey, hey, hey,” shouted Anakin over the clamour, “Has anyone here actually seen it?” Everyone turned to a tall ovissian, who flinched. “What does it look like?”

“Uh, I didn’t see much of it, just– um, mostly heard crashes and saw– saw rocks falling from the ceiling in the mines. But when I caught a glimpse, it sort of looked all–” He made a vague and thoroughly unhelpful gesture which may have indicated size. Or maybe temperament. “–Y’know?”

Anakin definitely did not know, but he wasn’t about to admit that to the congregation. “Yeah, yeah, of course,” he said instead. The ovissian sighed with relief. “And what exactly do you need me to do about it?”

One exasperated person shouted from the back. “Kill it of course!”

“Or at least move it out of the mines,” offered Mahj.

“Yeah, we need the mines or our economy will go to chisk!”

“The entire economy?” Anakin couldn’t imagine mines being quite that important when there was a massive forest right… Huh, it was higher up than he remembered. Right up a stone cliff, the one Wohrin’s home was carved out of.

“The entire economy! We’re a mining town, stone-masons and blacksmiths. Why else would build our houses in a quarry?”

This was the first Anakin had heard of ‘quarries’. Really, the whole trip so far had been quite the broadening of his horizons. He didn’t know why Obi-Wan didn’t take him off-world sooner, he was always promoting this kind of thing. Peculiar.

That being said, this whole beast business was not what he had been anticipating and the idea of facing an invisible, firebreathing, tentacled monster on his own was suddenly way more terrifying than the plan of facing a horde of smugglers had been. What if it was like the krayt dragons of Tatooine, wild with impersonal ferocity and an appetite for small humans? That would be an incredibly anticlimactic end for the Chosen One; he was fully anticipating his death to be in a great ball of flame, Obi-Wan watching heartbroken as his awesome and flawless apprentice fulfils his destiny. That would be cool. Dying alone in a mine in the middle of nowhere would not be.

“Um… You know, beasts aren’t really my department. And… I don’t have my beast-removal equipment with me right now.” Airtight excuse. Foolproof.

“You’re just scared!” exclaimed someone who nobody asked.

“He’s not even a proper Jedi yet,” added someone else, “There’s no way he could take that thing on by himself, I bet he doesn’t even have a laser-sword!”

“Now, hold on–” All thoughts of avoiding the beast flew out of the metaphorical window. “I never said I wouldn’t do it! I have my lightsaber right here:”

The crowd stepped back as it ignited in his hand. Yeah, that’s right, he wasn’t some dumb initiate and this was his chance to prove it.

...

The comms centre had several private rooms for important calls and conferences. It also had better hardware than the commlinks Jedi took into the field.

Obi-Wan had plugged his own commlink into a rarely-used port in the console and tried to call Anakin. As he had expected, there was no answer. With the right tinkering of the console’s receiver, however, the target signal had been traced to a sparsely populated planet barely a minute up the Corellian Run. Kaidestal.

He fought the urge to slam his head against the console. If there was a licence for padawan ownership, his would be revoked any time now. Truly, he was having a fantastic day.

He wondered how Anakin had even got offplanet and then wondered why he was wondering. At this point, it was suffice to say, ‘Shit’s fucked’ and move on.

After a few moments of meditative breathing, he straightened up, unplugged his commlink, and whisked out of the comms centre. Knowing Anakin, there was little time before something disproportionately drastic happened. Force, what did he do to end up in this position?

Master Plo Koon was easy enough to locate, happening to be beside the bronzium statue Obi-Wan had been inspecting earlier. He watched as Obi-Wan covered the awkwardly long stretch of corridor in order to get within civil conversation range.

“Master Koon, I am taking a short trip to Kaidestal. I shall be back by nightfall.” He gave no reasons, the man of mystery that he was, and Plo didn’t seem to mind. Plo was one of the gentlest councilmembers and therefore the best one to inform of unannounced, unauthorised trips to obscure planets. Perhaps that was exploitative of him. Perhaps his padawan shouldn’t run away.

(Plo was one of the first to hear Mace’s gossip regarding Skywalker’s potential disappearance and therefore knew damn well what Obi-Wan was doing. Plo was not, however, a snitch. Besides, he liked Kenobi – the man had an excellent taste in drinks.)

Master Koon nodded slowly, “That seems reasonable. I’ve heard they do good stone carvings there.”

“Quite,” said Obi-Wan, impatiently – no, Jedi weren’t impatient. He was merely preoccupied.

“There’s a G8 light freighter in the hangar that you can use.” Plo shifted as if to move, but it was really more of an invitation to leave.

“Thank you, Master Koon.” Not at all in the headspace to overstay his welcome, Obi-Wan began to head towards the hangar.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for, young one!” Plo called after him.

“Me too,” muttered Obi-Wan under his breath. He wasn’t that young; he was twenty-eight. He was, however, too young to be dealing with feral padawans that made him feel twice his age. Why did he ever pick up Anakin, anyway?

...

The mouth of the mine was carved into the wall at the bottom of the quarry. It was darker than a Tatooinian night and he was being pushed into it by a gaggle of villagers who didn’t seem to notice his apprehension. While this was ideal for the maintenance of his reputation, it also made things move far more quickly than he had wanted.

No matter. He was a Jedi and Jedi faced terrifying monsters head on.

“This beast is gonna wish he never saw me,” he said, bravely, “Coward. Absolute… kriffin’… clown.”

“What are you doing?”

“Old Jedi trick, it’s called psychological warfare. That beast is no match for Anakin kriffing Skywalker.”

“Is the swearing necessary for psychological warfare?” asked one of the group. “It’s just I brought my daughter along…”

A roar emanated from the mine ahead, echoing terribly. The tall ovissian, now wearing his head miner’s helmet, was shaking more than the nine-year-old behind him. She was delighted by the mine monster and had spent much of the walk loudly exclaiming that she wanted it to eat the entire goddamn quarry. No one else appeared to share her enthusiasm.

“Well,” said the head miner, sounding awfully authoritative, “I think you’ll be able to find your way from here. We need to go. For… health and safety reasons. Yeah, this crowd, in this passageway? Major fire hazard. Need to clear it. I’ll take care of that, you take care of–” Another roar erupted, punctuated by a thud and the sound of rocks falling. “– That.”

Anakin was unimpressed. “Ugh, do you have to have such an aversion to being cool?” He turned to see the group’s response but found the passageway empty. He rolled his eyes. Teenagehood would suit him well, he decided.

Slowly, he took his new lightsaber off his belt. It kind of sucked that his excellent craftsmanship was impossible to see in the gloom. Alone, in the dark, with no eyes on him, he could admit that quite a few things were looking decidedly uncool right now, but Force if he didn’t want to prove Obi-Wan wrong.

He tracked the sporadic tremors to their source, which was conveniently down the single, unbranching passageway in this section of mine. Still, it required a great amount of skill and a lesser man would have walked into five support beams, which was way more than Anakin’s three. He was a credit to the Jedi Order, really, even if they couldn’t see it.

Speaking of, the mine had grown far darker the further he walked until he couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face. The Force was being unhelpful, merely suggesting ‘forward’, which was a no-brainer. His issue was all of the obstacles involved with ‘forwards’. If only he had packed a light.

Hang on.

Oh, Anakin Skywalker was a genius. Lateral thinking and creative problem-solving had always been his strong point, as currently being demonstrated.

His lightsaber ignited with a kzhhh. Its electric-blue glow lit his maniacal grin in harsh clarity. It also revealed the glinting eyes of something big. The grin dropped from his face as he took five steps backwards.

The passageway had opened into a small cavern without him noticing and the beast barely fit into it. Colours were difficult to make out in eerie saber-light, but its fur appeared as black as the mines, matte with dust. Large tentacles stretched out from its nose, blindly groping the walls and ceiling of the cavern as if trying to judge the environment. Massive, shovelling paws held claws almost as long as Anakin was tall. In short, it resembled a mole.

This meant that, theoretically, Anakin was at an advantage since he was decidedly not blind and had only been known to resemble a mole some of the time.

The beast was also more clumsy than Anakin, knocking support beams left and right. Luckily, none had completely shattered but, judging by their splintering fractures, it was only a matter of time. Time limits were very dramatic; this would be a worthy first mission.

Anakin waved his lightsaber in the vague direction of the mole. It was unbothered. He frowned, put out, and then poked one of its claws. Suddenly, the beast was very bothered. Its nose went from snuffling around to being thrust in Anakin’s face. Apparently it had his scent. Obi-Wan would have blamed it on Anakin’s infrequent use of the shower. Anakin would have responded that he grew up in the desert and then accused him of not caring about wasting water on trivial matters. This would put a glint of annoyance in Obi-Wan’s eyes and Anakin would count it as a victory.

The mole exploited his distraction, dishonourable as it was, yanking him off the ground with a thick face-tentacle and shaking him irritably. He tried hitting the disgustingly writhing mass with the hilt of his lightsaber – ineffective. Then he slashed it with the blade and got catapulted into a wall. His vision failed and the back of his head killed, but he was quickly grabbed by the ankle and dragged across the floor. Massive, sharp claws came swinging at him. This was not good.

Quick, what would Obi-Wan do?

“Hey, you suck!” he shouted, voice wobbling as he dove out of the way of another slash, “No one likes you! You should just stop and go away!”

The mole monster may also have been deaf since it only continued its previous level of violence despite the scathing insults. He dodged a claw, jumping into a swinging tentacle which smashed him into a support beam. Splinters pierced his robes, digging into his right arm as it collided with the beam. His lightsaber flew from his hand and he fell to the ground, spinning to narrowly avoid landing on the hurt arm. All light in the cavern vanished as his saber-blade extinguished.

All of a sudden, the lightsaber argument from that morning felt like a moot point. A lot of things were looking very moot now, in the dark.

He could hear the shuffle of tentacles searching the floor and the scratching of claws against stone. The mole was snuffling loudly around for him. His arm hurt.

Fighting the urge to curl up by the wall, he slowly climbed to his feet and looked the monster dead where he thought its eye could be. Warm air huffed in his face, blowing his braid back. Everything was still for a moment and then a tentacle whipped around his knees and flipped him upside down into the air. He definitely did not yelp.

The sound of a lightsaber igniting came from the tunnel, then pounding footsteps and then Obi-Wan ran in, illuminating the cavern walls around him. Something intangible yanked Anakin out of the mole’s grasp and into Obi-Wan’s arms.

Anakin struggled to escape the strong left arm that wrapped across his torso, efficiently immobilising him. “Hey, I had it under control, you know.” He gave up, reaching his good hand out and calling his lightsaber back to it. “Still do, actually.”

“Sure,” replied Obi-Wan, not letting go even as a tentacle lunged at him. He jumped backwards, slashing the support beam that Anakin had dented. They dove into the tunnel as the cavern rumbled. The mole roared back. There was a terrible creaking of splintering wood and then the cavern ceiling fell in. Dust and rock made the air thick.

Quiet.

Anakin looked up at Obi-Wan from where he was pressed against his chest and saw a strangled sort of sorrow.

“Poor thing,” croaked Obi-Wan. Then he looked at Anakin with a clenched jaw. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those. I could have studied it.”

It was almost enough to make Anakin apologise.

...

Obi-Wan dragged his padawan by his collar until they reached the mine’s entrance. The villagers who had pointed him inside were crowded around and erupted into cheers as soon as they stepped into the light.

One elbowed the head miner playfully. “Told you he was the madawan’s Jedi.”

“Shut up,” said the ovissian, who then raised his voice above the chattering. “Thank you, Master Jedi, for your assistance. Uh, what exactly is the status of the, uh…”

“It’s dead,” Obi-Wan replied, bluntly, “And I’m afraid you may also need to reinforce the tunnel’s structural integrity. I apologise on behalf of my padawan –”

“Hey!”

“Of course, he will also apologise himself.”

Their eyes met in a match of wills. Anakin sighed, just loud enough for Obi-Wan to hear, and acquiesced.

“My sincere apologies,” he muttered, bowing shallowly. Obi-Wan had definitely taught him better manners than this; the child was just showing him up. Ungrateful womp-rat.

Fortunately, the villagers weren’t versed in bows and didn’t seem invested in apologies. Most were preoccupied by the mine and the new lack of angry mole. Small blessings, perhaps.

...

After manhandling the still-hot wreck of Anakin’s Aethersprite into the freighter Obi-Wan had brought and flying the brief trip back to the Temple, Obi-Wan was reaching the end of his patience. He left the ships with the hangar’s mechanics and dragged Anakin away from any chance of helping them. Their trip to the Halls of Healing were brief – the healers were efficient in removing the splinters and wrapping Anakin’s arm in bacta-soaked bandages. He only complained about half as much as he usually did.

They marched double-time to their rooms and Obi-Wan locked the door behind him; he could not cope with Anakin sneaking out at night.

“Master?” The voice was small. Obi-Wan tried not to let his ire show in his look. Perhaps if Anakin was squinting it would work. He was not. Instead he was holding out a hand full of pine needles and another with several small pinecones. “While I was on that planet, I found these for you to study. I’ve never seen them before; they could be revolutionary.”

Obi-Wan sighed, not having the heart to tell him that pine trees were fairly common throughout the galaxy. Anakin dropped his revolutionary finds into his hands, having to scrape off some of the pine needles that stuck.

“Thank you, Padawan. That was very thoughtful of you.”

“There were some bigger ones of these,” he added, pointing to the pinecones, “but I couldn’t fit them in my belt and some of the wildlife tried to fight me for them.”

“A squirrel?”

“I dunno, I didn’t see it very well. It was kinda fast. Reminded me of you, a bit.”

“How so?”

“Red,” said Anakin, nodding to Obi-Wan’s head, “And it didn’t like me picking up things off the floor.”

Obi-Wan huffed. “As long as you weren’t trying to eat pinecones.”

“Is that what they’re called?”

“Yes. Although I suppose I’d have to… study them. To make sure.”

Anakin’s face lit up. “Wizard.”

Obi-Wan’s annoyance was almost forgotten. Not quite. He was still a responsible Jedi master, no matter what the Council speculated.

There was a knock on the door. Obi-Wan looked at Anakin, who grimaced back. He opened it with very little hesitation.

“Knight Kenobi.” Speak of a Sith…

“Master Windu,” said Obi-Wan, far more brightly than he was feeling.

“Have you located your padawan?”

“Of course; he’s right here, Master.” He pulled Anakin out from behind his legs. Anakin attempted a winning smile, but nerves appeared to crumple it slightly. He had always been intimidated by Master Windu – first impressions were a force to be reckoned with. “I knew exactly where he was.” It was technically true, if you were selective about your timeframe.

Master Windu gave Anakin one of his signature piercing gazes, the kind that seems to expose one’s every weakness and warn against them. Anakin seemed to get the message. Hopefully he would keep it for at least a week before he inevitably threw it out.

“If that’s the case, I won’t need to launch a search party. Good night, Kenobi.”

“May the Force be with you, Master Windu.”

After Master Windu had left and Anakin had gone to bed still shaken from the encounter, Obi-Wan contemplated ditching the Temple and his wayward padawan for Bail Organa’s whiskey collection. Alderaan always made the best whiskey…

...

Art by me, @dib-leo-pard

#star wars fanfiction #star wars prequels #ao3 fanfic #anakin fanfiction #anakin skywalker #obi-wan kenobi #fanfiction #fanfic #star wars

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glittergummicandypeach · 4 years

Text

Texas: Son of Muslim who murdered daughters denies it was honor killing, says ‘Religion has nothing to do with it’

Islam Said, a son of Yaser Said, who murdered Islam’s two sisters Amina and Sarah on January 1, 2008, denies that the killings were honor murders or had anything to do with Islam. “It’s something else. Religion has nothing to do with it.”

Yet Islam Said has now been arrested in Texas along with his father. If this wasn’t an honor killing, why would he go on the run with his father and help him hide for all these years? Why wouldn’t he have the normal human reaction of thinking that what his father had done in murdering his sisters was abhorrent, and turn his father in to authorities? Did Islam Said’s commitment to the religion of Islam override that natural human reaction and make him think that what his father had done was good and praiseworthy?

For despite media denial and obfuscation of the fact, honor killing is something that many Muslims believe to be good and in accord with their faith. According to Islamic law, “retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right.” However, “not subject to retaliation” is “a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring.” (Reliance of the Traveller o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law. In this case the victim was the murderer’s daughter, a victim to the culture of violence and intimidation that such laws help create. That is why Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. The Palestinian Authority gives pardons or suspended sentences for honor murders. Iraqi women have asked for tougher sentences for Islamic honor murderers, who get off lightly now. Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but “the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour ‘provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.’” And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that “Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values.”

Also connected to the Islamic aspect of the story, and evidence that these were honor killings, is the fact that Yaser Said was enraged that Amina and Sarah had non-Muslim boyfriends. The Dallas Morning News reports below that “Sarah said her father had threatened her older sister when he learned that she had a boyfriend, saying he’d put a bullet through Amina’s head.”

Twelve years ago, the Dallas Morning News was more courageous and honest. Back in January 2008, it reported that the girls’ mother Patricia had said (regarding Amina) that “since they are Muslim that the daughter was only allowed to date other Muslims. Yaser had found out she went on a date with a non-Muslim and became very angry and threatened her with bodily harm.”

Yet now Patricia is playing dumb: “She had no idea where Said was, and, despite public speculation about a motive, she doesn’t know why the sisters were killed.” We can only hope that police will not take her claim at face value, and thoroughly investigate whether Patricia had any role in Yaser being able to evade capture for twelve years. For note this: Patricia “divorced Said in 2009 and had converted to Islam after her daughters’ deaths, said in 2011 that she didn’t know why Said had killed Amina and Sarah but that he thought they were overly Westernized.”

This is a woman who admitted in 2008 — after her husband had killed their two daughters — that her husband had threatened to kill one of her daughters for dating a non-Muslim. Then, after that, she converted to Islam. What kind of a mindset could Patricia Owens Said possibly have had that would have induced her to join the religion that seems to have played a role in leading her husband to murder their daughters? Could it have been because she was in touch with Yaser and was signaling her acquiescence to and approval of his act? Will investigators look into this possibility, or would that be “Islamophobic”?

Probably the latter. Irving police Chief Jeff Spivey says “This man brutally murdered — shot to death — his two daughters in his taxi cab. What led him to do that, I think at this point to us, is irrelevant.”

No, sir. It isn’t irrelevant at all. It could shed important light on the behavior of Islam Said, and on the question of whether or not Patricia Owens Said were involved in his twelve years as a fugitive. Also, knowing exactly what happened in this case could help authorities prevent such honor killings in the future. Will you, Chief Spivey, consider such issues, or allow political correctness and fear of the Leftist mob curtail and deform your investigation?

More on this story. “Man accused of killing 2 teen daughters in 2008 has been captured, Irving police and FBI announce,” by Tom Steele, Nataly Keomoungkhoun, Dana Branham and LaVendrick Smith, Dallas Morning News, August 26, 2020:

Yaser Abdel Said, a 63-year-old man who is suspected of killing his two teenage daughters in Irving more than a decade ago, has been captured, authorities announced Wednesday.

Said had been on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list since 2014 in connection with the shootings of 18-year-old Amina Said and 17-year-old Sarah Said on New Year’s Day 2008.

He was taken into custody Wednesday in Denton County, police said.

Two of Said’s relatives — his son, Islam Said, and his brother, Yassim Said — were arrested in Euless, accused of helping him to elude arrest.

Matt DeSarno, special agent in charge for the FBI Dallas field office, said Yaser Said was “compliant and quiet” when he was arrested in the city of Justin. He declined to provide details about how Said was traced there, crediting “good old-fashioned, aggressive, initiative-based police work” for the arrest.

Authorities suspect other people aided in harboring Said through the years, DeSarno said.

Patricia Owens, mother of the victims and Said’s former wife, was relieved at the news.

“All I can say is there’s going to be justice,” Owens told The Dallas Morning News on Wednesday night.

She said the last 12 years were a nightmare for her family. She had no idea where Said was, and, despite public speculation about a motive, she doesn’t know why the sisters were killed….

There was widespread speculation, rooted in Said’s Muslim faith, that the sisters were shot in an honor killing — a practice in some cultures where men kill female relatives who are thought to have brought shame upon their families.

The victims’ brother, Islam Said, then 19, disputed the notion: “It’s something else. Religion has nothing to do with it.”…

Islam Said — the brother who now stands accused of sheltering a fugitive — asked after the killings that anyone who saw his father turn him in.

“I don’t want to have nothing to do with him,” he said….

DeSarno said authorities will work to determine where Said has been for the last 12 years — but the “most significant priority now, though, is the prosecution for the capital murder of his daughters.”…

Asked about the theory that the sisters were slain in an honor killing, Spivey said those two words shouldn’t be used together.

“This man brutally murdered — shot to death — his two daughters in his taxi cab,” Spivey said. “What led him to do that, I think at this point to us, is irrelevant.”

Allegations of violence

In 1998, the girls accused Said of sexually abusing them, and their mother swore in an affidavit that the allegations were true.

A judge in Hill County, south of Fort Worth, dropped the charges several months later when the girls recanted, saying they didn’t want to attend school in rural Covington and hoped to live with their grandmother.

But allegations that Said was controlling and quick to violence never went away.

One friend told The Dallas Morning News that Sarah said her father had threatened her older sister when he learned that she had a boyfriend, saying he’d put a bullet through Amina’s head.

Another friend said Amina came to school with welts on her body, and one time said her father had kicked her in the face after he found notes from a boyfriend.

Owens’ sister, Connie Moggio, told a reporter that Said once shot out Owens’ tires to prevent her from leaving their home.

On Christmas, just a week before the slayings, the sisters, their mother and their boyfriends fled the state after Said learned about the sisters’ relationships. They rented an apartment under another name in Tulsa but returned to Lewisville on New Year’s Eve.

“What prompted her to go back home is beyond me,” Moggio said of her sister…

Owens, who divorced Said in 2009 and had converted to Islam after her daughters’ deaths, said in 2011 that she didn’t know why Said had killed Amina and Sarah but that he thought they were overly Westernized.

“He would say things like, ‘They’re becoming too American,’ ” she said.

At the time, she was still afraid of Said returning to kill her.

But she said she had one question for her ex-husband if she saw him, after she turned him in: “Why and how could you do that?”

This content was originally published here.

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irwintry · 6 years

Text

Lines

Warnings: swearing

Author’s Note: in the mood to repost calum

Word Count: 3k

part two

The first line appeared after you got your braces removed. It was long and dark down your skin, and while you were spewing excited words out to your mother, you knew that it meant very little. The longer the lines, the greater the distance your soulmate was away from you. The first line appeared to be about three inches down your wrist, which meant that whoever your soulmate was could be at least a whole state away or more. Any thirteen-year-old would freak out at the thought of having some knowledge of their soulmate's whereabouts, but you were one of the last in your friend group to have a line appear. You were just happy you weren't broken.

The length of the line encouraged insecurities within you. Someone you knew had a line the size of a millimeter. For all they knew, their soulmate could sit right next to them in social studies. It was safe to say that your three-inch tattoo was not spectacular. Nevertheless, it gave you hope.

The next line appeared two years later. The two-year wait sucked, but it had to do. This time, the line was a few centimeters shorter than the last. You gushed to your mother, showing her your wrist with pride. You took a look at her fading lines while she was examining yours, and you couldn't help but frown. She only had three short lines on her wrist. She was one of the lucky few that lived within a few towns of her soulmate, and they also happened to attend the same college. The last line on everyone's wrist would always be the shortest.

You wondered what your soulmate was up to. The lines only appeared whenever they were traveling, or so it appeared. Your family didn't move around as much, at least not within the two years since your first line showed up on your skin. You wondered what they were like, if they played any instruments, and if they enjoyed some of the same things that you did. You hoped that their favorite candy was Smarties® as well.

The night of your sixteenth birthday, you watched the two inch-line appear on your skin. Your family had taken a trip to California before deciding to drive up the west coast. You were in San Francisco by the time the line burned your skin, but only for a matter of seconds.

The lines appeared more often after that, and you were starting to grow worried that the thin inks would run out of space on your wrist. Only one line was shorter than an inch. You bought your parents dinner the day that happened. The others, on the other hand, always were around the same lengths.

You were pissed at your soulmate. From as early on as you could remember, you always hoped that you would have a story similar to your mother's. You didn't want a lot of line tattoos decorating your skin. The more lines you had, the more others would know how long you waited. You didn't want to be thirty with your wrists and ankles covered in random lines. By that point, they would mean nothing to you. They were starting to slowly mean nothing to you.

By your twenties, you were wearing bracelets to cover the lines up. You figured out that your soulmate could be someone who traveled a lot. Most celebrities had a billion lines covering their wrists because of how often they traveled. You secretly wanted your soulmate to be a celebrity.

Your left wrist was nearly finished, and soon (you assumed that soon would actually come) the lines would appear on your right wrist. You no longer updated your mother on your tattoos, nor really your good friends because they were tired of your complaining. Some friends.

Rumor had it that the lines appeared twelve to twenty-four hours after the so-called set time you and your soulmate were within a good distance of each other. There was no way to tell if it was true, especially for you. No matter, you didn't let it bother you. The bracelets kept your wrists covered enough to keep you from looking at them too often. You never cared about your soulmate as much as you used to.

"Yogi, Yogi, no– "

The small Yorkie dashed in the opposite direction. So far, your first week in Los Angeles was going well. The young pup circled a lamppost and darted over to a large bush adjacent to you. Your feet could only take you so fast, and they did not prove worthy to your little Yogi's paws.

"Yogi, please," you begged. You probably looked like a damn fool trying to catch her. You were arched over like Quasimodo so you could hope to catch the miniature devil dog. "Bad dog, Yogi. Bad, bad–"

Your dog yelped and scampered away from the bush. A bigger dog had growled at the small thing, and finally Yogi waddled over to you calmly. You sighed, picking her up so you could place her back on her leash. That was the last time you would ever trust your dog off of her leash. She wagged her precious little tail as she panted up at you, her eyes brown and bright.

"Yes, I still love you," you said, "you little freak." You glanced around to make sure your scene hadn't attracted unwanted attention, and luckily, it didn't. People were probably used to weirdos like you around here.

Your wrist burned on your walk home, and by this point, it was only humorous to you. You wished you were Yogi instead. She never had to deal with soulmate issues, unless dogs had their own form of it. Maybe you were her soulmate. You smiled at that thought and turned the corner to your apartment.

Yogi began yapping again. The day you adopted her, you plugged your ears every time she barked. The poor thing couldn't help how annoyingly high pitched her barks were.

"Yogi, no." You tugged gently on her leash before looking around to find what she was barking at.

A few people had walked by, and apparently one of them had bent down to attempt to pet her. You really had to increase your personal special awareness. You gave the leash one last small pull before continuing on your way. Yogi acted like nothing had happened as she padded down the concrete sidewalk.

With one more turn of a corner, Yogi once again started barking. You let out a frustrated sigh as you bent down to pick her up, and when your spine straightened, you nearly gasped.

"Holy fu–, your dog is the cutest little thing," the man said, holding out his hand so she could give it a sniff. At least he knew not to pet a dog first thing before they figured a person out. "What's its name?"

You couldn't speak. Well, you didn't want to even try. It was Calum Hood. Calum. Hood.

"Y-Yogi," you sputtered, clutching her tightly in your arms.

Calum grinned and scratched her head. Her barking at died down by then, and surprisingly, she was actually letting him pet her. Maybe she knew that he was Calum Hood, too. What if your dog was just as star-struck as you?

He cooed as he scratched down from her ear to her back, his fingers grazing over your forearm and leaving sparks of heat. "Yogi the Yorkie. That's fuckin' brilliant. Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to swe– "

You chuckled. "I don't mind swearing. Neither does she, I don't think. She hears plenty of it back at home when I stub my toes on every piece of furniture." You bounced her in your arms.

Calum beamed and let out a chuckle himself. "That's me with Duke."

"Your dog?" You dumb idiot. Of course Duke is his dog.

He nodded. "Proud dad and dog owner. I love having a small dog, but I'll never discriminate."

You laughed again. You had to chill. "That's what I said! I've had fairly large dogs my whole life until little Yogi over here." Once again, you bounced her in your arms. She was loving all of the attention.

"That name is fuckin' sick," he said and looked up at you. "'m Calum."

Woah, woah, woah.

"Y/N," you replied with a friendly smile, to which he returned. "I think she loves you more than she loves me."

Calum shook his head. "Definitely not true. I'm sure Duke would love you more than he loves me if he were here, though."

After another second of scratching Yogi, Calum pulled away. You hadn't realized how close he had been until he stepped back a few feet. You missed his presence already.

"Would it be weird if I asked you a favor?" he wondered, folding his arms over his chest. You heard the leather creak with the movement.

"Depends on the favor." You were most likely going to say yes anyway.

"I travel a lot," he started, "and I always ask my friends to look over Duke-y while I'm away. Um, sometimes they're not always educated in knowing how to take care of a dog." Calum laughed. "Would you be interested in taking over, maybe? We could exchange numbers and I could let you know the days I'd be gone. Only, of course, if this would work and be okay with you."

You pretended to ponder for a moment, but you still knew that your answer would be yes right away. Even if your schedule was busy, you could always fit time in for Calum Hood. But, your schedule was not busy. "That actually sounds like a dream job," you answered with a smile. "I've always wanted to work at a doggy daycare-kind-of-place, but I guess one dog will do," you joked.

"You– wait, you serious?" Calum grinned. "Thank you, Y/N. I promise to pay well. Here– "

Calum took out his phone, and as he did so, you glanced down at his wrist. You could only see the top of his dark lines, but there appeared to be a lot. You were somewhat relieved that someone also had as many as you, though he probably was more numb to it since he traveled quite often.

You set down Yogi so the two of you could exchange numbers, though this time, you had her on a leash so she wouldn't run away. That was a story to tell Calum another time. Calum. You could not believe you were face-to-face with him. You could not believe you were exchanging numbers with him.

"Cool, cool," he said, placing his phone back in his pocket. The sleeve of his jacket pushed farther up his sleeve, exposing more of his lines. They were decently long. "Thank you so much." Calum clapped his hands together. "Gotta run, but I'll let you know when I need ya! Thank you, thank you!"

You waved goodbye to him before turning the other way. "All right, Yogi," you whispered down into her soft ear, "you did a little good today. I think you made up for earlier. How about two biscuits after dinner tonight?"

Yogi turned her body and slammed into your legs, her tail wagging like crazy at the sound of you saying biscuit.

"Okay, freak," you chuckled. "Let's go."

It happened when you were showering the next morning. In the middle of washing your face, your wrist burned for less than half of a second. You thought you were daydreaming as you looked down to see a small line barely visible to your eyes. You waited patiently, hoping that in a matter of seconds, it would burn again and stretch farther down your wrist. Nothing changed, no matter how hard you scrubbed at the skin.

You switched off the shower, grabbing your towel and skipping out of the bathroom with your wrist extended. You had your phone in your free hand as you searched for your mother's contact.

"Hel– "

"I found them, well, him," you said hurriedly. You glanced down at your wrist, still unable to believe it all. It was too good to be true. "Walking Yogi, I found him. Didn't find out for twelve hours. Can't believe that twelve-hour bullshit is actually true," you muttered.

Yogi whined at your feet.

Meanwhile, your mom was laughing at you. You probably sounded like a hysterical mess.

"He's famous," you said. "He travels."

"So, that's why you have a thousand lines?" your mother asked with a chuckle.

You rolled your eyes. "Not a thousand..." You sat down on your couch. You told her the whole event a few moments later, the words coming out as more of a vomit than anything coherent. You could sense her smiling through the phone.

"Cuter than my story," she mumbled. "How will you see him again?"

You sighed, feeling the nerves bubble in your stomach at the thought of having to go over to his place and see him once again. "He asked me to dog sit for him."

"No fucking way."

"Mom!" you scolded, but you were laughing.

"That's so perfect," she said. "Then you can get married and finally own a hundred dogs like you've always wanted."

"True," you agreed. "Since one of us didn't want a hundred dogs..."

"Before you make me feel bad any further, I have to let you go in a second," your mother said. "I'm about to go to a meeting."

"Okay, enjoy boredom." You patted the cushion next to you so Yogi could join you, but she instead waddled the other way. "Love you."

"Love you more."

You let out another sigh as you set down your phone. Your first instinct when facing this situation was to run away, but you knew you couldn't run forever. No matter how many times you'd miss each other, you'd somehow find your way back to one another sooner or later.

Calum sent you a text three days later, and you weren't sure he was one-hundred-percent sober. Nevertheless, he texted you, which meant something good at least.

y/n y/n y/n! i'm leavinf town tomorrow!! areyou still able to doggy sit?

You waited a minute or two to answer before sending him an enthused yes. You wanted to match his level of excitement. Once you looked over the text again, it hit you that, by now, he probably knew you were his soulmate, too. Now you were going to have to deal with that conversation. Unless... he wasn't even your soulmate. Maybe it had been someone else you stumbled into on your walk with Yogi yesterday. Or, it could be a twenty-four-hour rule, and your soulmate could actually be the girl at the Starbucks counter.

Fuck.

Calum let you know his address soon after you answered him. He followed up by asking you if you could meet him by nine in the morning so he could show you around and let you know about his feeding routine, etc. This made your stomach drop. You had been hoping he'd just have you show up after he left.

So, the next day, you found yourself on your way to Calum's (which, to be honest, was only up the hill where all of the wealthier places sat above the somewhat-decent apartments). You hadn't thought to bring Yogi along with you – so he could say hi again – until you were parking in his driveway. This was his driveway. This whole ordeal was going to drive you insane.

He greeted you with a smile and a gentle pat on the shoulder before leading you into his home. He introduced you to Duke along your tour, and you could hardly focus on anything he was saying with his beautiful pup before you. You were in absolute heaven.

"Thank you so much for doing this," he told you. "I have a feeling that you're probably more reliable than my friends."

You simpered, letting out a dry chuckle. "You have too much faith in me, Cal."

He smiled along with you but stared at you in silence.

Had you said something wrong? You wondered about it for a while until it finally dawned on you. You called him Cal. Maybe he had a thing about strangers calling him by a nickname most likely meant for close friends. Nonetheless, you felt guilty about it.

A few seconds later, he resumed showing you the places where the leashes, dog food, and toys were kept. He informed you that he would like you to check on Duke two to three times a day, and during one of those times, give the dog a decent sized walk. He assumed you knew exactly what "decent sized" meant since you also had a small dog.

"Is it too much to ask you to send me updates over text?" Calum asked as he gathered his bags by the door. "Oh, and before I forget, let me go get the spare key." He really did have too much faith in you, a stranger, to make sure his home and dog were safe. Especially since he was all well-known as he was.

"I can do that!" you shouted to him from the next room as he searched his drawers for another key. "If you're ever free while I'm here, I can FaceTime you. Only if ya want."

Calum walked in with a great big smile on his face. "I would love that. Thank you. I'll let you know ahead of time, too, that way you can have Duke meet Yogi, and I can witness it. Oh, my fuckin' god, you better FaceTime me then."

You chuckled, taking the key from his warm hand. Soft and warm. "I pinky promise," you said, holding up your pinky.

Calum held out his own pinky. The sleeve of his jacket pushed up his forearm as he extended it, and you nearly choked on your saliva when you noticed the lines decorating his tan skin. You failed to breathe as he gave you another enthusiastic thank you before saying goodbye to Duke. You kept your jaw clenched in order to keep it from falling open. With a simple wave, you bid him adieu and bent down to pet his beautiful puppy.

Once he was gone, you could finally let out a shaky breath. Calum was your soulmate through and through.

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cherryrpg · 4 years

Photo

welcome to riverside, olivia price !

OUT OF CHARACTER.

name - Aly age - 23 timezone - EST pronouns - she/her

IN CHARACTER.

character desired - Olivia Price character faceclaim - Victoria Pedretti, Lili Reinhart, Benedetta Gargari character birthday // zodiac sign - December 1st, Sagittarius extracurriculars // hobbies - Prom Committee, Theater Tech, Cheer Squad // Painting, Dance Lessons, Sketching, People watching, Wandering around, Bothering anyone who will listen position on cheer squad: Secondary base

WRITING SAMPLE.

It was too grown up for her. If anyone were to walk into her Father’s too-big kitchen at that moment, that would probably be their response to the seventeen-year-old with a glass of red wine in her hand. But it was many a summer that Olivia had spent in France with her mother; drinking a glass of wine with dinner since she was nearly twelve years old. Much to her Father’s dismay, she made no plans of stopping that tradition any time soon… Even if she had upgraded from just a glass to just half the bottle in the last couple of years. It was different in Atlanta, where everyone around her was always popping champagne for brunch, lunch, and dinner; pretending to be more mature than they really were for the sake of appearances. And besides, it wasn’t as if her father was going to notice the missing alcohol, anyway. It wasn’t very often he noticed anything about her at all, really. Choosing instead to focus his energy on just how big of a disappointment she thought Luke to be.

It was one of the things she thought she loved about Riverside, andbesides the hoops her brother was always jumping through at the urging of their father, it was nearly perfect. Sure, she had been free to do as she pleased in Atlanta - as long as her mother approved - but in the little town she was hardly expected to answer to anybody. Her father was always busy (either with work, or with Luke), her teachers loved her (for some reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on), and she hadn’t found herself wanting to get into any actual trouble since she first arrived…not when she knew that familiar faces were lurking around every corner. It was strange how grounded it all made her feel; like the chaos that had been building up in her chest for the last seventeen years of her life was finally dissipating.

She had always considered herself a city girl - convinced that the flash of the lights and the parties were the only reasons to go on some nights - but with every day she spent in the little town, she found the city, any city, being the last place she wanted to be. No, Olivia wouldn’t trade sneaking glasses of wine in her father’s farmhouse style kitchen for anything now. She was a Riverside girl, and she was planning on staying that way for as long she could stand it.

————————————————————————————————

It was the crunch of leaves behind her that tipped Olivia off to her visitor; ears flushing an embarrassed shade of pink as she was caught red handed and bloodied by the barn door she had been not-so-subtly trying to break through. The cheerleader just spun around in her spot, skirt fluttering around her thighs with the sudden movement, as she caught the stranger right back. Her bloodstained fingertips - stupid, old wood - hidden behind her back while she spoke. “I’ll admit that I probably shouldn’t be out here.” In fact, she knew it was the last place she should be; seemingly abandoned or not, property was property, and it usually belonged to someone.

But the barn had practically been calling her name since she had first laid eyes on it, and she could only imagine the secrets that the inside of it held… Even if what was inside only seemed to be a dusty old tractor and a couple two-by-fours. That hardly mattered to Olivia though, because once she decided that something was beautiful, it was beautiful, and she had to uncover it’s secrets at all costs. “I mean, it’s a weird situation, right? Teenage girl, abandoned barn… What the hell am I doing out here, even? But I’d like to point out the fact that your lurking around in the woods puts you, at least, like – three points ahead of me on the creep scale. So, what do you say? Your creep move cancels out my creep move? We call it even?“

ABOUT THE CHARACTER.

The Louvre - Lorde

We Will Become Silhouettes - The Shins

Pretty Baby - Blondie

“I’m screaming at the top of my lungs pretending the echoes belong to someone… Someone I used to know.” - The Postal Service

headcanons :

Olivia has a hard time listening to her parents, her teachers, her elders, the police, and… any type of authority figure, really. She’s been highly independent since day one, with a mother and father like hers, she had to be to survive, and it’s all resulted in the most headstrong teenager in existence. She does what she wants to do, and only what she wants to do, and since escaping Atlanta and her mother’s near constant guilt trips… The fact has never been truer. Olivia knows that she’s all she needs to survive - well, herself, and her parents money.

Her brother is the only exception to the the walls that she builds around herself. She would sell her soul to keep Luke safe, and always gets herself into trouble if it means keeping him out of it. Olivia is protective because she knows that at the end of the day, Luke is the only person she really has in the world. She’s not close to her mother, and she knows neither of them are very close to their father. While she has no idea how Luke really feels about her fierce protective nature, she isn’t sure she could tone it down if she wanted to.

Olivia thrived in Atlanta. She was the perfect socialite, and she had only found herself resenting the shallow lifestyle a few times throughout her life; who could possibly resent getting everything they ever wanted? But the Riverside lifestyle has grown on her in a way that she had never been expecting. For the first time in her life she doesn’t have to worry about the way she looks, or who’s going to see her, or what she can and can’t eat to fit in whatever dress for wherever her mother was dragging her next.

For the first time in her whole life, she didn’t need to look in the mirror at every opportunity. She didn’t feel afraid of making friends. She wasn’t worried about anyone stabbing her in the back or using her as their step-up in society.

personality :

Olivia is highly independent, and it’s always led to her skirting through life as a lone wolf. Sure, she had her ‘friends’ back in Atlanta, but she knew she could never truly count on the girls she had grown up with. Olivia has trust issues - she’s skeptical of nearly everyone - but something about the small relationships she’s forged in Riverside have changed her in a way. Olivia is more open to talking than ever; she actually goes out just to be around people rather than to get champagne drunk on a dance floor. Her lonesome streak might never be shaken, though.

Sometimes she prefers watching people from afar, even those she calls friends. She prefers an empty building to the company of even Luke sometimes. Abandoned places - quiet spaces - are Olivia’s safe place, and if someone is lucky enough to be invited into one of them, they can probably consider themselves a part of her inner circle.

Liv completely expected to hate every part of joining the Cheerleading squad, but after a few weeks of getting her ass handed to her with workouts and routines, she quickly found herself changing her tune. It was a challenge that had made her feel more alive - more like a teenager - than anything she had ever done in Atlanta. Maybe it was all stereotypes from the dumb movies she had seen over the course of her childhood, but the girls on the squad were nothing like she had expected them to be either. Call it a soft spot, but she was certainly willing to go the extra mile for the girls on the squad… even if it seemed completely out of the ordinary for her.

ANYTHING ELSE.

I think Olivia probably mostly goes by Liv! But I love weird nicknames, so call her Picasso, or Monet, or even Weirdo - whatever you want! - because I think it would be fun!

#accepted #olivia price #lili reinhart fc

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teaespensonawards · 5 years

Text

Official 2019 T.E.A. Nominations

Yet again, CONGRATULATIONS to all of our nominees!

Since the list is hella long, it’s below a Read More. Look around, discover new fics, art, and authors, and consider long and hard what you might vote for in the next few days!

(Note: The rule about a fic only being allowed on the ballot twice has been suspended this year as a result of tired/dumb/overwhelmed mod issues. This rule will return next year.)

Voting will begin on January 25th.

FLUFF

Family

Gold's Adventure in Parenting, by @ethereal-wishes Precious Moments, by @jackabelle73 Belle's water breaks at a party, by @lotus0kid Tuesdays at French Theater, by @prissyhalliwell The Naming of Dinosaurs, by @worryinglyinnocent Blue Christmas, by @ishtarelisheba Espresso Shots, by @thestraggletag Hear Me Still, by @betweenpaperpages

Comfort

Walking After Midnight, by @nerdrumple Belle notices she's going gray, by @lotus0kid The Bond Between Us, by @sarashouldbestudying Sleeping Arrangements, by @mariequitecontrarie Ever After, by @boushh2187 True Nature, by @thestraggletag

Fix-It

The Life You Save May Be Your Own, by @thatravenclawbitch Reprise, by @little-inkstone Mother Knows Best, by @mariequitecontrarie It All Ends Well, by @worryinglyinnocent If Tomorrow Never Comes, by @mariequitecontrarie

Reunion

Home Again, by @ifishouldvanish Knight in Shining Armor, by @thecompletebookworm The Bookshop Owner, by @imgilmoregirl Until Last I See You, by @magnoliatattoo Five Days in Hell, by @celticheartedfangirl Marbled, by @worryinglyinnocent Leaves of Memory, by @0ceanofdarkness

Best Child Fic

Old Friends, by @rumbellegem15 The Naming of Dinosaurs, by @worryinglyinnocent Babysitting Debacle, by @ryik-the-writer The Mayor's Chair, by @worryinglyinnocent

SMUT

Kink

In Heat, by @prissyhalliwell The Party, by @worryinglyinnocent Best Seat in the House, by @timelordthirteen A First for Everything, by @magnoliatattoo Closing the Circle, by @emospritelet

Romance

Making A Splash, by @ifishouldvanish Gold in the Afternoon, by @nerdrumple Soapy Water, by @mariequitecontrarie Life in Detail, by @ishtarelisheba Baby It's Cold Outside, by @timelordthirteen Deseo, by @thestraggletag

Comedy

No Satisfaction, by @thatravenclawbitch You're Fired, Miss French, by @poca-staks SENT, by @poca-staks

Threesome

Love and Trust, by @emospritelet Room for Three, by @worryinglyinnocent

Best First Time

Dripping in Gold, by @maplesyrupao3 Gold in the Afternoon, by @nerdrumple The Wolves Were Always Lurking, by @ishtarelisheba Bravery Will Follow, by @emospritelet Storybook Romance, by @standbyyourmantis

Best Afterlife Smut

The Heart of a Hero, by @mrs-stiltskin Coming Home, by @scribbles-by-kate

PWP

Midnight Rides, by @maplesyrupao3 Take Me Lost, Make Me Found, by @thatravenclawbitch Off Duty, by @emospritelet Parent Teacher Conference, by @timelordthirteen Ask Me No Questions, I'll Tell You No Lies, by @standbyyourmantis The Fire Down Below, by @woodelf68 Yes, Your Honor, by @celticheartedfangirl

BDSM

A Dozen Roses by @ladybookwormwithteeth The Spinner in Chains, by @mrs-stiltskin Tell Me About It, by @lotus0kid The Ring, by @timelordthirteen

ANGST

Why?

Love Makes Us Sick, by @thatravenclawbitch The Unresolved, by @of-princes-and-savages Cogs, by @maplesyrupao3 Fairy Tales & Happy Endings, by @standbyyourmantis

Death

Belle and Gold meet at grief counseling, by @lotus0kid Ghosts in the Snow, by @theoneandonlylittlebird We'll Have to Muddle Through Somehow, by @thatravenclawbitch Things Unknown, by @bellegold Cogs, by @maplesyrupao3

Oops

Spoils of War II, by @bad-faery 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, by @justanoutlaw All I Want for Christmas, by @timelordthirteen

Hurts So Good

The Unresolved, by @of-princes-and-savages Things Left Unsaid, by @emospritelet XVII (I Do Not Love You), by @thestraggletag Enchanted Tales with Belle, by @bad-faery Fever, by @celticheartedfangirl

ROMANCE

Best Date

The Worst That Could Happen, by @thatravenclawbitch Bottle Episode, by @standbyyourmantis Dripping in Gold, by @maplesyrupao3 Swipe Right, by @standbyyourmantis

Best Courtship

Walking After Midnight, by @nerdrumple The Pages in Between, by @thatravenclawbitch A Match Made in Heaven, by @worryinglyinnocent Bellissima, by @standbyyourmantis

Best First Meeting

Gold in the Afternoon, by @nerdrumple A Princess in Theory, by @elanorjane A Match Made in Heaven, by @worryinglyinnocent Best Failed Date Ever, by @barpurplewrites Swipe Right, by @standbyyourmantis A Life Unexpected, by @celticheartedfangirl Bottle Episode, by @standbyyourmantis

GENERAL AWARDS

Best One-Shot

Who Says Dark Ones Don't Dance?, by @ifishouldvanish Vows, by @maplesyrupao3 Take Me Lost, Make Me Found, by @thatravenclawbitch The Plant Sitter, by @mrs-stiltskin Where the Sea Takes You, by @thecompletebookworm Why Not?, by @betweenpaperpages S.O.S., by @celticheartedfangirl

Best Drabble

I Won't be Home for Christmas, by @thatravenclawbitch The Ornament, by @timelordthirteen

Best Post-Ep fic

The Life You Save May Be Your Own, by @thatravenclawbitch Marigolds, by @mariequitecontrarie It All Ends Well, by @worryinglyinnocent Our Better Decisions, by @theoneandonlylittlebird

Best Comedy Fic

Spin Me a Tale, by @ifishouldvanish The Pages In Between, by @thatravenclawbitch Receipt in the Bag?, by @ifishouldvanish Mistaken Identity, by @thestraggletag

Best Movie AU

The World is Not Enough, by @wierdogal Bellissima, by @standbyyourmantis Zootopia AU, by @thestraggletag Elevated Hearts, by @b-does-the-write-thing Life in Detail, by @ishtarelisheba

Best Book AU

221B Avonlea Street, by @wierdogal

Best TV Show AU

Black Roses, by @ifishouldvanish Storybrooke Hyperion Teaching Hospital, by @wierdogal

Best AU Inspired By Other Media

Bellissima, by @standbyyourmantis This Secret is Safe, by @thatravenclawbitch I Must Be Warmer Now, by @ifishouldvanish

Best Historical AU

A Night to Remember, by @tinuviel-undomiel The Image of Her, by @mareyshelley Vows, by @maplesyrupao3 Behind the Eight Ball, by @ishtarelisheba Once Upon a Time in the West, by @joylee56

Best AU

Kiss of Life, by @emospritelet How Soon is Now?, by @nerdrumple Nothing Ever Changes in Storybrooke, by @standbyyourmantis A Face for Radio, by @b-does-the-write-thing Dark Heart, by @emospritelet

Best AU!OUAT

Ties of Blood, by @thestraggletag Writing Our Own Stories, by @wierdogal Outside In, by @lotus0kid Passing Inspection, by @mariequitecontrarie

Best Series

Alterations 'verse, by @ifishouldvanish Ruins and Battles, by @toseehowthestoryends Love on Ice series, by @elanorjane Fake Fiances and True Love, by @of-princes-and-savages The Fairy Belle series, by @prissyhalliwell The Lynchpin Universe, by catspook The Gold Family, by @mariequitecontrarie The Floofy!verse, by @woodelf68 Where is My Mind? 'verse, by @thatravenclawbitch

Best Holiday Fic

A Card for Mr Gold, by @timelordthirteen The Midwinter Lady, by @lotus0kid Selective Santas, by @of-princes-and-savages Let It Snow, by @standbyyourmantis A Visit from St. Nick, by @betweenpaperpages

Best Remix

The Housekeeper, by @b-does-the-write-thing

Best Crossover

Through the Vortex, by @wierdogal Warmth and Desire, by @celticheartedfangirl

Best Dark Castle

The Sorcerer's Apprentice, by @standbyyourmantis Mirrored Memories, by @mareyshelley Terrific, by @lotus0kid When the Clock Strikes Twelve, by @mariequitecontrarie

Best Storybrooke

Kiss of Life, by @emospritelet No Rest for the Wicked, by @elanorjane Nothing Ever Changes in Storybrooke, by @standbyyourmantis The Moment of Truth, by @leni-ba

Best Travel

A Life Worth Living, by @woodelf68 Going Back to the Great Wide Somewhere, by @wierdogal

Best “Missing Years” Fic

Who Says Dark Ones Don't Dance?, by @ifishouldvanish A Life Worth Living, by @woodelf68

SPECIAL CATEGORIES

Best Golden Lace

So a Lawyer Walks Into a Bar, by @ifishouldvanish Command Me to Be Well, by @magnoliatattoo I Must Be Warmer Now, by @ifishouldvanish

Best Woven Lace

Vodka and Peppermint, by @thatravenclawbitch Things Left Unsaid, by @emospritelet

Best Woven Beauty

What the Heart Wants, by @mareyshelley Vigilante Rose, by @elanorjane Doppelganger, by @celticheartedfangirl The Awakening, by @joylee56

Best Rumbelle Poly Ship

The Darkness Within, by @worryinglyinnocent

Best Background Swanfire

The House (Castle) Always Wins, by @wierdogal Bae, Emma, and Henry live in their car outside Belle's library, by @lotus0kid Flip A Coin?, by @wierdogal

Best Side Pairing

Ruby/Ariel, This Secret is Safe, by @thatravenclawbitch Tiana/Merlin, Once Upon a Time in the West, by @joylee56 Astrid/Leroy, The Unresolved, by @of-princes-and-savages

Best Afterlife Fic

The Heart of a Hero, by @mrs-stiltskin Coming Home, by @scribbles-by-kate Partners Beyond the Grave, by @wierdogal First Christmas, by @boushh2187

Best Crack!Fic

Receipt in the Bag?, by @ifishouldvanish Everyone Needs a Hobby, by @woodelf68

Best Drama

Walking After Midnight, by @nerdrumple Outside In, by @lotus0kid Heartstrings, by dragonbat Fairy Tales & Happy Endings, by @standbyyourmantis

Best Supernatural

How Soon Is Now?, by @nerdrumple Dark Sight, by @maplesyrupao3 Lack of Reflection, by @barpurplewrites The Darkness Within, by @worryinglyinnocent

Best Creature AU

The Sounding Sea, by @mareyshelley Heavenly Bodies, by @maplesyrupao3 The Pharoah and His Priestess, by @wierdogal The Wolves Were Always Lurking, by @ishtarelisheba Storybook Romance, by @standbyyourmantis

Best Unexpected Twist

The Bartender, by @timelordthirteen An Unknown Road, by @lotus0kid A Real Hero by @lotus0kid The Image of Her, by @mareyshelley

Best Dark One Lore Fic

Forgotten Lore, by @thestraggletag The Darkness Within, by @worryinglyinnocent

Best Bobby Squared

Dark Halves, by @worryinglyinnocent First, Do No Harm, by @iatethebiscuit

Best Trope

Finishing Stitch, by @ifishouldvanish The Worst That Could Happen, by @thatravenclawbitch Swipe Right, by @standbyyourmantis Wrong Room, Dr. Rush, by @theoneandonlylittlebird

Best Meta

Rumbelle Ethics, by @ifishouldvanish 25 Fucking Stupid Writing Choices OUAT Made, by @celticheartedfangirl

Best Prompter

@anonymousnerdgirl

EVENTS

(All fics in these categories are limited to 2018 events only.)

Rumbelle Secret Santa

Wishful Thinking, by @rufeepeach The Great Storybrooke Christmas Bakeoff, by @spottytonguedog Alone for Christmas, by @winterswanderlust Beauty and the Baker, by @little-inkstone Picture Perfect Bride, by @idesignedthefjords How Soon is Now?, by @nerdrumple Never Too Late, by @wierdogal

Rumbelle Christmas in July

No Satisfaction, by @thatravenclawbitch Mission: Storybrooke, by @of-princes-and-savages California Soulmates, by @elanorjane Behind the Eight Ball, by @ishtarelisheba The Plus One, by @joylee56 Notes, and Lines, and Letters, by @sieben9 Cruising Altitude, by @applejackcat Puffin, by @beastlycheese

May Day Menagerie

Aillte, by @lotus0kid The Pharaoh and His Priestess, by @wierdogal Merfolk Rumbelle AU, by @nropay

Fluffapalooza

Gideon chips the teacup, by @we-aim-to-misbehave I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, by @worryinglyinnocent With This Broom, I Thee Wed, by @joylee56

Monthly Rumbelle (Non-smut)

Please Don't Leave Quite Yet, by @rumbellegem15 The Thing Between Us, by @worryinglyinnocent Best Failed Date Ever, by @barpurplewrites The Naming of Dinosaurs, by @worryinglyinnocent If Tomorrow Never Comes, by @mariequitecontrarie

Monthly Rumbelle (Smut)

Patience is an Overrated Virtue, by @worryinglyinnocent Dreamy, by @mariequitecontrarie After Party, by @timelordthirteen The Fog of Mars, by @barpurplewrites

Rumbelle is Hope

Hope for the Hollow, by @itssandgirl Rumbelle planting their roses, by @rumbellecomic The Domestic Life of the Dark One and His Lady, as observed by Emma Swan, by @worryinglyinnocent Car Kicking Reduces Stress, by @wierdogal

CHARACTER AWARDS

Best Belle

Heavenly Bodies, by @maplesyrupao3 Spin Me a Tale, by @ifishouldvanish Her Heart, by @lotus0kid Ties of Blood, by @thestraggletag

Best Dark One!Belle

Through the Veil, by @theoneandonlylittlebird The Spinner in Chains, by @mrs-stiltskin

Best AU Belle

The Sounding Sea, by @mareyshelley The Pages In Between, by @thatravenclawbitch

Best Lacey

So a Lawyer Walks Into a Bar, by @ifishouldvanish Command Me to Be Well, by @magnoliatattoo Vodka and Peppermint, by @thatravenclawbitch

Best Detective Weaver

Vigilante Rose, by @elanorjane First, Do No Harm, by @iatethebiscuit Doppelganger, by @celticheartedfangirl The Awakening, by @joylee56

Best Dark One

The Sorcerer's Apprentice, by @standbyyourmantis Kiss, by @nerdrumple Deseo, by @thestraggletag Soul Deep, by @barpurplewrites

Best Mr. Gold

Belle and Gold meet at grief counseling, by @lotus0kid Disrupted, by @theoneandonlylittlebird Dark Heart, by @emospritelet A Visit From St. Nick, by @betweenpaperpages

Best AU Gold/Rumple

Counting Stars, by @galactic-pirates Nothing Ever Changes in Storybrooke, by @standbyyourmantis Closing the Circle, by @emospritelet

Best Spinner!Rumple

Fractured Blue, by @maplesyrupao3 The Spinner in Chains, by @mrs-stiltskin The Plus One, by @joylee56 Finding Home, by @thecompletebookworm

Best Woobie!Rumple

Brimstone and Mistletoe, by @thatravenclawbitch Hear Me Still, by @betweenpaperpages Home Again, by @ifishouldvanish Fractured Blue, by @maplesyrupao3

Best Wish!Rumple

Echoing Hearts, by @mareyshelley

Best Baelfire/Neal

The Exchange, by @rumbellegem15 Bae and the Bear and the Bow, by @wierdogal

Best Gideon

Babysitting Debacle, by @ryik-the-writer Lion!Gideon, Zootopia AU, by @thestraggletag Best Beloveds, by @woodelf68

Best OC Rumbelle Child

Olivia Rose Gold, Star-Crossed, by @celticheartedfangirl Jenny Gold, Accidental Magic, by @woodelf68 Tabitha, A Life Worth Living, by @woodelf68

RATINGS

Best of General Audience

Handprints, by @timelordthirteen

Best of Mature

Let It Snow, by @standbyyourmantis Something Old, Something New, by @winterswanderlust

ART

Best Fan Art

Rumbelle on the Beach, by @ripperblackstaff Teacup Garden, by @staypee Don't worry pop, i'll take care of mum/we'll meet again, by @nropay Peace ooot Dearies, by @delintthedarkone Jedi Master Rum Gold and Jedi Knight Belle French prepare for battle, by @galactic-pirates

Best Cover Art

All of Me, by @wizzygold The Fairy Gardener, by @timelordthirteen

Best Graphic Art - Gifs

Detective Weaver - then and now, by @virgidearie Rumbelle: Have You Ever Been In Love?, by @timelordthirteen Color, Brilliance, and Strangeness, by @ifishouldvanish Telephone speech from 2x16, by @agentsphilinda

Best Graphic Art - Still Images

Teacup Garden, by @staypee Taking a break from building their home, by @staypee Papafire art (i'll find you bae), by @nropay

Best AU in Art

He watched his wife in the mirror, by @virgidearie Belle and Ogilvy, by @virgidearie Mer!Rumple with a Mer!Belle, by @foxmurphy

Best Fluff Art

The Pretty Librarian, by @virgidearie Happiness, by @virgidearie Teacup Garden, by @staypee Taking a break from building their home, by @staypee Rumbelle Sims, by @celticheartedfangirl Dark castle, magic mishap, blankets, by @jenitosam Where it allllllll began, by @delintthedarkone

Best Angsty Art

Not much longer to wait, darling..., by @delintthedarkone I miss you - We miss you too son, by @virgidearie Because of course he kept her bones, by @staypee

Best Smutty Art

I knew you'd make it home, by @virgidearie Love, by @virgidearie Trust, by @virgidearie

Best Comic/Graphic Novel

In most fairy tales they said third time is a charm, by @nropay Because of course he kept her bones, by @staypee Belle Protects Rumple AU, by @nropay

Best Dark One Form

Rumplestiltskin's 5 different personas, by @ripperblackstaff Glitch!Rumple, by @nropay

Best Use of Color

Detective Weaver, by @ripperblackstaff Papafire art (i'll find you bae), by @nropay Rumplestiltskin's 5 different personas, by @ripperblackstaff

Best Video

The Rumbelle Movie, by @poca-staks Shut up and Dance, by @darkinerry Tale as Old as Time, by @wondertwinc The Dancing (Queen) King, by @poca-staks

Best Artist

@virgidearie @ripperblackstaff @staypee @nropay

BEST AUTHOR

@b-does-the-write-thing @of-princes-and-savages @timelordthirteen @mariequitecontrarie @wierdogal

BEST NEW AUTHOR

@sieben9 @idesignedthefjords @elanorjane @mareyshelley

BEST RUMBELLE FIC

Dark Heart, by @emospritelet This Secret is Safe, by @thatravenclawbitch Enchanted Tales with Belle, by @bad-faery Echoing Hearts, by @mareyshelley

BEST ANYELLE FIC

Wrong Room, Dr. Rush, by @theoneandonlylittlebird Homecoming, by @emospritelet Aillte, by @lotus0kid Cell Block Tango, by @smartgirlsaremean If Only for a Moment, by @ifishouldvanish Rival strip club owners, by @lotus0kid Morning Glory, by @mariequitecontrarie

BEST ANYEM FIC

Let's Spend the Night Together, by @ifishouldvanish Lacey has concerns about Danny's suits, by @lotus0kid The Worst That Could Happen, by @thatravenclawbitch Bloody Lace, by @of-princes-and-savages

Rumbelle Fandom Lifetime Achievement Award

@standbyyourmantis @ifishouldvanish @timelordthirteen

Newbie Spotlight

[Newbie spotlight will be announced along with category winners.]

#the espenson awards #tea awards #rumbelle #rumbelle fic #rumbelle fanart #rumplestiltskin #belle french #anyelle #anyem

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dukeofriven · 5 years

Photo

[Note: this post originally appeared in this thread. Owning to Tumblr’s inability to update reblogs with edits because it is a hellsite programmed by a secretive cell of former Stasi operatives to avenge the fall of East Germany, it has thus been re-edited and reformatted here for your reading pleasure.] JK Rowling’s wizards are the most useless, lazy, incapable dumbfucks in the history of fiction. The average Muggle? You take away their technology and they would be able to complete the basic tasks of feeding and clothing themselves without shitting on the floor. If a wizard ever lost their magic in Harry Potter, though, they would die. They’d be dead in three days. They’re garbage and I hate that I’ve come to hate Harry Potter - a series I once loved - because an author inexplicably hailed for her world-building is daily revealed to be appallingly bad at it. I realize this is a really dumb thing to be this angry about but I’ve been told for years what a great world-builder J.K. Rowling is, and that was not even true when the books were coming out. The Time Turner ruined all of Harry Potter forever, not because it offers easy time travel you can hold in your hand (although it does), not because you ask ‘why don’t they just use the time turner’ with every subsequent scenario forever (although you do), but because it was an enormous, flashing red light warning everyone that the series was going to attempt to make the transition from Fairy Tale Logic to Serious Fiction logic and fail. Badly. Really, really badly. I still think Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone is an almost perfect book: a distillation of decades of boarding school genre fiction combined with magic, friendship, and wonder. It is a book that owes as much to Enid Blyton and L.M. Boston as it does to C.S. Lewis or T.H. White and other authors with two first initials. Its sense of place is magisterial, from the frumpy, soul-crushing suburban sadness of Privet Drive to the ephemeral curio-shop wonderland of Diagon Alley to Hogwarts itself, a bastion of astonishment, homeliness, and delight. What it isn’t is the sort of framework on which you can support the horror that is the torture and murder of Charity Burbage in front of her colleague Severus Snape, who could not rescue her because he could not break his deep cover as a spy against Wizard Hitler 2. Long-running series can experience changes of tone and complexity. This is neither something laudable nor worth reviling; it’s a neutral phenomenon. Sometimes series do it well: Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld are both series that by-and-large end with books focused on far more complex issues than their earlier entries. TV series do this too: contrast the early episodes of Steven Universe or Adventure Time with episodes from later seasons. With Adventure Time, for example, trying jumping from the pilot to Remember You and see how hard you get tonal whiplash) Lois McMaster Bujold sublime space opera The Vorkosigan Saga doesn’t just change tones but also genre: space adventure, murder mystery, political thriller, goofy regency romance, comedy of errors, heist movie, schizoid identity crisis - on and on. The latest entry in the series has almost no plot to speak of, but is instead a musing on age, gender roles, grieving the loss of a lover, and the hope of new life. Some series, however, manage the transition poorly, largely because the initial tone cannot be harmonized with the later tone (Mass Effect jumps immediately to mind). But Harry Potter has more than just a problem of its tone getting darker: its trying to have darker events fit in the same world in which people can walk around with names like ‘Mundungus,’ the Hogwarts school song can be a nonsense poem, and the Philosopher’s Stone was defended with a series of video game puzzles. In a world in which the villain openly tortures somebody to death, the Philosopher’s Stone shouldn’t have any whimisical bullshit about its magical defences: it should have trip mines in the floor and an enchanted statue with a gun, because Voldermort isn’t a guy you confound with drinking potions and flying keys. You should just kill him. The charming fairy world of wonder of HP & The Philosopher’s Stone has room for a love potion. The later books, in which it is revealed that Voldemort was essentially born from rape, is not place where Ron Weasley can hand-out a book to Harry called Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches without seeming like a predator in the making. The cradle that is The Philosopher’s Stone cannot hold a beastly baby like Deathly Hallows any more than Grindlewald pontificating about the superiority of wizards can sit comfortably in a universe in which wizards took until the 18th century to accept the outhouse! Not that fascist ravings are inherently logical; but even non-fascists in Harry Potter never act like wizards are anything other than 100% better than muggles at all times. They can’t, because if the series were ever to do that it would have to acknowledge that the two worlds are different: neither better, just different. Instead - well, as Ron once bitched, magic makes coffee perfect every time, so it’s not clear how muggles stand being alive and don’t just roll-over and die from the hellacious half-life that is living with imperfect coffee. This has nothing to do with irony, a suggestion that ‘oh Grindewald talks a big game about wizardly superiority but wizards didn’t use toilets and cal themselves goofy names like Flumpus MacFludgeon: Rowling is using dramatic ironic to lampshade how wizard supremacy lacks self-awareness. No: this is about a world that is silly being asked to host a genocidal dictator and his crimes. It’s like those tedious ‘grimdark’ AUs that always show up in bad fanfiction by authors attempting to be serious: what if the Sesame Street gang had to deal with ICE, what if Po started haemoraging while hanging-out with Laa-Laa, what if Peppa Pig learned that she was adopted and her real parents were brutally murdered as part of gang war because they were heroin dealers and so on. (The best skewering of this edgelord comedy is still probably either Andrew Hussie’s Muppet Babies/Saw comic or any encounters the Shortpacked staff ever had with the Transformers: Buckets of Blood guy.) In Harry Potter, Rowling built a wonderful little fantasy world that ran happily on the logic of fairy tales and fairy stories, and then decided she was never going to be taken seriously as an author unless she introduced Hitler to the equation. And it never works for her. It’s not like it couldn’t have worked. The Lord of the Rings is famously a very different book from The Hobbit. It did, in fact, introduce Hitler into a little fantasy world but Tolkien made it work by abandoning huge portions of the Hobbit’s tone, style, and structure: he wrote a completely different book. Frodo isn’t scarfing-down Bertie Bott’s Every Flavoured Beans on the slopes of Mount Doom. The moment, say, Cedric Diggory lay dead in Harry’s arms, we needed to never meet Mundungus Fletcher ever again, or Weasley’s Gooftacular Prank Nonsense, or Ron getting Harry a book about love spells. All the very least that needed to go away, at least until the very end, because Rowling is not an author with the skill to keep the silly and the sublime on the same page. That’s fine in and of itself: all artistic people have strengths and weakness, nobody is skilled at every element of creation. J.M. Barrie was very good at writing a book about an eternal child, but a bit crap at writing a biography about his mother. Arthur Sullivan spent his life quietly seething no one wanted to listen to Ivanhoe instead of The Mikado. There’s a reason Jerry Lewis never released The Day the Clown Cried. Virginia Wolfe is a great writer, but that doesn’t mean she would have written a great run on She-Hulk. [Although now that I’ve said it I can’t think of anything I want to read more.] There’s a great bit in the Lord of Rings after the Shire has been scoured of Saruman where the Hobbits essentially open-up their larders and allow people to have fun again; there’s also a nice bit slightly earlier where Great King Aragorn puts on his old Strider clothes just so he can be his D&D character again: when series change tone, unless you’re really good at walking on a knife’s edge, the quieter, gentler, lighter world isn’t gone forever, but it does have to go away for a while: which means its time to tamp-down on the people with silly names and personalities - like Slughorn, who slips into book six like the second-coming of the vain and silly Lockhart, even though that’s the book where Dumbledore dies.

Rowling keeps trying to makes her old tone fit with her new world without having to pull a Tolkien and actually write differently, which produces moment after moment of tonal whiplash in which the latest Potter-related movie literally involves referencing the holocaust but she also drops some fun trivia about wizards shitting on the floor like animals. (You could describe the entirety of the first Fantastic Beasts film as Tonal Whiplash: The Motion Picture. I’d say that’s an essay for another day but I do not want to have to watch that movie again.)

It needs to be said that a primary reason these tone shifts ‘don’t work’ for Harry Potter is that the logic of a fairy tale is different than the logic of a mundane story. The logic of a fairy tale tends to be self contained: it doesn’t have a smart ass running around asking questions like ‘why’ because there is no why; a thing is the way it is because it is the way it is. Fairies steal babies on the third Sunday of every month, and nobody in the story asks ‘well what about in countries that use different calendars, and what about the shift from Julian to the Gregorian calendar that skipped eleven days?’ because such a pedantic question has no substance in a fairy-tale world. The Clever Child might question what the fairies need with babies, but she’s not about to break-down the week-to-week investment metrics on the Fairyland Infant Exchange. It’s not that one cannot critique or bring critical thinking to fairy stories; it’s that in a fairy story you don’t ask how the sewer system works because it’s not pertinent to what the story is trying to convey. It’s being the guy at the book club who is mad nobody wants to discuss his theories on the music of Rush: its not that the theories are bad, it’s that in this time and place they are of limited relevance. Harry Potter, however, does not belong to to the world of fairy stories, but to the legacy of Tolkienesque fantasy - the world of

In The Hobbit nobody would ever ask if Hobbiton had sewers - it’s not important, and if you ask those kind of questions expecting there to be a serious answer of grave import you’re being a twit. Lord of the Rings, though? Not only is it a valid question, but Tolkien probably wrote a paper explaining the etymology of the Westron word for ‘sewer’ and how sewers were first invented by Shítlívær the Noldor as a way of helping the Blessed Isles cope with all the crap that tumbled out of Fëanor’s mouth.

The world of The Hobbit is one you could enter and expect to quickly find yourself on an adventure. The world of The Lord of The Rings is one you could enter, walk-about, and study without anyone ever exepecting you to solve some sort of regionally-disturbing social problem: in short, it wants you to be invested in the existence of its world in a different way than The Hobbit. Even then, although The Lord of the Rings is more grounded than The Hobbit, it is not so grounded that it doesn’t leave room for mystery, and questions that refute Wittgenstein’s assertion that all questions must be answerable. Tolkien loved to create complex worlds, but there was stuff he knew wasn’t worth elaborating on. It’s really his fans and authorial heirs who developed the somewhat worrying belief that a good worldbuilder has to have an answer to literally every question or else didn’t think their world through. (This has killed more potentially good books than bad cover art ever has.)

The Lord of the Rings leaves room for The Undiscovered Country. Harry Potter wants too… but can’t. Firstly, Rowling obviously understands the need for what we might call poetic mystery - like the gateway in the somewhat unsubtly name Department of Mysteries - but she also wants you to know how wizards pooped three hundred years ago. You get the feeling she knows exactly how and why that gate works, and what it is, but she withheld the knowledge because she likes mystery’s aesthetic more than she ascribes to any idea that an author might have lacunæ in the knowledge of their own work. That is, she would never put something into her work that she didn’t have an answer for - for her there is no undiscovered country that exists beyond the knowledge of even the author; she is an omniscient deity. Not for her is C.S. Lewis’ insistence that for her characters: All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. Rowling knows exactly what happens to every one of them from the moment they were born to the moment the rot in the ground and the day-to-day schedules of their lives in heaven. Secondly - and far more of an issue - is that Harry Potter becomes a world that invites you to pick up each part of its structure and think about it, because the author has - with loving care - built that entire world for you to interact with. A place for everything, and everything its place. Except JK Rowling is a lazy thinker who never, ever considers the consequences of anything she says. Nagini is actually an Asian woman cursed to live as a snake, wizards used to magically disappear their shit from wherever they just stood and shat it out, Hermione Granger can have a time travel device to attended a bunch of classes but Harry can’t grab one off a nearby shelf and go back fifteen minutes and save his godfather, and nor a few years later can the Minister for Magic’s protection detail keep them on hand to go back half an hour and tell their past selves ‘Hey Voldemort is about to walk in here and kill y’all thought you ought to know.’ No author can work-out every aspect of every element in their works - that’s impossible, and why ARGs are solved by the internet hivemind in half a day even though they took a far smaller group of minds months to devise. But Rowling is intellectually lazy - she adds the holocaust to her Magic Fun Land without sparing a single moment to think that idea through. She then gets defensive when confronted by the suggestion that her worldbuilding might have been shallow. Hey your American wizard houses seem a bit racist also America doesn’t really use the house system in its schools - and her response was to lash out and not listen. Rowling tried to move Potter from a fairy logic world with its own rules into our world with our rules and our history but she doesn’t know our history very well, or even our rules, so she tells us wizards shat on the floor until the 18th century while the rest of us sit around going ‘but humans have never done that as social groups - even in horrible slums and facility-free prison cells humans create a designated place for taking a shit even if it’s just ‘that corner over there.’ We don’t just drop pants and go whenever!” This is because, as a worldbuilder, J.K. Rowling is actually kind of rubbish.

#Tumblr #J.K. Rowling #Harry Potter #Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone #wizards #muggles #the wizarding world #Charity Burbage #Severus Snape #Voldemort #shit #time turner #Enid Blyton #L.M. Boston #C.S. Lewis #Hogwarts #long post

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littlecrookedheart · 6 years

Text

Amen, Amen • The Fraying

Catch Up : Reckoning | Rum on the Fire | Like You're Made of Glass | Unfolding

Character(s) : Noah Marshall, Jane Marshall, Matt Pivouz (OC), Vinny Trovato (OC)

Rating : MATURE. THIS STORY WILL NOT BE NSFW, but it will be dealing with mature themes, such as death, possession, mental illness, suicidal thoughts, murder, and other graphic elements. Language warning. Please read at your own risk. I’m issuing a general trigger warning for the entirety of this story. *This chapter deals heavily with abuse. Please be aware of this before reading and do so at your own risk.

Time : This takes place 14 years after Jane’s death and roughly 5 years after the events in ILITW. Noah is 22 years old.

Word Count : 6,594

Author’s Note : This chapter was a rough one. We peek back into Noah's past and his new friendship with Matt, and we get to see some twisting of the tides when it comes to what they've been dealing with.

Key : Perspective switches will be marked with ** | Time jumps will be marked with –

Soundtrack | Chapter Inspiration

**THIRTEEN YEARS AGO**

"Honey, I know this is hard, but we told everyone six, and it's five thirty. We have to go."

Mom's sitting on the couch, staring into space like she always did after Jane left. Dad has a hand on her shoulder, a rarity then, she'd never let anyone touch her. I haven't hugged my own mother in fourteen years. Specifically, five thousand, two hundred and one days.

"Honey, we really-"

"I'm coming, okay?!" She's yelling, pulling her purse strap onto her shoulder and she spins around, finding me. "You'll keep your mouth shut."

I'm nine, and I don't know what she's talking about. I'm nine, and the tone in her voice wants to gut me like a wild animal. She's got me down, I guess. That's the moment when I found out that I was alone.

"Noah!" Katai stumbles over to me, holding out a snickers bar. "Brought you this."

They put it on my lap, because I won't look anywhere but down, and I say, "Thanks."

"Yep! Had it left over from Easter."

And that's kind of weird, because it's been months, but I just smile, because I'm nine and it's fine.

"Your mom is crying a lot."

"Yeah, I know."

"She misses Jane, huh?"

I nod, because so do I, but I can't say so. I can't deflect mom's pain.

"How come they wanted this memorial thing?" Katai asks, opening the snickers and taking a bite. I don't mind, and I break it in half to share.

"They think it'll be good for Jane's friends I guess," I say, shrugging.

"That's kinda dumb. I think they think it's good for their friends, not Jane's. Jane's friends are always talkin' about her."

"Katai?"

"Yeah?"

"Why did you stay my friend?"

"Whatcha mean?"

"Nobody else talks to me..." I'm trailing off, scraping my foot in the dirt. "Nobody wants to be my friend anymore."

"That's not true!"

"Then how come I never hang out with you guys anymore? How come Lucas stopped asking me to trade cards? How come Ava and Andy ignore me in class?"

Katai sighs, standing up and stomping in front of me, pokes me on the head.

"Ow! What the heck?"

"Noah, you gotta stop worryin'. And I'm always your friend! You stopped coming to my house on Saturday mornings and I still think me and you are friends!"

Katai is right, I think, because I'm nine and I don't know the future. So I hug them, because they're my friend.

**PRESENT DAY**

And now they're gone.

Less focus on the fact that I almost killed Matt back there. More focus on the drawing. It's in my hand, probably being held too tightly, and Matt's on the front steps, sitting next to me.

"Noah?"

"Hm?" but I'm not really paying attention. Feel the pencil marks. Feel the fibers. Feel my heart falling. Vinny's voice in my ears.

Help him.

"I don't care about that thing back there. It couldn't be you when you're right here," Matt says, putting a hand on my shoulder. This time, it's not a dagger. And I take a breath, because I don't know what that means. Because I'm twenty two, and I have one friend. Because Katai is dead. Because Matt is the only thing I know exists right now. Because I trust him, somehow. Because fuck this.

"But you saw me."

"I saw something. Looked like you. But I trust this version of you, not that thing. Do you want to kill me?"

Shake my head, count to seven. All I want is to let go.

"Right. Couldn't have been you."

Truth is, I'm not so sure. We find misery to be so fucking captivating because we look deep within her and see ourselves, an abysmal mirror just aching to hear 'bloody mary.'

Maybe that's where I fucked up. Stood in front of it so many times it started to reflect. Begged too hard. Fought too long. Think I could call for her? Say her name in the bathroom, close my eyes and hope she appears? Think I could suffocate? No, that's too easy.

And yeah, I'm ready to fall. Fuck, just as much, I'm ready to fly. But I'll keep on tightening the clutch around my own neck, because wanting is as honeysuckle as the idea that things will change, and I know better than to give into false hope. I know better. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven

"You have nice eyes."

What? I know my eyebrow is raised and furrowed, and of course, I'm looking away. My ears are burning like skin on a fucking stove top.

"Sorry, not like...my mom always said you can tell a lot about people by their eyes."

"You believe that?"

"You don't?"

No. Because I don't believe in anything that isn't absolute. Because I'm twenty two, and I've had to raise myself. Because I've tried and tried, and all I've ever learned is how to barely drag by. Maybe that's just what I'm made for, half empty glasses of murky water, shards of glass, forgotten promises. Whispers. Pain. Maybe I need a bloody mary.

"Anyway..." He's standing up, dusting off his coat. "We should go."

"What? No," but I don't know why I said that. Neither does Matt, according to the look on his face. "We're supposed to be here. Vinny wanted us to come here."

"Yep, and then something tried to kill me," Matt says, pulling his collar down to show me the marks. I know they're there. I know he's burning, too.

"You can go. I'm staying." Like somehow I've got a key, like somehow it's my place to stay.

"I'm not leaving you, shit head." He turns around, making his way up the stairs. He's looking over his shoulder at me, waiting.

So I meet him at the front door, and I notice his eyes are bloodshot, but they're gleaming. Like emeralds and gold and all of the things you'd want to find. I don't know what that means for him, I just hope it's better.

It's still dark inside, just like it was an hour ago. Except this time it reeks of sulfur, like it's been embedded into the walls, seeping up through the floors. Pull my shirt over my nose, make my way in to Matt's old room.

Noah slid across the floor near the bed, sticking his arm back into the compartment where Vinny had hidden the items. He felt a small knob, and turned it, almost as if it were a door. His face turned in confusion, but he pressed inward, which lifted an entire floorboard.

"Holy shit," Matt whispered, scrubbing his face with his hand. "How is this here?"

Noah shrugged, backing up and kneeling, prying the board upward with his fingers. Under the wood was a scatter of papers, stuffed in with small toys, a costume conductors hat, and a small photo album.

"I've seen that before," Matt said, pointing to the album. "Maybe in a dream or something, I don't know. It's familiar."

Noah handed it to him, scooping the rest of the contents onto the floor. Matt forced the window open, a cracking sound coming from the sealed panel.

"These aren't letters, they're pages from someone's journal," he said, grabbing a paper as he fumbled to the old bed, landing with a creak.

"Why are they in envelopes?" Noah asked, frowning in confusion. Matt shrugged and passed most of them to him instead, focusing on the photo album.

Noah opened the seals, brushing his hair out of his eyes as he read the first page, a sickness forming in his gut as his eyes skimmed the words. And then he knew exactly why they were hidden, and why they'd been in envelopes. He grabbed the few Matt had sitting near him, pulling them to the side.

Noah heard a small click from the doorway, looking up to see Vinny.

"Um...Matt?"

Matt held the conductors hat in his hand, running his thumb over the embroidery. "Hm?"

"Matt, look."

Vinny sat on the edge of the bed, silently, radiating a deep violet glow, almost like smoke. Instead of sulfur, the room smelled of licorice.

Matt's eyes glistened, his hands outstretched toward him. Vinny shook his head, moving his hand in the air as if he were smearing it, and was gone.

"Where'd he go?"

"Wherever he exists, now," Noah said, realizing that Vinny had shuffled through the envelopes, a handful of them pried open already.

Matt began to cry, trying to shake it off. Noah stood on his knees, putting a hand on Matt's shoulder. He seemed to crumble, as if he were paper, shifting and sobbing.

I don't know much about friendship, not outside of Katai. I don't know much about miracles or helping people or how to console the only person in the world who cares about what you're going through, but I can tell you how to crack the sky. I can tell you how to beat the demons on good days and how to drown them out on bad days. I can tell you how many puffs are on each of my cigarettes before I light them, and how many times Matt has cried for Vinny in the last twenty four hours. I don't know if that's right, if he's crying for him or because of him, but as cheesy as it sounds, I've never seen anyone love anyone like that. Just me and Jane, and now Matt and Vinny. I don't know if it feels good to know that.

I don't want Matt to know about these journal pages. They're too hard, too dark, darker than any brother should have to read. Vinny was twelve. Too young for this. Hell, you could be eighty and be too young for this. But why did he want me to find it? What good will this freaky drawing do me if I don't know what it's for?

Matt's quieting now, he's standing up and handing me the photo album.

"What is it?"

"Fucked up, open it."

These are pictures of Vinny and Matt, laughing and playing. This one may have been for a Christmas card. And here's their mom, and then again on her wedding day to Pete.

"Pete wasn't your dad?"

"Nope. Keep going."

So I do, and they seem to morph, their faces becoming warped and solemn, bullet holes appearing over their skin. I'm looking up at Matt, who gestures to keep flipping.

And then I see it, and my blood goes cold. Me. Jane. Jane. Vinny. My heart drops, if it falls and nobody is around to hear it, will it make a sound? Will Matt hear it? Does he see? Me. Him.

"What is this?"

"A lie," he says, grabbing the photo album. He palms the drawing of Jane and Vinny in the church and holds it up to a photo where they stood positioned the same, except not in a church. Instead, they're on a playground, and they look happy, like they're best friends.

But I grab the album back, turning the plastic, staring in utter fucking disbelief at a photo of Matt and I, sitting in his old room, the one we're in now. Because this photo is of today, not years past, not a fabrication. This photo is real, and so are we, and none of this makes any fucking sense.

I'm shoving it at him, my throat closing in, and I rush to the front door, fleeting for my last god damn nerve, get me out of here. Get me out.

I duck past Jane, humming that annoying fucking song, grab the handle, grit my teeth as it burns my palm, twist the handle and slide down the hill.

But Jane is here, too. She always is, isn't she? And I can't breathe, and I'm clawing at my mouth, thick, rough strings sewn through my lips. I'm coughing, sawdust puffing out of the seams, and Matt's yelling for me.

"Noah!" Matt shouted, jumping down the porch stairs.

Noah was doubled over, eyes blood red, segments of black wire embedded into his lips. Matt grabs a pocket knife from his coat pocket, bending the wire open. He's got one hand on Noah's shoulder, the other prying the material from his mouth.

Finally, he coaxes away the last of the wire, and Noah bends over, retching, spilling sawdust and larger wood shavings, black beetles and maggots spawning from it.

Matt helps Noah sit on the ground, hand on his back. "Can you breathe?"

"Yeah," I say, because physically, my airway is open. But no, no, inside, my chest is full of stuffing, like I'm fucking taxidermied, like my twin cradle has expired and decayed and all that's left is carcass.

Catch my breath, breathe, one, two, three, four, five, six-

"I know it's not a great time," Matt says, leaning forward, "Why were you humming that song?"

God damn, they've got me on display, don't they? Like they feed on my misery, but that's just how it goes, isn't it? Because I know I didn't do anything other than choke on that dust, but Matt heard a melody. Talk about insanity.

They get a laugh out of turning me into a puppet.

Like this is a big top circus, and I'm the acrobat, walking a tightrope made of rusty metal twine, like a noose that couldn't be unraveled, a scream that never left my last motherfucking breath and good god, I don't know how to put one foot in front of the other.

I don't know what an anchor is anymore.

"Hey, it's okay." Matt says, pushing a smile.

Maybe I do, after all.

**FOUR YEARS AGO**

I'm standing in Dr. Ripley's office, staring out the window. I remember this moment like the back of my hand.

"Okay Noah, have a seat," he says, keys clicking beneath his fingers as he finishes typing an email.

I sit down, but still face the window, watching breezy whisps of snowflakes dance down from the sky. I have always loved the snow.

"Today I'd like to get personal, are you open to that?"

Personal. Was discussing Jane's death not personal enough? I can tell him the detail of how the sky bends before it breaks but I can't get personal, not enough to satiate him.

Nod, agree, just get through this meeting.

"Tell me about your family dynamic."

Ha. Good one. I look at him forlornly, I guess he isn't kidding.

"It's fucked."

"Care to explain the extent of how fucked, exactly?"

"Sure. I'm Noah, I'm in a mental ward. Jane was my sister, she's dead now. My parents got divorced when I was ten, Dad cares but not enough, he's got a new family in Minnesota or some shit. He sends me a check from Jane's life insurance every month, wants me to keep it for college."

"And your mother?"

"Darlene is a god damn snake," I say, meeting his eyes. They're kind and blue, as they should be, as you'd expect from someone like him.

"Would you like to elaborate?"

I sigh, big, annoyed but not at doc, more at Darlene, that evil sack of-

"Noah, take a breath. You're shaking."

Oh fuck, I am, aren't I? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

"Sorry. She just, uh..she's not good."

"Was there ever any abuse? I have a note here from one of our first sessions, you mentioned that she'd have backhanded you for speaking up for yourself."

"She'd backhand me if I said nothing at all."

And it's true, she would. She loved the swipe of her hand across my face, the way it made me jerk backwards. She'd choke me with her poison any chance she got.

"When did that begin?"

"The night Jane died. We all got home, everything was quiet. It's weird, I actually could swear I remember this in black and white."

"That isn't abnormal. Please, continue, if you feel comfortable."

Ripley never pressures me to spill my secrets. Half of that, I think, is because he doesn't believe me. The other half, if I had to guess, is that compared to the other kids in here, I'm a walk through the park. Kid sees dead sister, is thrown into a depression after best friend dies. How's that for a headline?

Imagine walking through the park with snow like this. The idea of the crunch nearly gives me shivers. Man, I miss the snow.

"Like I said, it was quiet. I was on the couch, Dad was in the kitchen getting something but I can't remember what. I could have sworn I heard the sound of Jane's shoes, I turned around and of course, she was dead, so nothing was there. Darlene asked me what was wrong. I said, 'Nothin', mama. Just thought I heard Jane.' and her face did this weird, ugly thing, and she knocked me out of my seat."

"Did your father react?"

"I started crying and he ran in, checked my face and yelled at her. I don't even remember what he said. I just remember looking up and seeing Jane."

"A photo? Or perhaps, do you feel, she was visiting you?"

Visiting. Right.

"Not a picture. Like, whole Jane. Sitting across from me. When we were kids we did this thing to like, make our twin cradle work. We'd press our pinkies together, and like, it wasn't big. We just always did it. So I held up mine, and she did the same, but I felt it ice over inside. And then she was gone."

Doc shifts in his seat, opening a bottle of water. "What's your twin cradle?"

The space only we know, I could say. The place Jane lives, but it's nothing now, just like she is.

"It's nothing. Kid stuff."

He nods, smiling. "Your mother's behavior never improved?"

I pull up my shirt, showing him four cigarette burn scars on my ribs. Then to my shoulder, where a there's another scar, a line across it. The misshapen angle at the edge of my collarbone. Sit back. Count to seven.

"Noah, did your father try to get custody of you?"

"Nah. He said, 'kids need their mother.' But I didn't, not at all. Darlene might have done all of this shit, but the worst thing she's ever done is blame me."

"For the divorce?"

"Well, yeah. But Jane's death."

"Your mother blamed you for your sisters aneurysm?"

Shit.

"Doc, no offense, but if I told you how Jane really died, you'd keep me in here forever."

"I can't say you haven't piqued my curiosity," he laughs, handing me a bottle of water and my little plastic cup of pills. "I won't think differently of you if you tell me. How about....off the record?"

"You mean it won't go in the notes?" I say, swallowing the shapes.

"Exactly. But, again, only if you're comfortable."

"Jane didn't have an aneurysm. Something killed her, but not me, not any human. Something evil."

Ripley took a breath, nodding. "Stranger things have happened. And Noah, for what it's worth? I believe you."

** PRESENT DAY **

"I need a pack of cigarettes," Noah says, a few paces behind Matt, who repeatedly kept slowing down for him to catch up.

He pointed ahead to the corner shop, Matt nodded in agreement.

"Probably something to wash that wood dust out of your mouth too. Cigs, though? You need to smash that shit, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, tell me more."

Matt rolled his eyes, a coy grin on his face. "I just want to keep you around as long as I can."

"I could quit smoking and get hit by a car next Tuesday. I could get stabbed tonight. Fuck, Jane could kill me in five seconds from now."

"Whoa, dark mood, much? Besides, none of that's happening to you."

Noah shrugged, "I mean, you can't possibly know that. But I appreciate the sentiment."

"You're right. Just maybe don't smoke in your house? It's not...great smelling in there."

"Eh, chalk it up to the other list of compliments from fancy ass Matt Pivouz," Noah laughed, pulling the last cigarette from his pack. He shrouded his hand around his face, trying to block the wind as he flicked his lighter.

"That's my new title. Every time you speak to me, address me as first name, 'fancy ass,' last name, 'Matt Pivous.'"

"Why are we friends?"

Matt elbowed him, snorting as they approached the corner store. Noah sat on the bench against the brick wall, looking up at Matt as he relaxed against the post of a street light.

"You've never smoked?" Noah asked, warming his hands on his pant leg.

"Nah. Once you've conquered heroin, the rest seems like a tease, anyway. I don't want to be addicted to anything that could kill me."

"Well shit," Noah takes a final drag, grinding the cigarette against the sidewalk before stuffing it with the others in his pack. "You'll never be able to have anything good in life, then."

"Oh, is that so?"

Noah stood to his feet, tossing his cigarette pack into the trashcan. "Yeah. We get addicted to anything that makes us happy, makes us feel any kind of good. Makes us...normal. You don't want to risk dying? You'll never live."

"Spoken from the very wise and thoughtful Noah Marshall, who spends his days wearing a striped beanie hat and leaving beer cans on the floor."

"Hey, beer is good. And leave the beanie out of it."

Noah pushed open the glass door, walking in as Matt waited on the bench.

Remy glanced up from behind the counter, giving Noah a small wave.

"Out of Camels?"

"And dignity, but who's asking?"

"You're a weird guy, Noah. I'm surprised that your last pack lasted you four days," he said, sliding a new one over.

"I, uh.."

"Shopped somewhere else? A pity," Remy laughed, leaning over the counter. He grabbed a snickers bar and placed it atop the box, gesturing to Noah. "We all need a pick me up, sometimes."

Noah smiled, handing Remy the money, and turned out of the shop.

"Homeward bound!" Matt shouted, his long legs carrying him quickly across the crosswalk.

Noah shook his head, suppressing a laugh. he tore open his snickers, taking a massive bite.

Matt froze in his tracks, so abruptly that Noah nearly knocked into him.

"What's up?" Noah asked, as Matt turned around slowly to face him.

"Keep your head down. Do not look up. You hear me?" He said, making eye contact. "Let me handle this."

Noah nodded, his brow furrowed, and kept his head facing the concrete, following Matt's footsteps while he ate his candy.

His concern quickly faded away, a swarm of black bugs coating the ground. He rubbed his eyes, following Matt's request, keeping his head down.

The town seemed to wash away, darkness seeping in and overtaking everything around them. He was having a hard time keeping track of where Matt's shoes ended and where the bugs began, using the sleeve of his jacket to cover his nose, a heavy metallic scent surrounding them.

"Fuck you!" Matt yelled, and Noah's face instinctively shot up, looking around in horror at the scene Jane had painted for him.

A world of black, never ending darkness, and nooses swinging from the sky, his group of childhood friends dangling from them, blood beginning to boil up from the ground.

Matt swung punches through a thick mask of decaying membrane, the familiar low howling splintering in his ears. Trying to recite prayers in his head, he closed his eyes, quickly thinking of Vinny and the moment picking berries. A light, dim as it may be, appeared in his mind, guiding him further through the forest of sludge, his arms like hot shears as they cut through it.

The sound of wailing grew louder with each movement, piercing the air with a shrill burst of noise.

"Fuck you!" He screamed, his arm smacking into the same solidified figure he encountered at his mother's old house.

"Get away from me," he demanded, looking past the figure, its laugh taunting him.

He looked back at Noah, who broke his agreement to keep his head down, seeing him fall to his knees as he watched his friends hang from above.

Matt called out for his brother, but to no avail, flipping off the figure in front of him as he ran to Noah's side.

"It's not real," he said, breathing as if he'd been running for hours.

"It's my fault," Noah cried, his face coated in tears, shoulders heavy with each sob, "They're gone and it's my fault."

"No, they're not. Come on, look at me."

Matt grabbed the sides of Noah's face, staring into his eyes. "I know you're in there. Find me! Listen to my voice!"

Noah's eyes rolled back, a scattered web of black mold covering them, taking them back into his head. Matt grabbed Noah's shoulders, shaking him violently.

"No, no no no! You get your ass back here, Noah!"

Noah's body began to crumble beneath him, the darkness bubbling up, taking his remains with it.

Matt's knees hit the pavement, his body covered in soot and blood, vigorously wiping the remnants from his eyes. He collapsed entirely, his head pressed into the sidewalk.

"Noah, fuck. Come back to me."

His mind flashed visions of Noah's body eroding under his fingertips, the scent of ash and dirt clogging his sinuses. With everything he was, Matt cried, harder than he had for Vinny, harder than he had for himself.

"I'm ready," he whispered, shakily outstretching his arms to the sky, "Come

on, Vinny. Help a guy out."

His body flinched as he felt a hand on his shoulder, turning around to see Noah's face.

"You okay?"

Matt looked up, eyes darting around the evening sky and the world around them.

"Wh-What? What happened?" he muttered, his face stained in anguish.

"Keep your head down. Do not look up. You hear me?" He said, making eye contact. "Let me handle this."

I'm nodding, chewing this delicious Snickers. Let me tell you, I love Snickers.

"Fuck you!" Matt's screaming, and I'm looking up, looking around. Everyone's dead, hanging like ornaments, black, hot blood coming out of the ground. And bugs, so many fucking bugs.

But there's Katai, at the edge of it all, holding a hand out to stop me. So I stop, and they disappear, with everything else.

What the hell was that?

Matt's in a crouched, fallen position on the ground. I don't know what the hell he's doing. Put a hand on his shoulder, idiot.

"You okay?"

He's looking up at me like he's just seen into the eye of hell.

"Wh-what happened?"

"Um...what..what happened for you?"

And he's hugging me, like I've never been hugged before, like I'm somehow a light for him, and he can't stop filling his darkness.

So I'll hug him back, because he's my friend. I'll hug him the same way, because I'm twenty two years old, and Matt's the only thing I know exists right now.

Finally, he's pulling away, wiping his face. "Nothing. It's not important."

I don't know how I know this, but I know he won't tell me. I could beg him and he wouldn't tell me. Call it a hunch, but I think he saw me die back there.

"Matt, is everything okay?"

He nods, smiling at me.

"Everything is great. Let's get back to your place before it rains."

In front of Noah's door stood a middle aged woman, her short blonde hair blowing wildly in the wind.

"Who is that?" Matt asked, his voice low as he raised an eyebrow, turning to Noah.

"Darlene. My mother." Noah grit his teeth, jaw clenched, not meeting her gaze.

"You don't talk about her."

"She's nothing to me," he said, gathering his jacket closer to him. "She stopped caring about me the moment Jane died."

She crossed her arms, huffing as he and Matt approached. "Where the hell have you been?" She barked, flicking her arm outward, shrugging to the sky.

Noah stepped back, glaring at her. "Why are you here? Did Ula call you?"

"What?"

"Ula? ....My neighbor?"

"No, that woman did not call my phone. Why the hell would she call me, Noah?"

He shook his head, "I was just asking. What are you here for?"

"Noah, you need to get your shit together, there's a pile of cigarette butts spilling over this ashtray, I bet it smells like a god damn bar in your house-"

"Darlene, why the fuck are you here?"

"Oh, that's lovely. I raised my son to curse at his mother! Another fantastic result from my only living kid." She whipped her head around to face Matt, grimacing as she eyed him over.

"I'm Matt," he said, outstretching his arm to shake her hand. Noah glanced sidelong at him and he pulled his arm away before Darlene could react.

"And you are?"

"Noah's friend."

"Ha! Right. And you're here because?"

"Don't question his welcome. Why are you here, Darlene? I'm not asking again."

She turned to Noah, her eyes like brands on his skin. "I'm going out of town. You know the garage code. You need to come over on Wednesday and water my plants."

"What? I'm not doing that," Noah muttered, Matt noticing the way Darlene positioned herself to tower over him despite her slight frame. Noah was a solid foot taller, but the way she projected herself was the kind of intimidating that isn't always worth confronting, and Noah shrunk in her shadow.

Matt squared his shoulders, tensing his jaw as he watched Noah's body language, feeling protective over him. He knew that he'd do anything he had to, but in the same breath, he knew he couldn't shield Noah from her words.

You can deflect a bullet, he thought, but you can't make a sponge stop being a sponge.

"You will do that. Responsibility. Your father is sending a check to the house for you, come get it Wednesday, but do not step foot in my house unless you can do me that simple favor."

"Where is dad? Can you give me his number?"

"Noah, you don't even have a god damn cell phone, what do you need his number for? He sure as hell doesn't want to talk to you."

"I'm sensing a lot of animosity-" Matt started, Darlene swatting the air in his direction.

Noah took a breath, about to say something, but over Darlene's shoulder was Jane's face, standing behind her, the ground beginning to quake under their feet. Noah quickly found Matt's eyes, sharing a look of panic, Darlene seeming unphased as she continued to yell at him.

Jane's body seemed to root itself in the cement, branches snaking outward, splitting the ground beneath her. She howled, her voice like a curse, as if it could crack open the atmosphere and darken the sky.

Noah slammed his eyes shut, tapping his fingers on his pants, counting sevens.

"Noah, do I need to call that quack? What was his name? Ripley? Do you need to be in those four walls to straighten yourself out?"

He opened his eyes and Jane was gone, Matt's face crowded with confusion. And then he realized what she'd said, and quickly blurted, "You can't-"

"Oh, I can, and I will. You've got five boxes of shit at my house. Take them with you Wednesday. The garage code is Jane's birthday, as you should know."

"You mean their birthday?" Matt perked up, ignoring a stern look from Noah.

Darlene blinked at him, an irked, firey look on her face. "Excuse me?"

"Jane was Noah's twin. Which makes that his birthday too."

She smirked, scoffing. "Who are you to speak for my family?"

"Matt, don't-" Noah sighed, but Matt cut him off, speaking directly to Darlene, his eyes raging.

Matt's hands shook, lungs full of anger, composing all of the pain and rot and thoughts into one single outburst.

"Who are you to think you know the first thing about what it means to be family to anyone? You fucking abandoned your son because you decided to quit being a mother. And now what? Come to his doorstep, talk to him like he's shit? Treat him like he's not worthy of you?"

"He owes me!" She yelled, her face splotching red in anger, "He is the reason my baby girl is gone!"

"You weren't even a mother to one kid, what makes you think you ever could have handled two?"

Darlene's eyes widen, her face going sour as her hand wound back, smacking Noah across the face. He stumbled back, pressing the back of his hand to his cheek, the coolness from the air soothing the heat from the impact. She spit at Matt's feet, stomping to her parked car.

"I have no children," she hissed, slamming her door before peeling out of the parking spot.

Matt directed his attention to Noah, whose face had a large red welt forming over the skin.

"I'm so, so sorry. I had no idea-"

"...'s fine," he said, quickly unlocking his door and ducking inside, Matt following quickly behind.

"It isn't," Matt said, grabbing an ice tray from the freezer and cracking the cubes out, bundling them into a hand towel from the counter.

"Here," he pressed it gently to Noah's face, wincing at a bruise beginning to form near the top.

"Thanks," Noah mumbled, taking the ice from him.

"You okay? Fuck, Noah. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Seriously. I would have wound up with one of these any way you spin it."

Matt leaned forward, dropping his head in his hands.

"Is she always like that?" he asked, standing up and tossing his jacket on the chair. He started gathering trash from across the floor, Noah rolled his eyes, knowing he couldn't stop him.

"Let me help-"

"No, ice your face. I need to keep busy," he insisted, rummaging through cabinets to find cleaning supplies.

Of course, she's always like that. But how do you tell someone you're a pawn, a marionette at the end of a fraying string, the sum of words and ill wishes cultivated by your own mother?

When I was a kid, they always said sticks and stones could break our bones but words couldn't hurt us. I mean, they said that shit constantly, like they could speak it into existence. They were wrong.

Because I'm a concoction of insults and burnt edges, I'm a stick of dynamite lit from both ends, I'm a cracked panel, a shattered window, a busted tree branch. I'm everything they said wouldn't happen, I'm the whispers in the hall, the casket lining stained with embalming fluid, I'm the punchline of this god damn joke.

Don't tell me that hurts less than a broken bone.

How do you tell someone you're sorry? Like me, standing over Jane's empty grave, tossing a daisy on top of her pink casket, wondering if perhaps, maybe, in some other universe, she's in there. Knowing that her body is a conduit. Jane. My twin. She'll never know peace, she'll never know rest, she'll never get to meet the angels and touch the pearly gates like everyone always said she would. Instead she'll rot, just like me. Just like me.

Maybe we are still connected, after all. Bittersweet can't exist without the bitter, I guess.

"Yeah, she is," I say, because Matt needs an answer, I can see it crawling in his skin.

"You deserve better," he tells me, but he's wrong.

We paint karma so pretty. Wondering if we deserve this thing or that thing, must deserve the good more than the bad, must keep being good to get good.

Truth is? We deserve all of it. Whether it's heaven or hell, the sear or the healing, because we're human and we're all so fucked up.

But what does that mean for sanity? Because it'll dig its claws into you and shove you over the edge one way or another.

I'm fucked up, and so is Matt, and so was Jane, and so is Darlene. Maybe I haven't cried bloody mary this time, but yeah, I deserve it.

There's something so sinister about Karma. She'll rip through your skin if you let her.

"What about your dad?"

"I think he's in Milwaukee," I say, but I can't recall where he is. Some place starting with M.

"Was he an asshole?" He's tying a bag of trash, tossing it onto the porch.

"Nah. He just got sick of me."

"What?"

"When he picked me up from the facility. I told him the truth," and I did, and he hated me for it.

"That what? You see Jane?"

I'm nodding, and fuck, this welt hurts.

"He told me not to tell Darlene, to just...swallow it."

"That's why you got so good at hiding."

No, I go so good at hiding because everyone thinks I killed Katai.

"You didn't, though," he says, filling a glass of water.

...Did I say that out loud?

"Katai was like, your best friend as a kid, yeah?"

"Yeah."

He can tell I don't want to talk about them, glancing at me and giving me a small nod.

"Should we, uh..talk about Jane? What just happened out there?"

"I'd rather we just...didn't," I say, and that's true, because it won't help. It could never help.

"Good plan," he laughs, smiling at me from across the room.

I just close my eyes, letting the day take me.

"Go get some rest," he says, knocking my feet off of the table. "I'm here if something tries to fuck with you."

It isn't that they're gone with Matt around, because they're not. I feel them even more now, like thick needles puncturing my skin, building up in my brain, ready to explode. But I feel stronger, somehow, like maybe I can actually beat this. I know better, I do. But this is the most hope I've felt in awhile.

God, if you're real, if you can hear me, don't let it be for naught.

I'm in my bed, covers pulled up to my chin, curtains open for light. And my mind goes to Vinny, and the things he wrote in his journal.

** THREE YEARS AGO**

"Do you think you're better?" Dr. Ripley asks, crinkling open the wrapper around his butterscotch candy.

"I think...I might be."

"Okay, that's a start," he says, a smile on his face. "So tell me, what do you think you could still improve on?"

Noah stirs in his seat, burying his neck into his sweater as he sits back in the chair. He shrugs.

"I'll tell you what I think. I think you struggle primarily with trusting yourself."

"What does that even mean?"

"That means you're nervous, and rightfully so. Noah, in most cases with trauma victims-"

"I'm not a victim."

"Of course," Ripley continued, "You're a survivor."

Hardly, Noah thought.

"Anyway, it isn't foreign for people to experience self doubt. What we need to do is work on it and build from it, because, Noah, I do not think you need to remain in our care."

"But I'm not better yet?"

"I think you are. You know, I understand that you're nervous, scared, even. And that's okay. However, what's more frightening is not knowing yourself."

Noah looked to the side, tapping his arm in intervals of seven.

"We will keep working on it, okay? I'm here to help you."

Noah nodded, but to himself he scoffed.

I'm far beyond help.

Disclaimer : Characters I own are Matt Pivouz, Vinny Trovato, Lucia and Peter Trovato, Ula Santiago, Dr. Ripley, David, Anya, and Remy. I do not own the others. I’ve added a bit of a flare to them for the sake of this piece, but they do not belong to me.

Tag List : @teamtomsato @nuttatulipa @lovethemarshalltwins @europeanguy @breaumonts @fullbeaumonty @choicesatnight @spectrelier @brightpinkpeppercorn

#amen amen #noah marshall #it lives in the woods

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karelysse · 6 years

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Well... I can't take the trend that's been taken in the fandom of writing ooc porn fics not bc I'm qce, but bc it brings really bad memories from when I was in the fandom of the Anime of Hetalia. There was this character that represented spain and was a sweet guy overall and what the fandom did? Bc he was good with kids they decided to make him a pedophile. The character of France was made a rapist bc he was very flirty with everyone, and that happened with tons of my fave characters. (1/2)

So, if that alredy made me sick and get away from the fandom, imagine it now how it is for some of us. I can’t stand ppl mking Javier a douchebag when he’s a sweet nice guy, how painful is to see yuzuru being portrayed as a nymphomaniac bc he acts sexy in some of his programs. I can’t stand extreme personality twisting and seeing the direction this fandom is taking makes me wanna stop following fs altogether and abandon my works and orphan them. At least for me this is plain awful

hey there!you know, i’m not rly the kind to speak publicly about issues bc truly, i hate drama in general,, but i decided to answer this still bc i feel it affects me directly– not bc i feel attacked by this message or anything, but bc this is about writing fics, and i write fics, and mostly i read them, so somehow, i guess, my opinion sorta matters.

this issue is valid & i understand your feelings– seeing a trend that is not your taste becoming proeminent in a fandom u love is frustrating. you’re obviously not the only one who feels like this bc i’ve seen lots of cc/tweets/even tumblr asks about this lately. but mostly– i’ve seen comments on fics. and i guess thats the thing that bugs me the most.

the two problematic things seem to be 1. characterization 2. twisted sexuality/nsfw incorporation into it.

Characterization because readers feel the version of the “character” they read is way too far off reality to be acceptable. often they are deeply flawed– they are mean, violent, sadistic, manipulative– name it. That, and u add “twisted” porn scenes, where those flaws come in full display. if this is revolting to you, i think it’s perfectly fine and normal! but there comes the trick– there is no such thing as “too far off” bc hey. this is fiction. this is the F in RPF. nobody– even the ones considered the best writers in the fandom –has a damn clue of reality. u can try and be as faithful to it as u want, everybody can argue about it.

The thing is that the fics you consider acceptable bc they are “the closest to canon” are JUST as far off reality as those weird ones. you consider them acceptable bc they are the closest to YOUR vision of reality, bc they fit your standards, your point of view and your fantasies the best.

Feel like only reading the TRUTH about javi and yuzu? read news articles. There is no such thing as “true”, nor “wrong” characterization. (then u can argue– in this fic, there is no character development, or no dept or no that– that’s valid critic, as long as its done in the context and setting of the story. because that’s what it is. a story.)

Then comes porn– i’ve read so many comments on fics being like “please, please lock this” or something. well– i get you’re trying to preserve the virtue u guess your idols have– or maybe protect the kids? but you CAN’T, and i will repeat you CAN’T police the internet. something you don’t wanna read? don’t read it. if javi or yuzu stumbles on a fic where javi or yuzu rapes the other– its because they CLICKED on the fic, and somewhat, were looking for it. just like you, reader. What you CAN argue on and ask nicely is to tag stuff. that is very, very valid. i recognize not enough stuff is tagged appropriately out there, and i understand that you don’t have to read rape if that is something you don’t want to read. nobody deserves that. but remember– the author is a person, if they don’t tag something, it might be just inattention or that they thought it didnt matter. be kind.

telling people that they should stop writing fics, or writing altogether bc they write something that doesn’t fit your taste is not only immature and dumb, but also very mean. remember those very bad fics you read are often written by very young people. probably younger than all of you. just. be kind, please.

Let’s not fight, as fandom, over this. let’s not shame writers bc they write things you don’t approve of in general or bc for once, they tried something different that u didn’t like. let’s not try and install this culture of “black” and “white”, “good fics” and “bad fics” w no grey zone.

and mostly, let’s remember– a cute hanahaki disease fic, a circus au or a very long, detailed, very realistic fic of RPF is JUST as creepy as any other dark!ish fic. Damn, as a celebrity, i’d be even more creeped out by very realistic and faithful to the truth fic than by a damn vampire mary-sue self-insert au a twelve year old wrote.

And remember the most important part: don’t like, don’t read. I haven’t clicked on any of these /problematic fics b4 today, to see what all the drama was about. Hell, i was barely even aware of their existence. Please don’t generalize a whole fandom bc of 5-6 very productive writers.

#i'm sorry for stirring shit up-- this is the first and probably will be the last time i speak about it #i stand my ground very firm on this #let's NOT bully writers into writing what you want #because what you'll get is only-- no more writers at all #i've received comments about my /wrong characterization b4 and i can tell you #this shit makes you want to stop writing altogether #so i get very defensive when i see writers receiving many rude and mean comments shaming them and asking them to lock their stories #geez fellas. these writers are kids-- or teenagers.#but i agree-- the whole locking/not locking rpf ff is...... a real debate #i often wonder if i should just lock my fics too #but then i rmbr i got into rpf when i didnt have an ao3 account at all #and fell for it bc of all those great unlocked fics #so yeah #anyways #sorry bout all this #ask #asks

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mermaidsirennikita · 6 years

Text

July 2018 Book Roundup

This was a bit of a slump month for me in terms of reading. But wait! I read so many books! Yeah, but I savored very few of them. Some were mediocre, and several were bad. Very bad. Standouts included Riley Sager’s “spooky summer camp reinvented” thriller The Last Time I Lied and the very satisfying conclusion to Kiersten White’s super underrated Conqueror’s Saga, Bright We Burn. You win some months and lose some months--I hope the next one is better.

My Plain Jane by Cynthia Hand, Jodi Meadows, and Brodi Ashton. 2/5. A retelling of Jane Eyre, My Plain Jane sees Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre as friends at Lowood together, with Jane able to see ghosts and Charlotte desperate to get to the bottom of her secrets. As Jane takes a job at Thornfield Hall, she is pursued by Charlotte and intrepid paranormal investigator Alexander, in a tale full of ghosts, secret wives, and romance. I... really don’t want to say I hate this because it had its funny, cute moments that remind me of My Lady Jane, but... I kind of hated it? It’s partially my own fault, really, because the book was exactly what it described itself to be. But what worked when twisting history--My Lady Jane focused on Jane Grey--just doesn’t work when retelling a popular book. Charlotte was quirky girl’d to the point of being twee; she also seemed into Jane Austen, which bugged me because she wasn’t. And much of Jane’s side of things seemed like condescending fix it fic, in a way. Don’t you know that Jane only falls for Rochester because she’s a romantic young woman with no life experience (and an obsessed with Mr. Darcy because I guess)???? Maybe I just like the real Jane Eyre too much. Either way, I’m still going to read the next Jane book, but cannot recommend this one.

The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager. 5/5. Fifteen years ago, Emma Davis was the last person to see Vivian, Allison, and Natalie before they disappeared from Camp Nightingale--and the world--forever. She accused a boy she liked of doing something terrible; and she vanished into obscurity, reinventing herself as an up and coming artist. But she can’t seem to stop painting the girls, even as she covered them up afterwards. Upon the prompting of the camp’s owner--and dogged by guilt--Emma returns to teach at the reopened Camp Nightingale, given three new girls to mentor. Yet she still can’t seem to stop seeing the girls--especially the entrancing, manipulative Vivian. Riley Sager does something with his books that make me really happy: he keeps on taking a classic teen slasher trope and making a whole book about it. I loved the sexy-teens-in-a-cabin angle of Final Girls--and this book takes on the whole creepy camp thing, complete with a spooky lake and campfire legends. He also throws in--for good measure--toxic, intoxicating girl relationships! Because yes, Emma had a crush on a boy, but her world was really dominated by Vivian. At one point, I thought that this book would be a 4 out of 5 because as much as I love the tone and atmosphere and the overall story, I wasn’t a big fan of how Emma’s hallucinations worked and the ending seemed rather predictable. But that wasn’t the REAL ending. And the real ending? Just... yes. The present storyline in this book is good, but the past--mostly Vivian, let’s be real, that’s a girl after my own heart--is fantastic.

Bring Me Back by B.A. Paris. 1/5. While stopped at a gas station with her boyfriend FInn, Layla goes missing. Twelve years later--after enduring a period as the prime suspect in Layla’s murder, despite the fact that her body was never found--Finn is engaged to Layla’s sister Ellen. Out of nowhere, little signs begin appearing that lead Finn to wonder... could Layla still be out there? WHAT A DUMB BOOK. I didn’t realize that I’d read one of Paris’s books, the super underwhelming The Breakdown. If I had, I wouldn’t have tried it. God, this was fucking stupid. Literally every twist you would think of, every basic “surprise” is here. And then one that is so--but the real issue is Finn. I don’t take issue with flawed protagonists, but Finn was more than flawed. He was creepy (fine in certain cases) and stupid (never fine). And for that matter, everyone else was so one-dimensional that it was impossible to sweep aside his shortcomings. I skimmed this after a point, and I’m glad I didn’t waste any more time on it.

The List by Joanna Bolouri. 1/5. IT GOT WORSE!!! I won’t bother with a summary, because this is actually pretty fucking simple: a year (!!!!) after her ex cheated on her, thirty-year-old Phoebe still isn’t over it. In an effort to revitalize her sex life, she makes a list of sexual experiences she hasn’t tried and wants to, and sets off to check them off with her best guy friend, Oliver. Okay, admittedly, I should have known that this would be a diary book, which is a style I usually don’t like (with some notable exceptions). Phoebe has the most annoying voice I have ever read. It’s as if the author wants to mimic Bridget Jones, but doesn’t understand why people like Bridget and why she came off more as hapless but amusing, instead of just... a moron. Phoebe is a FUCKING MORON. She hates her job, she uses cutesy slang words (like, my least favorite cutesy slang words from the U.K.) and describes sex acts in the least appealing way possible. But it’s not as if the author wants the sex to feel real, because aside from a few mishaps, Phoebe overall has great sexual experiences, even when you imagine that if this is the first time she’s doing them, it’d probably be more awkward. Like... we’re supposed to buy that Phoebe LOOOOOVES anal after the first time she’s tried it, but she describes it as feeling like “she’s going to the bathroom, but good” basically. HOT STUFF. And she’s just a dipshit in general. She and all of her friends are. I knew this was definitely going to be 1/5 after Oliver made a joke about stereotypical “Native American” names (a joke that is somehow worse knowing that an author from the U.K. wrote it) but even before then, Phoebe is talking about her lack of sexual satisfaction with her friends all of whom are in their thirties and one of them... is like... humping a couch? I don’t know why authors who write “sexual” books think that this is normal behavior. I am in my 20s; I’ve been in weird situations; I know a lot of weird people. Never has some dry-humped a couch in front of me... as a joke.... or in general. Wow. Stupid.

Choose Your Own Disaster by Dana Schwartz. 3/5. Dana Schwartz’s memoir--detailing her struggles with eating disorders, mental illness in general, romantic travails, and finding herself as a millennial--is laid out in the style of a choose your own adventure novel. While it’s certainly well-written and takes advantage of its gimmick, I can’t say this was as enjoyable as My Lady’s Choosing. Obviously, they’re totally different genres, but... I don’t know. This wasn’t a fun read to me, even though I think it was important. Some parts hit too close to home, which isn’t Schwartz’s fault, while other parts seemed overwritten, which is. A mixed bag.

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell. 4/5. Shortly after marrying the wealthy and handsome Rupert, Elsie finds herself widowed and pregnant, sent away to the Bainbridge family’s country estate to wait for her baby to be born. She’s met with eerie villagers and angry servants, as well as Rupert’s awkward cousin, Sarah. All of that, however, she could deal with--what’s more unsettling are the violent events that begin occurring in the house, and strange painted “silent companions” that seem to pop up everywhere, their eyes appearing to follow Elsie around. Perhaps most disturbing of all is the diary Sarah finds, detailing the story of Rupert’s ancestress, Anne Bainbridge--and her mute daughter Hetta... This kicked off with a slow start; I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get through it. But about 50 pages in, things PICK UP. Especially when we get into Anne’s diary, which is where some of the really creepy stuff takes place. It’s a spooky, unsettling story that feels like it’s of another time. If you’re a fan of “The Others”--which I am--I’d highly recommend the novel.

Bright We Burn by Kiersten White. 4/5. The final book in The Conqueror’s Saga sees Radu finally forced to make a choice for his future, as Lada’s conflict with him and Mehmed--and all of her enemies, really--finally comes to a head. I can’t say much more than that, because... final book in the series, and all. I really can’t recommend this trilogy enough. Yes, a gender-flipped Vlad the Impaler story sounds weird. But Lada is a great character you so rarely see in YA--a truly horrible female lead. She’s awful. Not a monster, but not really redeemable either, especially after this installment. And I wouldn’t even say that Lada is the most complex character in the series--that goes to Radu, her brother who is a) gay b) a Muslim convert and c) in love with Mehmed, their childhood friend who is in love with Lada, who kind of loves Mehmed but kind of hates him because he’s about as horrible a she is. I loved this poisonous triangle of scheming and bad people--Radu is significantly less horrible than Lada and Mehmed, but has his moments--and the world and the supporting characters, and the only reason this book didn’t a full 5/5 is because I think there needed to be more. The conflict of the trio really petered out a bit for me, and it came down to Lada and Radu. And I love Lada and Radu, but Mehmed was the kind of antagonist that got their asses in gear, and the book needed that extra kick. Overall, however, this was a great conclusion--super satisfying, and quite bloody.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. 4/5. Celestial and Roy are upwardly mobile Atlanta residents--she a rising artist, he a young executive--and just over a year into their marriage when Roy is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. Sentenced to twelve years in prison, Roy writes to Celestial as their marriage gradually disintegrates. When he’s exonerated and freed five years into his sentence, he returns to her. But Celestial has built up a relationship with Andre, her childhood friend and the best man at her and Roy’s wedding. The question isn’t just one of who Celestial belongs with--and whether she belongs with anyone--but of whether or not she and Roy ever would have worked out in the first place? This is a DEEP literary book, y’all. Not light reading. And I can’t say it was super enjoyable? I mean, this is one of those harshly realistic, love isn’t enough tearjerkers. But it was very well-written, and it examined themes and questions that I don’t think you’d necessarily expect from such a relatively simple premise. Of course, much of the novel does revolve around being a black man (or woman) in 21st century America--so I can’t critique that aspect. The only thing I really can say as a criticism is that the older characters in the novel--Celestial and Roy’s parents, primarily--do essentially repeat themselves a good bit. And again, I can’t say that I like everything every character did or said--but every action came from a very real place. It’s a harsh one.

Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott. 3/5. Kit is an ambitious scientist, hoping to gain a spot on a PMDD-related study led by her idol. She’s the only woman in the running, and considered a shoo-in the the “woman spot”--until Diane shows up. Diane and Kit knew each other when they were younger; and Diane told Kit a secret that derailed both of their lives. With the weight of Diane’s secret on her mind, Kit begins to slowly unravel, questioning how she should handle a secret that has gone from being another person’s problem, to hers as well. I’m not one of those people scared off by Abbott’s squicky, literary style of telling domestic thriller stories. I’m used to her obsession with the female body and feminine mysteries in general. I’m not sure why this one didn’t click with me. The writing was still there, and on paper the story is something I should have liked--so I’m saying it’s me, not her. It may be that the books of Abbott’s I’ve really liked have dealt more with the truly domestic sphere or something more mundane and universal than scientific studies? I just wasn’t attached to this story or the characters.

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware. 3/5. Down on her luck tarot card reader Hal is shocked when she receives word that she is the possible recipient of an inheritance. Her grandmother has died, and Hal is summoned to her home to hear the will being read. The only issue is that to Hal’s knowledge, her grandmother was already dead--and with her mother gone, she has no way of knowing who this woman is. Desperate for money, she goes to the Westaway estate, only to find that the inheritance may not be worth the risk. This is a very standard mystery/thriller. Kind of predictable. I really don’t have much to say about it. The book wasn’t bad but it didn’t thrill me, so it might be another me/my slump thing.

Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren. 4/5. Macy hasn’t seen her childhood friend and first love Elliot for eleven years. When they run into each other in a coffee shop, he’s an aspiring novelist and she’s a resident on the brink of marriage. As the novel traces the story of Elliot and Macy’s past--and what he did to make her cut off contact with him the same night he confessed his love--Macy is confronted with a decision about her future, and owning up to who she is in the present. A slump-breaker! This is a really good romance, y’all. Elliot and Macy’s chemistry is palpable. You spend the whole novel worrying less about what drove them apart, and more about when they’re going to get together. That being said, the best part of the book was definitely the past. Their friendship felt genuine, which made the sexual tension buildup even better (speaking of: this is one of the few contemporary romances with legitimately good sex scenes). The stakes aren’t quite as high in the present--it seems painstakingly obvious from the beginning that Macy can fix her issues in a pretty simple way. And if she didn’t know that, I’d be a bit less annoyed, but she does. Not much happens in the present, really--that’s just the payoff for what started in the past. Still, this is a very sweet, sexy, and kind of heartwarming book that I would recommend to anyone who needs something that’s light without being TOO light.

Roomies by Christina Lauren. 3/5. Holland is obsessed with a guitarist on the subway, and has been for about six months. By a twist of fate, they finally meet, and through her connections she is able to get him a job opportunity. The only problem is that Calvin--an Irish immigrant who’s overstayed his student visa--is in the States illegally. So, out of the goodness of her heart and not at all because she wants to jump his bones, Holland offers to marry him so that he can get his green card. What could go wrong? Christina Lauren is, again, great at building up the sexual tension between her characters, and can actually write good sex scenes. This is a sweet, fluffy, silly book. I’d recommend it to romance fans. It’s just not as substantial as Love and Other Words and the plot could have been stronger; I basically skimmed over that stuff because it didn’t really grab me, and focused more on the romantic bits between Holland Calvin. A quick, nice read, but I’ve read better romance novels.

Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent. 2/5. Andrew and Lydia, a wealthy couple who’ve fallen on hard time, have buried the body of a young woman in their back yard. Though Lydia desperately tries to keep the secret from their son, Laurence, he discovers the truth before long. Meanwhile, their victim’s sister investigates Annie’s disappearance, struggling for answers. Ugh, this hasn’t been a great month for me + thrillers. This one sucked. In theory, there were good ideas, and moments of good voice, but the overall execution was very poor. The characters came off as caricatures, one of the worst things you can do in a thriller imo. And ooooh, there was so much emphasis on Laurence’s obesity, Annie’s lack of education--it seemed lurid and borderline exploitative at times. Hard pass.

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