#also I couldn't resist using the names of their twins from the books

[freddieslater]

Hey! How are you? I was just wondering if you could write a forwood au drabble where they’re both married and have twins just like in the books. (With some stelena bamon endgames but I don’t wanna be too demanding)

I am so much better after having received this request. You are truly after my heart, this is the au that I LIVE for. So, I only did the drabble, no moodboard but if you DO want a moodboard for this au, feel free to just ask and I will be more than happy to make one because, again, this au is EVERYTHING to me. And now, for some domestic Forwood with some mentions of Stelena and Bamon:

“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?” Tyler asks sceptically. He sets the plate down on the table and then rests his hands on the back of the chair in front of him. “Don’t you think it’ll be… weird?”

Caroline breathes out a laugh, saying, “No,” then stops, whips around, and stares at him with wide-eyed alarm and a plate still in her hand. “Why? Do you think it’ll be weird? Oh god, it’s weird, isn’t it? This is insane! What was I thinking?”

Like a switch flipped, she dove right into the deepest end of the pool and sunk right to the bottom. Tyler’s gotten used to it over the years, but truth be told, he hasn’t quite adjusted to just how heightened she’s been since having the twins. 

“No, Care, that’s not what I said,” Tyler quickly soothes, moving over to stand in front of her. He reaches out and gently strokes her forearms. “You’re not insane. I was just thinking about you. You know, what with everything that’s gone down with Stefan and… with Damon. Are you going to be okay in a room with both of them?”

She looks him dead in the eyes like a startled little chipmunk for a good second or two. Then, with a sigh, she deflates like someone’s popped open the little seal on the back of her neck and let out all of the air that was filling her to bursting point. 

To his surprise, she flings her arms around his neck and hugs him tightly. The forks in her hand jab a little uncomfortably into his right shoulderblade but he chooses to ignore it for the moment. He instead chuckles lightly into her hair as she takes a deep breath into his shoulder. 

“Hey, you okay?” he asks softly, stroking a hand up and down her back. He wonders if he should go and get the twins for her to focus her attention on; it calms her emotions right down to have them in her sights and be looking after them. 

“I just…” She pulls back to look at him with startlingly crystal-clear eyes, full of clarity and sincerity as she holds him at arms-length and smiles at him like he’s the only other person in the world. “God. I just love you so much. You know that, don’t you?” 

“Yeah, of course I do,” Tyler says with a twinge in his chest. He knows it, and he hears it often enough that it shouldn’t still make him feel like the romantic interest in a cheesy teen movie, but here he is anyway. “And I love you, Care.” 

Her smile stretches until her eyes crinkle like a joyful kitten, then she continues, “And I love that you care so much about me, and how I feel, if I’m okay. I really do. I promise you that I am going to be okay tonight. It’s all in the past now, and we are moving forward with our new life. We have the twins, we have our home. We have each other, and I could not be happier about that.” 

Tyler’s cheeks positively ache from trying to bite back the full extent of his smile. “Yeah?” 

“Yes, you dummy! This is everything I’ve always wanted.” She rolls her eyes. “I know it may have seemed like I wasn’t really one for the domestic, settling down… white picket fence life when we were at school, but… deep down, I wanted it. I hoped that I could have it, that I could actually do it and be good at it. Being a mother and… a partner.” 

There’s some emphasis on the last word, Tyler notices. He’s not stupid. But he’ll let her continue to think he is for another hour or so, just until they have the appropriate audience and dessert is about to be served with a particular piece of silver included. 

“You are amazing,” Tyler tells her fiercely, sliding his hands up the side of her neck. She leans into his touch, her bottom lip pushing out a little. “And, I totally believe you when you say that you’re all good about this dinner party idea. But be totally honest with me: how do you actually feel it?”

“Oh, I’m a nervous wreck,” Caroline says without missing a beat, confirming what he’s been observing for the last twenty-four hours. “Mainly just because I’m worried about a fight breaking out between either Stefan and Damon or you and them, but also because both Elena an Bonnie have confided some news in me that they’re planning on sharing tonight with each other and I’m not totally sure how they’re both going to react.”

Eyebrows raised, Tyler takes a step back, going back to setting the table as he prompts her with a simple, “Oh? Why? What’s their news?” 

She groans loudly, head thrown back, hands out at her sides. “Okay, so, technically I’m not supposed to say anything because I promised both of them that I wouldn’t, but you don’t count. I know for a fact that Elena tells Stefan everything, and the same for Bonnie with Damon, which, frankly, I think is even more insane than this dinner party because I wouldn’t trust him to keep a surprise party a secret, never mind anything of any importance.

“But anyway. Get this, would you believe, Elena and Stefan eloped.” 

Tyler’s eyebrows are practically off his forehead. “Wait, seriously? Wow.”

“I know! I mean, they’re married now! Which is totally crazy, right?” 

Biting hard on his cheek to keep a straight face, he nods with furrowed brows, and swallows hard before speaking. “Yeah, no, it’s crazy.”

He catches Caroline side-eyeing him, but he makes sure to give nothing away as he adjusts the last plate and she sets out the last of the cutlery. 

“And Bonnie’s news?” he asks, steering her back on track. 

It’s successful, too. Her eyes immediately widen and she’s talking a mile a minute, saying, “Oh god, that’s even crazier. I don’t think it’s even fully sunk in for me yet, I mean, I just can’t even picture it – I don’t want to, either, to be frank. Right, yeah. So… Bonnie’s pregnant.”

Tyler whistles through his teeth. “What? And it’s–”

“Definitely Damon’s, she says,” Caroline confirms, nodding.

“I can see why you’re nervous,” he says faintly, to her passionate agreement. 

He’s still processing that piece of information when the baby monitor crackles – not that they really need it when they both have hearing better than anything that requires a battery. 

Caroline’s head perks up like a dog’s ears. “Oh, is it five already? I need to feed them again.” She rubs her temples. “Do you think it’s worrying that Brianna is drinking more than Lucas is? Maybe it’s me. Maybe my milk is making him sick or something, do you think that’s possible?” 

“I think that they’re both perfectly fine,” Tyler says calmly, “but if you’re really worried, we can check in with the midwife again with any questions. I’m sure it’s just because Cas was a bit later than Bri. There’s always the formula stuff, see if it makes a difference for him.”

“True. I might try it,” she muses, biting her lip. 

There’s another groggy cry from upstairs. Seeing Caroline’s obvious need for a minute to go over her thoughts, he kisses her cheek and says, “I’ll get them.”

“Thank you, you’re the best, I love you!” she calls after him. 

“I know!”

[lovelyyandereaddictionpoint]

Unattainable | 7

Honey was pleased with himself as he gazed up at your sleeping face. He was proud he took the initiative to put himself in a position to witness such a cute moment. Ignoring the overwhelming presence of Haruhi all over you and the impending arrival of the mysterious Sergaki-san, this was perfect.

The goal was to make himself a known candidate to marry you; which from his research seemed to be a pretty good option. While the family name hadn't existed for very long it didn't seem like there was any resistance to steamrolling over others to advance. That worked great for him!

But as much as he liked to just let his plan fall into place others needed correcting. Haruhi was already in incredibly good standing, judging by the staff not bothering to question anything she asks for. Kyoya seemed to be showing his own interest in you, enough to try to challenge him in the first place. Not to mention Tamaki's blushy gaze in your and Haruhi's direction. He also noted the scornful looks the twins kept sending toward you. Now usually he'd sooner pluck their eyes out but he wanted to use this to his advantage. If he could help the twins occupy Haruhi it'd certainly help in creating some distance between you two.

Mitskuni sat patiently before getting up to walk in the direction of the bathroom passing by the Hitachiin twins. Slipping the written note into the twin's hand before skipping into the bathroom where he twirled gleefully with his scheming grin before reverting his face to the typical smile and walking back to you. It wasn't long before Haruhi would finish sipping her beverage and reluctantly lifted your head from her shoulder to go to the bathroom. As soon as she disappeared behind the sliding door, Honey called the flight attendant over.

"Hey Mister, can I have the cake I asked you to refrigerate?" While the attendant went off to fulfill the request the senior took this time to wake you up.

"(N/n), wake up and have some of this cake I saved!"

You groggily sat up, thoughtlessly obeying Honey as he scooched you closer to him and away from Haruhi's seat. Still fighting sleep you paid no mind to the Hitachiin twins collecting Haruhi's things to the seat between them. Honey couldn't help but snicker from behind his hand as the attendant returned with a cart that blocked the only free seat in the row.

Returning from the bathroom Haruhi could already see that her seat was being blocked and Honey was especially smiley. About to protest in light of all her things being there it was then she realized that they were missing. Whipping her head around only to find her belongings haphazardly tossed in the seat between the sleeping twins. If in confirmation amber eyes met hers in gleeful triumph as you sleepily accepted a spoonful of cake.

In haunting silence, Haruhi would sit between the twins...who were floored by her reaction once again. There was nothing. No emotion. No facade. It only made the twins hesitate for a moment before falling into their same routine. In time she was bantering with them as usual but something most certainly had happened. Nothing worried the twins more than Haruhi's blank stare as she held her book open. Something was stirring in their favorite person...and they didn't like that

[ckret2]

Your goldilocks cipher stuff gives me an unreal amount of dopamine (maybe i just like bill a lot idk) do you have any fun tidbits and details about the au that wouldn’t be too spoilery?

Thank you!! Here's a bunch of random trivia:

The (English) name of Bill's language's written script is Plaintext. Like, y'know, plaintext:

In cryptography, plaintext usually means unencrypted information pending input into cryptographic algorithms, usually encryption algorithms. This usually refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted.

Which is ironic, since Bill's the ONLY person to whom the text is unencrypted. But then, from his perspective, it's the only "unencrypted" text he ever actually sees—all the languages he uses in day-to-day life are foreign languages to him.

In the Bill Cipher AMA, somebody asks Bill what he thinks about all the fangirls he has, and Bill says they should all go to the Nevada desert and assemble a throne to wait for him. In fic, I've decided it'd be funny to give him a women-only cult in Nevada. The leader of the cult is named Mary and the underling most often referenced is Sue, because—and I say this with love and affection—if "fangirl who's put in a fic so she can meet her favorite tumblr sexyman" ISN'T a textbook Mary Sue, I don't know what is.

Bill really likes monster trucks. He's convinced himself that he'd be a TERRIFIC monster truck driver, because he can see the future, so obviously he'd know how to avoid any car crashes. He's probably wrong about this. It's a more physically taxing job than you'd think, and a human body is more easily taxed than he's used to.

Current favorite human food is nachos with sprinkles on top. Gotta be triangular nachos. If the chips are circular or rectangular it will legit depress him. Also plain old cheese is boring, give it some texture, it's gotta have peppers hot enough to kill a toddler.

Sometimes Bill talks to Waddles as if he's speaking to the Temporarily Genius Waddles and expects him to understand what Bill's saying.

If Bill's watching a show/movie and doesn't want to spoil the ending for himself he has to fight NOT to glance into the future to see what happens. Imagine if every time you read a comic book, all of the pages automatically separated and spread out across the table so you could see every page at once, and you had to keep resisting the urge to glance at the last page to see what happens. That's what trying not to glance forward is like for Bill.

Nobody's commented on this yet, so idk if anyone's caught it, but in chapter 2:

He carefully positioned himself directly in front of the trio, glancing down at the floor as if looking for the right mark to step on,

and in chapter 3:

Mabel considered his feet thoughtfully before spray painting an X where she estimated he’d been standing before.

“You got lucky—” he cast a dirty look at the X spray painted on the ground, “—but luck changes.”

In chapter 2 Bill saw the X on the floor in the future, and assumed he was going to leave it for himself so he'd know where he should stand for his big dramatic moment—which means he deliberately planted himself RIGHT on the mark where the twins were set up to tackle. (Even though he can see into the future, his time vision is pretty near-sighted.)

Bill NEARLY invaded the M Dimension mentioned in Journal 3—he was playing "muse" to a whole bunch of scientists and governmental types who were all collaborating, everybody liked him, nobody suspected anything, they were thrilled by the idea of opening up interdimensional travel to his totally-harmless-and-not-at-all-nightmarish realm so their muse could visit... the only reason he hasn't already conquered the M Dimension is because everything there, even the laws of physics, are based on the letter M, and for the life of him he couldn't find a way to adapt the portal blueprints to work there. The math's impossible.

Bill's the only member of the Henchmaniacs who's unable to leave the Nightmare Realm. (As in, physically can't leave. Legally, most of them are pretty trapped there for lack of another safe place to go; but like they could leave if they chose to.) Sometimes he sends his Henchmaniacs on errands for him to other dimensions; and sometimes they go on day trips outside the Nightmare Realm without him. When they leave he tends to sulk and insist he isn't sulking.

Nobody in the shack knows about Ford's embarrassing neck tattoo. (And it was REALLY hard keeping that secret on a boat.) Nobody, that is, except for Bill, who spent last summer stalking everyone in the shack and who can see through walls, seeing through a turtleneck is nothing. Someday he's gonna start casually humming All Star and strike terror into Ford's heart.

There's a handful of human languages Bill can't speak because the speakers cursed him to be unable to speak them. I don't know which languages yet, I'd probably need to do a lot of digging to find languages about which there's already "demons/monsters/etc can't speak/understand this language" folklore I can slap on him. But it's a joke I'm prepared to use if I find a language that fits.

Bill thinks it's weird that humans want their hands and hair to smell like food, but then don't even want to eat them. What's the point of strawberry-scented shampoo???

[andnowanowl]

Since "Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life Under Occupation" is suspiciously not available in the US in the form of an e-book, I purchased a physical copy and wanted to share it here for anyone else also unable to get access.

MUHANNED AL-AZZAH

Artist, 33

Born in Al-Azzah refugee camp, West Bank

Interviewed in Bethlehem and Ramallah, West Bank

The Al-Azzah refugee camp in Bethlehem is barely more than an alleyway bordered by dozens of small houses jammed closely together. As one walks through the tight corridors, it's hard to miss the haunting murals painted on the walls of the houses. These paintings are taken from the Handala cartoon series created by the late Palestinian artist Naji Al-Ali.¹ In one mural, a girl's hair is twisted into barbed wire. The painting on another house shows gaunt refugees packing their bags and preparing to flee. On another house farther down the street, fat politicians wag their fingers at an emaciated man in rags.

The artist behind these graffitied murals is Muhanned Al-Azzah. With a full beard on his lean face, Muhanned looks the part of an artist. He's soft spoken but funny, and laughter accompanies all of our interviews. Muhanned's family gave the Al-Azzah refugee camp its name when they led the flight from their village in what is now Israel to Bethlehem during the Arab-Israeli War, or Nakba, in 1948.² For Muhanned, as well as many other refugees, the dream of returning to lands lost in 1948 (and during the Six-Day War in 1967) persists, even if little remains today of those farms and villages. This dream of a right to return to property long ago claimed by Israel drives much of the politics of resistance within Palestine.³

Muhanned is a prolific painter, and his work can be found both on the sides of buildings and in galleries around the West Bank. On the day of our first interview, he is preparing a collection of abstract paintings for a show in London. Muhanned's paintings explore different subjects, but his recurring focus is the three years spent in an Israeli prison. At the end of our first interview, he shows us his rooftop studio, his paintings, and the bullet holes in the walls from the night of his arrest.

MY FAMILY HAS BEEN IN THE CAMP SINCE 1948

I was born here in the camp, in September 1981. My parents were born here too. In 1948, my grandparents on both sides left our land, our original village, Beit Jibrin, which is northwest of Hebron.⁴ Even though I've never visited Beit Jibrin, I feel I'm from there. I know all its details, since I've heard so much about it from my grandparents. I know that it's our village.

I know the story of how my grandparents fled the village in October of 1948. One day the soldiers came with guns, planes, and tanks, and everyone in town fled to nearby caves. But some people came back to the village in the night to sleep inside their houses or get things they needed. Then Israeli soldiers entered each house. The first adult male they found inside a house, they brought him to an open space and shot him in front of everyone.The men knew that if they were caught, they might be arrested or shot, so they fled right away. The women followed with whatever they could carry. They didn't have much money, and they couldn't carry much with them. The most important thing was to bring documents to prove that they owned their houses and keep them someplace safe. Most villagers fleeing Beit Jibrin then came here to Bethlehem, where they set up a camp and named it Al-Azzah, after my family.

I have a twin sister, two younger brothers, and one younger sister. Life in the camp has been the same since I was a child. On a typical day, we wake up and the adults go to the main street to eat and talk, to speak about things that are important. Really, it's like cocktail conversation—the news of the day, what's happening with different families, what's happening with the houses in camp. We have political discussions every day, but only in the evenings. In the morning, politics will destroy your brain.

This camp has a little over 1,500 people living in maybe 120 buildings, all packed close together. Everyone knows each other—people spend a lot of time outside because we have such small houses. On the one hand, it can be useful that the community is so close. If a family needs work done on their house, people from the neighborhood will just show up and help. If a family is hungry, a neighbor always has food for them. But you can't expect any privacy here. If you make something good to eat, people are going to know about it and show up for a meal. If you just want some time to yourself, forget about it. You could be sitting in your pajamas trying to rest or think, and someone will show up at your house and say, "Hey, you wanna go get coffee?" It was especially hard for my sisters growing up. If they came home in the evenings even just a little late, everyone in the camp would know they were out late and gossip about them. The girls have an even harder time here than the boys, I think.

THE SOLDIERS WENT CRAZY WHEN THEY FOUND WRITING ON THE WALLS

I grew up dreaming of Beit Jibrin as a paradise. My grandparents always told us about how great life was for them there. Their home and garden in Beit Jibrin were as big as the whole refugee camp where my family lives now. All of my family has hoped that one day we'd be able to return there and live again in our own home.

That's why we were against the Oslo Accords in the mid-nineties.⁶ The accords officially made the land that Beit Jibrin was on part of Israel. For us, we've always wanted a single state between Israel and Palestine so that we can return to Beit Jibrin. We didn't want to accept the Oslo Accords, and some parties in Palestine didn't either. The PFLP opposed the accords and the idea of two separate states that took our land in places like Beit Jibrin and just gave it up to Israel.⁷ The PFLP also supported the right of return, the rights of Palestinians to reclaim land lost in the warduring the Nakba.⁸ So as I grew up, although there wasn't really a single time or event that led me to it, I came to join the PFLP. There were other things I liked about them too—they weren't a religious party. Hamas, that's the big religious party. And Fatah, that's the big party within the Palestinian Liberation Organization, they were always looking for compromise and were willing to accept two states.⁹ But the PFLP seemed like a fit for me-they represented my interests as a refugee from 1948. I'm not going to say much more about their beliefs, though, because I don't want this story to sound like propaganda!

As I grew up, I got more and more into art. My father was an Arabic Literature teacher, and my parents sent me to classes and workshops in Palestinian art at a young age. I grew up seeing art as a way of resistance, through graffiti. During the First Intifada, in 1987, there was no media, there was no radio to cover all that was happening in Palestine.¹⁰ But there were the walls of the houses. They were the only place for media. For example, if there was to be a strike the next day and everyone had to close their shops, there was no simple way to get the message out. So in the night, some people with masks would go into the street with spray paint and write, "Tomorrow, August 9, will be a day of strike for all the shops and schools." So in the morning, everybody could see it.

And every day, when the people went outside, the first thing they did was look at the walls. Sometimes the message was, "Next week, we are gathering for a demonstration on Tuesday." Sometimes there was writing about a martyr, someone who was killed in Bethlehem." The soldiers, when they came in the camp, they'd go crazy when they found this writing fight over on the walls. They would arrest people, and every day there was a who should clean it up. Some people cleaned it, some people refused. And it was very dangerous when artists went out at night to write on the walls.

I was doing some of the same sort of thing even as a teenager. Art was my own individual way of resisting, but we can't do much just as individuals to resist-that just leads to chaos, so that's why I joined the PFLP. More than anything I wanted a chance to go back some day to live in Beit Jibrin, and so a lot of my art has been about being a refugee, about wanting to return home.

After high school, I went to Al-Quds University in Abu Dis to study painting.¹² I also had a chance to study traditional arts in Morocco-decoration, Andalusian art, mosaics, and writing.¹³ When I returned home, I continued to study Palestinian art and culture, and I stayed politically active as well.

I was part of the PFLP through 2004, when I was around twenty-two. I met with other members and organized protests and other campaigns on campus. The Israelis considered the PFLP terrorists and an illegal political party, and so I knew that I could be arrested one day, and maybe even killed. But at that time I was feeling that we were under occupation and somebody must do something to change this situation, and anything anybody could do for Palestine was for the good.

SOMETIMES PEOPLE JUST DISAPPEAR

Late on the night of April 15, 2004, I was home asleep. I slept in an apartment on the roof, where I also had an art studio. My whole family was there, and they stayed on the second floor of the building. We had a friend staying with us as well. My uncle's family lived on the ground floor. Suddenly I woke up hearing megaphones. I knew it was the Israeli military. They were ordering everyone out onto the street, demanding that everyone on the block come out of their homes.

I got out of bed quickly and my first thought was how I could escape. I went to the window and looked out. I saw my neighbors filing out of their homes, and Israeli soldiers were there with jeeps and vans—it looked like they were circling the entire camp. As I watched, the soldiers were moving toward our house, starting to circle it. Then they called out my name through the megaphone. They spoke directly to me in Arabic. "Muhanned Al-Azzah. You cannot escape. Put your hands up and leave the house."

I took my time, if I can speak freely, to hide whatever I didn't want them to take when they searched the house. I hadn't been part of planning any big operations or doing anything violent, but it was against Israeli law to even promote or be part of the PFLP. I guessed they were arresting me because someone had let them know I was organizing for the party.

All I could think was that I might die in a moment, and I asked God for just a few more moments to live. My adrenaline was so high, it wasn't a matter of being strong or not strong, just wanting to survive. But I took my time and put on warm clothes. I knew if I went outside, there would be no time to come back and get clothes. After a few minutes, they started shouting into the megaphone again. By this time, the rest of the people in my house were already outside. I started to see the red laser lights of their guns all over my room. They fired a couple of shots at the house. And they kept demanding that I come out, even as they were shooting at my window. I hid as best I could while I decided what to do next.

After some more time, they brought my mother from the street to my bedroom door. She told me to open the door, that it was safe to go outside. So finally I opened the door and went out with five laser sights hovering over my body. I was terrified.

My neighbors were all outside their houses sitting in the street in the middle of the night. There were maybe fifty people, my family and neighbors, watching and waiting for me.

The soldiers didn't tell me why they were arresting me. They told my family they needed to speak with me for five to ten minutes and then I'd come back. My mother was crying, but she couldn't move because there were a lot of soldiers surrounding her. She couldn't tell me goodbye. My family knew I would come back, but not when-in one hour? One day? One hundred years?

After the soldiers handcuffed me, they put me in one of their jeeps, and we drove for what seemed like a couple of hours. We ended up at Al-Muskubiya in Jerusalem.¹⁴

The room where they took me was small-maybe eight feet by eight feet, white, with air conditioning. There was a white light, a table, and computer—these were the only things in sight, other than a chair in the middle of the room. The chair was fixed to the ground. They cuffed my hands behind the chair and chained my legs and hands to it. I couldn't move a millimeter.

Then they questioned me for two days straight. They'd be asking me questions for twenty or more hours a day, with three or four officers asking the same sorts of questions. They weren't really about anything particular—just questions about my life. They didn't even accuse me of anything. I started to get very confused and disoriented. I fell asleep hundreds of times, but just for a second each time. When they saw that I was nodding off, they'd throw water on me to wake me up. They pushed me very hard. Twice a day, they brought me beans and released one of my hands. They said I had two minutes to eat. After two days of being awake, sitting upright, not moving, my legs and hands became numb.

They'd also tell me things to break me down. They told me that my house had been demolished, that my family had been killed. They brought pictures of my younger brothers and told me they'd been shot. I didn't really doubt them, and I assumed I'd be killed too. Sometimes people just disappear, and I thought I'd be one of those people. I started to feel lost, just completely out of focus.

Finally on the third day, they let me know I was being held because of my association with the PFLP and because they suspected the PFLP was planning an attack on Israel. They wanted me to talk about it. I didn't know anything about an attack, but I also didn't want to give them any names of other people in the PFLP that I knew, so I stayed quiet. If I gave them names of other PFLP members, they would arrest them too. Sometimes they'd interrogate me for just a few hours a day, sometimes for twenty hours or more. When I wasn't being interrogated, they sent me to a small, gray room—less than six feet by six feet. If I tried to lie down to sleep, my head and legs would be pressed against opposite walls. If I caused a problem in this room, like making too much noise, they'd cuff me and leave me bound up for five or six hours. They gave me just enough food to keep me alive. After a week, they gave me a few cigarettes but no lighter.

Sometimes in between long sessions, they'd put me in a cell with other Arab men. These men would tell me their stories, say they were from Hebron or whatever, and then start asking a lot of questions about me. It was pretty obvious that these men were informants, part of the interrogation, and that their job was to get me to talk when I was feeling less scared, more relaxed. They'd say things like, "I told the Israelis everything, and now I can sleep. If you tell them everything, they'll be easier with you.”

I never saw sunlight. I never knew what time it was—evening, morning? I would sleep for a few hours, and I didn't know whether I slept for one hour or for one hundred hours. I didn't know what day it was. I didn't know anything. I spent a lot of time alone, and my mind was going, but I had something inside that pushed me to stay strong.

JAIL IS A TIME TO MAKE AN EVALUATION OF YOUR LIFE

After about four months in Al-Muskubiya, I was taken to military court.¹⁵ There were around twenty soldiers there, all with guns. I felt alone and threatened, and I think this was part of the game. They wanted to scare me in any way they could. But I felt strong, because I was not just one person, I was one with the Palestinian cause. I was a civilian, I had the right to resist occupation, and I didn't care about what they would accuse me of. I didn't listen to what they said, really. They charged me with political activism, activity against the Israeli state, and being a member of an illegal political party—the PFLP. They had no evidence against me that I was part of any attacks on Israel, just that I had promoted the PFLP. They gave me three years.

I was taken to a prison near Be'er Sheva around August of 2004, not quite four months after my arrest. The amazing thing was that the route that the prison bus took to get to Be'er Sheva took me right through the site where my home village, Beit Jibrin, used to be. I had never seen it before, so I tried to see as much as I could as we passed through. When I saw the village, I was shaken. My grandparents had said so many good things about it, about the good old days. I had dreamt of it as a paradise. But the land was barren except for a few trailers that make up an Israeli settlement. There was an old mosque, and lots of ruins—old stones and parts of buildings that were thousands of years old.

My grandparents had been driven from their home by force, and here I was seeing it, again only by force. It was hard. I was alone. It reminded me that I wasn't with my family, and I always imagined I'd see the village some day with them. It was a bad, lonely feeling. It was almost like I had woken up from a coma—I couldn't make sense of everything that must have changed from that time before 1948, a time I knew only in my dreams.

Life at the prison at Be'er Sheva took some time to get used to. I spent most of my days inside my cell. The cells were about ten feet by fifteen feet, and there were seven people living in each one. There were bunk beds for each of us, but we couldn't come down from the beds all together at the same time because there wasn't enough space to stand. For example, when we wanted to clean the room, only two people could do the cleaning.

Everyone was from different places. Some people were very old, some people were young. Some had ten or twenty years in jail, and some had one year. If you wanted time alone, you had to pretend you were sleeping. From the first day, I began to get to know the other prisoners pretty well. Social relations in Palestine are very close—there are strong connections between Palestinian people. So you can find somebody in jail whose brother or friends you know and you can speak with him.

We had two opportunities to leave our room-once in the morning and once for an hour in the evening. We walked outside in the prison courtyard. In my section there were over a hundred people, but only forty people could fit in the courtyard. So forty people entered and walked in a circle in rows, four to a row. We had one hour, so we walked half an hour clockwise and half an hour counter-clockwise. One of the prisoners would clap when half an hour was up and then we'd walk in the opposite direction. As we walked, I thought, This is the circle of our life, of every day. And when we start at this point, after one hour we will be back at the same point.

The courtyard was mostly covered, so there was barely any sunlight even on bright days. Most of the prisoners started to feel sick, just from lack of sun. There were some small windows in the hallways outside the rooms, and if you wanted to get sun, you had to go there in the morning. But there was a pecking order. I was new to the prison, and there were older people who had been in jail for twenty years and they were sick, so it was more important for them to be in the sun than me. I didn't really see any sun for over a year.

Slowly, my mind started to bend and adapt to life inside cell walls. Jail is a time for each Palestinian to sit with himself, a time to make an evaluation of his life. And it's an important, powerful experience to have the time to learn and share stories with people in jail.

Sometimes we found somebody sitting by himself in the room with his mind on the outside world, and we knew we had to keep him from feeling alone. If any of us prisoners began to live with our mind outside the jail, we would start to feel down, depressed. So we would give each other a little time to think those thoughts, but if we saw someone looking pensive, we would go to him after maybe half an hour and start joking, discussing things, anything, just to keep him from getting lost within himself.

I was in isolation a few times—sometimes for a few days, sometimes for a week. This could be for something like having contraband, like cell phones. It was very bad in isolation. There was no bed, just a small room with a mat on the floor that you slept on. You had five minutes to go to the bathroom and do what you want, shower, clean—just five minutes. And then you came back to the small cell. Some people spend years in isolation.

There were often conflicts with the guards inside the jail. We would begin to shout or knock on the door and they would come and shoot us with pepper bullets.¹⁷ The bullets cut your skin and the pepper goes in.

The guards searched the room several times each day. When they did these searches, they would bring at least nine or ten soldiers to every room. Sometimes they came just to search. Sometimes they came to bother us. They might come at three in the morning, when we were sleeping. Within a second they'd open the door and nine soldiers would enter with their guns, shouting, "Get down! Put your hands up!"

Still, we were able to hide things sometimes. One thing that was important to us was a cell phone. We used the phone to get news, to talk to our families. At one point, it was my job to hide the phone every evening. We would take it out at six o'clock in the evening and use it until ten, twelve at night, and then hide it. I hid it in a lot of places—for example, we put it in the floor. We cut out a little bit of tile and put it underneath. But you had to be very fast and careful because when the guards came, they searched everything, even the floor sometimes. One time, they brought in a metal detector, and they were able to find our phone that way. They took it, and as punishment they took away visits for two months.

THEY WANTED MY FAMILY TO FEEL LIKE THEY WERE IN JAIL TOO

During the whole time I was under interrogation in Jerusalem, my family had no idea where I was or what was happening to me. Toward the end of my time in Jerusalem, someone who knew me from the camp spotted me as I was being escorted down the halls to or from interrogation. This guy told his mother about me when he got out, and then his mother told my mother where I was. Then my mother and father went to the International Red Cross to ask for permission to see me.¹⁸ Finally, two months after I was transferred to Be'er Sheva, they came to visit me.

When I first saw them, my mother had been crying. She was behind a pane of glass and we spoke into telephones. It was difficult for me and it was difficult for her, because we knew she was going to leave after forty-five minutes. During the visit I told them, "It's okay, I'm good. We have a big space, and TV, and the food is good. We have meat, we have chicken every day, we have juice, we can drink what we want." And all of that was a lie to make her feel better about the situation. It wasn't easy, because I knew if anybody was released from jail, they would tell her what was really going on. And I knew that she knew I was lying, but she didn't want to say it.

But she wanted to keep my spirits up as well. I kept asking about what was happening outside, and she told me everything was good—this friend was getting married, this one was about to graduate from college. There were a lot of bad things she didn't tell me about. I know she lied because she wanted to give me a nice picture of the outside. So we were lying to each other just to keep each other happy.

My parents came twice a month. It was hard for them to visit the jail. They'd get on the bus at four in the morning and wouldn't arrive until noon, and the visits were only forty-five minutes long. They wouldn't get home until at least seven or eight at night. Sometimes when they came, the prison guards told them, "He's not here, we took him to another jail," or "He's in court." It wasn't true. Once, another prisoner coming back from a visit told me, "Muhanned, your family is waiting outside." I changed my clothes for the visit and waited for my turn. But every time I asked the soldier about it, he said, "Not now, not now." Finally, visiting hours ended and the soldier said, "Your family didn't come." I told him my family was outside, and he went to check. When he came back he told me they had been there, but that they had to leave because visiting time was over.

You know, I didn't want my family to come. I didn't want them to spend all these hours just to come for forty-five minutes and sometimes not even see me. It was a punishment for my family. The Israeli authorities wanted to make my family feel like they were in jail too. So, one night, I used the mobile that we had hidden to tell them not to come anymore.

A couple of months after my parents first started visiting, my two younger brothers were arrested as well. The older of the two was sentenced to two years. He was nineteen. My youngest brother was given administrative detention for a few months-he was just sixteen at the time.¹⁹ I was the first, but my father and mother now say the Israelis have a map of the house since they've visited so many times.

When I was arrested, it was hard for my family. My mom didn't leave the house for a while. But after she came to visit me the first time, she began to meet people and she began to see there were people who would spend all their lives in jail. They had families, wives, and children that they'd never see. So this gave her some perspective. She thought, My son, at least he will get released. And she felt the same way about my brothers. I felt the same way, too. There were a lot of people who had twenty-year sentences. So I felt I was just in prison as a tourist.

After a year and a half, in the spring of 2006, I was moved again, this time to the prison in Naqab.²⁰ There I lived in a tent in the desert for eight months. There'd be maybe twenty of us in each tent, and huge walls around each section of tents. The walls were the same height as the apartheid wall.²¹ We were in the desert in June and July, the hottest time of year, under the sun all the time. It was like 104 degrees Fahrenheit, but we were just out in the sun. All the prisoners, they spent their time close to the wall trying to get shade. And there were so many bugs—mosquitoes, bed bugs. It was terrible. The only good thing was the other people, the other prisoners I met.

After the prison in the desert, I was transferred again to Shate Prison, near Nazareth, not long before my release.²² I spent a few months there. Then finally, in 2007, I was released.

I MADE MY ROOM LOOK LIKE THE ROOM IN JAIL

I knew the date I would be released, but not the place. They released me in Jenin.²³ It was very far from home, and I didn't have any money. I didn't have anything. In 2007, the situation in Jenin was not easy. I borrowed a phone from a taxi driver to call my family and tell them to come and take me back to Bethlehem.

When I got home, I found a hundred friends, family, and neighbors waiting for me at the camp. All of them wanted to carry me on their shoulders or to hug me. I had spent the last three years speaking and living with a maximum of seven people, and to be around so many people all of a sudden, so much commotion, was overwhelming. I was happy, but it was a little too much. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, and I couldn't focus.

The first day I slept in my own house, I woke up at six in the morning, alone. I had gone to sleep at four or five o'clock in the morning because I was celebrating with my family and friends, but I woke up at six because every day while I was in jail, we woke up at six to do the count.

For three or four months, I wanted to be alone. I didn't want to speak with anybody. I didn't want to meet anybody. I made my room look like the room in jail—I filled it with some boxes to make myself a smaller space, and I had coffee and everything I needed around me in that one room.

Everybody who goes to jail has a lot of problems when they get released. For me, I had trouble speaking with more than one person at the same time, and sometimes I needed a long time to focus on all the details of a conversation. Also, sometimes I had a problem with—I don't know how to say it—feeling secure. For example, if I heard a voice outside, I had to go and see who was talking. If somebody opened the door to my family's house, I had to go and see who it was. Sometimes I'd be sitting in some public space with friends and I'd notice a person sitting behind us, staring at us. My friends, who hadn't been to jail, wouldn't notice that.

But still, I tried to get back into my life. I wasn't as active anymore with friends or politics. But I started school at Abu Dis again in 2008. I was going back to my old art program, the one I'd been in when I was arrested in 2004. My family is educated, as are many people in the camp. Work is not easy to find, and we are not in a normal country. So you must study to have something to do. Having a B.A. here in Palestine is like the same level of qualifications as finishing high school somewhere else. I have four uncles—one has a Ph.D. from Rice University, one has a Ph.D. in education, one is an engineer, the other finished his master's. Two of my aunts are getting their master's. It's the only way to make a living. My twin sister finished her master's and is working for her Ph.D. So getting a degree was very important to me.

Still, it sometimes felt like the hardest thing in my life to go back to university. I had been out of university for almost five years, and when I came back, all my old friends were gone. People who had been studying with me, they were now my professors at the school. I couldn't spend time with other students to discuss anything because they were five or six years younger than me. They felt the things they were discussing were very important, but I didn't care if I had Ray-Ban sunglasses or how much my watch cost or whatever. So I found a distance between myself and others. To be honest, I skipped a lot of classes.

I wasn't like that before jail. Before jail I was happy and proud to go in the morning to lectures, to attend university. I was proud of the books I was reading. But after jail, I was ashamed. I didn't want anybody to see me, having me going to school. I felt too old and that this time was finished for me.

But I also met someone, a woman who was about six years younger than me named Aghsan. Before long, we got engaged. But for a girlfriend didn't change much—it was still hard to adjust to being out of prison. For the Palestinian, the occupation changes everything, controls everything your mind, your life. Aghsan is from Ramallah, and it should have taken me one hour to go and visit her coming from Bethlehem.²⁴ But at the checkpoint, Palestinians are stopped for hours, even if you are just going to meet your girlfriend. At the checkpoint you don't know how long you will stay.²⁵

I had to tell the soldiers at the checkpoint that I had been in jail, because if I had not been honest when they asked, they would have checked and it would have been a problem for me. They asked a lot of questions. And sometimes they didn't ask anything, they just told me to get out of my car and made me wait. It depended on the soldier. If the soldier had a problem with his girlfriend, if he was having a bad day, he would make it a bad day for me. So during our engagement I would just go from Bethlehem to Ramallah to see my fiancée for a couple of hours and then head the opposite way to come back, and this was my whole world. After a while, I started to think the story of Romeo and Juliet was easier than my story. I thought, Why am I in love with a girl in Ramallah? London and Ramallah seem like the same distance. Is this really worth it? Sometimes I think the occupation will even stop love.

I also have had trouble at work because of my time in prison. I got a job at an organization called Addameer, a prisoner support and human rights association, a little after I started school.²⁶ It's difficult for me when I feel I'm under someone else's control. I don't want to be under control. This is a problem I have at work. I don't like signing in every day, having my actions determined by someone else.

I BELIEVE ART IS RESISTANCE

When I came back to university at Abu Dis, I spoke with my art teacher. I told her that I wanted to make art about the jail. She supported me because she said there were few artists like me who had experienced jail, even if there were a lot of artists who made prison the focus of their work. Palestinians and international organizations are always speaking about political prisoners in Palestine. Some Palestinian artists make posters, drawings, paintings, and they often depict prisoners as very big and strong, as guys who can destroy the walls of the jail. But I wanted to do something different. I wanted to speak about prison, about life from the eyes of a prisoner. My art was about how the prisoners see the outside world. I painted the bars of the windows, because that's the view we knew. We never saw a view without the fence, without the windows. And when I went to visit my family, my mother, she was on the other side of the glass. So when I was looking at my mother, I saw my mother, but her face was never completely in view. I've painted glimpses of faces and people and houses and cars on small square canvasses to represent the way the outside world appears to prisoners, seeing the world through these little screens, through small glimpses.

I had an exhibition in London in 2011, and also one in Jerusalem, and a third one in Bethlehem. I am proud of that. But I know these paintings I made, somebody can take them for money and put them in his house and close them up. So the maximum number of people who will see these paintings is ten people, twenty people. But I believe that art is for all levels of society. I am from a refugee camp, and I am drawing for the poor people in Palestine, not for the bourgeoisie. I'm not doing a painting to keep it inside the house.

After I was released from jail, I started doing graffiti. Sometimes I and a couple of other artists used stencils, because we did a lot of painting in places where we are not allowed to paint, so we had to go fast. I did graffiti in the main street to let everybody see the drawing.²⁷

I believe art is resistance. The graffiti in Palestine, it's not like the graffiti in any other place in the world. Because when you write something on the wall, this means it has a connection with the First Intifada and the revolutionary time.

When I make my art, it feels that I am giving something to my homeland and sending my message to the rest of the world. I paint because I'm speaking for thousands of people nobody knows about the people in jail. Many of them have been living for thirty years or more in jail. Few people speak for or about them. There are 12,000 people incarcerated in military jails. Why people don't know about them, I don't know.

If you live in Palestine, you have big problems—much pain, much suffering. I am painting to change that, to help ease the pain. Many of us are not fighting with guns, but we find our own way to resist. We may lose our lives or freedom, but we are working for the lives of our next generation.

---

Footnotes

¹ Naji Al-Ali (1938-1987) was a political cartoonist who criticized Palestinian politicians and the state of Israel. A recurring character in his artwork was Handala, a faceless ten-year-old Palestinian boy whose story represented the Palestinian refugee experience.

² Members of the Al-Azzah family had been leaders in the region of their former village ever since revolting against Ottoman rule in the nineteenth century. After many of the residents in their community fled to Bethlehem in 1948, the refugee camp was named after them, in recognition of their prominence.

³ From the glossary -

two-state solution: A proposed peace plan that would create a separate Palestinian state and define clear boundaries between Israel and Palestine. Peace process plans since the First Intifada between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have targeted a two-state solution rather than a one-state solution.

⁴ Beit Jibrin was an Arab village located thirteen miles northwest of Hebron and twenty-five miles southwest of Jerusalem. Before 1948, the population was a little under 3,000. The village was depopulated during Israeli raids in the 1948 war, and there is currently an Israeli settlement on its former location called Beit Guvrin.

⁵ From the glossary -

Arab-Israeli War: A conflict between newly formed Israel and neighboring Arab nations that has shaped Israeli-Palestinian relations since 1948. Tensions between Jewish and Arabic residents of the British Mandate in Palestine (1923-1948) were high leading up to the 1947 United Nations announcement of partition of the region into a Jewish nation (Israel) and a state for the region's non-Jewish Arab population (Palestine). The Arab League, an organization of neighboring Arab countries, opposed the partition plan, and declared war on Israel in May of 1948, immediately after Israel officially declared statehood. The war between the Arab States and Israel lasted until armistice agreements in the spring of 1949. During the war, more than 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes, and Israel annexed 60 percent of the land that had been demarcated as Palestinian territory under the 1947 U.N. partition plan. Palestinians refer to the war and its aftermath as the Nakba, or "catastrophe," and much of Palestinian politics today is driven by the claimed right of families to return to lands they were expelled from in 1948.

⁶ From the glossary -

Oslo Accords: A series of negotiated agreements between the leadership of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization starting in 1993, during the height of the First Intifada. The goal of the accords was to institute a peace plan and create an interim Palestinian government in anticipation of eventual Palestinian statehood. The Oslo Accords led to the creation of the Palestinian National Authority (subsequently called the Palestinian Authority), a temporary governing body formed from the administration of the PLO.

⁷ The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was formed in 1967.

⁸ The "right of return" refers to a political position that Palestinian refugees and their descendants should be permitted to reclaim land and property that they were driven from in the wars in 1948 and 1967.

⁹ From the glossary -

Fatah: A left-leaning political party that makes up the majority of the Palestinian Liberation Organization coalition. Fatah was founded in 1959 largely by Palestinian refugees who had been displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. After its founding, Fatah had several militant wings and conducted a number of military actions against Israel, and Israel targeted military and non-military elements of Fatah.

Hamas: A political party founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is a Sunni Islamist political party, and its stated aims are to liberate Palestine from Israel and establish an Islamic state in the region that now encompasses Israel and the occupied territories. Hamas gained greater influence in the early 2000s, surging to power on dissatisfaction with the Palestinian Authority, which many Palestinians viewed as corrupt and willing to cede too much to Israel in peace negotiations. After winning parliamentary elections in the Gaza Strip in 2006, Hamas solidified its power in Gaza after violent skirmishes with opposition party Fatah. By 2007, Hamas had effectively taken control of Gaza, driving the Palestinian Authority from power there. Because Israel views Hamas as a terrorist organization, it imposed a crippling economic blockade on the Gaza Strip following Hamas takeover. In the spring of 2014, Hamas and Fatah announced a political reconciliation, though to date Hamas remains the sole power in Gaza.

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): The Palestine Liberation Organization is a coalition of political organizations that was formed in 1964 with the aim of creating an independent Palestinian state. The PLO was first formed in the summer of 1964 during a meeting of the Arab League, and was composed of numerous political and military factions, including Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Yasser Arafat led the PLO from 1969 until his death in 2004. The coalition was considered a terrorist organization by Israel and the U.S. until 1991. After negotiations known as the Oslo Accords began in 1993, the PLO became the official governing and diplomatic body of the Palestinian people. In 1994, the Palestinian Authority was formed out of the organizational structure of the PLO and chartered as an interim government of Palestine for the duration of peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine.

¹⁰ The First Intifada was an uprising throughout the West Bank and Gaza against Israeli military occupation. It began in December 1987 and lasted until 1993. Intifada in Arabic means "to shake off."

¹¹ Palestinians use the term "martyr" generally for anyone killed by Israelis, not necessarily someone who died while fighting. Although originally a religious term, it is now used by religious and secular Palestinians alike.

¹² Al-Quds is a university system with three campuses in the West Bank, including one in the city of Abu Dis, which together serve over 13,000 undergraduates. Abu Dis is a city of around 12,000 people just east of Jerusalem. Al-Quds is the Arabic name of the city of Jerusalem.

¹³ Muhanned is referring to the art and culture from Spain during the 800 years when it was under Muslim influence. In 710, Islamic armies succeeded in conquering large areas of Spain within a short span of years. The conquerors gave the country the name Al-Andalus.

¹⁴ Al-Muskubiya ("the Russian Compound") is a large compound in Jerusalem that was built in the nineteenth century to house an influx of Russian Orthodox pilgrims into the city during the time of Ottoman rule. It now houses a major interrogation center and lockup as well as courthouses and other Israeli government buildings.

¹⁵ Up to this point, Muhanned was being held in administrative detention, a system that allows Israel to indefinitely detain Palestinians without specific charges.

¹⁶ Eshel Prison, near the Israeli city of Be'er Sheva, is a maximum-security facility that was opened in 1970. Be'er Sheva is a city of over 200,000 people located sixty miles southwest of Jerusalem.

¹⁷ Pepper-spray projectiles are weapons sometimes used to incapacitate and control crowds. Each projectile ball fired from the weapon contains chemicals such as capsicum, which is also used in pepper spray. Though they are intended to be non-lethal, deaths have been reported from the use of pepper-spray projectiles.

¹⁸ The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is an organization that monitors prisoner rights around the world, among other functions.

¹⁹ From the glossary -

administrative detention: A legal procedure under which detainees are held without charges or trial. Some forms of administrative detention are legal under international law during times of war and while peace agreements are negotiated between opposing factions. Many of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are held by the United States in administrative detention indefinitely, and the procedure has also been employed in Northern Ireland against the Irish Republican Army and in South Africa during the apartheid era. Administrative detention was employed by the British against Jewish insurgents during the British Mandate of Palestine, and the Israeli military adopted the practice at the formation of Israel. In 2014, Israel has held as many as 300 Palestinians in administrative detention. Though each term of detention is limited to a set number of days (usually a single day to as many as six months), detention can be renewed in court, meaning detainees can be held indefinitely without trial or charges. Though article 78 of the Fourth Geneva Convention grants occupying powers the right to detain persons in occupied territories for security reasons, it stipulates that this procedure should only be used for "imperative security reasons" and not as punishment. During the Second Intifada, Israel arrested tens of thousands of males between the ages of fourteen and forty-five without charges.

²⁰ The Ktzi'ot Prison is a large, open-air prison camp in the vast Negev desert (Naqab desert in Arabic), located forty-five miles southwest of Be'er Sheva. Ktzi'ot was opened in 1988 and closed in 1995 after the end of the First Intifada, and then reopened in 2002 during the Second Intifada. According to Human Rights Watch, one out of every fifty West Bank and Gazan males over the age of sixteen was held at Ktzi'ot in 1990, during the middle of the First Intifada.

²¹ This is a reference to the barrier wall separating Israel from the occupied Palestinian territories, which in many places is twenty to twenty-six feet high and made of triple-reinforced concrete.

²² Shate Prison (shate means "hot pepper" in Arabic) was opened in 1952 and houses 800 prisoners.

²³ Jenin is a city of almost 50,000 people on the northern border of the West Bank. It's located over sixty miles north of Bethlehem.

²⁴ Ramallah is the de facto administrative capital of Palestine. It is about thirteen miles north of Bethlehem.

²⁵ From the glossary -

checkpoints: Barriers on transportation routes maintained by the Israeli Defense Forces on transportation routes within the West Bank. The stated purpose of the checkpoints in the West Bank is to protect Israeli settlers, search for contraband such as weapons, and prevent Palestinians from entering restricted areas without permits. The number of fixed checkpoints varies from year to year, but there may be as many as one hundred throughout the West Bank. In addition, there are temporary roadblocks and surprise checkpoints throughout the West Bank that may number in the hundreds every month. For Palestinians, these fixed and temporary checkpoints—where they may be detained, delayed, or questioned for unpredictable periods of time—make daily planning difficult every month.

²⁶ Ramallah is the de facto administrative capital of Palestine. It is about thirteen miles north of Bethlehem.

²⁷ Most of Muhanned's murals are done with the permission, and even at the request, of the property owners.

[b0rista]

— 𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐈𝐄 𝐒𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐑.

WARNINGS: light angst & swearing.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: he's one of my ultimate favorite snk characters, and i needed to cleanse my page of the heavy ass warrior content djjfjf.

"you're either a blessing, or you're a lesson. either or, you and i met for a reason."

with all of the gore and the misfortune that comes with your livelihood, it's connie that gets you through it.

as expected, you first fell in love with him for his humor. not for the humor itself, but for how it shed the smallest flicker of joy upon a heaping tower of despair— as soldiers, you needed that. fortunately, he was the one that brought it to the table. even during your days as cadets, connie lived to make you laugh. hearing a chuckle flutter from your core served as a form of therapy for him, and with time, he grew addicted.

with that being said, he does the stupidest shit in order to get your attention. even when you're together, he'll do what needs to be done. for example, one time, he tried to impress you by doing a trick while saddled up on his horse. in an attempt to twirl like a jackass ballerina, the horse decided that it deserved better, and kicked him clean off its back. at the sight of his 5'2 ass being hoisted eight feet into the air, you nearly choked.

prepare yourself, he's a cuddler. after a particularly hard day's worth of work, connie finds solace in bedding up with you, knowing that you're safe, and with him. he asks that you don't tell anybody, but he actually really enjoys cuddling as the little spoon. to have his head pressed against your chest, his ear to your heartbeat, brings him comfort. of course, he'll never detest to being your big spoon, either. he absolutely loves the feeling of you buried within his touch.

^ if you ever want to go an evening without cuddling, he'll be immediately offended. never, ever, ever will the two of you fall asleep back to back. he simply won't have it, it makes him feel as if something's wrong. and if that is the case, nobody's falling asleep until you've talked about it and successfully sorted it out.

at the beginning of your guys' relationship, everyone worried for you. did he coerce you, y/n? are you being forced? has he threatened you, has he threatened your family? nobody could grasp the fact that connie motherfuckin' springer had managed to pull you.

if there's any sort of sour talk regarding you, no matter how little it is, this man will leap to your defense. one time, jean called your bedhead ugly, and connie propelled a moldy roll of bread into his forehead. in the end, a massive food fight erupted, and you were just standing there with your bedhead like 🧍‍♀️

HOWEVER, there was an instance that actually led to a genuine, real fight between you two as a couple. you'd managed to scuff up your leg during the battle with kenny the ripper and his associates, and when it came down to who was and who wasn't going to tag along for the eren & historia rescue mission, connie belittled you to the team behind your back. not because he actually felt that way, but because he'd do anything to maintain your safety— even if it meant hurting your feelings. telling captain levi that your abilities were inadequate for that particular mission hurt him, but he did what he felt was necessary.

in the end, though, levi saw through the charade. to connie's dismay, you came with to save eren and historia. and during the entire journey, you didn't even utter a word to him. of course, though, during the battle, you put your frustrations aside. once you saw your lover's head nearly get kicked in during combat, you understood his intentions, and you forgave him. as expected, he replied to your forgiveness with humor,, his go-to coping mechanism.

"considering how sexy i looked on the battlefield, i knew you wouldn't be able to resist."

whenever his hair starts to grow out, you're the one that gets to cut it back down! he's able to do it himself, but he really likes it when you do it. you're typically propped up in his lap, sitting face to face as you file down his edges. he always loops his arms around your waist, intently staring you in the face— seeing you so concentrated on his hair, he can't help it.

you wouldn't expect this from connie whatsoever, but he likes it when you read to him. pick a literature of your choice and let him kick back and rest his head onto your lap, pleasE. he'll close his eyes, and for the first time in forever, stay still. the only time he and books ever coexist is when you're reading one to him. he'll also make fun of you whenever you stumble over a sentence,, so get ready.

the day you realize that this motherfucker is nearing six feet tall, you're ready for the holy spirit to whisk you away. literally, you measure his height on the weekly once you realize he just keeps gaining inches. that, and when he starts growing more into his face? lawd, take you now.

"connie, you're getting seXY-"

"what the hell does thaT mE A N-"

many, many proposals. none are meant to be taken seriously, which the both of you know. still, there are far too many proposals between the two of you. one time, you killed a fly midair, and he thought you were the baddest bitch on the block.

"marry me."

another time, he swooped you into the air with his maneuvering gear, and as you held onto him for dear life, you looked him dead in the face: "marry me, you baldheaded bastard."

it can be a reel, how many times the two of you say that bullshit. somehow, it's cute.

he doesn't really take basic boundaries into consideration. like, one time, you caught him using your toothbrush because he couldn't find his. it wasn't fun, you had to give him a serious talking to.

he is, without a doubt, constantly prepared to lay down his life for you on the battlefield. during his time as a soldier, he's grown significantly strong— and once he fell in love with you, he's felt even stronger. not only do you give him drive, but you lend him strength. with that being said, you're somebody he'd die for without even an ounce of hesitation. and knowing him, he's probably made that more than obvious.

when connie's village was destroyed and it was discovered that his entire family was turned into titans, you were one of the only ones to actually comfort him. you were absolutely enraged at how nonchalantly your lover's loss was set aside, and although he'd tried his hardest to conquer the grief alone, it was you who sat at his bedside at night, cradling him in your arms as he wept. never in your life had you seen him so distraught. after that period of time, your relationship with him only deepened in its seriousness. 

as expected, you and sasha spend quite a bit of time together! after all, that's your boyfriend's best friend. given her easygoing nature, it didn't take long for sasha to absolutely adore you. naturally, she wonders how the hell you manage to operate with a boyfriend like that, but she tries not to ask questions.

speaking of the wonder twins, they love getting you in trouble. whenever the two of them think up an astonishingly moronic shenanigan, there's a solid 50/50 chance that you'll be looped into it, too. one time, they purposefully dulled jean's razor, and when he went to shave, it only ended in him splitting his face open due to placing too much pressure. as a joke, those two jackasses carved your initials into the handle. when jean decided that he'd murder you, connie tried playing the hero, lEapiNg to your defense. it was stupid, and it didn't work. you still laugh about it, though.

there have been several jokes regarding starting a family and growing old together— secretly, though, connie doesn't want them to just be jokes.

he stole a stray cat for you. yup, yes he did. the two of you were walking about the city, and you saw a gray-haired sleeping beside a trash bin behind a local vendor. you compared its fur to the color of his hair, calling it cute. out of impulse, connie went back to that exact same vendor later on that day, trapped the cat in a box, and brought it to your doorstep.

his forearms and fingertips were covered in claw marks, but to see your face light up the way that it did, any amount of pain was immediately worth it.

after the nickname that shadis had given connie on the first day of cadet training, you named the kitty q-ball. 🥺

during the season four era, the two of you share a house. at first, captain levi argued against it— "put a pair of horny teenagers in a home together, what do you think is gonna happen?"

y'all said fuck it, and lived together anyways. it's you, him, and your lovely child, q-ball. occasionally jean, too. some nights, he doesn't want to be alone.

eskimo kisses. during the prepping of every single mission, you'll get eskimo kisses. it's a small, loving gesture the two of you do before heading into the battlefield. as a sign of your love, you'll press your foreheads together and rub noses, weapons holstered and ready for combat. it's a serious tradition, and it'll never be ignored.

and after a mission, connie has this habit of pinching your cheeks immediately after rushing towards you. it isn't to be cute, either. it's so that he can scan you, and check you for any harm. basically, it's him squeezing the life out of your face while bombarding you with questions.

expect supremely cheesy pet names! bae, biscuit, buttercup, baby thing, sexy bitch, and so on. if it were anyone else, he would 100% make fun of them. but it's him, therefore adorable.

[mauserfrau]

Trivia Tuesday: Sepulchre

Click To Read ~ NSFW ~ Read The Tags

Events leading up to and immediately after the birth of the Calypso Twins: a love story and a story about Leda and Typhon, though I wouldn't call it a love story about Leda and Typhon. Includes Leda backstory, Typhon backstory, ersatz Siren lore, a somewhat unsurprising OC and detailed explanation of "When we were born, our father had to cut him off of me."

Since I know someone who's reading it right now, behold some trivia. And spoilers.

CH1

I'm not 100% sure that's the first time Niven used the sentence that became the epigraph, but it was definitely the most famous. I see it as an epigraph for the whole series, which is why none of the other installments have them.

I linked the music at the start since the story, despite the genre shift, has such a consistent, melancholy mood I thought the playlist would enhance the experience even on random.

Leda's character design is based off of Ren from Pirates of Dark Water. Her eye-color is sampled from Troy's model.

Jean-Michel Sapphir was named after Edward Sapir and the fact I forgot good old Eddy and his linguistic relativism only had one P in a somewhat unsubtle nod to the fact the entire story was influenced by some very very relative linguistics above and beyond the conceits of "Tlon, Uqbar Orbis Tertius" that factor into the narrative.

Cygnus was originally a throwaway line in Satellite, but I figured later if I was going to be continuing the story, I might as well do something with it.

I actually got to like writing Typhon turning this story out and I hate it. More on this later.

The bit with Leda coming around the corner and seeing the poppies is one of my favorite things I've ever written. I have been paid for words not half that good.

A lot of the interpretive terminology Leda uses is from Camille Paglia. Sorry not sorry.

Holophagia is the first fake book referenced in Grimeverse. It comes up again.

I could rant for pages about why I made the decision to attenuate the seasons on Pandora, but LSS, you've seen my pacing. You know I like my everythings drawn out XD.

Literally the only reason there's anything Christian in Grimeverse is so I could talk about Gnosticism.

“ Eppur si muove! ” / “Yes, the sea moves! You got it, Baby!” = I should be hined for that.

Yes, Tyreen having the same musical taste as Typhon is on purpose. I imagine synth jazz is like an 80s Sade album crossed with Drum 'n' Bass.

The prayer in the temple is not just to take up space :X.

~*~

CH2

I had to do a sad Vault Monster. I just had to.

Leda & Typhon had five robots altogether starting out in this universe. I don't know what happened to the fifth one, only that it existed.

Yes, the splash image is Leda looking down at Ever-Flowing's remains.

Why do I keep calling her Ever-Flowing instead of The Leech? The same reason I say "eat" instead of "leech" for Tyreen. I'm getting a completely different reaction from the audience. AHAHAHA LINGUISTIC RELATIVISM AGAIN. Ahem.

Oh, and she looks like Tyreen, if it's not super obvious.

I specifically put all of the banter I could between her and Leda being as this was their only time to talk. Some of it I wrote in after the chapter was done too.

Because I really wasn't planning to have Ever-Flowing be the twin's sire. However, @wataredis talked me into it with so much joy, I just couldn't resist. She's also responsible for Ever-Flowing being the Aspect of Adaptation and a lot of lore in that regard that's come to permeate Grimeverse. She really made the story so much more beautiful with all the fact I can now use the tag 'ersatz Siren lore'. A round of applause, please!

But, yeah. It wasn't the genesis of the story, but a big part of engineering Sepulchre was making sure nothing the audience was told about Leda was true after all (and she's as much of an unreliable narrator as Typhon!): she's not an Atlas researcher, her team wasn't murdered by Bandits, she did not have two children with Typhon DeLeon and her name wasn't Leda. You can actually back hack what it was if you read around the series though.

~*~

CH3

Leda's routine with the blood is based off of a scene in The Book of the Beast by Tanith Lee.

A lot of this chapter was reverse engineered from things I wrote first that happened later: the crops at the homestead, how the twins were born, Leda calling them fish. The middle one was the weirdest to render from Leda's perspective since I originally described the twin's birth purely for shock value. Laying it out that it made contemporary sense... well, there's a reason that scene gets all wiggly. And they have plums because I was hungry for plums one day when I was writing.

The medical specifics are brought to you by @raidbossmadi's enthusiasm. I didn't actually do that much research. Mostly I verified what I knew off hand and hated myself for knowing any of that off hand.

I wasn't actually planning the conversation between Leda and Typhon about what to do with the twins to get so complicated and emotional. Like I said, I got to like writing for Typhon. It's almost later.

I'm not sure Ever-Flowing's daughter's name was Tyreen exactly, but that's what Leda heard. I'm not sure of the son's name, but I refer to her boyfriend/the one-eyed man as Atticus in notes and YES, he became the serpent. I forget who asked me that.

The twins still have the two pointer charms and you can see Troy's in Several Saturnine Lunchtimes At Doctor Black's.

~*~

CH4

This whole chapter is meant to be read to "Sunset Strip" by Veeshy, the song I picked for Typhon and his very particular variety of awful.

OK, so it's my sincerely held personal belief that even despicable characters deserve their 500 words about why they're despicable, so here's Typhon's. I tried to make his trauma commensurate with the crime he nearly commits, not a justification, but an explanation. And that's why it's really terrible. So terrible, it made me love him for a brief, shining instant. I then went back to hating him.

I also tried to shrink the sentences and vocab in this chapter to match with him not being as book smart as Leda, but I'm not sure how successful I was...

Dido's Siren power sounds familiar, maybe? This is comics continuity somewhere under the madness. Dido was awesome to write and I think I might need to show Maya watching a video of her at some point. Hell, maybe I'll throw Typhon in.

He's already been thrown in enough. Yeah, that thing about Sirens having men who die for them is real in Grimeverse. Real in the games too, far as I can see (so what happened to Maya is a cosmic fuckup of epic proportions) (or would be if I was writing that).

The scene with Typhon falling in love with Leda is foreshadowing for the entire series :X. Yes, I have kenning names for every Siren.

The scene that inspired the whole fic was Typhon finding the twins still alive above the bleached line down the valley.

The rock he left them on is the one Tyreen later uses as a lookout and I almost included a flashforward to her doing just that. Her ability to extend herself and Leech whole areas if she's near death is called 'poofing' in my notes because I am five.

~*~

CH5&6

You know, I estimated this fic would be about 5k. It's more than 30k. Umm. Oops.

If the scene with Typhon finding the twins still alive was the first scene I thought of, one of the earliest notes I added around that was Leda being enchanted with her little fish and I loved writing that so much.

I can see why people mitigate Tyreen's scars in their own fic, but that didn't work for me. And then I figured I'd do them all at once, hence the business with her face. (I admit, I also like the explanations that Typhon is somehow responsible or that she earned them herself by... being herself).

But yes, Tyreen did have issues eating from when she was born and none of you should be wondering if this comes up repeatedly.

And the first person she leeched was her mom. Cute?

Ugh, that was too much surgery. Too me forever to slog through that. Looping the story together with the last line was such a relief.

There was a lighter version of the twins coming around and getting their names that I wrote before I got this far for real, but it went in the trash.

Then I had to go and change my mind about the end. Like I said, I almost finished on a scene with toddler twins... that didn't seem like quite the right choice. So I let Ever-Flowing rant for a thousand words.

There you have it: the twins got in the state they were because Ever-Flowing looked at Leda's genes as a gift from Fate and wanted to play with them.

Oh, and the term "Ever-Flowing" is from "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". It means "the ocean" in context. Subtle as a brick, I am.

[danni-chuu]

The 7 brothers with a 10 year-old lilith (+ side characters & mc)

This is an hc is inspired by the chapter 14 flashback, so the gist of this Hc is what if lilith gets turned into a 10 year old child try as diavolos way to save her. This is gonna be a really long post so strap in~❤️.

This hc post is made with the help of my friend, @heeminchan, thankiez.

General info about 10 year old lilith:

She has no recollection or memories about the celestial war or being an angel at all.

The post might say 10 years old but she's probably already pass the 1000+ mark, but still is and acts like a child.

She looks like ruri chan ( for reference here)

So without further babbling, lez go❤️

Lucifer

" if you behave I'll give you a princess poison apple and play with you "

Lucifer being the eldest takes it upon himself to be a father like figure to her. In front of the others, he makes sure to keep a strict front but in private, he's alot more softer on her.

Lucifer's room has a toy chest for her since she likes spending time and playing in his room. And being the child that she is, she even dresses up the skeleton in his room. If he's not busy, he would play with her, simple playing house and all.

One time while lucifer was doing paper work,lilith wanted to help him . So to keep lilith busy, he handed her a bunch of void documents and told her to sign them. In the end she got bored and decided to draw her with her 7 older brothers. Which luci decided to frame and put up at the entrance hall.

If lilith gets into trouble, luci doesn't shy away from punishment. But rather than stringing someone upside down and leaving them like that for 100 years, he would just ground lilith and take away her toys. (Buuuuut her other brothers would just sneak some of her toys to her room, especially beel and belphie)

Mammon

" heh you should be greatful you're brothers with the GREAT mammon, shortie! Huh?! w-wait dont cry! "

Mammon loves teasing lilith. Be it calling her a pipspeak, shortie, cry baby, etc. He's said them all, buuuuut he always takes it back because lilith might tell lucifer and he gets punished AG A I N.

Lilith as much as possible doesn't leave any of her things in mammon's room, because her other brothers warn her that he's going to sell them away.

One time mammon stole something from lucifer (probably something to profit from), and lilith was in lucifers room because she was playing hide and seek with beel. Seeing mammon stealing, she gets out of her hiding spot and tells mammon that she will rat him out to her big brother lucifer.mammon taking non of this shitz says he'll do whatever she wants. By the end of the day, lilith gets a new plushie and mammon still got ratted out because how can she lie to her big brother lucifer?

Mammon does try to get her involved in his schemes sometimes. Making her ask money from her other brothers and other more shenanigans, but when he's feeling it he will in fact spoil her with little treats such as candy.

Leviathan

" wooah you look so much like ruri-chan! Can you sing too?"

Levi is still as much of a shut- in, having a younger sibling that he can teach TSL or play games with is his dream come true. Lilith goes to his room to watch anime (for her its cartoons but dont tell levi because he will be very triggered) with him and play video games.

If lilith does go to levi's room , he's always watching out just in case she ends up using his precious figurines as dolls or touching his precious merch. Sometimes( most of the time) when he's too busy playing his games, lilith will just talk to henry 2.0 and feed him.

Levi is a mega ultra super duper (insert more hyperbolic words) fan of ruri-chan, so during lilith's birthday..he gave her a ruri-chan costume (the other brothers already knew where this was heading but they couldn't stop it since lilith liked the cute clothes). She wore them and levi literally freaked because she looked just like her! He posted a picture of her on devilgram and the pic got a decent amount of likes.

The only time that lilith gets in trouble with levi is her staying with him past her bed time, she gets pouty about it but in the end she still gets taken to bed by her big brother lucifer.

Satan

"i can read you a story or we can play tea time, what do you prefer? "

Satan acts alot like a tutor to lilith, he teaches her about manners, reading and writing, and many other things. Satan loves teaching lilith especially when he sees her trying to pronounce big words, which he finds adorable.

Satan for the most part wants lilith to stay out of his room because there are too many dangerous books around. But he would rather play with her in her room instead, either reading a children's bed time book before going to bed or playing tea time with her. They both share a love for pets and animals, so in his free time, he will take her to a kitty cafe where she can play with the lil furballs.

Satan was regulary teaching lilith about different animals, until they got to the cat. Lilith became so intrigued by cats that satan spent a good 30 minutes to an hour of answering her questions about cats. One day, he saw lilith crying by the stairs. He quickly went over and asked her what's wrong, only to find out that she asked lucifer if they can adopt a cat wherein lucifer completely dismisses the idea. Knowing that Lucifer's mind wont change, the next day satan surprises lilith with a black cat plushie with a red bow tie thats as tall (or alitte bit smaller) than her. Until this day, the cat plushie satan gave her is her favourite. She is never seen without it, and she even gave it a name, mr. Momo.

The only time that lilith ever gets in trouble is if she joins in on satan's pranks on lucifer. But most of the time she's let off the hook if they're harmless ones.

Asmodeus

" waahh~ lilith's so adorable, but not as adorable as me"

To lilith, asmo is the closest thing to a sister she can have. Being the only girl in the house( before mc, if mc is a girl ), asmo likes to doll her up and make her his little dress up doll. He often buys clothes for her because he just LOVES making her pretty.

She doesn't spend as much time in asmo's room because there isn't much to do there, but when asmo calls her in after a shopping trip. She already knows he's going to make her pretty as a peach!

It was lilith's birthday and Asmo wanted to dress her up for the occasion! Hair? Check! Make up? Check! Clothes? Check! She was looking as pretty as ever (but not as pretty as him). After dolling her up , lilith went to her other brothers to show Amos work. All of them asked if a child should be wearing that much make up, but asmo tells lilith to shrug them off because they can't appreciate beauty even if it hits them in the face!

The one thing that gets lilith in trouble is lucifer seeing her being dressed by asmo , wearing clothes not fit for a 10 year old girl. Seriously, devilgram level make up on a kid is not appropriate (well in lucifer and some of the other brothers point of view)

Beezlebub

" the eggs taste like plastic..huh? I'm not supposed to eat them? Sorry, they looked too realistic"

Beel is very close with lilith. He spends most of his time watching over her or bringing her to his favourite food joints to eat. Since beel is so big, she loves it when he carries her around, either on his shoulders or just being carried in general. Beel wants to protect lilith at all times, so if sorcerers or witches want to summon lilith, he comes along to watch over her still.

if its not Lucifer's room, lilith's next stop is always the twin's room. She goes in and jumps on either of the beds and having her toys there as well she can already entertain herself. When beel is there to play with her, she likes to play chef and make him food using her plastic kitchen toy set( though some pieces are missing since beel keeps forgetting that its plastic). If she doesn't want to play with her toys, she tries to tickle fight beel and always wins.

Beel was in his room eating a box of cupcakes until lilith barges in and sees him eating cupcakes, she pouts at beel asking why he didn't tell her that he had cupcakes. Beel, being beel just says to her, " they're my cupcakes". She pouts even more and says that she wants a cupcake as well. Beel couldn't resist and splits the cupcake, giving the other half to her. After finishing the cupcake, he promises to buy her a box aswell next time.

Lilith having a sweet tooth herself will often look in the fridge for sweets. She sometimes ends up eating beels food(custard), and hides the evidence. Beel rampages again and breaks the kitchen. Lucifer then lines all of them up and ask who ate the custard, and all of them immediately suspect mammon. But being a good girl, lilith admits her mistake and apologizes to beel, who calms down and says ," you could have left me some..".

Belphegor

" how about later...? Im still too sleepy to teach you..."

Belphie, same with beel, is pretty close with lilith. If he isn't cuddling her as his favourite cuddle buddy, he's teaching her how to dance ballet(Based it off his dancing sprite). Lilith spends most of her afternoon napping with belphie.

Besides playing with beel , lilith also loves playig around with belphie. She makes it an everyday challenge for herself to wake him up in the most creative ways. It can be things such as ice,drawing on his face, tickles, etc. When belphie is too lazy to stand up from bed( which is often), she just plays with his hair and does whatever she wants with it. When he finally does stand up, he teaches lilith some ballet. While she's even wearing her full ballet attire, with tutu included.

It was the middle of the night and lilith had a nightmare, she wanted to go to her big brother lucifer, but it was already late and she might be disturbing him. But then she remembered that mid nights is when his big brother belphie is awake, so she goes over to him with mr.momo. belphie is alittle confused since its way past her bedtime so he asked her whats wrong. She climbs up his bed and hugs him, after calming down she tells belphie that she had a nightmare. Belphie was well acquainted with nightmares, so he knew exactly what to do. They went to the kitchen and both had a cup of warm milk. Going back to his room, he cuddled up with lilith and made sure she had a good nights sleep.

Lilith ends up over sleeping and gets very cranky if she gets rudely awakened.the others find it very adorable.

Mc

"...." * Huwgs*

So this depends on the mc's personality but lets start from the beginning. After being sent to the devildom and having the basic run down of what is to come, mammon takes you to the house of lamentations. The first thing you notice once the door opens, is toys scattered all around the entrance hall. Not only toys, but you see a height lines at one of the door frames. Mammon gets more annoyed because he stepped on one of the toys and he shouts out," lilith!". A small girl carrying a black cat plushie almost her size comes down the stairs. Mammon scolds her for leaving her toys out like that and he introduces you to their 8th sibling, lilith. Lilith immediately hugs you (no matter the gender), because it's been a while since she's seen a human. And you become her instant play mate.

The mc's room already has a toy chest, filled with lilith's favourite toys. She likes to play around with the mc and actually gets quite attached to them.

Lilith gets so comfortable around the mc that she ask permission from her big brother luci if she can make a pact with the mc. Of course, lucifer is skeptical but he allows it because of liliths enthusiasm.

Diavolo

" ah lilith , I didn't think you would be accompanying lucifer today. "

Dia acts alot like the rich uncle that only comes back during the holidays to give out presents. Lilith rarely gets to see diavolo because most of the time it's only lucifer that gets to see him. But, when lucifer does come back he often gives lilith sweets that barbatos made by diavolo's order.

On the rare occasions that lucifer brings lilith along with him, she acts very reserved and shows off the manners lessons that satan has been teaching her.

On one evening, lucifer brings lilith along to dinner with diavolo. While eating, diavolo jokes around saying that lucifer should just stay in the castle with him. Suddenly, lilith bumps in and protests against the idea, " no big brother luci's staying with us". She hugs as much of lucifers arm that she can, giving diavolo her most pouty and "menacing face". Dia loves seeing how much she cares for her brother, while lucifer is trying his best to hide his embarrassment.

Luke

" ahhhhh! Im not a child! I dont want to play with a demon!"

When lilith first saw luke, her mind immediately said," playmate! ". Though luke always complains about being treated like a child because he's short, he tries to bare it because simeon convinced him to play with lilith.

When in the purgatory hall, she brings along mr.momo and some other toys. luke sometimes pretend he isn't there so he doesn't have to play with lilith, but once he hears a sniffle of her almost crying. He couldn't help but open the door for her and play.

Upon first meeting luke, the key difference in height was..still... apparent. Somehow, lilith is still a few inches taller than luke. Being the giddy child she is, she tells her brothers about it and they all start laughing their lungs out. And when luke finally got wind of it, he was so flustered and embarrassed, he almost refused to leave his room.

Solomon

" why not make a pact with me?"

All her brothers warn her about solomon and to stay as far away from him as possible, she rarely gets to interact with him. But most of the times they do meet, he often ask her to make a pact with him. She always replies to him, " i have to ask big brother luci's permission first". Solomon just smiles and pats her head.

Huhu not much i can say about him since im sure the brothers distance lilith from solomon as much as possible.

And that concludes this very very long post , hope you guys enjoyed it❤️❤️❤️

[nothingbutfangirlsmut]

The Trials of Emi

Pairing: A little Minho. A sprinkle of Frypan. Gally x Emi(OC)

Summary: Emi, her twin brother Thomas, and a small group of gladers had been rescued and taken to a safe haven. Or so it seemed. It doesn't take long for Thomas to realize something is wrong. What happens next is a true trial for all of them but Emi's trials began the moment she was ripped away from a dying Gally. Watching someone you love die right before your eyes truly takes a toll.

Finally meeting the right arm could have been the end but betrayal leads to even more chaos and loss. A new mission to rescue those taken from them leads them to a city. The last city. After Emi finally comes to terms with everything that's happened something unfolds that changes everything again. She will have to not only deal with helping her brother take down WCKD and save their friend but also deal with all the new problems in her head and her heart.

Rating: As of right now it’s at most PG13. Some strong language that’s about it but it could change.

(This is the 2nd part/book to my other story "The Maze trials: A Gally Fanfiction". This will cover the events of the scorch trails and the death cure.)

Chapter Seven

One by one we were pulled towards the floor then untied. Teresa, Thomas, and Minho were already untied. They were working on Newt when the sound of a helicopter distracted all of us.

"What the hell is that?" I asked over the noise.

"WCKD," Thomas said as he scrambled to help Teresa and Minho.

"Good evening, this is the World Catastrophe Kill Zone Department. We have your compound completely surrounded. You've found yourselves, through no fault of your own, in possession of WCKD property. Return them to us unharmed and we'll consider this a simple misunderstanding. Or you can resist and every last one of you will die. It won't be long before the flare wipes out the rest of us. The hope for the cure rests in your hands. The choice is yours." Janson's unmistakable voice was shouting.

I was the last one pulled free of the ropes. Thomas helped me to my feet then he took a quick look at my shoulder. It was getting worse. It was bleeding again and throbbing.

"We have to move! Quickly!" Thomas shouted then turned to lead the group.

We followed close behind him out of the room we'd been hanging in. Instant chaos was what we heard. People were running in the distance and screaming. We kept to the shadows as we looked for a way out. Thomas pushed through a door. Just as we were all inside a man appeared holding a gun on us. Thomas raised his hands as the man sneered at him. A shot rang out causing us to instantly search for who was the victim. To our surprise, the man in front of us fell on the floor. Behind him stood the same girl who had led us to Jorge. She put the gun to her side then nodded.

"Come with me" she ordered then turned for us to follow her.

Thomas hesitated for a second then started to run after her. She led us back through the building to a set of stairs. We all started running up them behind her. As soon as we did loud music started to play.

"Brenda!" A man shouted.

Jorge appeared at the top of the stairs.

"Hurry, we don't have much time. Let's go, let's go, let's go." Jorge said pointing for us to go to the left.

We all ran behind Brenda and Jorge.

"Right this way," Jorge said then shoved open a large door.

I gasped at the drop in front of us. It was a massive canyon below with other building all the way on the other side of it.

"Oh, you gotta be kidding me." Fry groaned as he looked down.

"Not me Hermano, you kids want to get to the Right Arm? I'll lead you to them but you're gonna owe me." Jorge said to the group.

He turned back to the wire that was above his head. He reached up grabbing something then yanking it down. It was some kind of tied up rope.

"Follow me!" He shouted as he slung himself down the wire and across the canyon.

"Alright, let's go!" Brenda shouted pulling down another rope.

We all looked at Thomas.

"Go, go" he shouted moving so we'd all be in front of him.

Minho went first. Clint went down followed by Newt. I stepped up to the rope Brenda was holding for me. I grabbed it then took a deep breath before launching myself down the wire-like the rest of them. By the time I got to the end where the others were waiting I was laughing. That was the coolest thing I've ever done. I came down quickly but Minho was there with his arms spread wide. I tripped as I landed but Minho caught me. He pulled me out of the way quickly as Aris came in behind me. Right behind him was Teresa.

"Where's Thomas?" I asked her as I stepped out of Minho's arms.

She looked back up to where we all came from. He should have been right behind Teresa. Brenda should have been too. We all watched hoping the pair would appear any second. The building across from us went up in flames as explosion after explosion went off.

"No!" I screamed trying to grab the rope to somehow get back over there.

Hands were grabbing my arms pulling me back. I could feel the tears on my cheeks as the hands turned me around. I was pulled into a chest with strong arms tightly around me.

"Brenda knows other ways out. We have to move." Jorge said to the group.

"He's Thomas he's gonna be fine," Minho whispered into my hair.

I was praying he was right. I lost Gally. I can't lose Thomas too. We all followed Jorge until he stopped at the edge of the building we were in.

"This town we are going in isn't the nicest so stick close and keep your head down. We are going to find an old friend of mine." Jorge informed us.

He stepped out slowly onto the sand. I was cautious to do the same. I had Newt on one side and Minho on the other. We walked slowly into the sand-covered road. I couldn't see anyone out. They were probably all inside their homes asleep. It did seem late at night.

"We are gonna lay low for the night," Jorge whispered then turned to the right.

As we walked down the side road I noticed two men standing off to the side in the shadows. I eyed them as we walked past. The others didn't seem to notice them. I had slowed down a little from my distraction. Newt and Minho were both walking in front of me now. I moved to get back between them but I never made it there. Two sets of hands grabbed me from behind. Two hands pinned my arms to my back causing the pain in my shoulder to skyrocket. The other two hands grabbed my face and covered my mouth. They yanked me back from my friends. I thrashed as hard as I could. I tried to scream but his hand had my voice muffled. I started to kick my legs wildly until I connected with one of the men. The hand covering my mouth released me so I screamed the first name that came to me.

"Minho!" I screamed as loud as I could.

The hand slapped back over my mouth muffling me again. I could hear my friends shouting for me. I couldn't say or do anything else as the men dragged me into a building.

I was thrown to the ground harshly. The lights inside the room were dim but I could see two makeshift beds on the floor. The room was old and rundown.

"What's a pretty little thing like you doing out here?" One of the men asked as he stood over me.

"None of your business." I snapped at him.

Both men chuckled. The one standing over me squatted as I pulled myself into a sitting position. My shoulder was pulsing with pain as more blood slowly seeped out.

"Please, I'm injured," I said softly.

"Why do you think we grabbed you?" The man by the door said.

"Easy prey" the man squatting said.

I looked at him with disgust clear on my face. I had no clue what these men were about to do to me but I wasn't going to go down without a fight. The man next to me sat down on his knees then leaned forward to grab a piece of my hair. He stuck his nose against my hair then took a deep breath. I tried to pull myself out of his grasp but he only tightened his hold. I felt weaker than usual. I couldn't do much to fight him off.

"Emi!" I heard the shout of my name from outside.

The man by the door turned to hold the door closed like someone was about to barge in.

"Minho! Newt!" I screamed.

The man next to me covered my mouth with his hand again. This time he positioned himself behind me on his knees. He pulled my back completely against his front. I heard a faint click making me turn my head to see a knife in the man's hand. My eyes widened in fear as I tried to get out of his hold. The more I moved the worse the pain in my shoulder got. The door suddenly jolted like someone had ran into it. The man standing against it moved to put his full weight against it. Something rammed into it again.

"Emi!" Minho's voice shouted from the other side of the door.

I tried to tell him I was here but the sudden feeling of a cold blade against my throat had me trying to keep my breathing steady. The door was taking a heavy beating and the man standing against it seemed to be struggling to keep it closed.

The door finally flew open as Minho and Newt practically tumbled into the room. Fry, Clint, Aris, and Jorge were right behind them. Minho's eyes caught mine as the knife's blade was pressed harder against my skin.

"Let her go," Minho demanded the man holding me.

The man laughed then grabbed my shoulder after releasing my mouth. I hissed as the pain increased.

A loud shot rang out making everyone jump. Jorge had shot the man the was once holding the door closed. He turned pointing the gun at the man holding me.

"We don't have a lot of time to waste. So do as the boy said and let her go." Jorge said menacingly.

The man holding me growled then slowly released me. Minho was quick to grab my hand and pull me to my feet.

"Are you okay?" He asked as he grabbed each side of my face.

My body was aching from the damage to my shoulder. The blood had finally slowed but I felt light-headed and dizzy. I held onto Minho's biceps trying to steady myself.

"No" I whispered.

Minho moved to my side that wasn't injured then wrapped his arm around my waist.

"We need to get her somewhere safe," Newt said to Jorge.

Jorge nodded then led the group back out onto the sand-covered road. Minho held me close to him as he moved as fast as he could. Jorge made two more turns before stopping in front of another door. He opened it then gestured for us to go in.

Once Minho got me inside he slowly laid me on the ground. When Jorge stepped inside he flipped a switch turning on a few dim lights.

"How do you feel?" Clint asked as he kneeled beside me.

"Everything hurts and I'm dizzy. I'm really dizzy." I said softly.

"How long has she had that wound?" Jorge asked.

"A few days," Clint told him.

"Has it been bleeding the whole time?" Jorge asked.

I nodded.

"She's losing too much blood. We need to stop or at least slow the bleeding." Jorge said coming to kneel beside me.

Minho was quick to grab his shirt then tear a large bit of it off. He gave the cloth to Jorge. Jorge moved the cloth sling then tied Minho's shirt tightly around the wound. I hissed as he did so. Minho held my hand even after Jorge was standing again.

"That will have to do until we can get a hold of better supplies to treat her," Jorge said.

"What now?" Newt asked.

"We wait here until morning then find Marcus," Jorge told him.

—

[angry-fishy8]

A story that'll never be published

I remember that night. We talked till the sun came up and you kissed me. Not like I was wanting or the kind you were hoping, but I think that's when we finally learned that there was something. I don't think I wanted to admit it, and neither did you,  so we kind of just forgot about that night. I mean why would we? I was plain and you were Mr. Fourteen. I gave up on closing myself because you told me to open up. God, looking at it, we were so stupid. But I'm not saying that being angry. I'm saying that with a huge smile on my face." +

I don't remember when I fell asleep but I woke up around three. Tyler still wasn't there so it made me worried. Are you really that mad at me? I just wanted to sleep but my brain wouldn't shut off. +

I grabbed one of Tyler's hoodies and grabbed a blanket. I didn't have an exact place where I wanted to go, but I didn't want to be in the hotel right now. I know I could've just went to talk to Brooklynn, but she'd just tell me off. +

When I had gone outside, the crisp fall air hit my legs before anywhere else. I guess shorts were a mistake. +

While I was walking I was replaying everything that happened today. Why would Tyler be so mad just because he pushed me away? I mean I guess in hind sight what I said after didn't really help. +

"I promised I wouldn't hurt you and that wasn't enough!" +

"It was!" I yelled. +

"Are you sure? Because everyone thinks that I'm the one trying." +

"What am I supposed to do, I told you I didn't want to ruin our friendship! Here we are! And here you are getting ready to leave." I grab his coat and threw it at him. "Do it, like everyone else." +

"Kate, this is just you worrying." he said calmingly. +

"GO! I DON'T CARE ANYMORE!" +

"Is that what you really want?" +

"You're gonna do it anyways! Might as well let me do it on my terms." I cried. "Because that's what you want right? To leave? It's obvious, you've wanted that for a while." I looked away while he stepped closer. "Leave." +

He stood there for a moment. +

"I really did love you." +

I could feel everything crumble. After a while of not responding, he left. And everything I had to offer did too. +

I sat down at the park where Mrs. K and us talked. I just sat staring at the stars waiting for something to happen. +

"Kate, sweetie, it's time for school." I heard my mom sit on the opposite side of my bed. "You've been here all weekend." +

I didn't pull the covers from my head but I'd been awake the entire night. +

"Bumblebee." I whispered. +

"Are you sure?" She put her hand on my leg rubbing it. "It's the last one for the semester." +

"Yes please." +

"I'll call the school and tell them you've been sick all weekend. You have your concert tonight though." She kissed my head. "Don't let this bring you down." +

Brooklynn: You left me alone all weekend and now? +

Kate: We broke up. +

She didn't reply. And I stayed awake just watching my wall. That was enough. +

There was a shooting star and that's what pulled me from my thoughts. I laughed. +

Story continues below

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"You weren't even that special." I whispered. +

"There'll be a day you can say you're okay and mean it." I sang. Secret for the mad by Dodie was the one thing that helped me when I was down. +

"I promise you, it'll all make sense again." +

"That's the song you want to sing for Senior Night?" Mrs. K asked. +

"Why not?" I laughed. +

"It just doesn't seem like you, I mean it fits your vocal tone beautifully, and the vibrato in your voice is lovely with it." +

"But?" +

"Sweetie." She patted my arm, "We can talk if you want." +

"I know." I fake smiled. "I think when I'm fully ready, you'll be the first person I'll talk to you. I promise." +

"Alright then, I'll remember that." she smiled. "How's college searching?" +

"I found a great culinary arts school." +

"Culinary Arts? Like your father?" +

"Through everything he put me through, our best memories are cooking." I played with my ring finger. "It's all I know." +

"And music sweetie." +

"Yeah, but I'll never be good enough for that," +

"I thought the same thing once. And here I am" +

I smiled. That was the best memory between us. I mean there are a million great memories, but the one on one moments are the best. +

"Kate?" I heard Tyler say. +

I covered up in the blanket more as he sat by me. +

"What are you doing here?" +

"I couldn't sleep." I said looking up at the stars. "Never seems to shut off when I want it to." +

"Same." He whispered. +

"I think I owe you an apology." +

"For?" +

"I'm not sure." +

"Then don't" he said sweetly. "Don't do that to yourself. If you said sorry for every time I did something wrong, then you'll never trust me." +

"But what did you do?" +

"What did you do?" +

"I let you leave and didn't talk it out with you." +

He laughed. "I didn't want you to feel obligated to. If you need space that's what I'm more than happy to give you." +

"Wait." +

"Yes that's why I left." he wrapped his hands around his legs. "What were you thinking about that couldn't make you sleep." +

I laughed. "Seeing Mrs. K today and talking about my fidget just made some unhappy memories pop up." +

"Like Alec?" +

"Yeah." He didn't respond so I pushed myself. "Is there anything you really want to know about my past?" +

He looked up at me but I didn't turn towards him. +

"Uhm no not really." +

"Come on, I won't lie." +

"Okay. Why do you play with your ring finger?" +

"Ahh the basics." I laughed, "I caught it when I first met Alec. He used to comment on how I would be a "beautiful bride". It was basically his way of trying to have me open up. Our friends would call him future husband and after a while we'd laugh about it. The first time he'd ever held my hand, he grabbed my hand and played with my ring finger." I started to rub it. "For Christmas, he bought me a little ring to put on it so I had something to play with. It was the first time he'd shown that he liked me. I always thought it was a game with him." +

Story continues below

"So you didn't trust him when you first met him?" +

"No," I looked at the stars, "I didn't really like trusting guys." +

"Why?" +

"My dad." I grinned, "How cliché? The one guy who should give me unconditional love and make me think I'm really beautiful, actually made me think the opposite." +

"Did he ever-" +

"No, all emotional trauma. If I wore something tight fitting, he'd call me too fat. If I wore makeup it was too much. If I was asked out, he'd ask who'd ask me out. After a while I started to wear long sleeved shirts and pants every day. Even in the summer. Then my sophomore year, I didn't eat, and he'd tell me off. Asking why am I taking the easy way out. How is starving yourself to a certain image the easy way out? I had started to get so bad, I fainted in certain times. Basically anything he saw wrong with me, I saw wrong with myself times ten." +

"Oh." Was his only response. +

"Next question?" +

"Uhm, do you ever think you could fall in love again?" +

My heart stopped. "Sometimes I wonder that myself. But then I ask am I really capable of it?" +

"What do you mean?" +

"Like, I love seeing people in love. It's beautiful. Not just the honeymoon stage, but when you see a couple and know, yeah they fight, but they choose to give each other space, to think about if the fight was important or not. Then they pretend it didn't happen or they move passed it. It makes them stronger. It's like the strongest friendship, but more. I see that and I think, am I capable of that?" +

"And?" +

"I mean that's what we did." I didn't look at him but I saw from the corner of my eye that his mouth slightly opened. "I'm not saying I'm in love with you, but I'm also not saying I wouldn't be able to." +

"With me?" +

"With anyone." His jaw clenched. "The idea of opening up to someone scares me." I continued. "Think of it, if the men who are supposed to love you, support you, treat you with respect and dignity, if they chose to do the opposite, could you learn to love or even fathom the idea of it?" +

"I have." It was his turn. "My mom, we have a strange relationship, it's nothing like you and your dad, but it's close. She blamed me for my sister getting sick, when we first found out, and when I wanted to come and listen to what the doctors had to say, she'd just tell me no. She'd blame me for it." +

"I'm so sorry.." +

"Well after awhile I gave up on our relationship, how can you blame someone who had no iea what was going on?" +

"You can't." +

"But she did." his voice broke. "I think that's why I have such a strange relationship with girls, "Jennifers and Carries" they make it easy. Because I can shut it down. I can just refuse to get close to them, and they'll take a hint. Other than my sister, I've never had a strong connection with woman." +

"So you're scared." I said silently. "Of being hurt again. Of trying to jump and not knowing if that person is going to catch you or just leave." +

We didn't say anything for a while. But I took his hand. It wasn't in the romantic sense. I wanted him to know I'm willing to catch him if he was willing to do the same. Neither of us knew how to connect with someone of the opposite sex, and just grabbing his hand, it was the first step. +

"Together," I started. "I want us to take baby steps together." +

"In a romantic way?" +

I laughed, "No bozo, in a platonic way. Neither you nor I have any real sense on trust. you preach to me about dating but you've yet to notice we're in the same boat." I nudged him. "So why not take the same ride and see where we go." +

"As friends?" +

"As friends." +

"And if one day, one of us decides we want something more?" he squeezed my hand but he couldn't tell he was squeezing my heart too. +

"Then the other one has to be just as ready." I looked at him. "Deal?" +

"Is this your idea of asking me out in the future?" +

"No." I smiled noticing he was leaning in closer. "Because neither of us know if this'll work." +

"I have a pretty good idea that it will." He said inches from my face. Just before I could pull away he kissed me on the forehead. "When you're ready." He whispered. +

We sat there for a moment looking at each other and for a moment I could feel every negative thought drift away. He smiled and it made me smile just as wide. +

"There you are!" I heard a female voice squeal and I jumped away from him. "Tyler you forgot your key in my car." +

"Oh uhm thanks Lacey." He coughed. +

"Who's this?" we asked in unison. +

"Oh Lacey this is Kate the friend I told you about, Kate this is Lacey, I met her in a bar on my walk." +

And all the bad thoughts were back but they weren't about me. No they were about Lacey and Tyler. He looked at me and under the blankets squeezed my hand. +

"Pleasure meeting you Lacey." I smile letting go of Tyler's hand and getting up, "I guess you two should continue getting to know each other." +

"Are you his girlfriend?" The young blonde asked. +

"No." Tyler said before I could, "We're just friends." +

"Then why is she wearing a hoodie with your last name?" She pointed her hand at me. +

"Believe it or not friends share clothes." I laugh taking it off and handing it to her. "Believe me when I say, if he remembered your name after a while, you've got no threat from me. I'm just a friend." I strained. "Anyways, I need to pack, I've gotta get back to Pueblo tomorrow." +

Tyler stood up and grabbed my hand, "But we weren't supposed to go back till Monday." +

"Silly me, I forgot I put in a three day weekend." I smiled. "Again it was nice meeting you Lacey, you're in great hands with him." +

And I walked back to the hotel without my blanket, his hoodie, or a clear mind. +

"Stupid." I whispered to myself