#and he lives on an empire of lies to every authority in his life. Even Bahorel is impressed. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

faebriel · 9 months

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kai faebriel pretty please tell anon number i don’t even know anymore and the audience abt the tangled au thoughts..

okay i wouldn't say i have a perfect list of coherent thoughts happening like i do with some other aus but here are the main points i think. keeping in mind we have magical long haired wilbur and mildly swashbuckling rogue niki.

there's a magical flower in a field somewhere.

the antarctic empire rules over the land with a fist that is unjust only when it is extremely funny. lifetime buddies techno and phil are co-rulers; phil also has his son, wilbur. for the kid of an emperor wilbur is allowed to run around a lot, and he makes a lot of friends - from street urchins to bakers' daughters. stick a pin in that thought

unfortunately, one day pre-teen wilbur gets very sick. distraught, phil orders that the empire is turned upside down to find a cure, and they find it - the flower. it is infused into a tea, which wilbur drinks. his sickness disappears, and his hair turns white-gold.

double unfortunately, this pisses some people off

dream, noted Some Guy of the forest, had been using this magical flower to stay young and exert his power and authority over the forest for almost a century. needless to say, when the flower was taken by the empire, he was pissed. he swears revenge, and when restoring his youth through song doesn't work, he kidnaps wilbur. and teams up with some friends to overthrow the empire (pulled to pieces over the loss of its favourite son) and send the royal family into hiding. oh and he bullies some street urchins which mysteriously disappear and are replaced by a loud fucking chicken in the middle of the forest but like don't worry about it. in the chaos of kidnapping wilbur soot is struck in the head and loses his memories

the relationship between dream and soot is more of a patronage than a parenthood - dream provides protection and manpower while soot provides "strategy" (this started as internal knowledge on the kingdom but now dream just kind of keeps him busy) and of course, magic rejuvenating hair. over the years dream tells soot all sorts of lies about the outside world, and about how they would treat a "cursed" man like him, and soot is mostly more than happy to stay inside, even if something doesn't feel quite right.

and every year he sees a massive show of flame and fireworks from his tower window.

on the other side of the coin - when the empire falls, a young niki loses everything. she loses her parents, her family's bakery, and her home. first she's locked out of the castle, abandoned by her childhood friend, then she's locked out of everything - she ends up fleeing to an orphanage that her letter-friend lives in a kingdom over, carrying a dark, angry bitterness in her small heart that grows as she does. the kids whisper about the anarchist syndicate, remains of the old empire, who name themselves after gods - with a harsh tongue and nothing but memories drenched in perceived betrayal, niki calls herself nemesis.

as an adult, she teams up with fellow orphan and loser jack to generally swashbuckle. they don't trust each other (even if they're both awfully lonely), but they have the same goals. most of the time. like stealing old, relic crowns from decade-dead empires.

nemesis runs into the forest, the manberg guard hot on her tail, and finds a tower. and a man with the longest hair she has ever seen in her life.

soot's life is kind of pathetic. he literally cannot remember the last time he has been outside, his only friend is a chicken he has to hide from dream, he's cursed and would be hated for it if he dared step outside his tower, and everything he could possibly care about exists within four tiny walls. dream has truly managed to convince him that he deserves nothing. but, he's still an opportunist, and he's curious - dream is gone for three days, so if nemesis takes him to investigate the reason for these explosions every year, he'll give her back her dumb tiara. and nemesis does not really trust people as a rule but unfortunately she does silently long for company even though she doesn't realise it (c!niki moment) but also quite frankly wants her satchel back so she agrees.

cue road trip!

this post is already getting so long so here are some miscellaneous thoughts:

i haven't figured out who the snuggly duckling folks are but i know that instead of singing abt money niki is singing about exacting bloody revenge on all people who have hurt her Ever actually

after almost drowning in a mineshaft nemesis reveals that her real name is niki, which throws soot for a loop - he knows that name, which is impossible, but he does. from where? i wrote a bit of this scene actually

they also have a bit of a heart-to-heart afterwards where soot heals niki's hand and manages to wheedle her into talking a little bit more about her history. she had a friend when she was very young, you see, a prince who left her in the fucking dust when times got bad. and she never really got over it, even as the evidence increasingly started to suggest that something worse than abandonment happened to him.

("why don't they recognise each other?" 1. the magical power of aus working when i need them to 2. wilbur's magical dye job also niki's less magical dye job 3. puberty! puberty. has happened to friends of mine. potentially combined with mutual mild faceblindness)

they finally make it to the city and have a wonderful day braiding soot's hair and encouraging people to partake in graffiti and they turn the city upside down until they find someone with old newspapers from the empire (they had to convince them by holding nemesis' wanted poster up to niki's face. even though she had plain blonde hair two dye jobs ago, ugh) and soot does his best to memorise this information while trying not to throw up looking at crude renders of flags belonging to the small territories that cropped up beneath the empire.

betrayal moment so sad, schlatt almost executes niki for being an annoying dormouse, wilbur realises he is wilbur actually and dream has been longcon fucking with him for the last several years, niki gets stabbed and manages to only put together that soot is wilbur about three seconds from dying, she gives him the big chop, fortunately wilbur cries so so hard that his tears are magical too

CHICKEN TOMMY MURDERS DREAM

oh yeah and as it turns out the fireworks/fires are a bit of theatrical terrorism emduo put on in wilbur's name on his birthday every year. after dream dies wilbur and niki manage to track them down to reunite wilbur with his family and also get niki some cool friends :]

there's still some holes here but do you See the vision. do you see these losers sneaking around and reading books and painting with chalk as kingdom dance plays. Do You See Niki Being Harassed By A Chicken

#i dont know if this is danny or wam or just has brother vibes. but ty for the ask nonnie!!#asks #i feel like a tangled au is something that crops up in every fandom. personally this is my third (had a clingyduo one and also inside job).#but i like this one. theyre silly :] and maybe its just hunger games au getting to me but separated childhood friends rainduo is something #that can be so personal #rainduo #aunonnies

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anamedblog · 1 year

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In Search of Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul

Sara Bozza, ANAMED Senior Fellow (2022–2023)

If you are a European archaeologist and you arrive in Istanbul for the very first time after having read Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul (and having daydreamed for ages about it), you will be extremely anxious to explore every corner of the city in search of the images and feelings that the book intensely inspires.

Tons of pages about Istanbul have been written by hundreds of authors, due to its unique character as a kaleidoscopic city between two continents, with an extremely rich past made of intertwined, different cultures. Today, the city is still a melting pot of people of different cultures, languages, and nationalities arriving from every corner of the world, according to current geo-political dynamics and hordes of tourists swarming the most iconic places. Istanbul is today projected towards the future, with neighborhoods dramatically affected by profound social and urban changes, but its vibrant, picturesque atmosphere is still present at almost every corner.

The main concept of Pamuk’s autobiographical book Istanbul. Memories and the City is melancholy. The book begins with a quotation from Ahmet Rasim that is the perfect summary of the entire book: “The beauty of a landscape resides in its melancholy.” A deep feeling of melancholy and latent sadness is the fil rouge of the entire narration of Pamuk’s life in Istanbul. The “modernization” of Turkey was still in progress when the author was born in 1952 and during his childhood, spent between the districts of Nişantaşı and Cihangir: the image he depicts is that of a city inevitably suspended between old splendors and present decadence. In his account, the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent dramatic changes of Turkish society don’t seem water under the bridge but a very recent and perceivable thing.

Probably one of the most tangible effects of the social changes occurring in modern Turkey is the ubiquitous presence of building sites. On one hand, wealth, renewal, new cultural places: in Istanbul, it is common to see (with pleasure and optimism) historical palaces under restoration or recently repaired and given back to the community. On the other hand, the inexorable progress that makes the “old” vanish: today, passing by an urban void, one can imagine the previous presence of old houses that are now gone and feel that same sense of loss that young Pamuk felt when seeing that a traditional wooden house was destroyed by a fire.

But the strong fascination of the old buildings of Istanbul lies in the great number of human lives that have passed through those architectural spaces (but yes, also in the fact that they are now ruins—professional deformation). Pamuk himself explains his idea of Istanbul’s melancholy, hüzün in Turkish, which is strictly connected with the people that inhabit the city: “Now we begin to understand hüzün not as the melancholy of a solitary person but the black mood shared by millions of people together. What I am trying to explain is the hüzün of an entire city: of Istanbul.” p. 92

With this concept in mind, every corner of the city—and better if it’s in a back street, in a non-touristic neighborhood—is soon transformed into the perfect location for our hunt for the ancestral, melancholic soul of Istanbul. A hunt that is absolutely personal and subjective. So…if you have the chance to spend several months in Istanbul thanks to the ANAMED fellowship, go out and find your own vision! Your stay will soon turn into your romantic, curiosity-driven love story with the city.

“I love the overwhelming melancholy when I look at the walls of old apartment buildings and the dark surfaces of neglected, unpainted, fallen-down wooden mansions; only in Istanbul have I seen this texture, this shading. When I watch the black-and-white crowds rushing through the darkening streets of a winter’s evening, I feel a deep sense of fellowship, almost as if the night has cloaked our lives, our streets, our every belonging in a blanket of darkness, as if once we’re safe in our houses, our bedrooms, our beds, we can return to dreams of our long-gone riches, our legendary past.” p. 34–35

“The wooden mansions of my childhood and the smaller, more modest wooden houses in the city’s back streets were in a mesmerizing state of ruin. Poverty and neglect had ensured these houses were never painted, and the combination of age, dirt, and humidity slowly darkened the wood to give it that special color, that unique texture, so prevalent in the back neighborhoods that as a child I took the blackness to be original.” p. 37

“If the city speaks of defeat, destruction, deprivation, melancholy, and poverty, the Bosphorus sings of life, pleasure, and happiness. Istanbul draws its strength from the Bosphorus. But in earlier times, no one gave it much importance: They saw the Bosphorus as a waterway, a beauty spot, and, for the last two hundred years, a fine location for summer palaces.” p. 47–48

“What I enjoyed most about our family excursions to the Bosphorus was to see the traces everywhere of a sumptuous culture that had been influenced by the West without having lost its originality or vitality. To stand before the magnificent iron gates of a grand yalı bereft of its paint, to notice the sturdiness of another yalı’s moss-covered walls, to admire the shutters and fine woodwork of a third even more sumptuous yalı and to contemplate the judas trees on the hills rising high above it, to pass gardens heavily shaded by evergreens and centuries-old plane trees—even for a child, it was to know that a great civilization had stood here, and, from what they told me, people very much like us had once upon a time led a life extravagantly different from our own—leaving us who followed them feeling the poorer, weaker, and more provincial.” p. 52–53

“In The Seven Lamps of Architecture, John Ruskin devotes much of the chapter entitled “Memory” to the beauties of the picturesque, attributing the particular beauty of this sort of architecture (as opposed to that of carefully planned classical forms) to its “accidental” nature. So when he uses the word picturesque (“like a picture”) he is describing an architectural landscape that has, over time, become beautiful in a way never foreseen by its creators. For Ruskin, picturesque beauty rises out of details that emerge only after a building has been standing for hundreds of years, from the ivy, herbs, and grassy meadows that surround it, from the rocks in the distance, the clouds in the sky, and the choppy sea. So there is nothing picturesque about a new building, which demands to be seen on its own terms; it only becomes picturesque after history has endowed it with accidental beauty and granted us a fortuitous new perspective.” p. 254–55

“We might call this confused, hazy state melancholy, or perhaps we should call it by its Turkish name, hüzün, which denotes a melancholy that is communal rather than private. Offering no clarity, veiling reality instead, hüzün brings us comfort, softening the view like the condensation on a window when a teakettle has been spouting steam on a winter’s day. Steamed-up windows make me feel hüzün, and I still love getting up and walking over to those windows to trace words on them with my finger. As I shape words and figures on the steamy window, the hüzün inside me dissipates and I can relax; after I have done all my writing and drawing, I can erase it all with the back of my hand and look outside.” p. 89

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* All the quotations are from Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul. Memories and the city, First Vintage International Edition, New York 2006 (translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely).

* All photographs are by the author.

Further reading on Istanbul, its daily life, and the history of its buildings:

De Amicis, Edmondo. Costantinople. 1st edition 1877. Richmond: Alma Classics, 2013.

Domaniç, Seda, and Sinan Sökmen., eds. Monday to Sunday Istanbul. Istanbul: Istanbul Tour Studio, 2022.

Farajova, Turan, and Serdar Kılıç. Istanbul Apartmanları. Hikayeleri ve Anıları ile Beyoğlu. Istanbul: Fabrika Yayıncılık, 2022.

Freely, John. Stamboul Sketches. Encounters in Old Istanbul. 1st edition 1974. Istanbul: Eland London, 2014.

Freely, Brendan and John Freely. Galata, Pera, Beyoğlu. A Biography. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2013.

Özpetek, Ferzan. İstanbul Kırmızısı. Istanbul: Can Yayınları, 2016. Available in Turkish and Italian.

Photographic books:

Pamuk, Orhan. “Foreword.”In Ara Güler’s Istanbul. London: Thames & Hudson, 2009. Turaç, Serkan. Zemheri Istanbul = Midwinter Istanbul. Istanbul: Yem Yayın, 2023.

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thepastisalreadywritten · 23 days

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SAINT OF THE DAY (June 1)

"We are slain with the sword, but we increase and multiply; the more we are persecuted and destroyed, the more are deaf to our numbers.

As a vine, by being pruned and cut close, shoots forth new suckers, and bears a greater abundance of fruit; so is it with us."

– St. Justin Martyr

Justin was born around the year 100 in the Palestinian province of Samaria, the son of Greek-speaking parents whose ancestors were sent as colonists to that area of the Roman Empire.

Justin's father followed the Greek pagan religion and raised his son to do the same, but he also provided Justin with an excellent education in literature and history.

Justin was an avid lover of truth, and as a young man, became interested in philosophy and searched for truth in the various schools of thought that had spread throughout the empire.

But he became frustrated with the professional philosophers' intellectual conceits and limitations, as well as their apparent indifference to God.

After several years of study, Justin had a life-changing encounter with an old man who questioned him about his beliefs and especially about the sufficiency of philosophy as a means of attaining truth.

He urged him to study the Jewish prophets and told Justin that these authors had not only spoken by God's inspiration, but also predicted the coming of Christ and the foundation of his Church.

“Above all things, pray that the gates of life may be opened to you,” the old man told Justin, “for these are not things to be discerned, unless God and Christ grant to a man the knowledge of them.”

Justin had always admired Christians from a distance because of the beauty of their moral lives.

As he writes in his Apologies:

"When I was a disciple of Plato, hearing the accusations made against the Christians and seeing them intrepid in the face of death and of all that men fear, I said to myself that it was impossible that they should be living in evil and in the love of pleasure.”

The aspiring philosopher eventually decided to be baptized around the age of 30.

After his conversion, Justin continued to wear the type of cloak that Greek culture associated with the philosophers.

Inspired by the dedicated example of other Catholics whom he had seen put to death for their faith, he embraced a simple and austere lifestyle even after moving to Rome.

Justin was most likely ordained a deacon since he preached, did not marry, and gave religious instruction in his home.

He is best known as the author of early apologetic works, which argued for the Catholic faith against the claims of Jews, pagans, and non-Christian philosophers.

Several of these works were written to Roman officials, for the purpose of refuting lies that had been told about the Church.

Justin sought to convince the rulers of the Roman Empire that they had nothing to gain and much to lose by persecuting the Christians.

His two most famous apologetical treatises were "Apologies" and "Dialogue with Tryphon."

In order to fulfill this task, Justin gave explicit written descriptions of the early Church's beliefs and its mode of worship.

In modern times, scholars have noted that Justin's descriptions correspond to the traditions of the Catholic Church on every essential point.

Justin describes the weekly Sunday liturgy as a sacrifice and speaks of the Eucharist as the true body and blood of Christ.

He further states that only baptized persons who believe the Church's teachings and are free of serious sin may receive it.

Justin also explains in his writings that the Church regards celibacy as a sacred calling, condemns the common practice of killing infants, and looks down on the accumulation of excessive wealth and property.

His first defense of the faith, written to Emperor Antonius Pius around 150, convinced the emperor to regard the Church with tolerance.

In 167, however, persecution began again under Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

During that year, Justin wrote to the emperor, who was himself a philosopher and the author of the well-known “Meditations.”

He tried to demonstrate the injustice of the persecutions and the superiority of the Catholic faith over Greek philosophy.

Justin emphasized the strength of his convictions by stating that he expected to be put to death for expressing them.

He was, indeed, seized along with a group of other believers and brought before Rusticus, prefect of Rome.

A surviving eyewitness account shows how Justin the philosopher became known as “St. Justin Martyr.”

The prefect made it clear how Justin might save his life:

“Obey the gods, and comply with the edicts of the emperors.”

Justin responded that “no one can be justly blamed or condemned for obeying the commands of our Savior Jesus Christ.”

Rusticus briefly questioned Justin and his companions regarding their beliefs about Christ and their manner of worshiping God. Then he laid down the law.

“Hear me,” he said, “you who are noted for your eloquence, who think that you make a profession of the right philosophy. If I cause you to be scourged from head to foot, do you think you shall go to heaven?”

“If I suffer what you mention,” Justin replied, “I hope to receive the reward which those have already received, who have obeyed the precepts of Jesus Christ.”

“There is nothing which we more earnestly desire, than to endure torments for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he explained. “We are Christians and will never sacrifice to idols.”

Justin was scourged and beheaded along with six companions who joined him in his confession of faith.

Justin Martyr has been regarded as a saint since the earliest centuries of the Church.

Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians also celebrate his feast day on June 1.

#Saint of the Day #St. Justin Martyr

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cmdenning · 1 month

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{Author’s Note: This post includes table of contents, prologue, and chapter 1. P.S If you prefer another platform to read on I am active on Wattpad, AO3, Neobook, and Inkitt under the user cordialmoon.}

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Falling of Angels

Chapter 1. Opera

Chapter 2. Contact

Chapter 3. Dwell

Chapter 4. Flight

Chapter 5. Pearls

Chapter 6. Hotel

Chapter 7. Prodigal Son

Chapter 8. Flesh

Chapter 9. Dishonor

Chapter 10. Point-Blank

Chapter 11. Run

Chapter 12. Butterfly Garden Part I

Chapter 13. Butterfly Garden Part II

Chapter 14. Nightmare

Chapter 15. Daydream

Chapter 16. The Falling of Angels

Chapter 17. Old Lies

Chapter 18. Saturn

PROLOGUE & SYNOPSIS

Born in the year of the rat on January 31st, 1900, Cheung Fu. He was the son of two rice farmers in the outskirts of Hohhot, China. When he was born just in time for the Lunar New Year, his parents believed he would bring great wealth and luck to their family. However, Fu had not been easily persuaded to achieve greatness. Life was hard and grueling, his father was addicted to gambling and his mother had suffered addiction to opiates after white men from America and Britain flooded in, demanding disastrous trade and causing the heir to the Qing dynasty to flee. China seemed like it was in shambles and by the age of ten Fu knew the cost of trusting too easily, even if it was family.

Each week he earned his wages with his parents on the rice fields, and each week his father took his wages to gamble. His mother suffered delusions and oftentimes forgot to cook dinner or care for Fu and his newly born baby sister. That was Fu's first lesson about family. He knew then that blood meant nothing about loyalty or shared responsibility. It only meant oppression and when Fu reached his twenties, he was ready to make it big. His father always told him he'd never amount to anything, that there were snakes lurking in every patch of grass ready to take away glory.

Fu killed his father and his mother. They were the snakes in the grass, at least to him. When he took his sister with him, he taught her the same. Trust no one, not even family. That is how you thrive in this world, how you use it to attain your own greatness. However, the years that passed by Fu had married and joined the Nationalist party during the revolution, which of course they had lost to the Communists. Resentment for the world built up in Fu, he saw the new Republic of China as a farce and misguided, thus he built his own empire. The Triad.

At first, it was petty dealings such as moving small amounts of narcotics to buyers and sellers, acting as the middle man and building himself up. His wife was none the wiser as she raised their son and worked in the textile factory in the city. The petty dealings weren't enough for Fu who desired more. He wanted to make his family powerful and wealthy beyond imagination. He wanted to live as a king, not a poor son of a farmer. He hated poverty and he hated not having a voice. The perfect opportunity presented itself during the 1940's with the great war, Fu was indicted and served as an officer and there he made his connections. His wife raising their son and they had bought land in Beijing, slowly building their home.

Sparing the details, the Triad become the power house that it is now when our story begins. Fu is known simply as Grandfather or Master Cheung. His wife had died several years before their son was married. Their son Cheung Min married a woman named Lee Hua, together they had three children. Hana, Gao, and Lien. It was the first time that Fu had a family that honored him, all loyal to him and his wishes as he began to get older. Min was prepared to take over the Triad, learning all from his father. Everything was perfect, until on the day of Grandfather Cheung learned that his son Min and his daughter in law Hua were planning to make their eldest daughter Hana the next boss of the Triad.

Fu believed in tradition, honor, and expected roles of gender. There was no world in his mind that a daughter would come first before a son, in fact, he hated the idea so much that he regretted having a family. The paranoia of the Triad falling apart, his own son turning against him. It was all too much. Grandfather Cheung's worries all vanished when Min and Hua died in a car accident after visiting the opera in the city with Hana surviving the wreck.

Year later, Grandfather Cheung is tasked with raising his grandchildren in a way that he sees fit. To ensure that he is preserved in time and everything he had worked for remains. Hana is missing, Gao is primed to become the next leader of the Triad, and the youngest Lien is constantly trying to prove his worth to a family that doesn't accept him. However, this story begins with the greatest threat to the Triad. A traitor hides in the midst and Grandfather Gao will stop at nothing to oust this traitor, even if it means hurting the ones he is supposed to protect.

Welcome to The Falling of Angels.

In the gritty underbelly of the 1980s, where power is synonymous with the Triad, loyalty is paramount. Yet, when Lien, the youngest grandson of the mafia boss, succumbs to the forbidden allure of a Russian enemy, the fragile balance of power teeters on the edge of chaos. As the Triad grapples with internal strife and the looming threat of betrayal, Lien finds himself ensnared in a web of passion and deceit with Vitya Reznikov. In a world where privilege is bought with blood, Lien must navigate treacherous waters to prove his loyalty, even as he discovers that the price of selfishness may cost him everything. Welcome to a world where trust is a luxury, paranoia is a constant companion, and betrayal lurks in every shadow.

The Falling of Angels (TFOA)

by @cordialmoon

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

READING LIST:

@justwriteit

8CC JAN-FEB 2024

This book was written as apart of the 8 Chapter Challenge where writers are encouraged to give their best shot at 8 full chapters (1500-2,000 words or more per chapter) of an original story! It is featured on @JustWriteIt's reading list for JAN-FEB of 2024 along with many other amazing authors!

📚 LIST OF ON-GOING WORKS BY ME

I. The Falling of Angels ( 17 Chapters)

2. The Prince & The Sea ( 13 Chapters)

3. Ghoul and His Boyfriend (3 Chapters)

🔖 SHELVED WORKS

1. DRON (Harry Potter Fanfic) this is permanently shelved. I may in the future create a fanfic.

🐦 OTHER PLATFORMS: @cordialmoon on all!

- Neobook

-Archiveofourown

-Inkitt

- Youtube (audio version of the book)

- I hope you enjoy reading and please comment and share your thoughts!

✩✩✩✩✩ REVIEWS

"This is a hidden gem."

- greenfan7 (ao3)

"Heartbreaking, intense, and riveting."

- seladiel (inkitt)

"Crying my eyes out."

-KaiTheTwinkiePie (wattpad)

I. Opera

Beijing, China

November 8th, 1979

The Cheung family was affluent and well-connected to the elites of the Chinese government since its inception. Matters of narcotics trafficking, political corruption, and money laundering—you name it, they had their hand in it. Leading the Triad was no menial task and the issue of inheritance became the greatest concern for Master Cheung, the formidable boss, following the death of his son and his daughter-in-law. Their death was reported an accident; however, it was never comprehensively investigated. Though, that part of the story comes much later. Instead, the pressure befell the three children of the late Mr. and Mrs. Cheung and these children were now the future of the Triad.

Before the passing of their mother and father, the eldest daughter Hana was primed to take an apprenticeship under her father to one day lead the Triad. This plan was met with spiteful resistance from Master Cheung, who adhered a preference for a male successor. And after the funeral, her younger brother Gao was promised leadership over his older sister, leaving her without agency. Of course, Hana had felt stripped of who she was raised to be. Her future blown away in one fleeting moment of despair and loss by the hands of her stern grandfather.

Hana desperately attempted to advocate for herself, oftentimes demanding her rightful place. When that did not work she resorted to other forms of protestation against Master Cheung. At first, it was disruptive behavior like throwing lavish parties while he was away for business and leaving the estate littered with sweaty bodies and powdery counter tops. It failed like all of her attempts to undermine her grandfather and resulted in silent disapproval. Master Cheung dismissed it as brash hysterics, further proving she was unfit to lead. It wasn't until she found her solace at the Yuan Opera in the city, away from the soul crushing estate. She found where she flourished, where she learned to sing, dance, and act. It was her saving grace and she took to it like bees to honey. For her, she discovered she could find family with the actors. One in particular was her favorite, Master Liu, who could perform any role, sing any tune, and love whomever he desired. He seemed to hold within him the ebb and flow of yin and yang.

She loved how effortlessly he was connected with both the feminine and masculine qualities of his identity. And though he could be secretive, his flamboyant personality and talent for human connection shined through every endeavor. It uplifted Hana in ways that could only be expressed by immense gratitude and the softening of her heart. He gave her that feeling of power back, because in the Opera she was free to act as a queen, foe, lover, and friend. As if by ritual practice, she avoided the attention of her grandfather and balanced her time with her youngest brother Lien and the Opera. He was thirteen at the time and was quite similar to Master Liu. When Hana could not be at the Opera, she brought that magic to Lien and together they became inseparable.

Understanding her younger brother shared that same spirit that Master Liu had, she knew she could extend that lifeline to him. She recognized the way he flailed his wrist when he spoke, the way he adored brightly colored garments, and preferred music over sport. The way she would catch him singing in his room or smelling flowers when no one was looking gave her hope she was not alone at the estate. She did everything she could to ensure that Lien would never be made to feel how she did by their family. That light inside of him like radiant authenticity and pure love for the world and the people in it, the touches of femininity in his personality that would surely be crushed when he grew up in the Triad drove her to take any measure to safeguard his true self. His identity, his uniqueness, and his love for beauty had to be protected.

When autumn came and called the leaves to find their bedding in dry grass, the Triad became busier as the blanket of night was longer and more profitable. Lien was soon to be primed for leadership much like their older brother Gao. She witnessed he was beginning to lose that song inside of him each time Master Cheung slapped his flailing hands or confiscated the pretty things Lien collected. She felt an obligation to take Lien to the Opera, so that he may find that there are still places outside of the Triad that would embrace him. Hana and Lien snuck out during an annual dinner for the Triad, held to entertain socialites and government officials. "Where are we going?" The young Lien asked, his dark brown eyes watching the street signs and the dawn redwood trees pass by. "Somewhere you'll love, do you trust me little brother?" She asked and held his hand. He nodded his head with the hesitation of a beaten dog.

When they reached the Yuan Opera house, Lien's eyes lit up like fireworks upon seeing the beautiful Ming dynasty architecture standing out in the sea of growing modernity. "Here it is, little brother. Go on inside, they are expecting you." Hana encouraged and Lien, afraid to make that first leap, had moved out of the car. He cautiously went up the steps, pausing at the grand doors. Hana noticed he was apprehensive and she kneeled next to him. "I won't force you to go in, you know that," she whispered to him. "Will I get in trouble?" He asked with that fear of dishonor rearing its ugly head.

"Little brother, I won't let anything happen to you." Hana rubbed his back and he looked at her. The grand doors that suddenly began to open revealed the richness inside. It was Master Liu wearing the traditional female dress with long black hair and pale makeup that dazzled Lien immediately. Master Liu bowed and took Lien's hand in his, "Welcome to the Opera, to home." He smiled warmly at Lien, winking to Hana. The boy's worries washed away as the excitement of childhood imagination took the reigns. Once inside, he and Hana were greeted by all the actors, some of whom were practicing their singing and stunts. It was a place of freedom and joy that eroded traditional gender roles. Men dressed in the feminine style and women dressed in the masculine ones, everyone there had the fluidity to explore all facets of their identity, something Lien yearned for.

Hana took Lien's hand and brought him to the dressing room where Master Liu began to take out the xingtou dresses for both of them while a woman approached with a tray of white and red powders, a jar of black liquid, and a set of makeup brushes. She never said her name and was referred to as Mei Mei, or sister. She was mute, but her eyes gave way to glimpses of a rich inner world. Gently, she began applying the makeup to Lien's face. Master Liu dressed him and Hana soon after as if they had always been there. Lien could not contain himself, humming along to the musicians practicing outside. Mei Mei placed the jeweled headdress and wig onto Lien, he looked beautiful and for once Hana could see him smiling from genuine happiness. He was more in this moment than "The heir and the spare," Master Cheung would always say to Hana and Gao. Instead, Lien was gifted his own path.

This time was different, Hana had given Lien something he'd always have. She had given him his power and his voice in a life that told him who to be. Now, Lien could know it was up to him to decide where he belonged. "Come, little brother. Would you like to see yourself?" Hana asked and Lien looked at her with an enthusiastic nod. She led him to the full-length mirror and that joy blossomed into a radiance from his heart as he spun around, the both of them giggling. "We are so beautifully dressed, no? It would be a shame to hide this. Maybe we could sing our favorite song for the other actors?" Hana offered and Lien, like a moth to a dazzling flame, had no hesitation in his heart this time.

The two of them would go to the stage behind the closed curtain, "If you get scared, just squeeze my hand and I'll keep you safe, little brother." She comforted him. "Thank you, sister." He responded and the curtains opened with the sweet melodies of the erhu strings filled the Opera. The both of them preparing to sing Lakme, a hymn their mother used to sing to them. Hana started off the first solo and swayed her arms, bringing her fan to her face, fluttering it as her eyes looked over Lien who held his fan up to follow her lead. He sang as best he could for having the first performance jitters. When he stumbled, Hana helped him with his part. The entire acting team stood in the wings hands held over their hearts. Not a soul was straying away from a brother and sister expressing freedom. Lien loved every moment of it and that shaky voice grew confident, his song returning to him.

By the end, the actors applauded and cheered. Hana and Lien bowed on the stage and Master Liu looked like a proud theatre dad. Though, beauty in this life was precious and unfortunately a joy that was cut short. The doors of the Opera house swung open and hit the wall. Silence followed the deafening boom of the wood cracking against the stone. Hana pushed Lien behind herself, watching suited men crowd the entrance. It was Master Cheung and his men. Master Liu turned around, giving a grandiose bow to activate his persuasive and enchanting flare. "Gentleman, come! It's a beautiful performance, young Lien and Hana make quite the dazzling dans, no?" He chimed with airy laughter. Master Cheung looked the man up and down with a disgusted expression as if Master Liu was a diseased leper. The old man then looked to Hana with a crooked smile, provoking her begin trembling. Master Cheung rose his hand and one of his men shot Master Liu in the chest. The frilly fabrics tainted with blood and the man's body thudded against the ground.

The actors began to back away, panicking as Master Cheung lifted his hand again, "Lien, come!" He roared and Hana shook her head in defiance, "You can't do this! He did nothing wrong!" She pleaded even while Master Cheung boiled over with rage, sending his men to the stage to grab both Lien and Hana. They took them out front of the Opera house. Master Cheung firmly grabbed Lien's arm and dragged him around like a rag doll, aggressively wiping the makeup off his face, "Disgusting! No grandson of mine will be a sissy!" He claimed, ripping the headdress and wig from Lien's head, throwing him into the back of the car. On the other hand, Hana fought to get out of the henchman's grasp. Her grandfather faded towards her and she was let go, quickly steadying herself.

"You're a monster and mother and father would never let you speak to us like this!" She spat in his face and for this, Master Cheung slapped her hard, causing her to fall on the ground. "Set it on fire." He ordered shamelessly, and turned away from his granddaughter getting into the black Mercedes speeding off.

Hana remained on the steps of the Yuan Opera house, her eyes welling with tears as bright flames wrapped around the building. She watched as two of Master Cheung's men broke the handles of the doors to lock the actors inside the blazing inferno and she rushed to the doors. She heard the haunting screams and smelled the burning of flesh. Her home reduced to ashy embers by morning and she was forever changed.

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #thriller #bxb #crime fiction #original fiction #80s #fanfic #author #lgbtq fiction #booklr #mafiaromance #wip #thefallingofangels #gay characters #queer community #intense

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sekritjay · 6 months

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It was his Mum who started it. She was always singing round the house, turning any stray remark into a rhyme, such as “Let’s go to the show, we have to go now, you know….” Uncle Everett added to it when he’d play the latest records from Jamaica at family parties, the men in their suits all dancing to reggae and ska while he, Benjamin the eldest, would add on verses about cooking. Then there was the time he was called to testify at church and made a rap of “Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus” and all the Bible books, forwards then backwards. The pastors named him Zephaniah after that, a prophet’s name. So when people said later that he ought to be a painter, or a car mechanic, he clung to what he’d known since he was eight years old: he was going to be a poet, poet, poet.

They said, you can’t make a living that way. He was sure he could. It didn’t need much, just “a pencil full of lead…light and fine,…[that] moves with me through space and time”, and a mind burning with ideas. The first of which was, that he didn’t like poetry much. The world Wordsworth wandered in wasn’t his: Birmingham’s poor black end, all grey tin baths, grey pavements, grey sky, or London, “magnificent through its pollution”. He wanted to write about the lives of people now, walking those streets: struggling to survive with social services cut, lied to by politicians, oppressed by authority right and left without even knowing it. And then, as important as writing, he wanted to stir those people up by standing on a stage and letting rip the verse of fire.

He could make them laugh, too, before jabbing in a serious point. Britain’s diversity, for example, was worth celebrating, a pot of Picts and Celts to which had been added Romans, Saxons, Normans, Afghans, cool Jamaicans, fresh Indians, Pakistanis, Bosnians, Turks, all sorts. Let simmer; add respect. But “treating one ingredient better than another will leave a bitter unpleasant taste”.

Nowhere was the bitterness sharper than in black Britain. It was his main theme. As a child he ached with shame when schoolmates brought their favourite golliwogs to class; as a youth, a naughty boy deep in gangs, rackets and thieving, he’d felt these were the only options open. But even as a dread Rasta strolling real and regal down the street, with his poetry and novels in every bookshop and his face on TV, he still felt unsure about asking a policeman the time. Black males were stopped and searched five times more than white men. When young black men were killed, like Stephen Lawrence, white killers got off. When black men like his cousin Michael and a whole litany of others died in custody, there was no inquiry. And when a white woman sat well away from him on the Tube, was that because he was black?

Black people do not have Chips on their shoulders, They just have injustice on their backs

When Nelson Mandela was in prison he wrote a tribute to him, and when South Africa cast off apartheid he hosted a concert for him at the Royal Albert Hall. But he was all too aware that the legacy of colonialism still blighted equality even in Britain, the land paved with gold.

Some black entertainers sold out, of course. They thought going to the Palace and sipping champagne proved how far they had come. He couldn’t do that shit. The queen had met him backstage once, a nice old lady, but No Monarchy was his motto. In 2003 the establishment tried to award him the Order of the British Empire; he threw that thought straight back. If there was anything he had railed against all his life, it was the empire and all its works.

People sometimes got the strange idea that he had softened. Perhaps it was because he was interviewed on the BBC and went into schools to teach children to love words, have fun with them and think again about eating animals, who were people too:

Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas Cos’ turkeys just wanna hav fun… It could be yu mate, an not on your plate…

He also worked for the British Council, though mostly to prove that British poetry was reggae and dub as well as Keats. Murmurs even arose that he could be poet laureate. But then he would declare yet again that capitalism would eat itself to death, and urge people to break the law every day just to prove they weren’t entirely under control: by speeding, or wanking at the bus stop. At which point the establishment would cry, “Fuck! He’s still militant!”

His anger did indeed burn a long, long time. So many causes inflamed him. He wrote, and worked for charities, to address all the suffering he heard of: war victims, abused women, the homeless, refugees (“We can all be refugees. Sometimes it only takes a day”). His duty was to drag into the daylight injustice everywhere. On the cover of his anthology of 2001, “Too Black, Too Strong”, with poems about East Timor and Palestine as well as his home cities, his fist punched out smack in the reader’s face.

Yet he did have a more reflective side. It showed as he got older, when he moved to the remote Fens of eastern England, grew his own organic vegetables and thought more about “the African heart deep in my Brummie chest”. Religion, he had long ago decided, gave God a bad name. After trying and rejecting several, he took Buddha as his hero and self-knowledge as his creed. Meditation gave him a direct line to the creator, and didn’t blunt his anger. In fact, one wouldn’t work without the other.

When good at last triumphed over evil, as he was sure it would, he hoped it might be partly due to the poetry he had sown in people’s heads, especially young heads. The love of words, the drive of rhythm, the search for justice; the sense of prophetic power.

I used to think nurses were women, I used to think police were men, I used to think poets were boring, Until I became one of them.

#benjamin zephaniah

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subliminalbointext · 1 year

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Obedience By Fleur #3: A Mindless Desire

Santiago’s eyes rolled back as she sank into a mindless pit of pleasure. The closer she came to the edge, the more her thoughts faded.

It wasn’t that Santiago had forgotten her deal with Ed, the models of Fleur-de-lis, or the conspiracy she’d suddenly found herself at the center of. All of that was still there somewhere, the beating heart beneath the floorboards of her journalistic integrity. Santiago tried everything to drown out the noise of her guilt. Boxes of pizza, bottles of Grey Goose, a few doses of Molly.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Even the nostalgia of social drug use couldn’t dispel it. If anything, reminiscing on her wilder years in college only made Santiago more miserable. On one particularly bad trip Santiago found herself lost in the mirror, studying her own reflection. Could this really be the same body that had written a thesis on ethics? The same mind that challenged the entire culture of a multimillion-dollar news media empire? Santiago dug her nails into her forehead, tearing at the flesh to reveal the face of the monster that lived underneath. More and more she felt like it had always been there.

But Ed found Santiago before she could do any real harm to herself. He took her gently by the shoulders and eased her away from the mirror. Whispering positive reinforcements before placing a soft kiss on her lips and leading her slowly back to the bedroom.

He was surprisingly kind to her, though Santiago knew this was only an after effect of getting absolutely everything he wanted from her. Ed was a pathological Type A whose default setting was unspeakable cruelty. As the usual cocktail of drugs, booze, and simple carbohydrates failed to ease Santiago’s guilt, she found the kind of comfort she was seeking in Ed. It wasn’t in the way he kissed her, or how he assured her in that vaguely threatening rough approximation of a comforting voice, “You’ve earned every inch of that corner office.”

Ed was attractive in an old-fashioned way. His short hair, side-part, and clean-shaven face reminded her of a man she’d seen once in an old cigarette ad on microfilm. Sixty years ago he could comfortably play the role of a father in a Disney film. But men who looked like Ed had long expired. No, it wasn’t in the looks either. It was in the way they fucked.

Santiago admitted that she’d been weak in taking him to bed. Ed disagreed, going into his usual speech about the choices we make and the reflection of our inner desires. Santiago’s recent windfall in the form of a senior staff position at her old place of work, Trespass—her idea of a karmic fuck you to the organization that had threatened to derail her career just a few years earlier—had brought a stability that Santiago hadn’t yet felt in her adult life. And desperate to accept her new station, she tried to convince herself that she could make up for her betrayal of Kiley Mara with good works. If her journalism did more good in the world than the deal she made to get it, then she could justify moving forward. But that required some Olympian level of mental gymnastics that Santiago simply couldn’t fathom. Despite her regular resolve to cut all ties with Ed, her spiraling depression led her back to his bed each night. This was the only place she truly felt in control.

She closed her eyes shut as her head pushed back into her pillow, fighting the impending orgasm with everything she had. She exhaled silently, refusing to give Ed a single sound. Her eyes were clear when she opened them again, finding a second wave in herself.

Santiago lifted her head from the pillow and peered down her naked body at Ed between her legs. Her fingers clenched around his slick hair, and she pulled him hard into her pussy. “Take it,” she said with her best authority, but her voice shook from the pleasure. It took all of Santiago’s concentration not to moan. “Take every bit of me.”

And Ed obeyed, his tongue dancing dutifully over her throbbing clit.

Santiago’s body was on fire. She groped her tit violently and bit her lip to stifle that deadly moan. She wouldn’t give Ed a second of weakness.

This was Santiago’s secret weapon. The reason she continued returning to Ed’s bedroom. Because in the real world she had given up complete control, but here she was the mistress of everything. In the bedroom Ed treated her like a queen, and it felt good to see him grovel.

Ed was locked in, his fingers digging into Santiago’s thighs as his tongue ran laps to a silent rhythm playing in his head. He could feel her thighs tightening as she came closer, until her entire body rocked as it was overtaken by orgasm. Still, Santiago didn’t scream. All Ed could manage to get from her was a stifled moan and labored breaths as she shook beneath him.

Ed licked his lips, took a deep breath, and smiled. “That was a good one.”

______________

Santiago took the time that Ed used to wash up to check her phone. There was a message from her new assistant, Toby: Located the founder. She’s in Rio.

Santiago tapped quickly: Book flight for tomorrow.

Ed stepped out of the bathroom, drying his face on a hand towel. He asked, “How’d you get your name?”

Santiago, crosslegged on the bed, looked up from her phone, “What?”

“Santiago? What is it, like, a grandma’s maiden name or something?” He plopped down in front of her.

She smirked and unfolded her legs, spreading them over Ed’s lap. He began to run his hands gently over them. She wouldn’t admit it, but she loved the way Ed touched her. Sometimes it felt like he was actually in love, but she knew that she had trained him well.

“Are you pretending like you don’t know everything about me, Eddie?”

“It may surprise you but I’m actually not some international man of mystery. I don’t have files on every girl I’ve fucked.”

Santiago’s smile faded. “I was named for the city. My family is from Santiago.” She turned her attention back to her phone as Ed’s hands wandered.

Already booked.

“Huh,” Ed nodded. “My brother’s name is Dallas, but my dad just liked the Cowboys.” He found his way to her feet. “I need a favor.”

“I’m not going to blow you,” she said without looking away.

Ed swatted at the phone unsuccessfully. “Not a personal one,” he said. “It’s about business.”

“Since when do we do business?” Santiago asked. She noted the look on Ed’s face then, more curious than concerned, asked, “What is it?”

“There’s this congressman,” he began. “Brent, something. From some flyover state. Iowa, I think. He’s new, he’s young, wants to prove himself.”

“Why do I care?”

“He’s making a lot of noise about Stanley. He’s asked for a congressional investigation into corporations using mind altering technology.”

“I still don’t see what this has to do with me,” Santiago said coldly.

“Well,” Ed said, turning his attention away from Santiago and back to her feet. “You have experience in digging for information. You have a voice that people trust, a platform to use it with.”

“You want me to dig up dirt on Congressman Flyover? Why? A congressional probe was inevitable.”

“Yeah,” Ed said quietly. “I suppose so. Only, if we can get ahead of it, get our people on that probe, then it won’t turn out so bad for us.”

“Absolutely not,” she said. “It was just the one deal, Ed. We’re done.”

“Are we?” he asked, gesturing his head around the room.

“Fuck off,” she said, pulling back from Ed and settling against the headboard. “I’m leaving anyway.”

“Where are you going?”

“New assignment. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Why don’t you just brainwash everyone involved? Hell, if you’re that desperate to fuck with democracy, just throw money at it until it goes away. It works for everyone else.”

“Just think about it,” Ed said. “There’s still more I can do for you. A lot more.”

______________

Ed was aching when he got home. He and Santiago had been fooling around for months now, but she always got her way, leaving him unsatisfied. Maybe it was reward enough to return to his condo and find Kiley there, mindless and ready in her Obedience by Fleur lingerie.

“Welcome home, Master,” she said as she approached him at the door. Pressing her hand lightly to his chest, looking up at him with those distant eyes. “How can I serve you?”

“Fuck,” Ed said with a long, drawn out sigh. He hadn’t felt this horny since he was a teenage boy.

The mindless smile painted on Kiley’s lips faded just a bit. “Is everything okay, Master?”

“Santiago,” he said. “Bitch is killing me.”

“Let me help, Master.”

And Kiley helped in the only way she knew how. She took Ed by the hand and led him to the bedroom. Kiley had been a great fuck even before Ed had gotten into her mind and made it his. He fell back onto the bed and closed his eyes, letting his slave lead only because she’d been programmed to. Kiley’s movements were well-trained, like an automaton’s appendages responding to the spinning gears inside. She dropped to her knees in one quick motion, and snapped the clasp on his buckle, pulling his pants down to expose his hard cock.

Kiley didn’t have to work Ed too hard. He had so much energy built up from his night with Santiago that he was already on the edge. Her mouth was all he needed. When he came, she looked up from the floor and smiled that wide, empty smile, before swallowing.

Ed could breathe again. He sat up on the bed, but Kiley remained diligent on her knees in from of him. He looked down at that peaceful expression as she waited there, empty and eager to be commanded. He sat there for a moment facing her, contemplating, and then he reached out, pressing his hand against her neck. He applied just enough pressure at his fingertips to be menacing, but not enough to hurt Kiley. His hand was so large around her small neck. He could feel the blood pumping against his thumb. He studied her face as he held her. There was nothing there. No fear hidden beneath those empty eyes. Just a smile.

Ed looked disappointed. “I could squeeze the life out of you, and you wouldn’t make a sound,” he said.

“I would scream if you told me to.”

Ed released his hand with a frustrated sigh. “Just get on the bed.”

“Yes, Master.” Kiley replied. “Do you want me on top tonight?”

“No,” he said. “I want you face down.”

And that’s how Ed took her. Kiley’s cries were stifled from her face buried in the sheets, but they were cries of satisfaction nonetheless. Ed used her for more than just sex, but she never felt more alive than with her Master’s cock inside of her. Once again, she did only what she had been trained to do. Said the words that Ed had taught her. “Own me, Master! Use me!”

Ed had found a strange kind of theater in fucking one of his slaves. That he played a part in this production just as much as they did. But tonight, Ed closed his eyes and saw Santiago’s face. He imagined that Kiley’s soft moans came from her lips, and he drowned out the rest. Kiley continued to follow her script, responding to lines that Ed didn’t say. “No one!” she cried. “No one else owns this pussy but you!”

Kiley face down made it easier to imagine that it was Santiago. Ed hadn’t yet met a woman who didn’t succumb to his charm. He imagined that Santiago had, that it wasn’t just your garden variety brainwashing like Kiley Mara, but a deeply ingrained desire to be fucked by Edward Timothy King. She had denied him this pleasure for so long. He would make her pay for that, and she was going to love it.

“Do I still please you, Master?” Kiley asked Ed when they were finished.

Ed laid with his head propped up on his pillow, Kiley resting her head on his chest. He sat up as best he could to look again into her blank eyes. For a moment he thought he saw a genuine emotion. Clinical testing of Obedience lingerie had found that its wearers were capable of base, instinctual emotions, especially lust and jealousy, but that these instincts could be suppressed with thorough training. Ed liked to think he was thorough, but Kiley was asking questions that she shouldn’t have been able to.

“Of course you do,” he said. “You’re the best fuck I’ve ever had.”

“You’ve trained me well,” she smiled.

“Right,” he said.

“Do you love her, Master?” she asked.

“Santiago?” Ed laughed. “Absolutely not.”

“Then why does she drive you crazy?”

“She hates me,” Ed said.

“I couldn’t possibly hate you, Master,” Kiley replied.

“I know. She’s the only woman in my life with an authentic feeling and all I can think about is breaking her, bending her to my will until she’s my mindless bitch.”

“I can make her your mindless bitch, Master. I can make her just like me.”

“No,” he said. “She’ll come to me.”

______________

Santiago doubted her young assistant Toby when he first joined on at Trespess. He wasn’t her hire: he was someone’s nephew whose father had grown tired of summers spent watching him waste his life away in the pool house.

“I read about your first job here,” Toby said to Santiago when he first met her, his voice shaking a little in the presence of the boss. “I just want you to know that I appreciate everything you stand for. I think you’re very courageous.”

“Neat,” Santiago replied. Not like his appreciation didn’t make her feel like absolute garbage.

But Toby was a surprisingly hard worker and a naturally gifted researcher. He’d done half a bachelor’s in history at San Diego State before dropping out, which meant that he had some experience dredging through old newspaper articles in the library. Like most kids his age, he was chronically online and the speed out which he could track a name down sometimes scared Santiago. But she quickly found use for him. She didn’t tell Toby why she was so interested in Fleur-de-lis, but he never asked. He only did what was expected of him and left the rest to her.

Toby had booked Santiago the earliest flight available to Rio de Janeiro and within two days she was relaxing in her hotel, killing time until her meeting. Santiago knew that Ed was suspicious of her but she didn’t care. She’d made a deal not to break the story about Kiley Mara’s enslavement, and as far as Santiago was concerned, that was all she’d agreed to. So, she’d find a new story.

It was quiet in the hotel room. Santiago found that silence had been louder than ever since making her deal with Ed. First she tried drowning it out with television, but she couldn’t figure out how to connect Chromecast. So she laid in bed and accepted the noise in her head. She thought about the options she’d had. She knew that Ed was out there somewhere, probably fucking Kiley or one of his other slaves. That would have been her if she hadn’t agreed to walk away from the story. Her mind as empty as Kiley’s had been at the diner. Ed liked them on their knees.

Santiago burned up thinking about it. She’d begun to soak through her panties. It wasn’t just the guilt that led Santiago to imagine a life of slavery to Ed. When she’d been hired back on at Trespass, she left her fiancé. She said that it was hard to separate her love life for her work life, but truthfully she couldn’t look him in the eyes anymore. It had been so long since she’d had a man inside of her. She would never allow Ed the satisfaction, but if he took her will from her, if she was powerless to do anything but what he commanded, she knew that he’d fuck her good.

The silence in the room was broken by the sound of her moans. She came as she imagined Ed deep inside of her.

She freshened up after and had just gotten out of the shower and settled into bed when she heard the knock on her door. She was underdressed in her oversized t-shirt and underwear, but hadn’t expected her guest to show up in anything fancy herself—clandestine meetings are rarely formal. Santiago rose from the bed and slipped on a pair of tights before checking the peephole and opening the door.

The woman standing there looked like a goddess. She was half a foot taller than Santiago, carrying herself with an air of authority that seemed to make her a half foot taller still. She was gorgeous, and if Santiago didn’t know any better, she could have mistaken her for one of Fleur-de-lis’ flowers.

“Hi,” she smiled, a little bit nervous, a little bit turned on still. “You must be Elena Maxwell.”

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primrose-path-of-dalliance · 3 years

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on bren and feeblemind.

(cw: lots of caleb backstory. self-explanatory, i think?)

this isn’t something i’ve talked about on my blog yet, but since the campaign has begun drawing to a close, i want to make sure i say my piece on the popular theory that bren/caleb was institutionalized because trent ikithon feebleminded him to disable him.

my piece being that it’s exceptionally unlikely he did—at least as a premeditated plan. this kind of theory also falls prey to the exact beliefs ikithon has tried to exploit in caleb.

for our mutual reference, i’ll quote the spell description of feeblemind.

FEEBLEMIND (PHB) 8th level enchantment

Casting time: 1 action Range: 150 feet Components: VSM (a handful of clay, crystal, glass, or mineral spheres) Duration: Instantaneous

You blast the mind of a creature that you can see within range, attempting to shatter its intellect and personality. The target takes 4d6 psychic damage and must make an Intelligence saving throw.

On a failed save, the creature’s Intelligence and Charisma scores become 1. The creature can’t cast spells, activate magic items, understand language, or communicate in any intelligible way. The creature can, however, identify its friends, follow them, and even protect them.

At the end of every 30 days, the creature can repeat its saving throw against this spell. If it succeeds on its saving throw, the spell ends. The spell can also be ended by Greater Restoration, Heal, or Wish.

considering the characteristics described and implied by actors other than ikithon—caleb and astrid prominently—who are not motivated to deceive on ikithon’s behalf, feeblemind is not consistent with caleb’s mental break.

fact the first: when bren broke, he became violent and spellcasted.

when astrid describes the circumstances in which he was taken to the vergessen sanatorium (e89, 1:49:30), she refers to his lashing out as “creat[ing] a lot of sparks everywhere else” and rubs at burn scars across her neck. she says that they had to subdue him because he was too dangerous. all of these statements add up to a bren who was viciously spellcasting at his friends and mentor when he broke down.

this wouldn’t have been possible if he’d been feebleminded. feeblemind explicitly prevents the affected creature from casting spells or activating magic items. in that scenario, the only thing bren would’ve been capable of is throwing hands. from him? not very dangerous at all.

how do we know astrid wasn’t lying or intentionally deceptive? because she (and eadwulf) still cares so much for caleb that she risked her life multiple times to aid him. no one who would give caleb a map to a secret volstrucker vault with her own handwriting on it (e127, 29:29; and 30:57)—or intentionally fail to counterspell him when ikithon could’ve seen her do so—would lie to caleb about ikithon attempting to permanently feeblemind him if she knew.

to preempt the idea that astrid had set the m9 up: it’s very obvious she didn’t, since trent ikithon had clearly had no forewarning of a break-in. he would’ve at least been waiting in the vault, already prepared to subdue them quickly, if he’d known.

so it’s fair to determine that astrid would either be honest to the extent of her knowledge to caleb or make it clear that she couldn’t answer him. since she didn’t imply the latter, we can assume she was being honest. and because of astrid’s competence, it’s highly probable she would’ve noticed if his behavior was symptomatic of feeblemind over the years.

fact the second: bren’s mental condition repeatedly improved and regressed while he was institutionalized.

astrid states this in the same conversation about their subduing him after his breakdown (e89, 1:50:50). considering this with the context of their romantic relationship prior to his breakdown, her genuine care for him, and her rise to power that included accompanying ikithon frequently to the sanatorium (e127, 31:07)—astrid would’ve had the motivation and the opportunities to visit bren in person. she could’ve also kept well-abreast of his condition.

actual times of improvement and decline in the mental state that astrid first observed during his breakdown wouldn’t be consistent with feeblemind. although it reduces the victim’s intelligence score to 1, they still retain thought and their sense of identity without problems.

this is a maintenance of consistency and (relative) reason. feeblemind does not actually damage a person’s basic perception of reality. but the health of bren’s behavior throughout the years was instead very unstable.

fact the third: caleb doesn’t remember anything from the burning of his home up to his healing by the unknown cleric.

in the conversation with astrid in e89, he asks her what happened when he broke and explicitly says, “the last thing i remember is my home” (1:46:58). when he first tells beau and nott about his past, he explains that he doesn’t remember much of what happened to him there (e18, 2:51:54).

beyond the reduction to their intelligence, feeblemind doesn’t affect the victim’s ability to form memories. caleb’s keen mind feat and established narrative element of his eidetic memory would’ve still been present as well. therefore, feeblemind alone can’t explain such a significant, near-empty gap in his memory. he would still remember something.

even the possibility of trent ikithon altering them directly is precluded by the fact that the cleric’s healing removed the alterations to caleb’s memory. if all those years had been magically blocked away, they’d have returned when he was healed of everything else.

fact the fourth: sometimes, people really do just break.

nothing about caleb’s backstory is inconsistent with just... being a person living their life, even a terrible one. he was a young man that believed so zealously in his country and his purpose, abused by a powerful older man, that he did many horrible things and believed they were right. until finally he did something that he couldn’t process and broke down.

there’s two reoccurring, underlying assumptions i’ve noticed behind why this theory seems to be so compelling and popular:

caleb just seems so remorseful and traumatized by his double patricide. there’s no way he would’ve willingly murdered his parents. ikithon must have known and decided to preempt his inevitable betrayal.

everything we know about bren, especially from the horse’s own mouth, suggests that he had been willing (at least up until his mental break) to murder his parents. he was literally an extreme nationalist—a fascist, if you will. he was lawful evil (twitter source). he gratefully executed many “criminals” put in front of him, more than likely by burning them to death based on his ptsd. victims whom we now understand may not have been guilty of anything at all.

he was glad to do what he thought was best for the dwendalian empire, and he truly thought being volstrucker was the correct path. trent ikithon, his abuser, treated him as his favorite (e110, 3:30:58). because he believed.

that fervent faith, in fact, is the key to something like his breakdown in the first place. hearing the dying screams of his parents, bren was forced to confront a violent dissonance between his radical beliefs that condemned traitors (as he believed until the cleric’s healing) and the intuitive horror of murdering his parents that he couldn’t reconcile. this fathomless sense of betrayal is why caleb so deeply despised ikithon and himself.

a young evocation wizard who didn’t want his parents dead would’ve run into that burning house, feebleminded or not. someone magically compelled to set that fire would’ve understood what happened as soon as the charm left him and would definitely remember every detail once the cleric healed him.

caleb is remorseful and traumatized because he willingly murdered his parents. as well as many others.

it can’t be that simple. caleb was institutionalized for eleven years just because his abuser pushed him too far? there must be a more nefarious reason. ikithon even said he basically stored him for later.

putting aside the fact that bren having a breakdown in the way he did makes complete sense for his situation, ikithon’s “claim” that he orchestrated all of caleb’s subsequent years is not only something he never actually says (e110, 3:16:34)—it is a claim that’s patently absurd.

i’ve written meta that discusses this in the past (link here). essentially though, the number of moving pieces and assumptions that would be needed for such a series of events is ridiculously improbable. even assuming that ikithon feebleminded him—so that caleb’s mind would be intact when he ‘woke up’—even assuming that ikithon somehow procured the service of a cleric of the archeart—a banned deity in the empire that would oppose ikithon...

why in the world would he ever reasonably believe that caleb widogast, the man he viciously betrayed and lied to and abused, would do anything to benefit ikithon?

trent ikithon is a mortal man. he has power, yes; enchantment magic, authority, and a history of abuse and manipulation over caleb’s head, yes. but ikithon is a mortal man. not a puppeteer in the sky piloting people’s bodies.

he certainly wouldn’t have led caleb to a whole new family that would change everything about his life for the better. a family that would love him, truly—a family that would help him heal, bear the weight of his guilt, and find a real future waiting for him again instead of a self-destructive end. a family that would fight tooth and nail for caleb’s sake against ikithon.

abusers lie. their biggest lie, the one they always circle back to in the end, is that their victim is unique: that there is something which makes them deserving of abuse, and that their abuser is both right and inescapable.

ikithon is read as honest because he chooses his words carefully and has the self-confidence to believe it. everything he’s claimed about caleb and his past have either been implications that he encouraged others to reach for him or platitudes empty of everything except gaslighting intent.

caleb has escaped. and everything ikithon wants is to convince caleb and his friends that he continues to control caleb’s life, that caleb is special, so he can regain some influence over a man who’s come to command so much power.

the idea that caleb must’ve been feebleminded—that he couldn’t have just had a mental breakdown like so many other prospective volstrucker before miraculously, then strenuously, recovering to create a hopeful future for himself—falls into the trap of validating ikithon’s lies.

trent ikithon didn’t see and believe in caleb’s ‘full potential’ before anyone else did. he didn’t foresee a single ounce of the man’s struggle to put himself back together after what he suffered. caleb was not institutionalized to serve as a toy to one day pull back out of the closet. there was no feeblemind or other secretive plan that could only serve to obfuscate the brutal truth:

ikithon abused a boy until he shattered, and tried to hide the evidence. a crime that he’s committed against countless other children. plain and simple.

so that’s my piece.

caleb widogast—bren ermendrud—was not the victim of a premeditated feeblemind from ikithon, based on the mechanics of the spell. even more importantly, the narrative of his and ikithon’s stories would suffer if he was.

now,

A LOGICAL POSSIBILITY I WON’T DENY.

what if ikithon feebleminded him as a method to subdue him after the breakdown?

this is more or less an alternate theory that’s irrelevant to the points i actually wanted to make. but i want to talk about it anyway because it’s kind of fun.

fact the bonus: bren spent eleven years in the sanatorium.

eleven years is a long time. he would’ve been able to save every 30 days after the initial failed save. the exandrian calendar has about eleven 30-day periods every year. assuming a feeblemind spell cast on him just prior to his institutionalization, that’s somewhere around 121 possible save attempts, give or take a few.

what’s the likelihood of him actually saving? to go through the mechanics:

normally, feeblemind reduces a person’s intelligence score to 1, modifier -5. caleb, as a variant human, possessed the feat keen mind from the beginning both mechanically and story-wise. this would make his intelligence score 2, modifier -4, even after feeblemind.

as a level 1-2 wizard, he would’ve had proficiency in intelligence saves. this would be +2 to his save.

in total, the modifier to bren’s intelligence saves would be -2.

in order to cast feeblemind, trent ikithon would have to have been a minimum level 15 wizard. this leaves two possible proficiency bonuses to determine his spell save dc: +5 or +6.

it’s probably safe to assume that his intelligence score is at least 18–20, likely 20. this would be a modifier of +4 or +5. (his intelligence could be 22+ if matt wanted to be a real dick, but let’s assume otherwise.)

spell save dc = 8 + spellcasting score mod (for wizards, this is intelligence) + proficiency bonus.

this means trent ikithon’s possible spell save dc is somewhere from 17–19.

therefore:

at minimum—17 being ikithon as a level 15–16 wizard with an intelligence score of 18–19 at the time of casting—bren would have to roll a 19 or nat 20 to make the save with his -2 save modifier.

at a dc of 18—ikithon either being level 17–20 or having an intelligence score of 20, but not both—bren would have to roll a nat 20.

at a dc of 19(+), it would be impossible for bren to save without additional bonuses such as bless.

i don’t have the brainpower to calculate some real statistical probabilities, but depending on your opinion of trent ikithon’s probable capabilities at the time of bren’s mental break, he may have been able to save against feeblemind sometime during the eleven years he spent at the sanatorium.

naturally, this has the earlier-mentioned conundrum of remembering that return of clarity once he was healed by the cleric, should ikithon have been retrieved to recast the feeblemind and altered his memories. nevertheless, it may or may not be a fun thought to play around with.

#caleb widogast #trent ikithon #blumendrei #cr #cr meta #critical role #critical role meta #critrole #bren aldric ermendrud #bren ermendrud #abuse cw #mental institution cw #prim post #prim says some things #long post

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rhysismydaddy · 3 years

Text

Unholy Matrimony Pt. 1 (Nessian)

Nesta’s part of the Damnation Series.

OOF this took so long sorry. I rewrote it, changed it, then deleted it entirely about 9 times. I literally started writing the version before you, from scratch, on Sunday. All parts are linked below, so I’m only tagging people on this version! To go to the next chapter, there is also a link at the bottom <3

ALSO, an important caviat: Nesta is an only child in this one! I originally wrote it for her to be adopted and not know it, but it wasn’t really relevant to the story, so... idk. Just ignore that plot hole I guess.

Parts 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 -- pls like each part I’m insecure

______________________________________________

~Cassian~

“You’re getting married.”

The glass of bourbon halfway to my mouth pauses, because despite being known for being rash and unpredictable, even I’m surprised by the sudden change in conversation.

My eyebrows raise as I look over at Rhysand, my best friend and Capo, trying to figure out if this bastard is serious. His tone says he is, but that doesn’t make sense, because before a few seconds ago, the word “marriage” was in neither of our vocabularies.

He’s been single for as long as I have, although I’m starting to suspect he’s got a bird in the city. He’s too damn happy these days, and the other day I saw him laugh at something on his phone.

Which is weird, because we both know long-term commitments don’t really do well with our lifestyle.

We were raised to not give a shit about anything except the job. We kill without remorse, live in the shadows, and whatever other shitty euphemism you want to use. Settling down in some suburban, picket-fence prison has absolutely no appeal to Made Men.

Don’t get me wrong, most of us get married at some point. But never for love.

Some men choose a bride that’s pretty and sweet. Someone who will donate to charity and help clean up their image. Governors’ daughters, women from old-money families, and social princesses make up this category.

Some men marry to advance their station in the Family. Second sons who will never inherit the business marry daughters of Underbosses to get a nice boost to their status.

And then there’s the ones who are forced to marry by their capo--ie. me-- so they choose whatever attractive woman that’s in the Family and available. Those are always the happiest.

But regardless of the reasoning, marriage in the mafia is heartless, political, and for me, unnecessary.

I know I’ll have to pick someone eventually, but there aren’t a whole lot of desirable options at the moment. Not many of the other Underbosses have daughters that are over the age of fifteen right now, and I have no interest in doing the child-bride thing.

Plus, there’s no way I’d marry someone outside of the family. At my rank, it isn’t an option.

That leaves... a widow?

The only one I know is Ianthe, and considering I highly suspect she killed her last husband and the fact that she’s crazy, there’s no way in hell I’d legally bind myself to her for life.

So he must be joking.

I take a pull from my cigar and look over at Rhys with narrowed eyes. “Uh huh. Sure. To who, exactly?”

“Volchonok.”

The Wolf Cub.

The cigar snaps in my fingers.

“You’re fucking kidding,” I say, honestly hoping that’s the case. He’s either that or insane, and I’d hate to lock someone who’s like a brother to me in a padded room.

Rhysand’s unflinching gaze doesn’t change, but his tone morphs from that of my friend to my boss. “You will marry her, Cassian.”

“She’s a fucking Russian,” I spit, not understanding. That should be reason enough for him to be joking.

In our world, being Russian is a crime similar to stabbing the Pope.

We’ve been at war over New York with them ever since they decided to try and get a stronghold on the east coast, and I’ve killed more of them than I can fucking count. Now I’m marrying one?

“Yes, she is, and so is her father, Alexei Olov.” Aka the Bratva Boss responsible for blowing up half of St. Petersburg last year when the local police refused to buy his weapons. “You will marry her, move to New York full time, and run the city with her by your side.”

“Why? Two or three more years, and we’ll have the city anyway.” Every day the Russians get weaker, and I’ve been responsible for pushing them out of my city block by block.

So there has to be a reason we’re suddenly okay with the enemy.

Rhysand sighs. “It was his idea, not mine. Orlov has agreed to sell our coke in Moscow and Seattle instead of his usual dealer and will supply us all the weapons we need for five years. There will also be no more midnight raids, bullshit arrests on bullshit charges, or missing shipments. He’s offering you a dowry, too.”

I don’t need his money, but the old fashioned term makes me laugh.

“Yeah? And how much does he think his wolf cub is worth?”

His lips twitch. “Ten million.”

“She must be a real pain in the ass, then, if he’s going to pay me that much to take her,” I chuckle.

Not that ten million dollars is anything but pocket change for the man. Orlov may be losing the fight in New York, but the bastard is richer than sin.

Selling arms to half of the entire world will do that to a person.

“I hear she’s beautiful,” he says, trying to tempt me to not fight him.

“Then you marry her,” I shoot back, not ready to give up the argument.

“I don’t feel like it.” Fucking typical. Rhysand sighs. “You and I both know we can work this deal to our advantage, so what will make you say yes?”

He could order to me to say yes and I’d have to, but he hates enforcing that kind of authority with me.

So I think it over, make a show of lighting a new cigar. “I want Sera.”

It’s a burlesque club in New York I’ve always been a little envious of, owned by Orlov and operated by his men. I’d tried to buy it a few years back but hadn’t had enough leverage on the Russian to strongarm him into selling.

Now I do.

Rhysand--the only one who knows about my failed attempt to buy the place--nods and tells me he’ll make it happen.

“When’s all this happening, anyway?”

He looks like he might laugh. “Wedding is in a month, but she’s flying in tomorrow night.”

A quick laugh forces its way out of me. Also typical of him to give me absolutely no time to change my mind.

Well, I have a month. That’s already longer than any relationship I’ve ever had.

Sighing, I stand and shake his hand, cementing the deal before I can even lament the loss of my bachelorhood.

~Nesta~

“Chto sluchilos?”

I slide my gaze to my father, because seriously, that’s the stupidest fucking question I’ve ever heard.

What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Everything.

“Nichego,” I lie, assuring him for what feels like the tenth time as I look out the window. The plane picks up speed and lifts off, taking me towards an uncertain future, an uncertain place.

I might have told him nothing’s wrong, but inside, I’m screaming.

Three days ago, I woke up to find a marriage contract on the pillow beside me. There was a blank space where my name had been typed and a pen waiting for me to remedy that.

I still haven’t.

I’m not signing anything until I meet this... Cassian.

God, what an Italian name.

An image springs to mind, one of a slumped-over, hairy-chest beast with slicked back hair and a gold chain.

I know it’s stereotypical and hopefully incorrect, but I’ve never been to Italy and Alexei strictly forbids me watching movies that portray Italians as anything except revolting.

But looks aside, there’s one thing I don’t need to guess to know.

My future husband will be like all the other men in my life: controlling.

Men in the world I live in take what they want, don’t ask for permission, and feel like they’re entitled to anything and everything. I’ve dealt with it my entire life, so it’s more amusing than anything at this point.

I guess I’m a bit non-traditional in that sense, considering most of the women around me have no problems taking orders from their fathers or husbands. But Alexei and I figured out pretty early in life that wasn’t going to work for me.

As he frequently likes to tell me, I started telling him to fuck off when I was five.

What did he expect? All the kids I hung out with were the opposite sex and at least five years older than me, so my vocabulary and mannerisms became pretty... colorful early on.

Regardless, I’m just not looking forward to having to deal with yet another man who thinks he can control me.

“Ty vresh',” Alexei accuses, lips twitching. You’re lying.

“Konechno.” Of course.

Of course I’m upset, but I understand what’s happening. I might have found out about it three days ago, but I’ve known it was coming for far longer.

As the only child of the great Alexei Orlov, Wolf of Moscow and Pakhan of the Russian Bratva, I’ve been told my entire life that I will one day be used as a pawn to gain more power.

It would--should--piss me off, but I’ve also been told I’m to one day take my father’s place and run his company.

So by gaining more power for him, I’m also doing the same for myself.

Not that I really give a shit about that kind of thing. I started officially working for Alexei years ago, and I already have enough money saved to never have to work again.

But in the Bratva, there’s no getting out. I was put in this world by birth, and the only thing that will take me out is death.

In case it isn’t obvious, I’m not a typical business woman.

My father is an arms-dealer.

A less than legal one, if you believe the heinous lies the media spreads about him.

He sells weapons to governments, private armies, and whoever the fuck else has the money to buy.

He’s also built himself a shipping empire to haul said weapons around the globe, runs the drugs and prostitute rings in Moscow, and has enough real estate to rival most small countries.

It probably sounds like I don’t care, and that’s because I don’t.

I like what I do in the sense that I have a mind for business. I went to business school and graduated at the top of my class, and I enjoy running the clubs and hotels I have. Trained by Alexei himself, I’m ruthless in negotiations, enough so that people started calling me the Wolf Cub by the time I was twenty.

But despite being good at it, I’m not particularly fond of the aspect most people think of when they picture my career in the Bratva. I detest drugs, have never hired a prostitute, and don’t really enjoy selling arms to bad people.

The alleyway meetups, the broken bones and bullet holes, and the blown up houses are all a little tiring to me.

Sure, it sounds exciting. And for a while, it was. I used to lose myself in the chaos, used to enjoy coming home with busted knuckles. But I honestly just got tired of it.

Right now, I don’t have to deal with it as much because Alexei’s still alive. But when he dies and I officially take over the family business, I’ll have to be more involved. Even if the thought makes me want to sigh.

I pull out my laptop and look over the financial report for Sera, my newest club in New York. As predicted, everything’s running smoothly.

I turn the laptop around to show my father, grinning when he pulls out his reading glasses and leans closer.

“Starik,” I tease. Old man.

He flicks my forehead, then reads the report and nods. Then he turns to his phone, probably playing Angry Birds or some shit, and leaves me to work.

The plane ride goes by quickly, and by the time we’ve landed in Chicago, I’ve gotten ahead on my schedule for next week, slept, and changed into what I’ve chosen as the “meeting my future husband” dress.

It’s simple and sleek, the black material clinging to my curves without being obscene. It’s long enough to hide the holster on my thigh, not that I feel in any danger with four personal guards stationed near me at all times.

My heels click as I make my way down the plane stairs and across the tarmac to the waiting sedan, and once my luggage and belongings are unloaded, we head to the Italian Capo’s house.

We’re meeting here, finalizing the contract, and then Cassian and I are flying to New York.

My new home.

“Try to look happy,” Alexei tells me, his heavily accented English almost ridiculous to hear. He speaks English only when he’s in the states, and considering he hasn’t come here since I graduated B school two years ago, he’s a little out of practice.

“I’m ecstatic,” I say, intentionally using a word I know he doesn’t understand.

His eyes narrow, because it isn’t the first time I’ve used this trick, but he doesn’t call me out on it. We continue to ride in ecstatic silence, eventually pulling up in front of the Capo’s... house.

It’s almost obscene to call it that, considering it’s fucking huge. Like obnoxiously huge.

I heave a sigh, step out of the car, and take in my surroundings. The neighborhood’s quiet, likely filled with friends of the Cosa Nostra too scared to make any noise.

A butler--seriously, a butler--opens the door and welcomes us inside, and as soon as I step in, I have to repress the urge to roll my eyes.

The amount of dirty money in the air is suffocating. It drips off the vaulted ceilings, down the artwork on the walls, across the marble floors. It’s in the little details of the crystal chandeliers and the mahogany staircase.

Ridiculous.

One look at Alexei’s disgusted face says he’s thinking the same thing.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re rich. Grossly so. Alexei could have ten houses just like this, if he wanted them.

But he doesn’t. He owns property all over the world, but most of it is commercial or apartment complexes--property that makes him money, in other words. This, however, is a massive waste of capital.

The butler leads us further through the house and into an office where four men wait.

One is immediately identifiable as their lawyer, his over-priced cologne making me have to resist the urge to sneeze. The humongous man in the corner is hired muscle, if the boxy shape of the guns under his jacket is any indication.

The man behind the desk is obviously in charge, so I’m guessing he’s the Capo. Rhysand or Rhyland or something weird like that. He takes me in silently, bright eyes not seeming to miss any details.

That leaves the man leaning against the desk to be Cassian Azara.

My fiancé.

Our eyes meet, his golden gaze beautiful and wild, and I have to remember to keep my expression bored.

Because the stereotype, the horrible image I’d conjured up in my mind, couldn’t be further from the truth.

For one, he isn’t hunched-over. He stands tall, leaning a hip against his Capo’s desk with obvious confidence. But I see more than just self-assuredness in his eyes. He seems a little too rough around the edges, wild gaze almost like he’s daring someone to swing at him.

If the confidence didn’t already make him attractive, his looks sure as hell get the job done.

His hairs long and dark and curly, half of it pulled up in a rouge manner that clashes with the suit he’s filling. He has a few days’ stubble, too, like standing still long enough to shave just isn’t an option.

His shoulders are impossibly wide, narrowing down to trim hips and legs long enough to make him tower over everyone in the room.

His knuckles are tattooed and split open, and there’s a cut above his eyebrow that tells me I was correct to assume he’s a fighter by nature.

Usually, that would be a deterrent for me, but there’s something about the way he’s dressed in a dark suit jacket and crisp white shirt while also looking so untamed that has me cocking my head to study him some more.

He studies me, too, beautiful eyes taking in the long blonde hair and bright blue eyes offset by pale skin. He looks at the dress like he can see everything underneath, and I have the strangest urge to blush. Jesus, he’s toxic.

He’s attractive, is what I’m getting at.

Which is not what I had planned on, considering I’d been trying to think of a plan on how to not sleep with him, but suddenly that’s all my mind can focus on.

His lips twitch like he knows what I’m thinking, and I realize we’ve just been standing here staring at each other for a bit too long.

So I turn back to Alexei and shrug like I’ve seen what my future husband has to offer and aren’t impressed in the slightest.

I toss the marriage contract on the desk, grab the Capo’s fancy little fountain pen out of his hand, and sign my name on the blank above my name.

Cassian watches, but I ignore him entirely until the ink has dried. Then I look up at him through my lashes and wink, turn on my heel, and leave the room.

~Cassian~

I think I’m in love.

Fuck.

She hasn’t said a single goddamn word, but the way she looked at me has me feeling itchy all over, anticipation and nerves rolling through me. I feel like I feel before I fight or something exciting happens.

Like I’m primed and ready and need it to happen now.

Nesta Orlov, my bride to be, is nothing like I expected.

I was fully braced for some meek little woman, similar to most of my friends’ wives, to come in and smile and say hello.

But nope. Nesta didn’t smile; she came in like she was walking onto a battlefield.

And she didn’t smile. She looked me over, clinical blue gaze noticing too much, and left me feeling winded. God, she’s beautiful. Just looking at her made me hot.

She also didn’t say hello.

Just signed the contract and left, like this was nothing more to her than a boring business deal. I mean, that’s what it is, but... I don’t know, I expected more of a reaction.

I’ve heard from some Underbosses that their wives cried or raged when they were forced to sign, but shit if that were the case with Nesta. She honest to God looked like she didn’t care.

Alexei, on the other hand, does look a little pissed about the situation, but I couldn’t care less of the old man’s opinion. He’s signed the contract, so to me, he’s irrelevant. Regardless, he and Rhys proceed to iron out some of the details about the wedding and other shit I’m not paying attention to.

Then they shake hands, and the Russian warlord turns to leave.

He reaches the door and looks over his shoulder at me, and there’s amusement in his cold gaze as he mutters, “Udachi.” Good luck.

As soon as he’s gone, Roman and the lawyer follow, leaving me alone with Rhys.

He slides the contract to me, and I sign my name next to hers, making this shit official.

“This should be interesting,” he comments, vague as usual.

I sigh, because I have a feeling interesting isn’t going to cover it.

_____________________________________________________

NEXT CHAPTER

Tags: @elorcan-trash @januarystears @emikadreams @sjm-things @santas-dwynwen @thebitchupstairs @sayosdreams @perseusannabeth @cursebreaker29 @a-bit-of-a-cactus @elriel4life @girl-who-reads-the-books @shinya-hiiragi @aelinfeyreeleven945tbln @ireallyshouldsleeprn @highqueenofelfhame @rowaelinismyotp @nahthanks @ghostlyrose2 @lovemollywho @tillyrubes10 @claralady @tswaney17 @rowanisahunk @superspiritfestival @thegoddessofyou @awesomelena555 @booksofthemoon @greerlunna @jlinez @studyliketate @over300books @justgiu12 @masstrash @aesthetics-11 @bamchickawowow @b00kworm @sleeping-and-books @musicmaam @hizqueen4life @maybekindasortaace

#nessian #nessian fanfiction #acosf countdown #acosf #nesta archeron #cassian #acotar #acotar fanfiction #acosf fanfiction #a court of mist and fury

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tipsydipsydo · 3 years

Text

Pairing: Taehyung x Reader

Gender of the Reader: female

Word Count: 3.5k

Rating: 18+

Genre: Angst; Fluff; Smut

AU: Historical/Middle Age! AU

Warnings: arranged + forced marriage; gender roles according to the period; sexual themes + sexual language; Praising; Body-Worship; Nipple Play; Fingering; First experience of an orgasm; Loss of virginity (unprotected Sex)

Summary: You're getting married tomorrow and you want to say goodbye to your mare. There you met the stable boy Taehyung for the last time, who's your best friend and childhood crush at the same time. You will experience a stormy night full of love and passion and you'll give the biggest proof of love to him...

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With a thumping heart you peep around the corner, but the cold hallway with high stone walls lies quietly in front of you, only a few candles in their stands lit up the long corridor. The servants must have finally retired to their own rooms and even the last noises in the courtyard has fallen silent. It must be close to midnight, but you couldn't sneak away earlier. The danger of being caught has been too big. But now you grab the thin skirt of your white night gown and lift it a little bit up, so that you could walk as silently as possible along the corridor, across the courtyard to the horse stable. Light-footed you quickly put one foot in front of the other, the bright Full Moon guides you with its light the way to the stable. Quietly you open the small side door and slip in, where you’re greeted the familiar smell of horse, hay and leather.

Here, too, the torches were extinguished late. Just thinking about what a momentous day tomorrow will be will make you sick and silent tears run down your cheeks. Tomorrow you will be your wedding with a man who was already over thirty years old when you were born and whom you didn't even really know. He was here once two months ago so that you two could „get acquainted" with each other. Theobald, as he is called, has a bald head, an ugly potbelly and with every, almost frightening smirk you could get a glimpse of yellow teeth. At your first meeting, he had already patterned you with such a disgustingly lustful look that a cold shudder ran down your back and still makes you nauseous at the thought of it.

Your eyes are slowly getting used to the darkness, fortunately some Moonlight falls through the small ventilation hatches, so you can reach the last Box without tripping over something. Securely you open the door and gently push the butt of my beloved Grey Mare Estrilda to the side. Curiously, she lifts her big, noble head and turns a little to you. As if she knows what will happen to you tomorrow, she tenderly presses her head against your chest. Until now you had only cried quietly for yourself, but now, you bury your face in her soft, long mane and let your feelings run free. Why didn't your mother, when you were born, take action against being promised to such an old man?

But every time you asked her, she just shrugged with her shoulders helplessly and murmured softly,"that's just how it is, Y/N. I wanted to talk to your father, but he only saw the opportunity in finally reconciling two hostile Empires. With this marriage. You have to believe me, dear. I was hoping for something different for you. That you will be happier than I am. That you can live your life more in more freedom."

You have always been different, your curiosity, your stubbornness and your self-confidence do not correspond to the expectations one has of a daughter of the noble family. You love horses and riding, you can't do anything with jewelry, dresses out of expensive silk and velvet or perfumes. You loved to ride in the big hunt at least once a year and go hunting with your falcon Alan. You are not interested in the easy, comfortable life as the wife of a nobleman. You would much rather have helped once in the kitchen and learned how to cook a meal. But this was strictly forbidden to you, after all you are not a maid! Your wish is simply to be allowed to be as you want it to be. You do not care whether it is appropriate for a woman of your rank or not.

Your body slowly calms down from the convulsion and one last time you take the smell of your beloved mare deep into your lungs. Because she will stay here while you return to his estate with your new husband. That would become your new home. Although the wedding party will be celebrated here... but you will spend our wedding night with him on his castle. Then you will be trapped in the clutches of a sadistic, cruel and heartless ruler. You have heard some whisperings and rumors from the other Kingdom. The thought lies like a bitter, putrid taste on your tongue and your stomach twists at the thought that you have to show yourself naked to this disgusting man. You would rather burn at the stake as a wicked whore than surrender your virginity to him.

Suddenly, you hear the clatter of a fallen bucket and a dull cursing behind you, which is why you‘re startled and push yourself out of instinct into the darkest corner of the horse box. In vain, because the shadowy figure steps closer and opens the box door. Your heart beats fast, who is that and would he betray you for wandering around in the stable at night? But your anxious heart romptly calms down as you look into the soft and gentle face of Taehyung, the stable boy.

"Y/N? What are you doing here, wouldn't you have to sleep since a long time? After all, tomorrow is your wedding.", the last sentence spit Taehyung literally out. A relieved smile comes to your lips when you see your only and best friend. "Taehyung...", you murmur and fall into his arms, trying your best to suppress a sob. His muscular arms are wrapping themself around you, holding you and run tenderly his fingers through your hair.

The first time you met was on your eleventh birthday when you received Estrilda as a birthday present and he was assigned to look after the welfare of your horse. At that time he had already been fifteen, and now, nine years later, he has matured into a handsome twenty-Four year old man. He is the only one who ever understood you and even offered to run away with him when you found out about your marriage. But you would be looked for all over the country and everything would be more like a deadly skewer, which is why you sadly but thankfully refused. Above all, you do not want to expose your beloved mother to the cruel anger of your father, he would blame her if one morning you could no longer be found. It is inevitable that you must marry this disgusting, sadistic devil, whether you like it or not. But one thing you will decide for yourself...

Taehyung's masculine smell of sweat and horse calms you down more than ever and you snuggle up sobbing at his chest, steeled muscles from the daily hard work. You let your feelings run free and enjoys the gentle caresses he gives you. He is even more against the wedding than you and you have already guessed the reason for a long time. He develops feelings for you, which would go beyond your normal friendship-relationship. This assumption triggers a gentle flutter in your stomach and you wish you could be even closer to him than you already are. You both knew it, but you have never really said it out loud. For this fact requires no words. You’re in love with each other.

It was clear from the beginning that this fragile love has no future, and yet it feels so right, even though it is completely wrong. But he gives you the affection and attention that even your own mother could never give to you. Tonight, you want to give something to Taehyung that would belong to himcompletely alone. Nobody could ever steal it from him, this gift is irreplaceable.

It would be your virginity. If you have to marry such a cruel man, you want to give your innocence to someone who has proved to be worthy enough. Taehyung is worthy for it.

You detach yourself a little from his chest and look up into those beautiful dark brown eyes in which you‘re threaten to drown every time. Your fingers glide up to his strong neck, through his soft, black curls and tug on them gently until he moans softly.

“Tae... From tomorrow we will not see each other again. We only have this night left. I have already given you my heart, it will remain yours forever. But tonight I want to give you something else... My virginity shall be yours.”, you breathe softly against his lips.

Taehyung startles and looks down at you in disbelief. "B-But Y/N...I-I could never accept something like this! Such a thing like your virginity belongs to Theo-", he rambles overwhelmed and want to turn your opinion against that idea,but you just press your lips almost violently onto his.

"No. It should never belong to Theobald. If I already have to make the marriage covenant with him, then I want to be able to decide by whom my virginity will be token!", you reply to your lover and bite him hard into the lower lip.

He is still visibly surprised, but now your passion reaches him too and he respond with the same desire to your kiss. Your tongues find each other and starts a wild catching game. Heat rises in your bodies, reaches every pore of your body and makes this unknown feeling of pleasure pulsate through your veins. You long for Taehyung's love, one last time you want to feel his affection before you go to hell tomorrow. At least once you want to see heaven before you are banished to hell for the Rest of your life. The breath of your loved one becomes faster, he is panting, this kiss alone pushes you both in such a tremendous passion, which you have kept so forcibly hidden from each other otherwise.

"L-Let‘s go to the hayloft...", Taehyung murmurs at your neck in a deep, hoarse voice. You nod breathlessly, you are completely overwhelmed by the feelings that a simple kiss can trigger in you if you just love someone with your whole heart. Securely, you climb one by one the narrow wooden ladder up to the hayloft and you two throw tightly wrapped up into the hay. Your lips can hardly keep away from each other. The desire and longing for Taehyung increases every moment.

"Please...", you whisper in a whimpering voice, your body feels like it's on fire and this unknown longing for union drags you into a swirl. But Taehyung wants to get to know you and your breathtaking body, trying to memorize as much as possible. He never wants to forget how you look, feel, smell and taste. The cords of your nightgown are opened unnoticed by him, suddenly you just feel the scratchy hay under you and his loving hands on your skin.

"Beautiful.... So beautiful...", he mutters again and again under his breath. His eyes wanders over your exposed body, blown out eyes lingering on your breasts. Taehyung admired you silently since you’ve met for the first time, you always took his breath with your beauty away. Especially the last few years he realized what kind of effect you have on him, how you’ve grown up from the little wild princess to a confident young Lady. How his own and your Body has changed of the years and with it, how his maybe not so innocent desires awakened in him.

You are gorgeous, he can’t even describe your majestic body in words properly, you leave him speechless. You look better than in his sinfully fantasies he has at night, tossing his sweaty and needy Self around in Bed, trying to prevent those indecent thoughts about his own best friend. Well, his love of his life. He shouldn’t think that way about the princess, is he insane or something?! Still, he couldn’t reject his feelings for you, neither you could.

You both will end up in hell, you’re doing so sinful things right now but why they’re feeling so good? Why is it a sin to have such desires, to have the need to feel so close to each other, why are you sinning when you feel so much love, desire and pleasure that you couldn’t bear it anymore? You couldn’t understand and you would never.

„My royal highness, m-may I ask if you allow me to touch your Breasts?”, stutter Taehyung out, gulping hard and biting his lower lip in desperation. He knows he would hurt you somehow through fusion of your bodies but alone the thought of it hurts him right in his heart. Taehyung doesn’t wants to be the one who’s hurting you, he wants that you’ll keep this night as good as possible in your memory.

„O-Oh my god, Taehyung... d-don’t call me that, please just call me by my Name. ...and please, oh please touch me, I want to feel your Hands all over my Body!”, you pant out whimpering, arching your spine to encourage Taehyung in his actions.

A deep, longing moans leaves his lips, finally touching and kissing every conceivable part of your body. For the first time and probably also for the last time in your life, you will learn what this true love is. Something of which so many Minnesingers always sing about. It feels so indescribably good that the tears are just running down your cheeks, you can’t hold them anymore, you feel too good, too loved. Only this night you want to see heaven before you have to burn in hell as a deflowered whore until the end of your life. But this one time is worthy for you to sin. A lustful moan escapes your lips as his lips enclose one of your nipples and caress them tenderly with his tongue.

Countless whispers and pleads are falling from your slightly parted lips, you’re chanting his name like a mantra. Every noise that comes from your tongue let Taehyung‘s need to pleasure you even more grow. Almost helpless, as if you’re drowning, you grab Tae‘s strong Biceps and look up to him. Your eyes are sparkling from the tears which ran down your cheeks, the unconditional love in them is crushing Taehyung‘s Soul.

"Oh Y/N, I love you so much... I don’t know how to express them so they would portray the pure feelings I have for you in my chest, in my soul. Please let me show you something else...", he wispers into your ear, nibbling tenderly on your earlobe.

His other hand glides through the valley of your breasts, over your stomach down your sweet and hot center. You whine softly, you’re a little flustered, nobody touched you down there in such a way before. Almost automatically your thighs want to close again, just Taehyung’s gentle and caressing hand keep you from doing so.

"Shhh, my precious Angel, don’t be ashamed... you’re gorgeous and so beautiful, you can’t imagine how bad I want you. You smell so delicious, you’re driving me insane! Would you like to continue or should I stop? I will do whatever you want, just tell me..", murmurs Taehyung’s low voice, you can clearly hear the tremble of arousal in it. After you took a few deep breaths to calm your oversensitive nerves, you’re spreading slowly your thighs for him.

Taehyung‘s eyes are fixated on your face, watching patiently your facial reactions for any discomfort. Now, his hand is coming to life again and moves forward until it disappeared between your legs. His fingertips moves incredibly gentle over your soft pussy lips, slowly parting them and let his fingers soak in your lust juice. They run up and down, teasing your clit and preparing your entrance for his length.

Waves of Lust electrify your whole Body, every fiber and nerve is pumped full of sexual desire and you’re gasping for air. You’ve never felt that way before, you have no clue what kind of sweet spot that is but you want Taehyung to touch it over and over again.

Why does sinning feels so incredible good? You’re fallen for the devils work, you love sinning when it feels that amazing.

"Please, please, please... Taehyung, do that again, it feels so good-", you sob out, holding on his broad shoulders as if your life depends on him. Honestly, it does.

"Yeah? Does that feel good, my Princess? Do you want more?", rasps your beloved Taehyung. His fingers speeds up, flicking your cute little pearl with his thumb in a rapid pace now. His middle and ringfinger is pounding into your tight, pulsating channel and is stretching you open. His movement creates lewd squelching noises which makes you a little blush. The coil of lust in your abdomen grows unstoppable, you don’t know to handle this unfamiliar feeling. Your Body is shaking, whimpers and choked out whines filling the hay loft. You don’t understand what is happening, just pure unfiltered need and desire clouded your mind and you can’t think straight anymore.

"Oh my- Oh my god, Tae... I-I am... I don’t know what is happening-"

"I know Baby, everything is okay, just let yourself go... I‘m here, I will catch you when you’re falling apart..."

It just needs a few more strokes of his thumb on your oversensitive clit until the ball of pleasure bursts open and fills every pore of your body with pure ecstasy. You can’t hold your tears of pleasure back anymore, the small and so precious diamonds are rolling out of the corner of your eye until Taehyung’s Lips are catching them.

"Baby... are you alright? Did it felt good?", he asks quietly and rubs soothingly over the top of your thighs. Avoiding your center on purpose, he doesn’t want to overstimulate you even further.

"T-Tae... that- that felt so good... h-how did you do that? I-I can’t hold my tears back, I am sorry!" A weak sob leaves your lips and you bury your face into Taehyung’s chest. He caress you gently, whispering sweet nothings and praises into your ear, worshipping you to the fullest. Promising you to show you how you can make yourself feeling that good, teaching you how you can make love to yourself.

After you came down from your high, you gently grab the soft baby hair in his nape and move his face towards you.

"Taehyung, I want to feel you as close as possible, I want to merge with you, I want to make love to you- ...I want you.", you whisper and hold his face in your hands, looking him deep into his eyes.

"Oh, I will... I will serve you with everything you wants,my Dear. Please lay down and spread those beautiful legs for me again...", he answers and smile softly at you. The sweet love names he picked for you makes your stomach flutter und the blush on your cheeks is darkening. Taehyung gives you a last sweet smile full of love before your lips meet again and he pushes into you.

A short, stabbing pain flares through your body, but that was all. He holds still into you until you give him the permission to move. At first, it was a slow and gentle rhythm but your sweet moans and whimpers encourage him to go faster and in the end he looses all his control over his suppressed sexual needs. Making love to you in the most passionate way possible.

He shows you the heaven on earth and love takes on a whole new meaning for you. You trust him unconditionally and he shows you that you are equal. You are an equal woman, an equal person for him. He loves and respects you. All this is the most beautiful thing you have ever experienced in your life. You have given him your virginity and he has given you a son with these wonderful brown eyes and dark curls.

"Mother, why do you always cry when you see me? I didn't do anything today... ", asks your little six-year-old son and looked at you questioningly with those chocolate brown eyes that bring you to tears every time.

"You look so much like your father. Your real father."you say quietly.

"Did he hurt you, Mommy?", he asks with big fearfully eyes and you quickly shake your head.

"No, not at all! H-He had been the only man who had ever really loved me...“

„...the only one to whom my heart will forever belong."will you bring barely audible over your lips.

#btswritersguild #bangtanhq #bts smut #taehyung middle age au #bts x reader #bangtanarmynet #taehyung smut #bts medieval au #thehouseofbangtan #taehyung x reader #purplearmynet #bts x reader smut #bts angst #deflowered #bts fluff #bts x reader medieval

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jasonscaramel · 4 years

Text

Positions - The Mandalorian

Din Djarin x unnamed female reader (credit to gif maker up there I just work here)

warnings include: i was inspired by ariana grande’s new album, i also haven’t written in forever (much less for din—that’s never), 2.9k words, heterosexual sex, slight cockwarming, slight dom!din (but that’s all you’ll ever get from me)

author’s note before we get started: i have more of these planned so if you’re interested in being tagged let me know! also it has been forever since I've written so if you like it pls let me know

Being a multi-faceted human being isn’t that difficult, especially growing up in the middle of an endless galaxy. You were taught many valuable lessons growing up: cooking, farming, smuggling, hand to hand combat—the necessities to keep you alive. So upon your first ever meeting with a Mandalorian, it was no shock that he deemed you useful almost straight away.

Growing up with defected Imperial parents, the intelligence training you received from your paranoid parents was better than the Empire could offer. You were sneaky, sly, and downright deceptive when you needed to be. Talking a bounty into walking straight into their death was easy, as was putting them down yourself if you needed to.

You’re also a damn good babysitter. And kids love you.

All around, it was a no brainer for Din—after promising you passage to a nearby planet that ended up being a six month journey—to keep you on board. You were all attached to each other at that point, especially the kid. He found maternal energy quite soothing, and even if you weren’t his mother, it seemed as though having a woman to counteract all the Boy going on eased the little one’s mind.

So now you’re here, the kid strapped to your chest and Din by your side, the only thing in your way of the Razor Crest is the man holding a knife to your throat. He’s trying, and failing, to get ahold of the kid in the process. Din pulls out his blaster in a move to protect the both of you, and the knife shoves further in your neck.

“Come any closer and they’re dead!” The man shouts in your ear, and a squeal comes from the makeshift baby carrier on your chest. You look at Din, hoping desperately he’s making eye contact with you. You give him a single nod, then stomp on the man’s foot as hard as you can, moving to grab the knife from your pocket. The blade at your throat is piercing, but you ignore it to stab the knife into the man’s thigh. He finally pulls away in agony as you rip it out, only to shove it into his throat seconds later. He hits the ground with a thump, choking on blood, and the kid lets out a relieved huff.

“Let’s go, it’s freezing,” you say as your teeth chatter, wrapping your arms the kid and snuggling for dear life. You can feel the sticky warm blood trickling ever so slowly down your neck, but the wound doesn’t hurt.

Upon entering the Razor Crest and shutting the hatch, Din turns his attention to you. “Does it hurt?”

You give a slight chuckle, shaking your head. “It’s fine, Din. You get us in hyperspace, I’ll put the kid to bed and get cleaned up.” You left no room for arguments as you made your way over to the baby’s pram and began unraveling him from your chest. You noticed Din hadn’t moved yet, but you didn’t really mind. He’s very protective of his son, so it doesn’t affect you to have him watch you coddle the kid, coo at him and sing him to sleep, if only it puts Din’s mind a little more at ease. With the lives you live, it’s hard for either of you to have trust in anyone. The only way is to prove yourself, and you intend to do it every day. Maybe for a little more than trust, but hey, you’re not complaining having Din stare at you all the time.

By the time the kid is ready to lay down, the ship is up and beginning its course. You shut the little guy in on himself so nothing bothers him and head to the refresher. Looking in the mirror, you have a sizable cut on your throat, but it’s only surface damage. You wipe off the blood, put on the first antiseptic you can find and head out. Apart from that little scuffle, your day had been relatively uneventful. You stopped on this planet to get groceries and fuel, for maker’s sake.

Settling into the co-pilot’s seat, you turn to look at Din and find him already facing you. You give him a soft smile, reaching over and giving him three light taps on the beskar on his thigh. It was something you always did; it always comforted him, even though he never really knew what you meant by it. “You alright?” He sounds genuinely worried, and you imagine if you could see his face his brows would be furrowed in the cutest expression.

“Definitely,” you reassure him, lifting your head to expose the cut a bit more. “It’s superficial, no harm done.” You drop your head to give him a bigger smile for added convincing. “What’s on your mind?” You know he’s concerned, but there’s something else underneath it. There always has been something else with you two. It lies beneath every conversation, making its way in through comfortable silences and soft touches. It pulls at your heartstrings at the oddest of moments, like when he’s cleaning up spit up with his cape or gazing out at the stars in hyperspace when he thinks you’re not there.

“I just don’t like to see you hurt, is all. But you handle yourself well, so it’s hard to worry for too long.” You hear his tone get lighter as he finishes his short explanation, giving you a slight chuckle when he’s finished. You return it easily.

“Please, you have nothing to worry about. As long as I have you as back up, I can do anything.” It started as a simple sentence, but the longer your silence sat the deeper the meaning became. Neither of you broke the spell, just stared at the general direction of each other’s faces and hoping you were making eye contact. It made you giggle, and when he cocked his head to the side, you just shook yours.

“Well, I wa-“ Din was interrupted by a beep on your wrist, indicating the child had been moving around. You turned on the speaker and gave him soft reassurances and cooed a small lullaby.

You didn’t hear anything after that, so you returned your attention back to him. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?” You pulled your sleeve over the watch to show you were giving your undivided attention.

The words that come out of his mouth are so quiet you hardly hear them. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

A smile breaks out on your face, tears unwillingly welling in your eyes. “Me too, Din. Me too. I-“ You stopped yourself immediately. What were you going to say? Maker, you could think of a dozen. I love you. I want to touch you. I want to sit in your lap and feel safe.

You’re glad to hear the child crying from the speaker on your wrist.

It had been two months since your almost-talk with your favorite Mando. Since then, Din has parked on the edge of a rainy planet, leaving you and the child for the past week. Easy enough job, watching the ship and the kid, albeit incredibly boring. By day two you were considering what card games the child would understand. By day five, you took to cleaning the entire ship.

Din came back on day eight, the day where you decided to fix up whatever you could laying around. Granted, you’re not a mechanic, but you’ve hot wired enough ships in your day to know a thing or two. It’s basic things at first, fixing loose wires and buttons, tightening bolts. After poking around for long enough, you think you find a decent enough project in fixing the nest of wiring in the cockpit, so you get to work.

It’s not much more than busy work, so when the child started crying you let him sit in your lap and help you work. After doing more harm than good for a solid half hour, you began to try to teach him the task at hand. He couldn’t grasp the entire idea of what you were doing, but he was doing a great job at handing you the wires you needed.

It was a while before you heard the ship make it’s familiar noises as Din came onboard. You heard the bounty pleading, the whoosh of the carbonite, but you didn’t hear his footsteps come closer so you continued your task. The child was beginning to have enough, you could tell he was getting tired, but knowing Din was here you wanted to keep him up as long as possible. Give Din more of a break after working so hard.

“Hand me the blue one,” you paused, watching the child’s little hand reach for the wrong wire. “You don’t know colors, do you?” Sighing, you moved his hand a little to the left to put him back on course. “That’s blue.” He made a noise in acknowledgment, handing you the wire to clip underneath the control panel.

You heard Din finally making his way up as the child handed you another wire. “Red! Thanks, buddy.” He gave you a small, sweet sound before turning to look at Din. You followed suit, looking up from your seat on the floor. The child wrestled his way out of your arms, waddling over to his father and lifting his arms. Din picked him up, holding him tight and rocking back and forth slightly to soothe him. It was the cutest thing you’d ever seen, and you don’t even think he realized he was doing it.

“How’d it go? You alright?” You asked Din as you rose from the floor, dusting your hands on your pants. Giving him a once over, you don’t see any blood leaking from anywhere, so that’s a good sign.

“I’m fine, he just wasn’t that easy to track down.” Din kept his eyes on the little one, watching as his eyes drifted open and shut. He was fighting sleep, but Din could always get him to knock out quick.

“If you want to go put him down and get dried off, I’ll get us going to our next destination.” You could hear the rain beating down on the Razor Crest, so there’s no telling how much water snuck it’s way between skin and beskar. He gave you a gentle nod, turning and making his way down to the refresher. The baby’s pram was next to his cot, so he could do everything in one place.

As the ship began its kick into hyperspace, you heard Din’s heavy footsteps make their way closer to you. Turning on auto-pilot, you jump over to the co-pilot seat to give Din his back. When he sits, he double checks the coordinates, and once he realizes you’ve done it all right, he slumps into his chair. You reach over, tapping three times on his thigh.

“I can take care of this if you want to sleep,” your voice was soft, imagining him dozing off like the child was earlier under that helmet.

He tensed, shaking his head without looking at you. “I’m not tired.” His fingers twitched, reaching for a lever and gripping it hard. Reading him was always incredibly difficult, but the more you’re around him the more he lets out his emotions in physical cues. He seems frustrated, restless, was the bounty that bad?

“Then what can I do to help? You seem... tense.” The sharp intake of air was audible through the helmet, so you followed your gut and placed your hand on his thigh.

“Cyar’ika...” his voice trails off, as tense as his body. He’d never called you anything but your name, especially not something this soft, and you found yourself moving to situate on your knees, in between Din’s. Looking up at him, you could see the beskar of his chest rising and falling at a rapid pace. You ran your hands up and down his thighs, gazing up into—what you hoped were—his eyes.

“Is this okay?”

He cleared his throat, nodding his head. “More than.” After you hear those beautiful, consenting words, you immediately get to work. You reach for the waistband of everything you could get your hands around and pull. Luckily, Din helps you and before you know it his pants around his ankles and his cock is right at eye level. You take a moment, eyes widening once you finally realize where you’re trying to fit that thing. Din shifts in his seat with nervous energy, and you remember he can actually see you, so you continue. Soft kisses up and down his thighs, the occasional bite soothed with your tongue, all while pumping him with your spit slicked hand. Making your way back up his thighs, you kiss up his balls and shaft, giving the tip a kitten lick before you take him in your mouth. The groan that emanates from the helmet drives you further, doing your best to get used to his size. You moan when he finally hits the back of your throat, and Din grabs your hair with a growl.

“I need—I want...” Din stops, panting, desperately trying to pull you off his dick by your hair. You comply, jerking him softly while looking up at him.

“Tell me what you want and it’s yours. Don’t hold back.” Your voice comes out raspier than normal, and you feel Din’s cock twitch in your palm.

“I need to fuck you.” You could feel his need even through the vocoder, so you let go of his cock and—after removing your clothing from the waist down, wearing nothing but a tunic—moved to sit on his lap. Din grabbed you by your hips, pulling you close and hovering over right where he wanted to. Slowly, fingertips digging deliciously into your skin, he guides you onto the tip of his cock. You share a moan as he stretches you, slowly but surely, as you feel like you’re going to split in half.

“Kriff, Din,” you whine, finally seating your hips against his. He runs his gloved hands up and down your sides in an attempt to soothe before resuming their iron grip on your hips. “You’re huge.” You smile when you hear a deep, gritty chuckle through his helmet, and once you feel his guiding pressure on your hips, you finally begin moving.

It’s slow at first; your hands doing all the touching as you got used to one another’s bodies. As Din got more comfortable, he began thrusting into you, taking over your pace and morphing it into something faster, yet equally close. He pulls you so close your chest is tight against his, your head moving to bury itself in his neck. As his pace grew, your hands gripped onto his shoulders, holding on for dear life.

It was the best sensation you’d ever felt in your life. The stretch was just enough for an extra sense of pleasure, and the way he kept hitting your g-spot on the way out had you seeing stars. You press your lips against the tiniest bit of skin you can find, your fingers desperately trying to find purchase on his shoulders.

“Maker, Din, please.” You didn’t even know what you were begging for—it sounded like your voice came from far away, like it wasn’t you. He felt so good and strong and sturdy and his soft grunts and groans were filling your ears solely to heighten your pleasure. Everything about him made you want to never let go, keep him just like this forever.

“You going to cum for me, cyar’ika?” His tone is playful as his thrusts get rougher and out of rhythm. You know you won’t last long and neither will he.

“Need it, Din. Please.” Your sobs of pleasure are almost drowned out by the beskar on his shoulder, but he hears you—he always does. His left hand leaves your hip and trails down to where the two of you meet. He traces his fingers over your pussy, and where it meets his cock, then moves to your clit and begins his wonderful torture.

You’re so close, and he’s so good, rubbing your clit just right while his cock splits you open. You hear him breathe your name from under the helmet, followed by a string of curses you can’t begin to comprehend, and you let go, squeezing tight around him as your thighs shake. Din thrusts once, twice more before he’s buried as deep as he possibly can be and comes inside of you. The warmth inside of you makes you shiver with the contrast of the coldness of the cockpit.

The both of you are out of breath, holding onto each other tightly as you try to regain your bearings. His hands reach around you, encompassing your body in a hug as he runs his hands up and down your back. Upon realizing your legs are still shaking, he moves his soothing motions to your thighs.

“You’re amazing.” Mumbling into his neck, you grab at one of his hands and hold on for dear life. “I don’t wanna move.”

“Did I wear you out that well?” Despite the vocoder, you could hear the smile in Din’s voice. You share a laugh, and upon mellowing out, you give his hand three little squeezes. “Alright, cyar’ika, just a little bit longer.”

His gaze stays on the streams of stars as he holds your hand, rubs your back, and whispers sweet nothings in your ear. A little bit longer with you could never hurt.

#the mandalorian #din djarin x reader #din djarin smut #din djarin #din djarin x you #the mandalorian x reader #mandalorian x reader

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onlyanidala · 3 years

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onlyanidala fic archive

These are fics with titles E-I.

A-D J-P Q-T U-Z

searchable desktop version available here

more anidala fics can also be found in our fic tag!

the link for each fic can be found by clicking the title!

Title: edges of the world Author: glompcat Status: WIP/Unupdated Rating: T Summary: Leia Organa finds herself stuck in a strange alternate/parallel universe where the Empire never came to exist. Meanwhile, trying to navigate a galaxy ruled by the Sith weren’t exactly the Jedi Trials Leia Skywalker had expected. Or: Leia from a universe where Anakin never fell and canon Leia switch places. Now the two of them - and everyone else around them - have to deal with the consequences of their dimensional swap.

Title: eros turannos Author: emerald-leaves Status: complete Rating: R Summary: Love the Tyrant. Oderint dum metuant- Let them hate as long as they fear. AU set in time around the Clone Wars. Note: This fic has unfortunately been removed from Fanfiction.net. However, a PDF is available upon request.

Title: the exchange Author: misslearn Status: WIP Rating: T Summary: The Daughter has a bad day and it irrevocably changes the fate of the galaxy, twice over. Or: ROTS Obi-Wan and Anakin are swapped with their younger, TPM, selves. It changes things, in both parallels.

Title: five weddings and a funeral Author: skywalkersamidala Status: complete Rating: T Summary: Padmé's feeling gloomy about her perpetual singleness, but everything changes when she meets an attractive stranger at her sister's wedding.

Title: flat tire Author: skywalkersamidala Status: complete Rating: G Summary: Who knew something as simple as getting a flat tire could change the entire course of your life?

Title: for a moment Author: shelivesfree Status: complete Rating: T Summary: And, just for a moment, all the worries and concerns that troubled the young couple cease to exist. Fade away to just this. Husband and wife. Asleep. Dreaming of the sweet little life they will soon bring into the world and into their hearts.

Title: for a sith to love a jedi Author: silverdaye Status: WIP Rating: R Summary: Jedi Knight Padmé Amidala, the Heroine with No Fear, has crash landed on a moon after a starship fight with Darth Vader. Now the two enemies are stuck on a strange moon with strange rocks that prevents them from accessing the Force. They form an uneasy truce to leave the other alone. Yet after Vader sees Amidala bathing, she keeps coming back to him and he can't keep his mind off of her.

Title: for you, i’ll risk it all Author: estrangedlestrange Status: complete Rating: G Summary: Darth Vader was certain he had killed Padmé Amidala on Mustafar, but when a rebel broadcast reveals she is alive, he will stop at nothing to free her from what he assumes is captivity. Former Senator Padmé Amidala was certain her husband had been killed on Mustafar, but after seeing Vader across the room during a mission, she is sure that she had been lied to. Knowing the truth, she seeks out her husband, either to bring him back to the light or kill him, which ever was necessary.

Title: friendly competition Author: skywalkersamidala Status: complete Rating: T Summary: Playing Quidditch is awfully difficult when you’re in love with the rival Seeker. Snapshots of Anakin and Padmé’s 7 years at Hogwarts.

Title: fruits of malice Author: therealthing Status: complete Rating: T Summary: In an alternate universe, Anakin Skywalker was taken from his mother at the age of four. He was raised as Darth Vader in a loveless, brutal environment. His life takes an interesting turn when he has an encounter with a certain senator from Naboo.

Title: future imperfect Author: therealthing Status: complete Rating: T Summary: A time travel story in which Anakin Skywalker is sent to the future to witness the consequences of his actions.

Title: fundamental force carriers Author: tanarill Status: complete Rating: T Summary: The Sith Lord Darth Vader lived his life. He probably didn't live it well, but he lived it as well as he knew how. At the end there, he'd even managed to woman up and kill Sidious. But he was dying, and at peace with the past. The past wasn't at peace with him.

Title: getting home to you Author: irnan Status: complete Rating: T Summary: Anakin always said it was Padme's fault, but he was the one who spotted that broom closet. Fluff.

Title: the girl from harvard Author: shelivesfree Status: complete Rating: M Summary: Absence makes the heart grow fonder. It also makes it grow more paranoid. Padme is in her last year of Harvard. Anakin has just started at the University of Chicago. Though they won't admit it, their long-distance relationship is taking it's heavy toll. Will their love prevail or will the distance prove too much for both of them?

Title: give me a signal Author: stranestelle Status: complete Rating: T Summary: When Padmé Amidala is unable to contact Coruscant while negotiating a loan on Scipio, the Senate suspects trouble, and sends Anakin Skywalker to go check on her. Of course, the resourceful senator isn’t really in any trouble – don't flatter yourself, Rush Clovis – but there’s definitely some brewing.

Title: hand in my hand and we promise to never let go Author: gemma Status: complete Rating: M Summary: Anakin Skywalker was sent to build an elite Jedi team to help end the ten-year Clone Wars. Jedi Knight Naberrie trains hard to be selected and grows closer to the Jedi Master in the process. But with Jedi falling every day in battle, is it safe to follow your heart? Or will war take what's most precious to Padme?

Title: the hardest path Author: catiiasofia & misschrisdaae Status: complete Rating: G Summary: Padmé does what she has to for her family. Series: Three Paths Not Followed

Title: heart of a sith Author: therealthing Status: complete Rating: T Summary: Fourteen years have passed since the inception of the Empire. Darth Vader has been asked to go to Alderaan for an unusual reason, one that Vader soon discovers will change his life forever.

Title: heirs of light and darkness Author: skywalkersamidala Status: complete Rating: R Summary: After escaping the Jedi purge two years ago made him the most wanted fugitive in the galaxy, Anakin Skywalker has at last been captured by the Empire. He expects to be killed, but Lady Padmé Amidala, the imperial heir, has other ideas.

Title: heretic pride Author: fialleril Status: WIP/Unupdated Rating: G Summary: Like most Republic citizens, the Naberries have never spent much time thinking about the Jedi. But that changes with the birth of their daughter Ilaré. (Or, the AU where the third Naberrie daughter is a Jedi, Padmé offers Naboo as a sanctuary for runaway slaves, Shmi is a conductor on the Tatooine freedom trail, and Anakin jump starts a reformation. Or maybe a heresy. It all depends on your point of view.)

Title: hidden Author: disco shop girl Status: complete Rating: T Summary: Anakin is woken from his dream before it can warn him of his fate. Without that fear hanging over him he feels a disturbance in the force, and chooses to leave before it can manifest itself.

Title: high above the clouds, my love for you is eternal Author: rogue darth skywalker Status: WIP/Unupdated Rating: M Summary: Modern Aviation AU. Anakin is a pilot, Padme is a flight attendant. When they meet for the first time he is captivated by her. But much to his surprise she has a young son. This is a story about how bonds are broken, how families are made, and how sacrifice is sometimes necessary to get people where they are meant to be.

Title: hold me in your arms and i’m home Author: gemma Status: complete Rating: M Summary: It's the ten year reunion for students from Coruscant high and more importantly, a long awaited reunion for two former lovers.

Title: home Author: skywalkersamidala Status: complete Rating: G Summary: In which "Darth Vader" is no more than Anakin's playtime alter ego (happy Skywalker family AU)

Title: hypnotic takin’ over me Author: gemma Status: complete Rating: R Summary: "By the Force… Just how many times had he seen her like this in his dreams? How many times had he run his fingers over her skin? Filled his hands with her perfect backside? Yet, when he was, by some mercy or a cruel joke, granted true sight of her, he was oblivious."

Title: i do take two Author: skywalkersamidala Status: complete Rating: T Summary: Thirty years after their clandestine wedding on Naboo, Anakin and Padmé decide to finally do the proper wedding ceremony they never got to have, with all their friends and family present.

Title: i know your type Author: shelivesfree Status: complete Rating: M Summary: "Am I dead?" It slips out, accidentally. She turns her head towards me, a confused look on her face and tips her head. "Excuse me?" Flashing her an impish grin, I lean casually against the wall. "I must have died and gone to heaven, because you look like an angel." The look she gives me is far from impressed. "Do you use that with all the girls, or am I just lucky?"

Title: i wish i could rewrite the stars Author: gemma Status: complete Rating: G Summary: Suddenly, forever felt like something that could be real. They could make it real, the two of them together and out of nowhere, tears stung at Anakin's eyes. It just meant so much. Padme loving him too was the stuff of his dreams; something he'd only just dared to believe was possible. But she did.

Title: if blood be the price Author: cadesama Status: complete Rating: T Summary: Anakin promised to free all the slaves and it is a promise he intends to keep. Struck by visions of a slave uprising on Tatooine, he runs away to join the fight. Five years later, it his new alliance of former slave worlds that the Republic fears, rather than a Separatist threat. Enlisted to negotiate a peace treaty, Senator Amidala is dispatched to find Anakin, alongside Obi-Wan Kenobi, who only wishes to bring his former Padawan home.

Title: imperial obligations Author: skywalkersamidala Status: complete Rating: R Summary: Padmé's advisors suggest that she get rid of Vader and make a politically advantageous marriage. The Empress is less than pleased. One-shot.Series: The Empress and Her Sith Lord.

Title: in his very soul Author: catiiasofia & misschrisdaae Status: complete Rating: R Summary: Ten years ago, the effort to liberate Naboo from Trade Federation control failed. Chancellor Palpatine managed to rescue the young Queen Amidala and two of her handmaidens, formally adopting her as his own. The new father and daughter quickly manipulated the Senate into granting him emergency powers and creating the Grand Army of the Republic, letting the Clone Wars begin. Now, assassins are coming for Padmé Palpatine, and her father has entrusted her safety to his mysterious enforcer, Darth Vader. While neither bodyguard nor charge is happy about this arrangement, there is an attraction they cannot ignore.

Title: in search of absolution Author: rogue darth skywalker Status: complete Rating: G Summary: Padme bit her lip as she placed one last post-it that had the name 'Shmi Skywalker' written on it. She didn't speak. She knew he needed a moment to think - to process what she was silently asking him. 'Are you ready to accept her forgiveness'"She'd want to come to her only son's wedding," She said. He shook his head, "I don't think so. After everything…"

Title: in the past Author: silverdaye Status: WIP Rating: T Summary: It's been two months after Bespin, and Luke Skywalker is trying to come to terms with the events that happened there. During a dogfight with Darth Vader, both of their fighters crash. When they recover, they both find themselves on Coruscant at the end of the Clone Wars. Vader still aims to claim his son, but Luke has been taken to the Jedi Temple where he meets Anakin Skywalker.

Title: it’s a dangerous love affair Author: gemma Status: complete Rating: M Summary: Lies, masks, blood and sex. The criminal underworld will swallow you up and spit you out again. One wants revenge and the other wants peace. Can their affair bring the downfall of the two biggest gangs of the underworld?

Title: it’s like deja vu all over again Author: shadowsong26 Status: complete Rating: M Summary: Three days ago, Padme Amidala closed her eyes for the last time in a sterile white room on an asteroid at the edge of nowhere. Three days ago, she opened them again on a sleek, chrome starship, watching Dorme putting on the finishing touches to Corde's headdress, her own weighted braids a comforting blanket on her back. Padme decides to change things, decides she can save Anakin (and the Galaxy) this time. Except, as time passes, she starts to realize things aren't happening exactly the way she remembers...

Title: (it’s not so bad) being dead like me Author: estrangedlestrange Status: complete Rating: T Summary: Recently deceased Anakin Skywalker (killed in an taco truck explosion) finds himself not in the after life but recruited as the newest member of the undead, he’s become a grim reaper. He’s told that it’s his destiny but really he thinks it’s just rotten luck. Rotten except for the fact that one of his fellow reapers is Padmé Amidala, the most beautiful woman Anakin’s has seen, dead or alive. As he struggles to come to grips with his death and his new role in the universe, Anakin finds that taking souls isn’t the easiest job out there, he also finds himself falling in love. One-shot.

#anidala #fic rec #anidala fic recs #onlyanidala fic recs #star wars #sw #fanfic #sw fanfic

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thepastisalreadywritten · 1 year

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SAINT OF THE DAY (June 1)

"We are slain with the sword, but we increase and multiply; the more we are persecuted and destroyed, the more are deaf to our numbers. As a vine, by being pruned and cut close, shoots forth new suckers, and bears a greater abundance of fruit; so is it with us."

– St. Justin Martyr

Justin was born around the year 100 in the Palestinian province of Samaria, the son of Greek-speaking parents whose ancestors were sent as colonists to that area of the Roman Empire.

Justin's father followed the Greek pagan religion and raised his son to do the same, but he also provided Justin with an excellent education in literature and history.

Justin was an avid lover of truth, and as a young man, became interested in philosophy and searched for truth in the various schools of thought that had spread throughout the empire.

But he became frustrated with the professional philosophers' intellectual conceits and limitations, as well as their apparent indifference to God.

He urged him to study the Jewish prophets and told Justin that these authors had not only spoken by God's inspiration, but also predicted the coming of Christ and the foundation of his Church.

Justin had always admired Christians from a distance because of the beauty of their moral lives.

As he writes in his Apologies:

The aspiring philosopher eventually decided to be baptized around the age of 30.

After his conversion, Justin continued to wear the type of cloak that Greek culture associated with the philosophers.

Inspired by the dedicated example of other Catholics whom he had seen put to death for their faith, he embraced a simple and austere lifestyle even after moving to Rome.

Justin was most likely ordained a deacon. Since he preached, he did not marry. He also gave religious instruction in his home.

He is best known as the author of early apologetic works, which argued for the Catholic faith against the claims of Jews, pagans, and non-Christian philosophers.

Several of these works were written to Roman officials, for the purpose of refuting lies that had been told about the Church.

Justin sought to convince the rulers of the Roman Empire that they had nothing to gain, and much to lose, by persecuting the Christians.

His two most famous apologetical treatises were "Apologies" and "Dialogue with Tryphon."

In order to fulfill this task, Justin gave explicit written descriptions of the early Church's beliefs and its mode of worship.

In modern times, scholars have noted that Justin's descriptions correspond to the traditions of the Catholic Church on every essential point.

Justin describes the weekly Sunday liturgy as a sacrifice. He speaks of the Eucharist as the true body and blood of Christ.

He further states that only baptized persons who believe the Church's teachings, and are free of serious sin, may receive it.

His first defense of the faith, written to Emperor Antonius Pius around 150, convinced the emperor to regard the Church with tolerance.

In 167, however, persecution began again under Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

During that year, Justin wrote to the emperor, who was himself a philosopher and the author of the well-known “Meditations.”

He tried to demonstrate the injustice of the persecutions and the superiority of the Catholic faith over Greek philosophy.

Justin emphasized the strength of his convictions by stating that he expected to be put to death for expressing them.

He was, indeed, seized along with a group of other believers and brought before Rusticus, prefect of Rome.

A surviving eyewitness account shows how Justin the Philosopher became known as “St. Justin Martyr.”

The prefect made it clear how Justin might save his life:

“Obey the gods and comply with the edicts of the emperors.”

Justin responded that “no one can be justly blamed or condemned for obeying the commands of our Savior Jesus Christ.”

Rusticus briefly questioned Justin and his companions regarding their beliefs about Christ and their manner of worshiping God. Then he laid down the law.

“If I suffer what you mention,” Justin replied, “I hope to receive the reward which those have already received, who have obeyed the precepts of Jesus Christ.”

“There is nothing which we more earnestly desire, than to endure torments for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he explained. “We are Christians, and will never sacrifice to idols.”

Justin was scourged and beheaded along with six companions who joined him in his confession of faith.

St. Justin Martyr has been regarded as a saint since the earliest centuries of the Church.

Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians also celebrate his feast day on June 1.

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dingoat · 3 years

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[So, @cinlat has been dabbling in a Sith au for her Fynta, with cameo slots available for various other characters to come hang out. And just the little bit of contemplation we had about where Ahuska might slot into this particular version of events, I wound up inspired enough to dabble with a scene! So welcome to an Ahuska who still wound up adopted into Mandalorian life, but has not forgotten/repressed her early years. Rather than their usual easy friendship, she and Fynta wind up butting heads more often than not and bumping into one another more than either would like. Apologies if I’ve gotten Fynta totally wrong, I will put up a disclaimer that I’m throwing this out here without any sort of proofing from Cinlat so she gets the final call as to the authenticity of this scene! I’ve also borrowed @askshivanulegacy’s Blakk for the ride, I think I needed a little cathartic fluff to counterbalance all the fluff-gone-wrong happening elsewhere hahahaha.]

‘Not on My Watch’

“I don’t know why you won’t just let me take a speeder…”

Ahuska lifted a hand to cut him off, raising a finger and shaking her head with a smile. It was no secret that the young bothan was soft for this particular Imperial Agent, even if her clanmates were quick to remind her that no self respecting human Kaas citizen would pursue anything more than a functional work relationship with her, a rudderless, stable-working alien.

She chose not to listen to what her clanmates had to say.

“Because a speeder won’t pull back when it feels the ice getting too thin or warn you when you cross a wampa’s path, that’s why.”

Cipher Blakk rolled his eyes and pulled the zipper of his insulated parka higher, but it still wasn’t enough to keep his face properly protected from the frankly absurd level of chill. “It’s not as though I plan to park on an ice sheet…”

“Uh huh, and you’ll know exactly what’s under the two inch layer of snow that’s just fallen…”

He huffed, and she laughed, opening the stall door against which she was leaning to lead out the young tauntaun buck she already had saddled and haltered. “Quit fretting. Thunder here is a solid ride and a soft touch, he won’t give you any problems, and I’d trust him over any autopilot to get you safely back to base if something goes wrong.” Blakk felt some unexpected warmth rise in his cheeks, and while he wondered for the thousandth time why she cared so much that he got back safely, the buck lowered his head to snuffle through Ahuska’s hair. She raised a hand to give the tauntaun a firm rub on the cheek and horn. “Yeah, you’re a good boy aren’t you? You’ll be good for the Empire’s elite, won’t you? Won’t you my good soft woolly buddy…”

Ahuska’s ears flicked at the same moment as Thunder’s twitched, and a heartbeat later Blakk’s head turned as well, hearing the heavy rasp of an iron gate lifting.

Ahuska had been stationed on the remote Hoth outpost for the last month and a half, more than enough time to get to know the sound of every latch and door in the stables, and the animals that spent their lives here knew them even better. Her sky blue eyes turned to ice as she squinted, staring down into the lower level. “Who… oh.”

Her lips turned to a tight, flat line as she recognised the figure down below, and the coolness in her expression was enough to prompt Blakk to lift a brow. “Ahh, is something the matter…?”

“We’ll see. What is she… oh, oh no, no no no…”

The Cipher suddenly found himself with a set of reins thrust into his hands, with Ahuska taking the liberty of closing his fingers around them and squeezing tight. “What… what are you…?”

“Hold him. Hold him tight and don’t let go for a second, distract him with this if you can…” She shoved a pinkish rock of some sort toward him, and with his hands full he was forced to stoop and hold it under his chin, expression nothing short of bewildered.

“I don’t… oh, gods no,” Blakk had the profound discomfort of realising then that it was a block of salt, as Thunder pressed forward with an eager little warble and began to lick at it. He made a tiny sound of dismay. “Ahuska…!”

But she was already gone, not even sticking around to have a snigger at his predicament, darting down the stairwell rather than waiting on one of the stocklifts. “Oi! Oi, di’kut, what’n Kad’s name do you think you’re doing---!!”

The object of Ahuska’s anger turned, unnaturally blue eyes flashing with irritation, and then immediately turned back to the stall door she’d been about to open.

“Don’t you dare touch that! Who the hell authorized you to be down here and what the shab d’you think you’re doing opening straight up into the yards?” Rather than heading straight toward the Sith, Ahuska veered to the far wall where a harsh wind blustered through the now gaping entry to the outdoor paddocks, and slammed her fist against a set of controls.

“This animal is… Shen-Four-Seven, isn’t it?” Fynta Wolfe, Assassin for Sith Intelligence and Infiltration, glared at the Bothan stablekeep who stood firm in the gateway, as though she could somehow block her passage while the heavy gate groaned back shut. She cut a strong silhouette against the glaring white world outside, framed with reflected light and fluttering snowflakes.

“Star, yeah, that’s her.” Ahuska’s tone was curt. She didn’t enjoy dealing with Fynta any more than she explicitly had to. Never mind that the Sith knew far more about her than Ahuska was comfortable with, but the fact that Fynta thought she could just slip on some beskar and mingle amongst the clans as though she weren’t an out-and-out Sith grated at her terribly. The nerves struck were just… a little too close to home.

“Then she’s the one I’ve been assigned while I’m on duty here. And since I’m not here to take riding lessons, I don’t see why I need to answer to you of all people, stablekeep.”

Ahuska bristled as the steel gate locked shut behind her, putting an abrupt halt to the chill wind. “Maybe ‘cause every last one of these animals has been assigned to me while I’m on duty here, and I don’t give a damn if you’re the Emperor himself, you don’t take one outside without my say-so. Not a taun, not a vulp, not a gods-damned arctic womp-weasel! So you can take your fingers off that latch and let me do my job, or you can deal with the shab’la stampede you’re about to let loose. It’s stable master, by the way.”

Fynta knew Ahuska wasn’t the type to lie for the sake of a power trip. The bothan’s conviction and ferocity at this moment was enough to give her pause and slowly arch a brow, though her tone was flat and unconvinced. “Stampede. You mean the whole three out in the main yard.”

“Mmm.” Ahuska’s tone was equally flat, but there was something smug about the way she lifted her chin and stared down the bridge of her muzzle toward the Sith. “Those three first, if Thunder up on the balcony doesn’t fling himself over to beat them to it.” She gestured upward and over her shoulder with a thumb, toward where Blakk diligently kept a firm but wary hold of the tauntaun buck Ahuska had left in his care. The agent swiftly averted his gaze when he realised attention had momentarily turned his way. “Then the seven in the exercise yards ‘cause let’s face it, those fences aren’t gonna stop a buck in rut, and maybe the dozen in the outer…”

“Excuse me?”

“Excuse what?”

“A buck in rut?”

“I said what I said. I know it doesn’t look much like the seasons change here on Hoth, but believe me, there are seasons, and we’re in the thick of one right now. Your little Star there…” Ahuska dipped her head toward the stall door that Fynta remained precariously close to opening, though to her credit her fingers were looser on the handle than they had been moments before. “Is a very, very appealing little lady at the moment. She gets lead out through the back to be worked in the yards on the south ridge or not at all, and when she’s being groomed and treated in here this gate…” She slapped the metal surface behind her with the back of her hand. “Stays shut! I wouldn’t even recommend her for a mission today or tomorrow unless you were absolutely certain of no wild herds en route and let’s face it, you can never be certain of that…”

Fynta hadn’t exactly paled, but she was definitely looking less confident about taking her assigned mount out onto the slopes. She found herself feeling unwittingly grateful that the blasted bothan had been here to intercept her, and then an equal measure of furious at herself for feeling grateful at all. “Alright, alright, fierfek, just get me a more suitable animal ready as soon as you can, I’ve wasted enough time here already…”

“Of course, my Lord,” Ahuska’s grin was far too toothy, her flourished salute and bow far too exaggerated to be genuine. She enjoyed watching Fynta bite back her seething a little too much. “And let me know what shebs-for-brains gave you Star to begin with so I can have some words.”

“I’ll try to find out,” Fynta lied. No way in hell was she going to let Ahuska know that, in a bid to get herself in and out of Hoth as swiftly as possible, she might have forged a signature or two on a requisition document here and there, and arbitrarily assigned the tauntaun to herself. She straightened, stepping away from the stall, and stared Ahuska squarely in the eye. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Don’t keep me waiting.”

She didn’t give Ahuska the opportunity to respond, making her way smartly off down a corridor. The bothan might come across as meek as a runt nerf calf most of the time, but Force be damned if she didn’t find a spine and a half where her animals were concerned. Fynta couldn’t decide whether she was impressed or irritated, and just found herself hoping that Ahuska would be able to find the same amount of backbone if anyone ever pressed her about matters that remained better left unspoken.

She really didn’t want to see another decent Mandalorian having their arm twisted into Imperial service.

Ahuska, meanwhile, had every intention of keeping Fynta waiting; she had another Agent of the Empire to finish dealing with first, and she wasn’t going to rush seeing Blakk and Thunder off soundly for the sake of a single agitated Sith. Her hackles were already smooth and the set of her ears fully relaxed by the time she made it back to the upper level, though the way Blakk’s wide-eyed gaze settled on her when she flashed him a grin threatened to dishevel her all over again.

“Didn’t give you any trouble, did he?”

“No, you were great- I mean he, he was great. Thunder was… great. Perfect. No trouble.”

Ahuska might have plenty of backbone when it mattered, but that didn’t stop certain moments making her utterly weak. She coughed into her hand, glancing aside as she took back the reins and returned the remains of the salt lick to her pocket. “Ahh, uh, right, good. Good! Where have you got your gear then? Better get him all loaded up for you.”

---

[And now a bonus for everyone who got this far, hahaha, have some zipped up Hoth geared little Imperials. Ahuska thinks they’re both ridiculous for complaining so much about the cold.]

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certainstarlightqueen · 3 years

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Yeah, I'm still digesting the final episode of CritRole campaign 2, and as part of that process I made a final deep dive into my feelings about Essek and his crimes. After all, this is probably the last thing I'll ever write about this topic. If you're going to be upset by "Essek apologists" or whatever other derogatory term you prefer when dismissing other people's interpretations, stop reading here. You have been warned.

In my humble opinion, the Mighty Nein and the cast are very much overreacting when it comes to Essek's crimes... their hypocrisy when it comes to Essek is off the charts and has been ever since they learned about his actions. I don't know if it's a cultural thing, I get that Americans are a little obsessed with patriotism so maybe treason is a bigger deal to some of you than it would be for me. Feel free to call me an apologist, but hear me out:

The way I see it, Essek is guilty of 3 crimes (or 3 categories of crimes if you will):

1. Treason. Stealing the luxen, which indirectly started the war.

2. Betraying the mighty nein. Primarily by lying to them.

3. Actual war crimes. We know he was was involvert with torture and there has been hinted at some other misdeeds we don't know about.

Now how YOU judge these crimes based on your own hopefully law-abiding-citizen moral compass is one thing (and mostly irrelevant in this discussion) my argument is that the Mighty Nein should not be judging him as harshly as they do. Here's why:

1. Stealing the luxen was a crime against the Dynasty, but the Nein has no particular loyalty to the Dynasty nor it's religious practices. An act of treason against a nation they're not part of just simply shouldn't affect them as much as it seemingly does. A lot of the resentment towards Essek seem to be built on the idea that he "caused the war" which caused people to die, but imo that is an absurdly black and white way of looking at it. Was that guy who shot the Archduke and sparked World War I responsible for every life lost in that war? Of course not, the world was literally at the brink of war and it was only a matter of time until something pushed it over the edge. It has been stated time and time again in game that the Dynasty and Empire are at war with each other all the freaking time. That's why as soon as the luxen was stolen the Dynasty blame the Empire right away without any sort of proof. Wars do not start because one person does one thing, they start as a result of long running political schemes and clashing interests. Like I said, cultural factors may be at play here, but to me continously insisting that Essek must atone for every single life lost in the war "he started" is increadibly childish.

2. Ok, now this is the one that actually stands out as a good reason for the Nein to be upset because in this case they were directly and personally wronged. Building up trust with someone to the point where you consider them a friend only to realise that they lied and manipulated you is a legit issue and I totally get that they would be sceptical towards trusting Essek again after that. Although it should be mentioned that Essek, in his confession, specifically remarked on how he had already betrayed their trust before he met them. Like, he was already living on a lie when they became friends in the first place. Not to mention how he apologised profusely and never did something to slight the Nein ever again...

3. This one is, in my opinion, by far the most serious crime, but also one that the Nein have very little justification to resent Essek for without coming off as the biggest hypocrits on the planet. Now torture is horrific, there is no debate about that. Sooo....remember how Nott worked briefly as a torturers assistant? How Beau tortured that guard to death with acid? How the Nein themselves in the heat of (or aftermath of) battle have occasionally done things that would classify as either physical or psychological torture of people at their mercy? As far as we know these are the only true "war crimes" Essek has committed, and under orders from the Bright Queen nonetheless. Yet Essek is the only character ever addressed as a "war criminal". Honey, you're all war criminals by modern standards. Everyone you know who is even slightly involved with the war in this fantasy land is a war criminal. Including Astrid and Eadwulf, but no one ever told them to go give themselves up to the authorities to atone for their sins or whatever. Now not all of the Nein are at fault here, Jester, Caduceus, Yasha and Fjord all seem to realise that they are not in any position to judge and they tend to go easier on Essek. Meanwhile Beau, Caleb and especially Veth are so hypocritical it makes my skin crawl. Coincidentally these three are the ones who went full on murder hobo without a second thought just a few episodes ago. Veth was literally willing to do the exact same thing as Essek and risk another war for her own personal interests. It also doesn't help that Matt plays Essek as the most melodramatic f*cker ever, repeatedly declaring himself to be the worst person in existence and never ever standing up for himself. I'm sorry, but with the exception of Caduceus, the Mighty Nein and a good chunk of their allies are shady as all heck, and the way they, by the end, borderline suggested Essek turn himself in (likely to face execution) to "atone" when everyone else is walking away without a care in the world just comes off as tone deaf.

Feel free to disagree with me, but the aforementioned is one of the reasons I was disappointed by the conclusion of C2. I had hoped for some emotional growth from the Nein, but instead they kept the broken "war criminal" reccord going, even after Essek (as the only npc willing to do so) risked his life to help save the world. Honestly, at this point I kinda wish they would just stay away from heavy topics like this in C3.... if the cast wants to play a black and white game where the "bad man is evil and also bad" then that is their perogative, but it does make the characters come off as shallow and hypocritical. You can't first say "Yeah, the Gentleman partook in human trafficking in the past, but he's a cool dude. Total bro." And then turn around and be like "Yeah, Essek partook in torture in the past so he is an irredeemable criminal who has to work real hard if he ever wants to get close to being a good person!"

Anyways, this was all I had to say. I'm ready to move on from C2 despite the bad aftertaste.

Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk

#critical role #essek thelyss #mighty nein #criticalrole spoilers

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fandomnetworks · 4 years

Text

HE’S WEIRD.

PART 1 PART 2

Summary: Your past comes to light and the uncomfortable truth seems to intrigue the DEA agents.

Pairing: Javier Peña x Reader

Word Count: 3.6K

Warnings: Violence and Cursing

Authors note: A lot more of the reader’s past in this part, I felt like it would be a great foundation for future parts. I promise there will be more Javi interactions in the next. Also if you haven’t read the first two parts I’d highly recommend you do!

Thanks my lovelies.

Were you fabricating lies straight through your teeth the night your so-called friend left that voicemail? Absolutely, and you hoped Peña did not call you out on your bluff. His quizzing eyes made your stomach hurl inside. Thankfully, he was too tired to be "dealing with you" and stopped asking questions. He headed out of your apartment once you assured him you wouldn't go out again, and if anything happened, you'd call him or Steve.

-----

It had been about two days from the time Peña last visited your apartment. Instead, in his place, Steve would see you at night; he was far nicer than Peña and would even bring you food that Connie made or food he bought for dinner. But tonight, you offered him freshly baked cookies you had spent nearly half of the morning looking for all the ingredients.

Taking a seat at the dinner table, both you and Steve had a coffee mug in your hands. He usually stayed about 10 minutes before leaving, and today was no different. "Javi told me some guy is bothering you?" He said in more of a question than a statement tone.

Something inside you stirred; you felt something but couldn't explain the feeling. Your cheeks became red, as you thought, what else did they talk about you when you weren't around. But you also felt terrible that you were lying to one of the few good people you've met since moving back to Colombia. But you weren't ready; you hadn't collected enough information yet to bring your plan to life and take that motherfucker down.

"Yeah, an old fling that didn't spark back up."

"You know, you should be careful with guys like that," Steve noted, eyeing your facial expressions, taking a sip of his drink.

If it hadn't been for the boost of adrenaline due to the two extra spoonfuls of coffee in your cup, you would have never reacted faster than Steve when your phone went off. His arm was just about to stretch out and pick the phone when your body lunged forward.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Lifting the phone from the receiver, you avoided all eye contact with him. You knew the look he was giving you, and between the man you knew was calling and Steve's attitude, you would have collapsed.

"Hello?"

"Mira, yo se donde vives, no me estes jugando con tus chingaderas." (Look, I know where you live, don't play your shit with me).

"Yes, hi, how are you?" You covered the speaker of the phone and whispered to Steve, "it's one of my college friends."

"How am I? Fucking mad, next time I see you, I'll make sure you pay for this."

"Lovely," A smile appeared on your face, "I'm glad to hear you're doing great. Hey, but listen, I have company; I'll call you back in an hour. Talk to you in a bit."

Even though your heart was beating a thousand times a minute, your facial expressions remained free. You tried comprehending that he said he knew where you lived. He, of course, could be bluffing and lying; it wouldn't be the first time. This only infuriated you and made you want to catch him so much more. He couldn't hold your life, your emotions for the rest of your life. But if you did nothing to stop him, he would continue to torture you and the rest of Colombia.

It wasn't much longer until Steve departed, telling you that Connie was probably wondering where he was.

---

Before your brother became president and before you had left for New York, your family was already in the spotlight. Your mom was a well-known doctor, and your dad was in politics himself. That meant people of high society always surrounded you. In one of the many parties hosted by your parents, you met a man named Santiago Matias.

At first, he was the kind of man to open doors for you, call you love names, buy you gifts, and take you out to eat often. His personality and his charm won you over. After a few weeks, you soon found him on one knee proposing to you.

The first red flag you should have noticed and ran in the opposite direction was how mysterious and quiet he was about his life. All you knew was that he was the child of one of your dad's close friend group.

You never thought that the ounce of cocaine in his pockets was just a sample he was giving out to people. He was a drug dealer.

If you had known the truth and the extent of his dealings, you would have never been associated with him. You would have never accepted his gifts and gestures if you knew the refined gifts of luxury were bought with narco money. You would have never fallen asleep in his arms and let his hands roam your body if you had known those hands had been used to take life. And you would have never kissed his lips knowing that his commands caused the death of dozens.

You took off the nearly $5,000 engagement ring and threw it at his face when you confronted him of his "work." You told him you never wanted to see him again, and you hoped he rotted in hell.

Now, you were out for revenge. You felt disgusted that you were once associated with him and needed to bring justice to all the people he ever harmed. When you were 17, the only thing you knew was that you wanted to be as far away as you could from him and that type of lifestyle. But after all these years, you were out for blood, and there was no stopping you.

He had connections to Pablo Escobar; if you could bring Santiago down, maybe just maybe you could bring a piece of information to the table and help bring Escobar down too. Santiago was a chesspiece to Escobar's game, and you were ready to destroy their empire and slaughter the world they created.

You might be "just the president's sister," the damsel in distress, but you had your own demons too.

---

The night was coming to an end, and the clock on your wall read 9:48 p.m. The phone rang for a total of 4 times, and you were sure he wasn't going to pick up; yet, the deep voice of your ex-fiancé sounded through the speaker.

The call only lasted 20 seconds. He only got in a hello before you responded, "6 p.m., you only no one else, at Chonche's." And you hung up before he could answer.

You would get as much information as you could from him at Chonche's restaurant. Once you were close to him, you'd bring him down.

6 p.m. would give you just enough time to meet up with him, extract as much as you could and be back home before Steve's regular visit at 8.

Easy right?

---

Wrong.

According to the leather watch on your left wrist, it was 5:58 p.m. as you entered the restaurant. The knife on your waist dug into your skin every time you took a step. It was a good reminder that you had it in case you needed it. You had tried covering your face and image by covering your body with black clothes and a dark baseball cap. The restaurant wasn't particularly a family-friendly one. Now that you thought about it, you had never seen a single child walk in here, especially not voluntarily.

In fact, every, every person in the restaurant, which was only about five people, including the bartender, was a drug dealer, narco, or a murderer. You laid your head low as you took a seat on a worn-out leather stool at the bar, far away from the men sitting at the back of the room.

Your heartbeat could be heard in your ear, the sweat accumulating around your forehead wasn't going unnoticed by the fabric of your cap. Why wasn't Santiago here? He was always on time, never a second early or late. Something was wrong. Did he set up a trap? Was this a mistake? Was he even coming?

The bartender came up and asked what drink he could get you, and you ordered your favorite beverage. Your leg began to bounce due to the anxiety you started to feel in your chest. Looking down at your watch, it read 6:02.

The front door swung wide open, the face of your ex-lover was nowhere, instead in his place was fucking Javier Peña. Quickly ducking your head, you were surprised it didn't snap.

Had he seen you? Your cheeks turned a light shade of red as the bartender walked up and handed you the alcoholic drink.

Looking back at the entrance where Peña once stood, a sigh of relief escaped your lips; he hadn't seen you.

But then you began to think. Why was Peña in a place like this? Was he a narco? Was his DEA position just a stunt? Was Peña a Santiago? Of course, he was; you only found dangerous men attractive. Your hindsight was absolute trash. Maybe he grabbed the drugs he collected during raids and resold the-

"What are you doing here?" Peña's voice whispered in your left ear as you turned the stool to look at him.

"Are you one of them?" You asked, hoping to hear the correct answer and not the one you were dreading.

"What? No. Have you been following me?" Solely by him towering over you, he started to get some stares from the men across the room.

"I should ask you the same question. I was here before you." You took a sip of your drink, trying to remain calm. If Santiago found you with a DEA agent, he would think you were setting him up and would leave.

Instead of taking a seat next to you, Peña placed a steel grip on your bicep, "Answer my question."

"Would you at least take a seat so they can stop looking at us?"

"No, we're leaving." He pulled you up from the stool.

"Let go of me."

Without answering you, he pushed you out of the restaurant. You let him. There was something wrong due to the lack of your ex's appearance.

Once outside, the two of you walked a few meters away from the restaurant; he pulled you to the side, looked around to see if anyone was watching, and asked, "What were you doing in there."

"I was meeting someone."

"Who?" he was clearly upset by the way he corned you against the wall, his face nearly inches away from yours. He was so close; you could smell the lingering scent of his cigarette fumes, the cologne on his neck, and could see the fine lines that made up his lips.

"San-"

The sound of a loud explosion to the left of you ended with the tear of tissue in your eardrum, making you lose most of your hearing. A fire came blazing from Chonche's windows. The glass from the windows shattered around the ground you had just walked on a few seconds ago. The windows of the businesses around the restaurant broke as well.

Peña instantly launched at you; he used himself as a shield to protect you from danger. The gun that was once inside the worn-out holster was now in his hands as he pointed it at anything that caught his attention.

The sounds of car anti-theft went off; sirens were blaring as paramedics and police officers began to make their way. The sound of wood burning tickled your ears, the crackle in any other situation would be soothing, but right now, it made Peña hyperaware of all the danger around you. In contrast, you could barely hear anything. Everything around you was going in slow motion except for Peña's lips when he turned to look at you. His lips were moving, but you heard jack squat. The way his mouth was opening wide with every word he said and his eyebrows knitting towards each other, you could conclude he was for sure yelling.

You nodded, not knowing what else to say or do.

Which only made him more enraged.

He pulled you out of immediate danger, his hands holding on to you as he pushed you towards his car. He was silent. And you were in no bit surprised. With the amount of adrenaline running through your system, the only thing going through your mind was how to breathe normally again and how to get your hearing back. His main priority was to get you inside his car and make sure no one was following.

Once inside, you asked, "Where are we going?"

He glanced at you quickly before looking back at the road, "Good, you can hear now. Who were you suppose to see?"

"Santiago Matias," You looked at him for a reaction but were somewhat surprised his face remained emotionless. "He's my ex-fiancé."

The worn-out, bruised knuckles on his hands turned white as the grip on the steering wheel became stronger. "You were engaged to him?" Now, the face of disgust was plastered on his tanned face. His words were said through gritted teeth. If you hadn't been paying close attention to his words, you wouldn't have heard him.

"I didn't know what he did when I first met him." You were about to tell Javier Peña about some of the worst times in your life, and you were afraid. You explained how you met, how he manipulated you after the honeymoon phase. What did you know about life at the age of 17? He was nearing 28 when you met him, and he used your naiveness against you. He was just starting his killer life, and as soon as you found out about his "work," you broke things off.

One day while you were walking around a local market buying some groceries, you reached to a vendor's stand. You went to pick up a couple of apples when the elderly lady working the stand caught your forearm. She lifted your wrist to her eyes and began to yell. She claimed that the bracelet you had belonged to her deceased daughter. You were immediately telling her that the bracelet was given to you for your six-month anniversary. She disagreed, pulling an old folded picture from her pocket. It had her daughter with the exact bracelet, down to the customized stones. She asked you to take it off, and you'd find the name Amalia engraved inside of it.

Your face became red; you knew that the name was on it. Of course, you did; you bragged about it to your friends. It was one of the most beautiful bracelets you'd seen. The word Amalia, you had assumed was a brand name. Never had it crossed your mind that it was a personal touch for a girl.

Santiago was known to give you gifts at all times of the week. He seemed like the kind of guy your dad would be proud of. Little did you know that as the elderly lady spoke about your fiancé, your relationship would soon begin to fall apart like a game of Jenga. Never in your worst nightmares did it ever cross your mind that the gifts he got you was bought with narco money or collected from deceased bodies. The woman told you that Santiago Matias had killed her family, including her 3-month-old grandson. The only reason that she was saved was because one of Matias' men knew her personally.

There and then, you took off the bracelet and handed it to the rightful owner. You didn't know what to say or do. Due to the man you were in love with, her whole family was gone. How many other families had he ruined? That very day, you broke off the wedding and told him you wished him a slow death. That you never wanted to see him again, and if he ever came near you again, you'd kill him yourself.

You left to get your bachelor's that very fall and seemed determined never to come back. However, as the short four years passed, and as you began to study to enter a masters program, you were pulled back home. The threat against your brother made him weary, and he wanted you close to home where he could protect you. That's how you ended up trading your comfy apartment with the hot neighbor to Colombia's small apartment. Thankfully the only thing that didn't change was the hot neighbor part.

Once you had finished explaining that time in your life, Peña made eye contact with you as the car came to a stop due to the traffic, "Why didn't you do anything?" The mood in the car shifted from frustration to confusion.

That was your worst regret of your entire life. Maybe if you had stopped him back then, he wouldn't have an empire today with the world's most famous narco. You felt uncomfortable under his harsh and intense gaze. The right words seemed to escape your lips as you tried forming the correct sentence. "I...I don't know. I didn't want to think that the man I was willing to marry could do such a thing."

You closed your eyes, not wanting to look at him, and took a deep breath. You had never told anyone the real story behind your first and probably only fiancé you'll ever have. Turning your head towards the window, you opened your eyes and looked at the passing cars as traffic began to lighten up. The only way you thought you could make things up was by bringing him down.

And apparently, Peña thought the same way, "Well, I don't know what to tell you Y/n." The car began to move, and so did the wheels of his brain as he began to plan out a solution.

"Listen," You turned to look at him, "I've been trying to set up a meeting with him for a while now. Today obviously didn't go as well as I had planned. But I'll try again. I can set up another meeting. It's the least I can do, right?"

He pulled into the base where Steve and Carrillo were, setting things up for tomorrow. Peña looked at you with a look of 'are-you-stupid.' "No what? He just tried killing you." He pulled into a parking spot.

"Exactly-" Both of you got out of the vehicle, walked towards the building; his long stride compared to yours made you trail behind him. "I-we can use that and-"

"No." He cut you off, just as Carrillo and Steve walked out of the building. You looked down at your watch; it read 7:02.

"Hey, where have you been?" Steve questioned Peña, quickly saying hi to you before pulling Peña to the side and updating him on the movement of their operation.

When Carrillo approached you, out of instinct, you gave him a quick hug. It had been a while since you had seen the handsome Colonel, and you did miss his snarky remarks. At first, he was tense but soon loosened up to your touch and hugged you back.

Out of the corner of your eye, you could see Peña staring at your interactions with Carrillo.

Small talk emerged. You asked him how he'd been and asked about the two soldiers who had stayed by your side all those weeks. In return, he asked if you were readjusting to the climate of Colombia. You also admitted you had missed him and invited him over to your apartment. (A girls gotta do what a girls gotta do)

But before he could ask you the purpose of your visit, you told him you had information about Santiago Matias. Which he instantly became intrigued. Once the Colonel caught on to Peña's lingering eyes, he asked you, "What's his problem?" The two of you fully turned to peer at him. Javier quickly glanced at Steve, pretending y'all hadn't caught him.

Brushing it off, you said, "I don't know, he's weird." A chuckle came out of Carrillo. He signaled for both men to follow him as the four of you made it inside the base.

---

Inside, you and Steve took a seat at a large table in Horacio's office, while he and Peña stood in front of you.

Quickly telling them the truth about your relationship with Santiago, you told them everything Peña had just heard and the explosion at the restaurant. In a heartbeat, you were getting a stern look from Carrillo and Steve telling you how stupid your plan was, asking you what the hell were you thinking.

"So what Peña and I were thinking was, I could bait him out by meeting up with him again."

"I didn-"

"What?" Steve yelled, looking at you and then at Peña, giving him a look of, are-you-serious.

"I did not agree to that," Peña stated, taking a seat on the table next to Steve. "We can use Y/n to..."

Fast forward an hour, countless coffee and whiskey refills, papers skewed around the table, and on the bulletin board, you had a phone to your ear. This time the room was full of soldiers and some higher uppers, which did not help your nerves. Carrillo, Murphy, and Peña sat around you, urgently and stressful waiting for Santiago to pick up.

After the second ring, you could hear your heart pounding in your ears. It felt so odd that the man you were willing to marry all those years back, now made you afraid.

Just as the third ring sounded through your ears, he picked up.

You motioned for Peña to start recording.

"Hello?"

"I'm alive, mi amor."

TAG LIST:

(Let me know if you want to be added!)

luvzoria smoke-and-sunset xletmetaste-yoursmilex youcancallmeaphrodite

Also sorry for any typos I’ve been editing and revising this for the past week and I have like 3 other versions of how this could have played out. ALSO I really want to incorporate a jealous Javi in the next chapter.

Again, thanks lovelies for taking a moment to read!

#javier peña x reader #javier pena x reader #Pedro Pascal #pedro pascal x reader #narcos #narcos imagines #Steve murphy #horacio carrillo

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