#and instead realized we are being systematically poisoned

[greater-than-the-sword]

Something my mom mentioned to me when I brought up the proposed gf/df diet change was that for many people the ACTUAL impact to their health from such a change is negative, because before, they were getting all their minor nutrients/vitamins from enriched flours and by cutting gluten, end up vitamin deficient, especially in vitamin B12 among other things. What's more, the things people typically replace dairy with especially in products (soy, margarine, hydrogenated oils, seed oils) are more unhealthy for the average person than dairy. Not to mention that major and sudden diet changes are going to put the body through some amount of stress to adjust in pretty much all cases and you can see why so much dieting flops. It makes people feel horrible for real reasons, and what's more, they know that they feel horrible while they are doing it but are told that this is good for them and they're just supposed to believe that

[granulesofsand]

I actually did my system homework this weekend. We have a funky relationship with our amnesia, so instead of sharing memories we each learn the thing on our own. Sometimes we teach each other, but I do better with hands-on stuff.

So I read an article about RAMCOA, one of the ones that we’re planning on transcribing to our internal library. I spaced out hard for the first read through, but I did make progress.

This article talked about the thought process of really little kids, before they can differentiate between self and other. One of the milestones here is developing a sense of safety. Children are supposed to feel cared for and understand their needs as natural and curable, and abuse shuts that right down.

Instead of safety, warmth, whatever babies normally find ‘good’, the systematic abuse within the group creates fear, disgust, an intrinsic ‘evil’. Because this is intentional, these bases are built into labyrinths of self-hatred.

Survivors of this kind of abuse report feeling ‘rotten’ or ‘poisoned’, and are sometimes able to elaborate with what was given to them throughout their lives.

And that’s what it is! I know now I’m not the first person in my system to realize, but it was new to me. That smell we worry lingers on us is from a flashback, not a physical sensation from the present. That’s why no amount of soap makes it go away, and why everyone says it’s not there. It only exists in the past, in our memories.

I was told I would be unpopular because I stank. That it was dangerous to be near me because rot brings disease and others will be effected. They said I was rotten from the inside out. And all of it was a lie, a sham grown from the see sown so many years ago.

The article was about transgenerational trauma; familial cults and groups that raise members from babes. How that inner doom can be externalized and the self-other barrier temporarily broken. It says that a survivor can project their pain onto someone they abuse, but that it doesn’t have the same positive effect as similar but healthy practices.

It’s hard to be angry with abusers knowing they went through the same cycle. I figure we were the fourth generation born into the cult, counting conservatively. Some of those children are still there, full circle as they hurt their own kids.

I can’t think about what that means for them, so I look at us. We’re one less branch of their tree, and we have a shot at a peaceful life. We might be out-out before we die.

I don’t know if anyone else has done this yet, not from our group. I’ve met a few of them in the wild, people who we knew or admitted to having grown up there too. It seemed like the only way to escape is in a body bag, and here we are. Still standing (that’s funny because we can’t really stand anymore).

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the sky. It’s a different feeling, even if it’s the same view. I like to sit outside and finally appreciate being alive.

[wanderingpages]

.・。.・゜Dark AU ゜・。.

V E R S I O N 2

“It’s you that I’ve been thinking about and I shouldn’t be. You’re cattle waiting for slaughter, baby.”

TFOTA // All Human // AU : Cardan tries not to lust after the girl he's supposed to kill.

Trigger Warnings: Crude language, Drugs, Sex, Murder/Talks of murder, Sexual/Physical Assault.

Jude's POV

My heart is beating out of my chest and not at all for the reason it probably should be. It’s too quiet, so I’m well aware of how audible my shallow breaths are. I open my mouth to say more but it’s so dry I end up coughing instead.

“Ew,” someone mutters, and I finally glance from Cardan to behind him where another person stands, watching aptly. He’s tall and pale, his hair is nearly silver and his light blue eyes are red rimmed as if they were swollen. He’s wearing all white and my heart rate rises at the thought of being initiated into some kind of cult. He’s pretty, but also unnervingly scary. When he talks, his voice is low and a bit raspy. “Here, take this.” He passes Cardan a plastic bottle of water and I take it warily after he opens it, trying not to let the shaking of my hands be so noticeable.

“Drink up,” Cardan tells me. The night we met, he had been dressed in black from head to toe, even when he had given me his sweatshirt, he still had on a long sleeve black shirt underneath. His hair had been much longer too, a skew of curls I wanted to run my hands through. Now its shorter at the sides, a little longer on the top and not at all obscuring tattoos down his neck I had barely been able to see that night. He’s also wearing white and I grimace, lifting the bottle to my lips. Water trickles down my knuckles and its hard to look away from the amused quirk of his brows.

I sniff the bottle and he rolls his eyes, “It’s not poisoned. Trust me, we’ve had more than enough time to slit your throat if we wanted to.”

My hands shake a little harder but I sip from the bottle.

“I hope you don’t go for the throat,” the man behind him says in plea. “It’s not very pretty to sew back.”

“Oh my god,” I whisper, my eyes starting to prick.

“Valerian,” Cardan sighs, “I told you to lay off on the creepy shit.” His eyes are lidded, like he’s tired. My eyes move down his face, and I realize he’s got a bump in the bridge of his nose – maybe he’s broken it once or twice. His lips move slowly, or maybe I’m just not quite catching up to speed. His jaw is cut, his neck is covered in ink, that dip down his sternum, over his shoulder, beneath his shirt that’s thin enough to let me know they travel even further. He’s sitting in front of me, legs spread, and I’m relieved that his jeans aren’t white as well. Combat boots are dirty, and they tap unevenly against tiled floors. My feet are dangling off the seat, pink and blue fuzzy socks are splattered a dark red color. I can’t stop staring, not until a finger hooks under my chin, forcing my gaze to Cardan.

“Quite finished?” I glance behind him, guessing Cardan must have dismissed Valarian, because he’s nowhere to be seen. It’s then I notice the door behind him, and the photos above the frame all systematically placed along the walls. They look like tattoos, a lot in traditional style but all in shades of gray and black. One makes me do a double take, glancing from the small dagger illustrated in a frame, to the much smaller one just beneath Cardan’s ear.

I must be imagining the blood dripping from the tip and trickling down his skin, because when I blink, it’s gone. “Did I kill someone?”

“No,” he says, bluntly, eyes narrowing. “You shot him in the throat. He was still alive, so I killed him.”

“You…” I shiver, feeling my flesh raise in cold bumps, it’s more scary not remembering it. I feel like I’m relapsing. I thought being away from Dad would help, but maybe I should have cut ties and opted to dorm instead living in his house. I feel the downward tilt of my lips. How long have I been out? I remember seeing Cardan and someone else, before, confused that I was shot at and even more confused that I was no longer alone in my living room. “Where were you?” My brows furrow. “You disappear for weeks and the first time I see you, you point a gun at me?”

“You missed me,” he says, and when I find his eyes again, he looks pleased, but not surprised. Countless nights using his sweatshirt as pillow has my cheeks on fire.

“Where am I?” I twist my body, taking in more of the room. There’s another door behind me, a long countertop with various inks and needles, stencil sheets, a printer, a safe. A tattoo parlor, maybe, but it’s so small. I set the water bottle between my legs and rub my hands up and down my thighs. I’m wearing pajama shorts and probably a matching top, starting to feel much colder now that I’m aware.  I rub at my skin a little harsher, but there’s a stiffness to my arm. “What time is it?”

“Jude,” Cardan says, voice sending a prick down my spine. He seems annoyed, which is ridiculous seeing as I’m the one who’s hostage here. Although, my hands and feet aren’t restrained, and I think his friend might have cleaned my wound, but would he stop me if I got up and walked away? Would I even know where I even was to find my way home? Is home even safe anymore? He snaps his finger in front of my eyes and my gaze locks on him.

“I never did tell you my name,” I point out. That night has replayed in my head countless times. I remember everything about it, so I keep going back to it, just to make sure the memory remains intact. “How did you know?”

He gets up and I lean back, startled to have him in my space so suddenly. He smells like he did that night, like citrus and cedar. It makes my head swim. He thumbs at my eyelid and I blink, or try to, at least. Up close, I realize his eyes are a deep brown and not exactly the color of midnight as I had thought. My reflection is unbecoming in them. When was the last time I ran a brush through my hair? “What are you doing?” it comes out as a whisper.

“Checking if you’ve got a concussion,” he murmurs. His breath smells like…juice.

I scrunch my nose. “I don’t like orange juice,” I let him know. I feel lightheaded looking into his eyes.

“What’s your name?” Cardan asks me, suddenly, releasing my eyelid, but his warm hands come to cup at my face, fingers splaying behind my ears and grazing at my nape. He moves my head, this way and that. I fumble and grasp on to his hip.

I eye him warily, “Jude, don’t you already know?”

“Checking if you did,” he mutters. My grip on him tightens then my fingers flex, feeling the warm skin under his shirt, letting me know he’s definitely real. “Who were they? Ren and Stimpy,” he clarifies and that confuses me. “What did they want from you?” I try to think back, but going past seeing Cardan’s face has my blood pumping faster. I hear it rushing in my ears, as I try to place those two men. “Hey,” Cardan says, a little quieter. A little softer. “Breathe,” he tells me, “slowly.”

My hands tremble but I force myself to hold them steady. I pull away from him, my stomach drops and I feel ready to vomit, but my fingers work on their own accord, and suddenly there’s click.  Cardan pauses, eyes blinking in first confusion, then disbelief. His lip twitches. He lets go of my face and I aim his gun to his stomach.

“That was really fucked up,” I tell him with a frown. He backs away slightly, hands up in surrender. “You held this to my head,” I accuse. I’m giving myself a headache, fighting for control of my body. I’m usually in autopilot when I pull off stuff like this. I hope the shock of pulling it off is not evident in my tone, because the truth is, I’m so beyond my element and completely aware of my mobility, that it’s jarring to say the least.

He lets out a short laugh. “It definitely feels different having that pointed at me.”

He eyes the gun cautiously when I use it to gesture around us. “Are you a tattoo artist?”

Cardan shrugs, “Why, thinking of a getting a rose somewhere?” he uses his pointer finger to gesture to the middle of his chest, then folds it and raises his thumb, “Good spot.”

“I don’t think I’d trust a serial killer to ink me up.”

He grins now, so sweet it makes my stomach flip. “Nothing serial about my kills,” he confesses, saying a lot without saying much at all. I can’t believe I’m thinking this, but I wish my dad were here. I have no real idea on how to handle any of this. Can Cardan tell there’s a tremor in my hand? Is it just me, or are my siblings in danger, too? Last I spoke to my eldest sister, Vivienne seemed fine exploring the Amazon with her girlfriend. I haven’t spoken to Taryn in ages, but I doubt she’s back from her trip. But Oak… Oak is just a few miles away. “Well,” Cardan muses, pulling me from my thoughts, “I might have an affinity towards arson.”

“Arson?”

He looks very much at ease for someone who’s about to get his kneecaps blown. “Yeah, baby,” he tells me, “You know. Boom.”

“I know what arson means,” I glare, my fingers going clammy against the gun. I know if it comes down to it, I will absolutely pull this trigger, but I hope it doesn’t come down to it. “What do you want from me?”

“Well, I’m not going to blow you up if that’s where you're headed. I told Valerian I’d keep your body intact and all that.” I suppress a shiver, focusing on his face, his nose, where I can’t quite tell if that bump on the bridge is endearing.

“You said you weren’t going to kill me – that night, in your truck.”

“Maybe I’m a liar.”

My body tenses so hard its unbearable. “Don’t…” I have to clear my throat, “Don’t give him my body.” Thoughts of Valerian dressing my corpse evade my mind and to my horror, its more funny than I want it to be.

I’m pulled from my thoughts. “Jude,” he’s closer to me when he says my name again, exasperated now. I’ve gone off topic, maybe. I do that a lot. I wish he could read my mind, it would be far easier than having to select one sentence at a time. “Ren and Stimpy,” Cardan brings them up again. “What could they have possibly wanted from you?”

I shrug. The night I met Cardan, I asked if I was going out of the fire and into the frying pan. I think I passed Go and am directly in line to catapult myself into the sun. “Money?” maybe something to do with whatever was on the laptop I destroyed. Maybe something to do with my Dad but I don’t tell him that. For all I know, my basement was probably full of dead bodies and I wouldn’t know how to explain that. I guess there’s a lot of things I'm unsure how to explain, in retrospect. “Were you watching me?”

“Yeah,” he says bluntly. “You should probably start closing your curtains.” Before I can even process that to be embarrassed, he asks, “How often did you think about me? I’m good at reading lips,” he informs me. “And you’ve said my name nearly every time your fingers got between your thighs.” My mouth parts in shame, more so not because of what he’s saying, but because when he places a hand to my thigh, I feel the high of anticipation. He eyes my lips when he tells me, “It’s okay, I’ve been thinking about you since the party, too. Thought of skull fucking you so hard, your brain would ooze out of your ears.” I swallow thickly, and he places his palm on either side of my thighs, not fearful of the loaded gun in my hands, I guess. “You know,” Cardan tilts his head. “You’ve got demon eyes.”

I gasp, head moving back in surprise, said eyes widening in shock and probably offense. He’s definitely the first person to ever tell me something like that. He grins and I don’t think it’s as saccharine as I did before. it’s all wicked, like he knows his comment stings. “Your eyes get so vacant, baby. Soulless.”  I can’t look away from his own piercing gaze. I feel like he sees into my very dark soul. “It’s creepy,” he admits. He leans even closer, and I can’t lean back any further. The tip of his nose touches mine. I can taste his sweet breath when he says, “It kinda gets me hard.” I squeeze my thighs together, the crackle of the water bottle between my legs making my stomach coil, and my breath stills.

“They clearly wanted something I didn’t have – Ren and Stimpy,” I tell him quietly, adapting his nicknames for them, trying to ignore his proximity.

He hums, and I can practically feel the vibrations reach my skin and maybe under it too. “Maybe so.”

“I guess I know why they want me,” or at least, maybe who sent them, I don’t say. “But… why do you want me?”

He lifts an eyebrow and it feels like it should be obvious in the way that he looks at me, I guess I can convince myself that it kind of is and maybe he can play along to torture me, but we both know that isn’t what I mean. “King…?” I test out the name he said that night at the party.  It tastes bitter, along my lips, makes my heart ache against my ribcage. “You came to save me” I guess at this, “and I can’t help but wonder if this is better or worse.”

His pelvis presses into my knees, and I part my legs on instinct. The bottle falls to the ground and I idly wonder if I had closed it properly or if it’s spilling on to the floor. I suck in my breath when he slips easily between my thighs. I think of how well we fit and how bad of an idea this is. Hadn’t I imagined this scenario countless times, trying to fall asleep at night? It’s all types of wrong when the chance suddenly arises. I didn’t think there’d be a gun between us. Maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised about that though.   

He leans even closer, yet he doesn’t actually touch me, which seems like an incredible feat. I thin sheet of paper could fit between us. “I’m not sure yet,” he says quietly. He grabs my knees suddenly and I jump. He slides his warm hand up my thighs and I feel my body throb in anticipation. He holds my gaze, eyes steely and impossibly darker than I’ve ever seen them. His fingers find the hem of my shirt and he slides the pads of his digits across taught skin. My stomach contracts and he lets out an amused huff.

Suddenly something cold is pressed above my navel and I know he revels in the fear my face shows. I hold his gaze, but I can’t feign indifference. When had my grip loosen? He flicks the safety off and even though two men had broken into my house and there’s no doubt in my mind they would have killed me or worse, I’m more scared now, looking into Cardan’s eyes, knowing that he won’t kill me. “Don’t you ever,” he enunciates, “fucking try to point my own gun at me again.” ‘You dumb fucking, bitch’ his eyes surely say, and I wouldn’t be surprised because I’m definitely thinking along the same lines. He slips the gun from under me and points it to my head. I yelp at the bang when he shoots and it fires just centimeters from my face, hitting its mark in the wall behind me.

A sob escapes me, involuntarily, and it takes me a moment to realize I was holding on to the leather of the seat beneath me so hard, I’ve teared into the fabric. “Next time, it’s going in your skull,” he promises.

He takes the hand from my thigh and wraps it into my hair, tugging my head back. He swipes his tongue along my cheek, licking away the tears that had fallen. I am disgusted with my body’s response to the rough pad of Cardan’s tongue caressing the heat in my cheeks. He lets loose my hair then secures his gun, before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out plastic strips. “Wh – What are you doing?” he grabs my hand, forcing my palms together and secures my wrists with a zip cable tie. Its pink. I think he’s teasing me. It matches my current sleep attire.

Cardan takes another tie and loops it through the arm of the chair and attaches it to mine. “Stay put,” he steps back as if to admire his work. He snatches the bottle from the floor and looks at the mostly empty bottle it in deliberation. I wince, realizing it had actually spilled. I scrunch my nose, and sink deep into the chair, praying he doesn’t attempt some form of water torture on me. In a tattoo shop of all places. He finally places the bottle on a counter and heaves out a heavy sigh while running a hand through his hair. As if guessing my thoughts, “I don’t like to torture people,” he says quietly, maybe to himself more than me. I guess his unspoken words are that, I’m the exception, isn’t it? He reaches and pats my cheek, then walks away without even a second glance at me. My heart hammers into my ribs and I call after him.

“Wait!” I yell, but the door is slammed shut and I’m left by myself. I'm embarrassed at all the liquid coming from my eyes, and leaking from my nose. I can hardly reach to shoulder them away, but even as I attempt to, the tightness I had felt before is gradually starting to run hot with pain. “Cardan!” I call again. I plead and I beg, to nothing and no one, not wanting to be alone like this. Had he timed everything that perfectly? To torture me when the medicine wears off? I tell myself that I’ve gone through worse, that this is just a scratch –  but I trusted my Dad; I definitely don’t trust Cardan. “Cardan!” I yell again, throat going hoarse. I yank at the restraints, knowing how easy it is to break them, but my arm stings like a bitch and the tears come more out of frustration than anything else. “Fuck,” I cry, “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.” I yell. “And I don’t have demon eyes, you prick,” I seethe, glaring at the door. “Come back,” I plead, deflated now. I slump back against the chair, leaning my head back until the light stings my eyes. I try to call out for the other man, the one Cardan called Valerian, but it’s just as useless.

.

“Hey,” someone snaps a finger in front of me. My eyes flash open in an instant, on high alert. I jump, forgetting my wrists have been restrained, then wince when I look down to see a raw strip of skin where the plastic has rubbed against. I look up again, recognizing the blonde man from the whole home invasion fiasco. Whereas Valerian was all pale and the embodiment of death, this man is all golden and far too bubbly for my current situation. His hazel colored eyes are blown out and that makes me uneasy. His eyebrow piercing glints when he moves to sit on the spinning chair in front of me. It’s a bit annoying how handsome the three of them are for a trio of absolute maniacs.  “Morning, Whistler.”

My brows knit. “Whistler?” I try not to let out any indication that my throat stings and that it bothers me that my voice is so broken.

“Yeah,” he spins a few times on the chair, a blur of black and gold with his dark attire. I close my eyes, feeling nauseous just looking at him. “From Blade. She’s good with arrows. And hot as all fuck.”

“Okay…” I take a deep breath, “Right, and that makes you…?” I fish for his name.

The squeaking sound the chair had been making stops and I open my eyes just a bit to see he’s grinning at me. He gives me a wink when he sees I'm looking. “I’m your Ghost, of course, here to haunt you until I'm told to stop. But don’t actually count on that happening.” He talks so fast, I feel a headache coming on. Hadn’t he been the one to shoot me?

“Are you here to untie me?”

“Probably not, but I got you food.” He reaches behind him to the counter and shakes a red box at me. “King said to get you a Happy Meal and an M&M McFlurry. How old are? Like five?” he laughs, “Just kidding, I already know. Ugh,” he looks down to my hands. They might be bleeding. “That’s hella gross. Dain’s gonna be pissed if that gets on his floors. I’ll have to dump peroxide over it later.” He opens the box and rummages for a bit before pulling out a single fry. He scoots over and waves the piece over my lips. I open my mouth, but he quickly pulls away.

“That was kind of mean,” I mumble, knowing he hears when my stomach growls in protest.

He ignores me. “So you and Sophie, huh?”

“Who?”

He blinks, eyes narrowing, “Yeah, King said you were good at not chatting. I guess you won’t say who killed her either, huh?”

“I don’t…” I trail off when he eats the fry.  He grimaces and picks another fry, this time, shoving it in my mouth. Its super salty, but I chew it dutifully.

“Don’t look at me, its fucking weird.” That would be the second time in one day where someone has pointed out how ugly my eyes are. “It makes me feel like that scene in Shrek with Puss in Boots.” He does not further elaborate. He reaches back for a small cup with a straw sticking out, then holds it out for me. I bend my head and take a sip, swallowing before wrenching my head back and making a gagging noise. I should have told Cardan that I hated something like water or fruit punch.

He frowns then takes a sip himself. “What the fuck is your deal? It’s just OJ.” He feeds me another fry, “So where’d you learn to shoot like that? Camp?” my face must give away the answer because he nods, and says, “Yeah, knew it.”  This one-sided conversation is titillating. I think back on my days at summer camp with a grimace. I may have cut ties with Dad, but would he notice me missing on the security feeds? Would he care? Was this one of his schemes, maybe? Ren and Stimpy did look a little familiar if I try to think back on them, but doing so gives me a migraine. “Reworked your cameras, by the way,” Ghost says, taking a nugget from the bag and biting into it. It’s as if he’s read my mind, “They’re just re-looping some hand-picked days, in case you’re wondering. My five favorite episodes of the Jude Show.”

He gives me the other half of the nugget, “You know what’s crazy?” I have a plethora of responses, but I focus on chewing my food. “Whatever was on that laptop is completely wiped.”

“I broke it,” I point out.

He rolls his eyes, “The cloud is forever. Anyways, your weird manic episode has nothing to do with the wiping of the hard drive. I was just pointing out that it is weird. Everything about you is weird. Its kind of arousing,” he jests, sounding less serious than when Cardan had told me something similar.

“How long have I been here?”

“Few hours, seven maybe. Seven is a lucky number.” I don’t know what he means, but I don’t take much of what he’s saying to heart, especially when he reaches into the inside of his jacket and pulls out a skinny blunt. I watch him light it, then let loose a puff of smoke between his lips. Should he be mixing uppers and downers while keeping watch over me?

“What’s going to happen to me?” Ghost reaches and sets the blunt between my lips, then grabs more fries to feed himself. I don’t really know what to do, nor am I sure he’s aware of what he’s done, but I inhale a bit of it, anyways. Something about when in Rome and all that.

“Shit, if I know. Weird that he tied you up so quickly though, that seems like a forth date type of thing.” He wiggles his eyebrows, making the piercing dance. “Fifty Shades,” he points out.

“Is he going to kill me?” I try again, eyeing the toy he pulls out of the Happy Meal box to examine. Its pink. “Cheer Bear,” I say, not as annoyed with this one as I was with Funshine.

“Maybe,” he shrugs and pockets the toy. “Kind of hoping he won’t, but, I mean. Don’t hold your breath on it, babygirl.”

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Masterlist

[nobodyfamousposts]

What if scenario after Lila is exposed but the parents of Marinette’s classmates being so disappointed in their children when they find out about the systematic isolation based on a bunch of lies that nobody bothered to double check. Alya’s family asking if she was sure she got her facts straight on her assignments for days to come, Max’s parents having him wear goggles to protect his eyes from any stray napkins, things to show their children how wrong they were to hurt someone without reason.

I just don’t see that.

I like the salt and spite and seeing the class getting a kick to the rear when necessary just as much as anybody, but these are their parents. And they are adults. So considering that we barely see any of them, I am going to assume that they are actually good parents who care about their kids as most parents do.

As such, I don’t think they’d be that petty.

Call their kids out on bullying, yes. Talk to them about not taking everything they’re told by someone as gospel, definitely. Try to urge them away from what they see as bad influences, certainly. But the parents would have to be downright jerks to talk to their kids like that instead of actually just TALKING to their kids.

Let’s instead turn this around and show what they have to be seeing. I’m going to go with Alya’s parents since she’s the one in the middle of this. Acting before the whole “lies being exposed” bit, because I think good parents would actually catch on to that sort of thing sooner and act on it.

They know their daughter’s interests. They know how much Ladybug and the Ladyblog means to her. They know how she can get about things she genuinely cares about. And they would listen to her when she tells them about things going on at school.

So when Lila first appears and Alya regales them with the claims Lila has been making, the two send a look at each other, figuring out pretty quickly that the girl is likely embellishing things. But it seems harmless and Alya appears really excited so they stay quiet at first. After all, they were teenagers once, too. They figure that the excitement will die down, the kids won’t take it too seriously, and the new girl will just settle into the class without much issue.

Then they hear about the interview Alya did of Lila for her blog. Now, they’re a little worried, because this could harm Alya’s reputation and her blog. The new girl came from another country and probably doesn’t know about the frequent akuma attacks or just how valued the Ladyblog is—both to Alya and the community that relies on it for accurate information. They can’t just TELL Alya that Lila is lying though since they don’t know the girl, so instead they subtly suggest that Alya may want to look up other sources to back the story before posting it. But Alya is a teenager and one who is confident to the point of being brash and acting without thinking things through. So Alya brushes them off as being overly worried, because in her mind, the question of whether Lila might be lying to her for any reason isn’t even considered. Why would she lie about being friends with Ladybug or all the other things she’s done? What benefit would there be to it?

So Alya leaves the interview and her parents can’t exactly stop her. They also figure that she’s young and the Ladyblog may just be the first trial run of her attempts at journalism, so she needs to figure these things out for herself.

There’s no point in continuing to press though because Lila disappears shortly after, not that they know why. So they shrug it off as a one-time thing and figure the interview isn’t major enough to warrant backlash and there’s nothing to worry about.

Months pass, fairly peacefully. There’s only some mention of the new girl calling the class during her trips, but nothing substantial for them to worry about. Up until Lila’s return.

Then Alya comes home and goes on about how Lila is back and how awesome it is. Her parents aren’t quite as pleased but figure it’s harmless—at least until Alya comments on Marientte taking issues with her return and how jealous and unreasonable she was in class over Lila being close to Adrien. They’re confused, because from their interactions, Marinette has generally been a sweet if somewhat eccentric girl. They could see her being jealous—anyone can be after all—but not willing to move to accommodate a new student with a disability? That doesn’t sound like her.

Well, Alya admits that the whole seating arrangement was changed because of Lila. With a bit of prodding from them, she confesses that it wasn’t even Marinette’s seat that Lila needed, and that everyone had chosen to switch seats around because of it.

This only makes them more confused. Why would Marinette be upset over the seats if she got to choose where she would sit?

This…actually makes Alya pause. And she somewhat guiltily notes that Marinette DIDN’T get to choose—that everyone else picked where they wanted to sit so she was left to the unchosen seat in the back. Alone.

They’re understandably displeased with this and calmly point out to Alya that doesn’t it make sense then that Marinette would be more upset about the fact that her seat was moved without her knowledge or permission and how she was the ONLY one in the class who DIDN’T get a say in where she got to sit?

Alya gives a little “yeah I guess, BUT…” and proceeds to explain what happened during lunch and how Marinette tried to claim Lila was a liar.

That goes in lines with what the parents first thought of her and makes sense to them. But Alya doesn’t get it because she likes Lila and her lying would make no sense. So when her parents point out that Marinette may have been right, Alya waves them off by saying that she had no proof other than her own word. Ignoring, of course, that Lila has no proof of anything either.

This comes to one of “those” points for her parents. They can either tell Alya she’s wrong and explain where she’s making a mistake—which might as well be a lecture, or they can be noncommittal and let Alya figure out her mistakes for herself in the hopes that she DOES at some point figure out said mistakes. They figure that in lecturing her, she’ll either blow them off or the lesson won’t stick. It’s one thing to have someone TELL you a lesson and another to actually learn it for yourself. Knowing how stubborn Alya is, they may just take it as her parents not liking Lila for whatever reason and become defensive. So as much as they want to tell Alya what they’re seeing, they instead keep it short and simple that maybe she should look into her facts and determine for herself who is telling the truth.

For Alya, she knows Marinette well enough to know that the girl is anxious, flakes out, and tends to jump to the worst possible conclusions for things. Lila on the other hand is awesome and amazing, and has no reason to make up stories to convince them. So Alya gives a laugh and says it’s not necessary because she already knows Lila wouldn’t lie to her.

Her parents glance to each other in uncertainty, but don’t prod further.

Imagine how things would continue from here. Alya is unknowingly in a toxic friendship that is slowly poisoning her and she can’t see it. Her parents see it and they worry, so they prod and ask, but Alya just waves them off. Slowly over time, she becomes more negative about Marinette until they can’t even be called friends anymore. Slowly over time, Lila’s “issues” grow and Alya is taking on more and more burdens because of it. And slowly over time, the tension and negativity starts to wear on her to the point where she is becoming overly stressed and it’s just downright unhealthy. The fact that she’s Rena Rouge and hiding this isn’t helping with matters, either.

She starts to push off her own responsibilities. Using Marinette or others to babysit her sisters without telling her parents beforehand so she can sneak away and spend time with Nino—which becomes less a matter of actual dating and more to simply get away and “de-stress”. Using people—particularly Marinette and then getting angry when those people either can’t or won’t be there in the way she wants. Even some behaviors that are downright bullying—to Marinette, sure, but more importantly (as far as Alya’s parents are concerned), to her sisters. And when her parents try to talk to her, she shrugs them off and blames others. Thanks to Lila, Marinette has been turned into a rather convenient scapegoat by this point. And the thing about scapegoating is that many people don’t even realize that they’re actually doing it or blaming someone unfairly. It’s just that there’s a situation, she was involved, and it’s so much easier to chalk it up to being due to her rather than address the problem—especially if she can’t be aware that there IS a real problem.

But her parents are.

A couple of months pass of this and finally things come to a head and they’re forced to put their foot down. Alya comes home one day from yet another overly stressful day at school, and when she enters the living room, both of her parents are there waiting for her.

“Alya, we need to talk.”

They tell her what they’re seeing. They tell her what she’s been doing. They tell her the effect she has been having on other people—them, her sisters, her friends. And they tell her what has been happening to her—how stressed and unhappy she’s been lately. Most of all, they tell her how concerned they are for her.

She tries to wave them off, but they’re not taking it this time. When they tell her some of the things they’ve been hearing from the school, she gets angry and makes accusations of Marinette telling them lies.

They point out that they haven’t seen Marinette in weeks since she last brought her over. And that is part of where they’re concerned—Alya hasn’t been bringing Marinette over anymore. Or even any of her other friends.

Alya has been isolating herself more. Hiding away in her room. Being increasingly snappish towards her sisters. Passing her twin siblings off to other people to look after so she can go on dates with Nino—which she never discussed with either of her parents beforehand and is an abuse of their trust in her.

She blows it off, thinking it’s just about her not looking after her sisters and that the lecture is unnecessary for something so minor. They point out to her quite calmly that it isn’t that she’s not looking after the twins, it’s that she’s telling them she will and then having someone else do it—and often someone that the parents don’t know, don’t trust, and did not give permission to do so. That’s dangerous. Not to mention it’s an abuse of their trust—meaning that Alya is lying to them.

THAT gets her attention.

“I don’t lie!”

“What would you call it then? You told us you would be here to do this and you weren’t. You told us we could count on you to watch over your little sisters and you didn’t. You handed off the responsibility to someone else and didn’t even tell us. We had to find out by walking in on one of your sitters trying to deal with the twins in the middle of a temper tantrum! If you wanted time to go on dates or were otherwise busy, why didn’t you at any point simply talk to us instead of doing it behind our backs?”

Alya really can’t respond to that.

“And then there’s your blog. We agreed to let you have it with the understanding that it wouldn’t interfere with your life or other responsibilities, but we find you’re running into akuma battles?”

“It’s just to get footage!”

“Alya, it’s UNSAFE.” Her father exclaimed.

“But Paris counts on me to get them information!”

“That does them little good if you’ve been vaporized in the process or turned into a french fry!”

“It was glitter.” Alya said with a pout. “And I’m the most factual source about Ladybug and akuma attacks!”

“No, sweetie. You really aren’t.” Her mother said with a sigh, much to Alya’s surprise.

They then proceed to explain to her just what she’s been putting on her blog. Theories of who Ladybug is that borders over the edge into pure conspiracy nonesense? The picture of Ladybug and Chat Noir kissing? Videos of interviews with Lila and her false claims?

“You’re posting things without consent or without any evidence backing them. How is any of that factual? Or even news?” Her mother asked. “You saw what happened to Nadja Chamack when she took her interview with the heroes too far. How is that any different?”

“It’s the sort of thing one would see in a tabloid, sweetie.” Her father put it more bluntly.

Alya glared, scandalized.

“And that’s not even getting into the ongoing issues with this Lila girl.” Her mother continued.

“Oh, now you’re going to harp on her, too?” Alya asked, annoyed.

“Alya, have you at any point checked into anything this girl has said?”

“Of course!“

“Really?” Her mother asked, incredulously. “So you talked to Ladybug about the dangers of a civilian claiming to be her best friend when she’s being targeted by a supervillain? Looked up any of the many interviews with Jagged Stone where he expressly mentioned never having a cat? Or a lawsuit against any airline for allowing a preteen to get past security and onto the runway?”

Alya gaped.

“We knew from the start that Lila’s stories were a bit too unbelievable to be entirely truth.” Her father explained. “But we said nothing because we thought that either you would realize that as well or her stories would taper off. But it’s been months now and neither of those things has happened. The only thing that HAS happened has been you following a trend that has been increasingly unhealthy and worrisome.”

“Alya, we are concerned for you.”

“I’m fine!” She insisted.

“You don’t hang out with your friends anymore.”

“That’s because Marinette is bullying Lila!”

“Saying something you don’t want to hear and pointing out flaws in a person’s story isn’t bullying, Alya. Ostracizing that person, intentionally leaving her out of things while letting her know you’re doing it, and only talking to her when you want her to do something for you IS.” Her father replied. “Especially when her parents are going out of their way to ask us what we know about the situation and are rather intently discussing the matter of whether they should allow their daughter to remain in what they are referring to as a ‘toxic place’ regardless of how much their daughter is trying to defend you.”

Alya blanched. “Wait—toxic? You mean the school?”

“This is about you. And unfortunately, I can’t say they are wrong. Your behavior lately has been getting out of hand. And it’s not just your treatment of Marinette. We’re also talking about the way you’ve been ignoring and snapping at your sisters. How you’ve been ignoring your homework. How you’ve been posting things online that have been increasingly scandalous or untruthful, which could hurt people and get you in legal trouble. Not to mention all the times you’ve been sneaking out with Nino after telling us you would be here. And while I’m sure this Lila girl isn’t the root cause of everything, she certainly seems to be a key component to a lot of it.”

“Lila is awesome though!”

“Awesome doesn’t mean healthy. Or safe. Or good. What has this girl done for you that has you so convinced that she’s such a wonderful person?”

“She gave me an interview for my blog! And she looked after the twins loads of times!”

“An interview that you can’t substantiate. And looking after your sisters at a time when YOU should have been and when you didn’t tell us she would be, which explains why the twins were that much more unruly and out of control for the past few weeks with ridiculous claims of how they’re going to get to meet princes and never have to go to bed.” The mother deadpanned.

“And I thought the Sapotis excuse was bad enough.” The father grumbled.

“The point is, Alya, that you’ve been doing a lot of things lately that have been unhealthy for you and rather uncaring of anyone else.”

“That’s not true! I’ve been helping Ladybug!”

“I don’t think putting yourself in danger to get footage or posting a picture she expressly told you she was unhappy with would count as ‘helping’.”

“I’ve been helping Lila!”

“But does she really need your help or is she letting you think she does because it benefits her?”

Alya frowned, growing uncertain. “S-she’s been having trouble with her homework.”

“But she still has time to take on babysitting duties for you?”

Alya continued, resolute. “I’ve been helping Marinette to try to get with Adrien!”

“You’ve been complaining frequently about how much of a pain it is that Marinette is crazy about that boy only to turn around and push her to try to confess to him when she’s clearly not ready. Then she fumbles because of it and you act even more annoyed and put upon as a result. How do you think that makes her feel?” Her mother asked.

“If it’s that much of an annoyance for you, why not just let her move on from him? You said she agreed to help him on a date with another girl at the skate rink that one time, right? It sounds like she was trying to move forward. Why didn’t you encourage her if it would have resolved that issue and cause everyone less grief?” Her father asked.

“He’s her crush!”

“And crushes don’t always last.” Her mother replied. “Sometimes being a wing-woman means helping the person to let go of an attraction.”

“It also means knowing when to butt out.” Her father added, bluntly. “You’ve complained a multitude of times about how much of a pain her crush is. So did you ever stop to consider how much you’ve been contributing to it and keeping it going?”

“But she gets so jealous!”

“That would be all the more reason to let her move on when she’s trying to.” Her mother told her. “And the fact that she does get upset about something doesn’t mean you should invalidate her feelings as jealousy. She’s a teenage girl, just like you. Her feelings are complex and confusing, even to her. Instead of writing her off as jealous whenever she was upset about something, what would you have learned if you had listened to her tell you what she was feeling rather than assume?”

“But she was jealous!” she insisted. “Why else would she keep accusing Lila of making things up?”

“Maybe because Lila is.” Otis retorted.

“That’s not true!” Alya exclaimed. “She wouldn’t lie to me!”

Otis had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. “Based on what? From the moment you met the girl she was spinning tales as easily as spinning yarn. And you clearly never checked on any of her claims or you would have known by now.”

“That’s because I do know!”

“Did you ask Ladybug about it?” Her father asked.

“Well, no. But I’ve talked to her since then and she never said anything!”

“Not saying it isn’t true isn’t proof that it is. What about Jagged Stone?” He continued

“I can’t talk to him!”

“He’s put out interviews that are readily available. And doesn’t Marinette have his number?” Marlena asked her, causing Alya’s eyes to widen in shock at the recollection.

“She does.”

“So that means Marinette would know if Lila was lying about him.”

“But she never said he said—”

“Honey, she shouldn’t have had to in the first place.” Her mother said, sadly. “Marinette isn’t a journalist anymore than Lila is. If two of your friends have conflicting claims, shouldn’t you have proof that something did happen before you start demanding proof that it didn’t?”

Alya winced, remembering how she requested that evidence from Marinette without even checking on Lila’s first. Because no, she didn’t have proof that Lila was telling the truth. Nothing other than Lila’s word. And looking back, she couldn’t say there was a good reason that should have mattered more than Marinette’s.

“But why would Lila lie?” She asked, despondently.

“People lie for plenty of reasons.” Her father said, saddened. “Whatever Lila’s reasons are for lying are on her. Your responsibility is to protect yourself first and not fall for that.”

“We’ve been talking.” Marlene stated. “And while we don’t want to, we are going to ground you.”

Alya gaped up at them in surprise and hurt.

“You’re a journalist, so you know how important communication is. Furthermore, you should understand how it works.” Otis stated. “But you haven’t been communicating with us. Or with anyone. And it’s showing in just how long you’ve been letting things go on until they got to this bad of a point.”

“But things aren’t quite that bad!” Alya insisted, urgently.

“They are disrupting your life and your ability to function—as a student, as a friend, and particularly as a member of this family.” Her mother explained. “So you’re going to take the next two weeks to break away from all of that. No Ladyblog. No outings with your friends. No dates with Nino.”

“You are to also not spend any time with Lila.” Her father added. “We’ll be talking to the teacher about keeping you both separated for now.”

“In that time, we want you to see if you notice a difference in how things feel. You’re stressed, and we get that. But you don’t seem to really understand where it is all coming from or what healthy changes you need to make to deal with it. That can happen sometimes when there is just too much going on, so these two weeks aren’t to punish you. They’re to give you a break from all these distractions to focus on you and what you need to stay healthy and happy.”

Alya didn’t agree. She hated this. She hated all of it. When she first went to her room, her initial response was that her parents were being completely unfair. But she couldn’t say they were wrong. And while it was certainly a pain at first, the two weeks gave her a lot more free time to think. And the time being barred from hanging with either Lila or Marinette allowed her a break from the constant tension and stress of their little “war”.

Now she would have the time to actually try and look up the claims both Lila and Marinette have made. And while Marinette’s claims weren’t always able to be substantiated and may have been little white lies at points, it was ever more clear that Lila’s were entirely false. She’s almost beating herself up because how could she not have seen it?

But how could she have? She had constantly been busy, being dragged into one thing or another. Either her blog, or school, or Marinette’s boy troubles with Adrien, or her relationship with Nino, or Lila’s most recent grab for attention.

It leads her to go back over other things she had overlooked and disregarded. She also starts to reevaluate what all she has going on and what she really needs to keep in her life at this time.

Ultimately, this is going to lead to a change and a much different Alya once the grounding period is over.

Her parents won’t be happy about how much she’ll struggle and have to let go of to get her life back under control, but if it means a healthier and happier Alya, they’ll be satisfied.

[ellanainthetardis]

Hi :) I’m know you’ve written fics where both happen but out of curiosity, in movie!verse (which admittedly I mostly ignore hahah) do you hc effie would move to 12 when Peeta moves back? Would it have been as difficult for her to live in the capitol if she was known to have been the escort that sided with the rebellion rather than the one that everyone thought was the enemy? What do you think would be her prompt to realise she’d rather be with haymitch when it’s not her PTSD like in book!verse?

MMM that’s a very interesting question I rarely touch movie!verse post MJ. I’m not entirely a fan of a “stay sober” Haymitch (at least not until a few years down the line when he might make the decision to cut out himself, bc it wasn’t his choice to get sober in MJ and I feel like he wouldn’t stick to it but I digress). As for Effie, it’s hard to tell. I love EB to death and I love her portrayal of Effie but the way they used Effie in MJ... I can’t really get behind it. She’s acting like her most flamboyant spoiled brat self all MJ 1&2 and 13 never puts her back in her place. I’d have liked to see a transposition of the scenes with the prep teams, for instance, or something that would confront her to reality, instead I got customized uniform book!13 would never have allowed and random comic relief. 

Anyway. Back to to topic. Two options, I think. Either we consider purely movie!canon and we decides they started hooking up in 13, so when he says don’t be a stranger maybe he means that but she doesn’t take it to mean “please move in ily” bc they don’t have the “history” so to speak. In which case, I will lean more toward something where she stays in the city and take a job with Plutarch, basically filling out Fluvia’s role, by becoming his Chief of Staff or something. I do think she has the skills to go into politics, maybe not as a face but as a PR or yeah, chief of staff, or something like that. Higher up but behind the throne, you see? 

Since she joined the rebellion after the Quell and was quite publicly the Mockingjay’s escort during the war, I think most rebels would be satisfied with that and maybe conclude she’s been a part of the rebellion for longer than anyone realized and she wouldn’t deny it so... She would be okay with them, maybe even well considered... I do think she would be in hotter waters with the Capitols but since Capitols invented the game, they would pretend and be very hypocretical bc they want to survive and, while she wouldn’t believe a word or a smile and watch for the knife in her back, she would go along with the charade. 

I think she could make a successful career out of that. A career she enjoys even, because her brain would be put to use for once. And since she wouldn’t be as jadded by the war, I don’t see her ambition being put in check. I guess she would be in relationship with Haymitch but it would be long distance. Holidays, the occasional week-end in 12 or the city... 

Maybe it works out well, at first, because Haymitch isn’t used to having someone romatincally around and that’s a good transition but after a while, I do think he would get in a frame of mind where he wants something more stable and it might put tensions on their relationship a few years down the line...

I’m a romantic and I love them so I want to think they would make it but I’m not sure how much a fling that started in MJ with the movie!characterisation would really work out. Either she quits and move to 12 (but she’s so ambitious and if her career is really working well, it seems ooc) or Haymitch moves to the city (which is NOT happening) or they find some sort of in-between solution where she takes a political role as a delegate in 12 or something... 

Second, option (my default when I play in movie!verse) we consider a hybrid of (what we  think is) book!canon and movie!canon for Effie. We consider Effie  has a lot of character development pre 74th and is fully aware of the states by the time Katniss pulls out the poisonned berries and isn’t as clueless during the Tour and etc as she pretends to be on screen. So when she arrives in 13 she’s DEEPLY unhappy about having been “kidnapped” (probably bc if Haymitch had asked, she would simply have said yes), really upset by the rebels failing to rescue Peeta and mostly worried because she’s not stupid enough not to see she’s not welcome. She’s basically durmped into the enemy’s den and Haymitch isn’t even around to protect her (bc he’s in withdrawals). I like to consider book!13 when I write that verse and pretend movie!13 doesn’t exist, so she would also be “a fish out of water” - as was promised when MJ1 came out. I also like to have her wear the real uniform for that reason, I think it’s important for someone like her who always means to stand out to be forced into the ranks, because it would play on her mind and that’s interesting. 

Anyway, book!hayffie do seem to have more history regardless of if you think they were having an affair before 74th or not. They have all those “of one mind” thing and conspiracy in elevators... They do seem to have a more... real equal working relationship, meanwhile in the movie, it seems Haymitch is doing all the work.... So if we take that into account, I think, in that hybrid idea, Effie would stick with Haymitch and remain his escort (and Kat’s obviously) in 13 so she’s more involved despite the hostility she triggers. Her being more involved means she gets to see more of the horrors happening in Command. She would also, I think, be tired by all the years of dead kids. That’s something that would sit heavily on her and I’m not sure book!Effie shrugs it off as easily as movie!Effie does... 

What I like with movie!Effie though, is that she develops a real nice relationship with Katniss. That, we do lack in the books. And I really like that because I think it might come to play a role post MJ. 

Of course, when we consider post MJ we have to decide what to do there too. I don’t like the movie!MJ ending XD I don’t like that Katniss isn’t hurt/addicted and I don’t like that they ship her off right after the murder. I like the whole “suicidal/withdrawal/trial” thing better. There is SO MUCH happening beyond her room during those weeks (months?) and that’s what’s interesting because I think that’s when hayffie’s fate is decided. (either they implode in book!verse - for a little while - or they seal the fact they want to be together for hybrid movie!verse)

Anyway, if we consider the hybrid version of Effie (movie!verse but with book background and the idea that the affair didn’t in fact begin in 13) I think it’s possible she just might be exhausted and disgusted by all the politics and worried about the children enough that she would just come to 12 with Peeta. To test the water. Also she knows her feelings, she’s mostly confident Haymitch does love her, she probably simply isn’t sure he’s actually ready to have her around him 24/24 in his house. 

I mean if she and Haymitch had been dancing around the casual/not so casual thing for years, she might want to take a shot at being steady, committted while he’s miraculously willing. I can see it as a natural progress of their relationship assuming they took a big step in 13 (either by openly sharing a compartment even if it’s not official like I like to hc or even just by not systematically denying when someone assumes they’re together or even - which I think is plausible - by having an actual convo where she puts it on the table that she wants more and he actually awkwardly reassures her that he does have feelings - even if the words aren’t said yet...). 

Now if they just started hooking up in 13, I don’t think she would show up with Peeta because there wouldn’t be all the developped intimacy and trust that they need. They both have huge trust and intimacy issues. Haymitch more than Effie, granted, but I don’t think she’s the kind of girl who would drop everything to follow a guy without being 100% certain he loves her without question. She’s a romantic, no questions, but she’s also pragmatic. I’m not sure we get those conditions with movie!hayffie. 

ALSO I realize this is all my hc and basically book!verse doesn’t give us much more to go on but I really do believe with all my heart the only reason Haymitch would be open to having a romantic (committed) relationship post MJ (and take a shot at sobriety on top of it) is because of Effie, of their long complicated affair and because he realized he loved her a little too late. Two things in movie verse: either they were hooking up and he doesn’t have the *gasp she’s in the Capitol’s hands, I lost her, shit I love her don’t I?” reveal (although I guess we can still have him start realizing during VT and go from there) so the knowledge he actually wants her in his life full time is slower to come OR they start hooking up in MJ and he doesn’t have the years of denial and tentative repressed feelings so I’m not sure how we go from him being a hermit to him wanting to be committed to someone he was sure he disliked even though he was fond of her. 

And she might have the same doubts. Basically a movie!hayffie relationship would have a lot of things to work out. But the thing with movie!hayffie is that Haymitch backstory isn’t explained (is it? I don’t remember. I blacked out most of the things I was disappointed about and boy was I disappointed with the Finnick reveal scene) and Effie’s background is very unexplored so it’s kind of sandbox. I’m too fixed in my own hc and visions of the characters by now but someone else might come up with very various backstories and backgrounds and make it work better than I could maybe...  

If you read all that rambling and made sense of it, I give you a golden star. Maybe I’m way off base though. It’s been a while since I watched the movies. I really didn’t like MJ1 and 2 much. There were stuff I liked, some scenes, mostly papa!H and mama!E, obviously I enjoyed the hayffie... But idk, 13 is too different from what I pictured, not strict enough, and I’m irked every time Coin gives Katniss a peptalk that should have come from Haymitch. The lack of Haymitch is also annoying to me. He’s supposed to be a key player and he’s just in the background. Even Effie is more useful, I feel. 

Anyway, see how my brain works? You ask a question and it jumps in a thousand different directions. I’m not sure I did a good job at explaining my thoughts. 

But do share yours! I’m interested! It’s been a while since we talked headcanons and meta! I’ll put this on the tag if people are feeling like reading ramblings and discussing their own vision... 

All hcs and meta are interesting! 

[libertariantaoist]

You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence "democracy," and the other, "tyranny."

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle - the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.

True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.

A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others - not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others.

The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff.

There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions... It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.

If our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men. Great men may make great mistakes; ...some of the greatest leaders of the past supported the perennial attack on freedom and reason.

I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous - from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows.

This civilization has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth - the transition from the tribal or "enclosed society," with its submission to magical forces, to the 'open society' which sets free the critical powers of man.

The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure.

No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.

I do not overlook the fact that there are irrationalists who love mankind, and that not all forms of irrationalism engender criminality. But I hold that he who teaches that not reason but love should rule opens up the way for those who rule by hate.

The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell. It leads to intolerance. It leads to religious wars, and to the saving of souls through the inquisition. And it is, I believe, based on a complete misunderstanding of our moral duties.

It is our duty to help those who need help; but it cannot be our duty to make others happy, since this does not depend on us, and since it would only too often mean intruding on the privacy of those towards whom we have such amiable intentions.

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. But this, I hold, is an offence against every decent conception of mankind. It is hardly better than to treat the history of embezzlement or of robbery or of poisoning as the history of mankind. For the history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder (including it is true, some of the attempts to suppress them). This history is taught in schools, and some of the greatest criminals are extolled as heroes.

Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations, for the sake of an ideal of happiness that may never be realised.

We do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things - and above all on ourselves.

It is wrong and dangerous to extol freedom by telling people that they will certainly be all right once they are free. ... The most we can say of democracy or freedom is that they give our personal abilities a little more influence on our well-being.

Science is one of the very few human activities - perhaps the only one - in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.

It seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness.

If only we would stop setting man against man - often with the best intentions - much would be gained. Nobody can say that it is impossible for us to stop doing this.

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[pikapeppa]

Fenris/f!Hawke and the Inquisition: Mother

Chapter 42 of Lovers In A Dangerous Time (i.e. Fenris the Inquisitor) is up on AO3! In which Morrigan confronts her mother in the Fade, with Fenris and Hawke along for the ride.

Read on AO3 instead. ~8300 words.

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Fenris went through the eluvian before Hawke. He immediately realized where they were, and his heart jammed itself into his throat.

He turned back to the eluvian as Hawke was stepping through it. Before she had a chance to open her mouth, he grasped her arm. 

“Go back,” he urged, but it was too late. Her face had gone pale, and her eyes were huge as she took in their surreal and unpleasant surroundings. 

 “Andraste’s fucking tits,” she breathed. “We’re in the Fade?”

Distress was creeping across her face like a shadow. He cradled her cheek in his palm. “Go back,” he told her. “There’s no need for you to suffer this again.”

“Are you kidding?” she said. She pulled his hand away from her face and squeezed it. “I’m not leaving you here alone. Not a fucking chance. Let’s just find Morrigan and get out of here as fast as we can. I mean, not that I wouldn’t love to stay in the Fade since it’s so nice and cheerful here, but I forgot to pack a picnic basket.”

She was smiling and her tone was light, and she was so obviously upset that it made his heart ache. “Hawke–” 

She cut him off. “How the fuck do you suppose this happened, anyway?” she said. “I thought the eluvian was supposed to lead to the crossroads, not right into the Fade. Isn’t this, you know, a bad thing?” She started walking along the cracked dirt pathway, and Fenris had no choice but to follow her.

“It got us from the Temple of Mythal directly back to Skyhold, as well,” Fenris reminded her. 

“That’s true,” she mused. She stepped gingerly over a tidy pile of gilded skulls, then shot Fenris a curious look. “So that’s three different places that Morrigan’s eluvian has led to. Do you think her eluvian could take us anywhere?”

Fenris frowned. “I wonder,” he said slowly. “But the way Morrigan spoke of the crossroads… She made it sound like specific eluvians led to specific locations.” Then he waved his hand dismissively. “We’ll consider it later. We should focus on finding Morrigan now.”

“True,” Hawke said. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Morrigan!” she yelled.

Her voice didn’t echo as one would expect; instead, it fell flat and muffled as though they were in a padded room. All the same, Fenris grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away from her mouth. “What are you doing?” he hissed.

“Calling for her! What else?” Hawke said in surprise. “If she knows we’re here, maybe we can organize ourselves and search for Kieran more systematically.” She grimaced at the hazy and ominous landscape. “If there is such thing as being systematic in the Fade.”

“We have to be quiet,” Fenris insisted. “We don’t want undue attention. Look.” He jerked his chin to the left, where a handful of wraiths were drifting aimlessly around an enormous and ancient-looking Avvar statue. 

Hawke looked, then tilted her head chidingly at Fenris. “Those are just wraiths like the ones in Old Crestwood. They won’t hurt us.”

“That doesn’t mean I want their attention,” Fenris retorted. “Now come. We must find Morrigan. Quietly.” He took her hand, and together they trotted through the misty and indistinct landscape of the Fade.

Hawke chattered quietly as they hurried past the omnipresent statues and eerie puddles and piles of candles. “So. Dorian going back to Tevinter, hm? That’s wonderful for him! A terrible hazard to his health, mind you, what with the poison and the assassins and the abusive father. But if anyone can navigate all of that and come out all the more handsome, it’s our Dorian.” 

“It is a risky course,” Fenris said distractedly. “But he’s certain of what he wants.” 

“So you think it’s a good idea for him to go back?” Hawke said. 

Fenris shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I think. He is his own man. I am not his father to judge what he does or doesn’t do.”

She snickered. “I should hope not, since you’re only a few years older than him. That would just be weird.”

Fenris grunted an acknowledgement, and they were silent for a moment before Hawke spoke again. “So… if I wanted to tie him to that nice squishy armchair in the library and not let him leave, I take it you wouldn’t be helping me?”

Fenris gave her a small chiding smile. “Not this time, Hawke,” he said gently.  “You are on your own with that plan.”

She chuckled, then sighed. “What’s so great about Tevinter that he wants to go back? Everything you’ve ever said about that place is awful. Everything he’s ever said is awful.”

Fenris ran a hand through his hair. “Our lives in Tevinter were very different,” he said slowly. “I was not a ‘person of Tevinter’. I was not a citizen. I was… chattel. Valuable chattel, but chattel nonetheless.”

Hawke scowled at this, but Fenris wasn’t finished. “Dorian, on the other hand, is a powerful altus from a noble family. He is a citizen of Tevinter in every sense of the word. For better or worse, the Imperium is his home.”

Hawke’s expression softened. “And it was never yours.”

“Absolutely not,” Fenris said quietly. “I… I have never truly had a place that I could call a home.” He gave her a rueful look. “You and I never had time to build that for ourselves.”

“Kirkwall was home for a while,” she suggested.

Fenris nodded ambivalently. Kirkwall was admittedly welcoming compared to everywhere else that Fenris had been during his years on the run, but he’d spent so much of his time in Kirkwall being constantly on guard that he hadn’t quite gotten around to feeling that it was really home. He might have squatted spitefully in Danarius’s mansion for years, but it had always remained just that: Danarius’s mansion, and never a home. Hawke’s house had been a refuge, first of friendship and then of love, but Fenris had never quite allowed himself to call it his home, not wanting Hawke to feel like he was dependent on her.

“I know what you mean, though,” she said, almost as though she knew his thoughts. “We never did buy that little house together that we wanted, did we?”

He looked at her. “We didn’t, no,” he said. He thought back to the conversation they’d had a few months ago in Crestwood, when they talked about finding a house on a Rivaini beach somewhere once Corypheus was dead. He wondered if she remembered it.

He wondered if it would be possible someday.

She gazed at him tenderly for a moment, then smiled and gently pinched his chin. “Well, you know what they say. Home is where the heart is.”

“I know no greater truth, Hawke,” he said softly. 

And perhaps this, he realized, was how he and Dorian were similar: they would both risk their lives for the wellbeing of their homes. Fenris’s home just happened to be a person rather than a country.

Hawke’s smile was wide and warm. She stood on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Come on, handsome. Let’s find ourselves a beautiful witch.”

They walked through the Fade in silence for a time – how long exactly, Fenris wasn’t sure – but it was long enough that he began to feel antsy about the repetitious and unnerving landscape that surrounded them. 

“Where in the Void is that blasted witch?” he said impatiently. “We should have caught up to her by now. She barely had a few minutes’ head-start.”

Hawke shrugged. “Time and distance work differently here, remember? And remember what Solas said.” She put on a mocking deep voice. “‘The more you try and force your way through the Fade, the less successful you’ll be’. Or something along those lines. We have to just… go with the flow. See what happens.” She gestured vaguely at the craggy and mist-laced rocks that loomed to their left. 

Fenris looked at her curiously. “How are you this calm?” he said. Then he winced slightly. That had come out sounding more insensitive than he’d intended.

She raised her eyebrows. “Should I not be?”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said hastily. “I’m glad you’re… taking this in stride.” Truthfully, he was thinking of Carver. Being in the Fade sent a creeping ripple of disquiet down the back of Fenris’s neck, and he hadn’t even lost a family member here. He couldn’t imagine how difficult this must be for Hawke. 

Her smile faltered for a telltale second. “Well, so are you,” she said cheerfully. “What else can we do, right? It’s not like we can ask for directions.” She raised her eyebrows. “Actually… I suppose we could try. Shall I ask the next wraith we see?”

She was deflecting, thereby confirming Fenris’s suspicions. He ran a comforting hand along her back. “I would rather not,” he said dryly. “But if you think it would help…” 

She smiled more widely at him, then tugged him toward a wraith that was hovering around a macabre threesome of hanging skeletons. “Hello!” she said brightly. “I hate to disturb your, er… drifting, but I don’t suppose you’ve seen a drop-dead gorgeous brunette passing through? Golden eyes, wine-coloured lips, scantily clad…”

She trailed off, and Fenris bit the inside of his cheek. The wraith was drifting away from Hawke without a word. 

“All right then,” Hawke said lamely. “Good, er, good talking to you.” She grimaced at Fenris and lowered her voice. “Was I terribly rude?”

“Ask Solas about spirit manners upon our return to Skyhold,” Fenris drawled. “For now, let’s continue to–”

“There she is!” Hawke exclaimed, and she pointed. 

Fenris whipped around, and his shoulders dropped in relief. Morrigan was walking around in a frantic but haphazard circle about fifteen metres away. 

“Morrigan,” he barked.

She looked up briefly at the sound of his voice, then waved him off. “Go back!” she called, and she started trotting away.

 Fenris grabbed Hawke’s hand and began running toward her. As they drew level with her, Fenris looked at her in surprise; her face was tight with uncharacteristic panic. 

“No sign of Kieran yet, then?” Hawke asked.

Morrigan shook her head. “No,” she said tensely. “I cannot tell where he has gone.”

Hawke’s eyebrows rose in sympathy. “It’s all right, Morrigan, we’ll–”

“Why did Kieran do this?” Morrigan suddenly burst out. “How could he do this? To direct the eluvian here would require immense power.” She took a deep, shaky breath and turned away from Fenris and Hawke. “If he is lost to me now, after all I have sacrificed…”

Fenris narrowed his eyes. “You never mentioned that Kieran was a mage. And a powerful one at that.”

“Of course that is what would concern you right now,” Morrigan snapped. “If you must know, Kieran is not, in fact, a mage.” She exhaled sharply. “But I do not understand what would lead him to come here. Why would he run from me?” 

Her voice was strained with stress, and Fenris watched her with growing wariness. Morrigan was one of the most infuriatingly cool and composed people Fenris had ever met. Seeing her lose her composure was almost as unnerving as the Fade itself. 

She was rubbing her sternum compulsively. “Whatever happens to him now, ‘tis my doing. I sent him on his path,” she lamented.

Fenris frowned in confusion. What did she mean by that? 

Then she looked directly at Fenris. “Please help me look, Inquisitor. Just a little longer.”

He blinked in bemusement at the simple humility of her request. “Er, yes,” he said. “We’ll… we’ll find Kieran.” 

“That’s right,” Hawke said firmly. She reached for Morrigan’s arm, then seemed to think better of it and tucked her hands behind her back. “Don’t panic, all right? We’ll find him.”

Morrigan took another deep breath and nodded, and the three of them continued in a wandering path through the Fade. Morrigan was silent as they strode along, and Fenris wasn’t inclined to break that silence; he wanted some time with his thoughts. 

So Morrigan’s son harboured some ‘immense power’, but he wasn’t a mage. So what was he, exactly? Was this immense power related to why was he so strange, with his oddly anachronistic way of speaking and his unnerving comments that reminded Fenris of Cole at times?

But Kieran didn’t always speak in cryptic riddles. At times he behaved just like a normal child, running around with Toby and Hawke in the yard–

Suddenly Fenris realized what was going on. He shot Morrigan a sharp look. “Kieran is possessed,” he said bluntly.

Hawke’s eyes went wide, but Morrigan only glanced at him. “Excuse me?” she said distractedly. 

“Your son is possessed,” Fenris accused. “That is why he’s strange – why he was able to open the eluvian. He’s possessed by a powerful demon, isn’t he?”

Hawke let out a little laugh and patted his arm. “Fenris, maybe now is not the time…”

But Morrigan answered him. “My son is not being controlled by some malevolent spirit, if that is what you are suggesting,” she said snidely. “What Kieran possesses is something far more valuable. He holds the soul of an Old God.”

Fenris’s stomach jolted in shock. That was not the answer he had expected. 

Hawke replied for both of them. “Huh?” she said.

Morrigan nodded. Her eyes continued to move restlessly across the strange and hazy landscape as she spoke. “Taken from the Archdemon at the final battle of the Fifth Blight, yes,” she said.

Fenris gaped at her in utter disbelief. Once again, Hawke spoke in his place. “How…?”

Morrigan glanced at her. “I dare not speak of the ritual, Champion. Your husband would no doubt lock me away if he knew.”

Her tone was laced with a hint of her usual arrogance, and Fenris narrowed his eyes. “You forced the soul of an archdemon into an unborn child?” he demanded.

Morrigan looked at him, then looked away and continued to scan their surroundings. “He has never known anything else. The Old God soul was with him from the moment he was conceived.”

“How could you do that?” Fenris snapped. “Force your child to bear the soul of an archdemon before he had the will to refuse it?”

“I told you at the Temple,” Morrigan said in a hard voice. “The magic of old must be preserved, no matter how feared.”

A fresh rush of anger filled Fenris’s chest, and he took a deep breath. Before he could speak, however, Hawke clapped her hands once. “All right!” she said cheerfully. “Fascinating as this chat has been, let’s stay on course, yes? We’ve got a ten-year-old to rescue from a boring life of no one but wraiths for company.”

Morrigan’s scowl immediately melted back into anxiety, and she nodded once before picking up her pace. Once Morrigan was slightly ahead of them, Hawke turned to him. “Fenris–”

“Her actions are deplorable,” he hissed. “Forcing a blight-infested… life-force onto her own child? Is that the only reason she wants to find him? To regain the power that’s trapped in his unwitting body?” 

“Look, what’s done is done,” Hawke said firmly. “And if we’re thinking about Kieran’s wellbeing here, arguing with Morrigan isn’t going to help us to get him out of here.”

Fenris clenched his jaw and didn’t reply. Hawke was right, of course; arguing with Morrigan wasn’t going to undo any evils she’d committed ten years ago. Not that she should be freed from any culpability she’d earned, but they had more pressing matters right now – namely the safety of her son. 

Hawke was gazing at him pleadingly, and an uncomfortable feeling of shame diluted his anger. He hadn’t meant to start an argument when a child’s life was at stake. But if that child bore such an immense power – one that Morrigan and perhaps even Kieran didn’t understand…

Fenris sighed. “Come,” he said tiredly, and he and Hawke hurried along in Morrigan’s wake. 

The whole situation was fraught with danger – the exact sort of danger that the Circle was intended to mitigate. But Morrigan had raised Kieran thus far without any help or Chantry control, and he was…

Yes, Kieran was odd. But he was perfectly polite and well-behaved. And before this incident, Fenris would never have suspected that Kieran harboured any magical abilities at all. 

But even Morrigan didn’t know he could channel this kind of magical power, Fenris thought. And that meant that Kieran’s power – or the Old God’s power, really – was a complete unknown, even to his own arrogant know-it-all of a mother–

“There he is!” Morrigan cried.

Fenris looked up, then did a double-take. Kieran was standing in a small clearing among the plethora of statues and craggy dolmens, but he wasn’t alone. 

Fenris’s heart seized with shock and alarm. There was a formidably-dressed woman kneeling in front of Kieran – one that Fenris and Hawke had met before, and whom Morrigan knew well. 

“No,” Morrigan said faintly. She sounded as though she’d been punched in the belly. “That’s… no. It can’t be.” She bolted off toward her son, and Fenris and Hawke raced after her. 

Kieran looked up at their approach. “Mother!” he said joyfully. He smiled at Morrigan and closed his fist, extinguishing the blinding white-blue light of magic that was glowing in his palm. 

The formidably-dressed woman rose slowly to her feet and smirked. “Well well,” she said. “Isn’t this a surprise.” Her cool yellow gaze drifted from Morrigan to Fenris, and then to Hawke.

“The Champion of Kirkwall,” she mused. Her eyes shifted back to Fenris, and her smile widened. “And a Herald indeed: shouting to the heavens, a harbinger of a new age.” She laughed: a rich, knowing sound that sent a shiver down Fenris’s spine. “The twists of fate have not been kind to you, have they now?”

Fenris narrowed his eyes. He may have forgotten Flemeth’s exact words to Hawke when they’d first met all those years ago, but the ominous nature of her interest in Hawke still lingered in his mind.

Hawke folded her arms. “Hello, Flemeth. It’s been a while, how are the dragon’s wings, blah blah and so on. We’d love to catch up over a cup of tea, but it looks like you’ve taken someone who wasn’t yours to take.” She gave Kieran a pointed glance and lifted her chin in challenge.

“Nonsense,” Flemeth replied. “He came to see his grandmother, like a good lad. I’m told sense often skips a generation.” She shot Morrigan a supercilious look. 

Morrigan took an aggressive step forward. “Kieran is not your grandson. Let him go!”

Flemeth tilted her head chidingly. “As if I were holding the boy hostage.” She glanced conspiratorially at Fenris. “She’s always been ungrateful, you see.”

“Ungrateful?” Morrigan shrieked. 

Fenris recoiled slightly. He’d never seen Morrigan so enraged. 

Morrigan took another step toward her mother and pointed at her accusingly. “I know how you plan to extend your life, wicked crone,” she spat. “You will not have me, and you will not have my son!” She lifted her palms, and a cloud of violent green magic began to build around her hands. 

“That’s quite enough,” Flemeth said briskly. “You’ll endanger the boy.” Her eyes flashed a brilliant white-blue – the same shade of white-blue, in fact, that had illuminated Kieran’s palm just a moment ago. She extended her hand toward Morrigan, and Morrigan’s magical attack abruptly disappeared. 

Morrigan stumbled back and gazed at her inert palms with wide and fearful eyes. “What have you done to me?” she demanded.

“I have done nothing,” Flemeth said. “You drank from the Well of your own volition.”

Fenris blinked. Wait. Drank from the Well? Flemeth knew Morrigan had drunk from the Well? But how…? 

Morrigan exhaled in disbelief. “You… are Mythal,” she breathed.

Fenris gave Flemeth a sharp look. The corners of Flemeth’s lips were curled in the smallest of smirks.

An odd feeling of surreality filled Fenris’s ears, and Hawke exhaled loudly. “Well, shit,” she said blankly. “That’s, er… unexpected.” 

Flemeth’s smirk widened. “You of all people should expect the unexpected by now.” She patted Kieran’s shoulder, and Kieran gave her a quick smile before running to Morrigan.

Morrigan fell to her knees and swept Kieran into her arms. Fenris, meanwhile, was still staring at Flemeth with a ringing sense of dull disbelief. Flemeth was Mythal, all this time? Back on Sundermount when Merrill had done her Dalish ritual on that cursed amulet, the being she’d set free was… not a witch, or a fragment of a witch, but… but an ancient elven goddess?

It couldn’t be. It was too… fantastical. 

“You can’t be Mythal,” Fenris said, but he could hear the uncertainty in his own voice.

She quirked an eyebrow. “Explain to me, dear boy, why I cannot be what I am.”

“Where is your proof?” Fenris said. But as soon as the words left his mouth, something strange that Solas had once said returned to his mind: no real god need prove himself. Anyone who tries is mad or lying.

Flemeth’s smiled broadened, and Fenris frowned. Then Kieran spoke. “I’m sorry, Mother. I heard her calling to me. She said now was the time.” He pulled away from Morrigan’s tight embrace and returned to Flemeth’s side.

Morrigan slowly rose to her feet. “I do not understand,” she said in a trembling voice.

Flemeth lifted her chin haughtily. “Once I was but a woman, crying out in the lonely darkness for justice. And she came to me, a whisper of an ancient being, and she granted me all I wanted and more. I have carried Mythal through the ages ever since, seeking a justice denied to her.”

“So… hang on a minute,” Hawke said. “You’re not actually Mythal, but you’re carrying her in your body?”

“She is a part of me, no more separate than your heart from your chest,” Flemeth replied.

Hawke raised her eyebrows, and Fenris knew exactly what she was thinking: Flemeth’s description was exactly how Anders had described his… arrangement with Justice. 

Fenris folded his arms. “How do you know that the ancient being with whom you share yourself is a goddess and not a demon?”

Flemeth smiled at him. “Such a curious lad. Some things do not change, I see.” She looked at Morrigan. “You hear the voices of the Well, girl. What do they say?”

Morrigan took a deep breath, then closed her eyes. A moment later, she opened them, and her lemon-coloured irises flickered for a moment before she replied. “They… they say you speak the truth,” she whispered. 

Flemeth smiled, then began to pace in a slow and leisurely manner. “But what was Mythal? A legend given name and called god, or something more? Truth is not the end, but a beginning.”

Fenris frowned more deeply. So it was still possible that the being inside of Flemeth was a spirit – just a powerful spirit that was known as a goddess back in ancient Arlathan.

“You follow her whims?” Morrigan asked her mother. “Not knowing what she truly is, still you step along the path she commands?” 

Flemeth gave Morrigan a condescending look. “You seek to preserve the powers that were, but to what end? It is because I taught you, girl. Because things happened that were never meant to happen.” She took a step closer to Morrigan, and Fenris took an instinctive step in front of Hawke; Flemeth’s usual smug expression was starting to twist with anger. 

“Mythal was betrayed, as I was betrayed – as the world was betrayed,” she proclaimed. “Mythal clawed and crawled her way through the ages to me, and I will see her avenged!”

Flemeth’s furious voice rang through the Fade. Despite his alarm, Fenris couldn’t help but notice this was the first time that any sound echoed the way it should in this dismal place.

Then Flemeth sighed. “Alas,” she said quietly. “So long as the music plays, we dance.”

Fenris continued to eye her mistrustfully. No matter what Flemeth and Morrigan said, Flemeth’s behaviour was still striking him as highly reminiscent of Anders, right down to the glittering white-blue of her eyes when she’d quashed Morrigan’s magical attack. 

Hawke cleared her throat. “So what business brings you here, Flemeth?” she said casually. “Or should we call you Mythal?” Then she straightened and snapped her fingers. “Flemythal! Oh, that’s a perfect portmanteau. Can we call you Flemythal?”

Fenris interrupted her. “Morrigan drank from the Well of Sorrows,” he said to Flemeth. “Did you come to force her into servitude?”

Flemeth threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, what a servant she would make!”

“Then what is it you want?” Morrigan demanded.

“One thing, and one thing only,” Flemeth said. Her gaze drifted down to Kieran. 

Morrigan’s jaw dropped, and her cheeks drained of colour. Kieran gazed at her sadly. “I have to go now, Mother,” he said.

“No,” she snapped. She glared at Flemeth. “I will not allow it!”

Flemeth folded her arms. “He carries a piece of what once was, snatched from the jaws of darkness. You know this.”

“He is more than that,” Morrigan yelled.

Flemeth shrugged elegantly. “As am I, yet do you hear me complain? Our destinies are not so easily avoided, dear girl.”

Morrigan stepped forward. “He is not your pawn, Mother,” she snarled. “I will not let you use him!” She spun toward Fenris and Hawke.  “Flemeth extends her life by possessing the bodies of her daughters,” she said. “That was the fate she intended for me. I thwarted her, and now she intends to use Kieran instead!”

“Have you not used him?” Flemeth retorted. “Was that not your purpose? The reason you agreed to his creation?”

“That was then,” Morrigan shouted. “Now he…” She broke off and gazed desperately at Kieran, and when she spoke again, her voice was cracked with distress. “He is my son.”

Flemeth raised her eyebrows slightly. Then Kieran spoke again in a soft, calm voice. “Mother, I have to.”

Morrigan shook her head. “You do not belong to her, Kieran,” she said desperately. “Neither of us do.”

“Why now?” Hawke said.

They all turned to look at her. Her arms were folded still, and all traces of jocularity were gone from her face. “You made do without Kieran for ten years,” she said to Flemeth. “Why do you suddenly want him now?”

“I did not know where he was,” Flemeth said. “Morrigan cleverly hid him from me… until now.”

Morrigan’s stricken face tensed even further. “‘Twas the Well,” she breathed.

Flemeth shook her head in a condescending way. “Always grasping beyond your reach, despite all that I taught you.”

Fenris frowned at her. “Does Morrigan speak the truth?” he demanded. “Are you seeking to possess Kieran’s body?”

“If my daughter believes it, then it must be so,” Flemeth said. 

Fenris scowled more deeply. Then Hawke spoke again. “And what if we say no?” she said in a hard voice. “If we tell you that Kieran is coming home with us?”

Flemeth glanced at Hawke as though she was a disobedient child. Then she gestured with her hand.

In an exact mirror of Flemeth’s gesture, Morrigan’s arm lifted, and a glittering ball of magic shot at Hawke. 

Hawke squeaked in alarm and hastily threw up a barrier. At the same moment, Fenris phased toward Morrigan and grabbed her arm. “Stop,” he barked – not at Morrigan, but at Flemeth. 

Morrigan answered anyway. “I – I cannot,” she cried. 

Flemeth lowered her arm, and Morrigan’s arm went lax in Fenris’s hand. He immediately released her and planted himself in front of Hawke. 

“Try that again, and I will tear you apart,” he snarled at Flemeth. 

Her gaze flickered over his glowing lyrium brands, then back to his face. “In this place, my power is greater than yours. Than any of yours,” she added with a glance at Morrigan and Hawke. “Do not tempt me further.” 

Fenris glowered at her furiously and kept his tattoos alight. Then Morrigan let out a ragged sob and fell to her knees. “Kieran…” 

Kieran looked up at Flemeth, and Flemeth met his gaze. A moment later, she raised her eyebrows slightly.

 “As you wish,” she said, and she looked at Morrigan. “Hear my proposal, dear girl: let me take the lad, and you are free of me forever. I will never interfere with or harm you again. Or keep the lad with you… and you will never be safe from me.” She lifted her chin slightly. “I will have my due.”

Morrigan scrambled to her feet. “He returns with me,” she said eagerly.

Flemeth blinked. “Decided so quickly?”

“Do whatever you wish. Take over my body now if you must, but Kieran will be free of your clutches,” Morrigan said viciously. She took two bold steps toward Flemeth. “I am many things, but I will not be the mother you were to me.”

Flemeth didn’t reply. As Fenris tensely watched, her face seemed to melt from its usual haughtiness to a wistful sort of sadness. 

She turned to Kieran, then took his hands in hers. He lifted his chin to meet her gaze, and a brilliant white-blue light burst from his chest. 

Fenris tensed in alarm, and Hawke’s fingers tightly clasped his hand. The light floated softly toward Flemeth, then touched her chest and abruptly disappeared. 

Kieran blinked at Flemeth. “No more dreams?” he asked. 

She shook her head. “No more dreams,” she said softly. 

Kieran smiled, then trotted over to Morrigan, who swiftly wrapped him in her arms. Flemeth, meanwhile, was watching them calmly. “A soul is not forced upon the unwilling, Morrigan,” she said. “You were never in danger from me.” 

Morrigan looked up at her, but didn’t speak. Flemeth nodded once, then took a step back. “Listen to the voices,” she said sagely. “They will teach you as I never did.” She turned and began walking away.

“Wait!” Morrigan called. 

Flemeth didn’t look back. A few seconds later, she melted into the mist of the Fade and disappeared. 

Morrigan exhaled slowly, then turned to Kieran and cupped his cheeks in her hands. “Are you all right?” she said anxiously. “You were not hurt?”

He looked up at her. “I feel lonely,” he said softly. 

Morrigan’s posture softened, and she smiled at him and stroked his hair. Then Hawke wandered over to join them. “No need to feel lonely, Kieran,” she said encouragingly. “You’ve got lots of friends waiting back at Skyhold, right? Toby needs someone to play fetch with, for instance. His legs are a little stiff these days, and someone’s got to help him stay limber.” She glanced at Morrigan. “If it’s all right with your mum, of course.”

Kieran looked pleadingly at Morrigan. “May I, Mother?”

“Of course,” Morrigan said. “Once we are free from the Fade.” She shot Hawke a small smile and ushered Kieran along with a hand at his back, and Fenris and Hawke trailed behind them. 

“So,” Hawke said quietly. “Mythal’s a spirit, right? We’re on the same page about that?”

Fenris nodded slowly. “It fits the pattern, yes. She sounds exactly like Anders’s vengeance demon.”

Hawke huffed quietly. “‘Vengeance’ is the right word. I don’t exactly want to have her on our bad side. I suppose it’s too late for that, though.” She gave Fenris an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Fenris, I didn’t mean to antagonize her,” she said. “It’s just… seeing her threatening that poor kid, and Morrigan literally unable to help him because her own mother controls her? It’s…” She grimaced and shook her head. “That’s so many levels of fucked up, it’s not even funny. And I find everything funny.”

“You’re right about that,” Fenris murmured. Flemeth’s absolute control over Morrigan was extremely chilling. And yet, it could be worse.

“At least Morrigan still has control of her own mind,” he remarked.

Hawke tilted her head. “Hmm?”

“She was able to say that she did not want to do what she was being forced to do,” Fenris explained. “As long as she has that…” He glanced thoughtfully at Morrigan’s mostly-bare back. “For her sake, I hope she retains that spirit.” Then he frowned at his own word choice. “I don’t mean… not spirit. ‘Sense of self’, maybe.”

Hawke looked at him. “That is kind of the question though, isn’t it? What the fuck are spirits, or a sense of self for that matter?” She ticked off her fingers. “We now know three people who have harboured another… something, or someone, in their own body. There’s Anders and Venjustice, who is a spirit; Kieran and the Old God soul, which was a… a soul, from what Morrigan said; and Flemeth with Mythal, which is a goddess, I guess, but even Flemeth wouldn’t say what the fuck that means.” Her face was twisted with confusion as she looked up at him. “So are all consciousnesses just different kinds of spirits?”

He rubbed his forehead. He was equally confused. “That seems an extreme conclusion,” he said slowly. 

“Is it, though?” Hawke asked. “Maybe we’re all just spirits melded with a body. Maybe…” She broke off, and Fenris watched with growing alarm as her face went slack.

She grabbed Fenris’s hand. “Maybe what Tranquility actually does is knock your spirit out of you!” she said excitedly. “And curing Tranquility invites your spirit to come back!”

He recoiled slightly, both at her enthusiasm and at the unpleasant reminder of a possible Tranquility cure. “But… but that’s not how Cassandra described it,” he said. “And I’ve heard Cole talking about it with her. He said it was a spirit of faith that touched her mind.”

She wilted. “Oh. Well, never mind then.” Her tense grip on his hand lessened to a normal affectionate hold. “But… it’s a neat idea, isn’t it? That souls and spirits are one and the same.”

Fenris grunted. “Unnerving is what I would call it. Besides, that is not how Solas describes spirits. They’re embodiments of a singular emotion or virtue, according to him.”

Hawke gave him a sly smile. “Ah, look at how well you listened to him. You’re going to steal my spot as his star pupil.”

Fenris gave her a flat look, and she chuckled. “All right, all right. I get your point. It would be interesting, though, right? If souls really did just come to live in the Fade after a person dies. Like that spirit that was imitating the Divine the last time we were here. How crazy would it be if that really was her, um, soul or whatever? Just… hanging around in the Fade.”

Fenris looked at her. Her tone was casual, and her face was pleasant and calm as she looked around at their hazy and macabre surroundings. Fenris carefully laced his fingers with hers and squeezed her hand. 

“I miss him,” she said abruptly. 

Carver’s stubborn and determined face flashed across Fenris’s mind. He took a deep breath. “I know,” he said softly.

She pressed her lips together and continued to look around at the Fade. A tense moment later, she spoke again. “Do you think a spirit would ever imitate him?”

I don’t know, Fenris thought. He felt poorly equipped to have this conversation with her, but he had to try. “Perhaps,” he said.

She was quiet for a minute, and Fenris watched with an aching heart as she surreptitiously wiped her eye. “Maybe I’ll try writing him another veilfire letter,” she said. 

He squeezed her hand. “I think that is a fine idea.”

She finally smiled at him with reddened eyes, and he smiled back at her despite the lump of vicarious grief in his throat.

They walked in silence for a moment. Then Fenris spoke up. “Something that alarms me, though. Flemeth’s ability to… resurrect.” He looked down at Hawke. “It’s reminiscent of Corypheus, isn’t it?”

She raised her eyebrows, so he went on. “When Merrill brought her out of that amulet. She stated that she was just a fragment. She seemed to imply that… that she could not be so easily killed, since fragments could be… preserved, like in that amulet. It strikes a similar note to Corypheus’s manifestations, doesn’t it?”

While he spoke, her eyebrows rose with wonder and worry both. “So you think Mythal is… um… that she’s like Corypheus?” she asked.

“Or that Corypheus is like her, if she is truly an ancient being as she claims,” Fenris said.

“Shit,” Hawke breathed. She gazed at him wordlessly for a moment, then sighed and tugged a tuft of her short dark hair. “Well, we’ve got our homework cut out for us.”

“Unfortunately so,” Fenris said ruefully. “When we get back to Skyhold, speak to Solas about… all of this. I am curious to know what he thinks of Mythal’s existence being this… tangible.” He frowned as his thoughts returned to Solas. The elven mage had been so vociferous about the dangers of drinking from the Well of Sorrows. Had he known all along that Mythal’s existence was…well, that she existed?

Was this part of the secret that Solas was hiding?

Hawke looked at him in surprise. “You don’t want to talk to him yourself?”

Fenris pursed his lips. He did want to question Solas about this, but he still thought Hawke was more likely to get answers than he. 

“I will speak to Morrigan,” he said. “I will find out what the voices from the Vir’Abelasan have told her.”

Her eyebrows rose even further. “Are you sure you want to talk to Morrigan and not Solas? Given how much you, um, hate her?” She laughed nervously.

Fenris gave her a chiding smirk. “I will not challenge her to one-on-one combat. I promise you that.”

Hawke elbowed him playfully, and he sobered. “After what transpired here, I… I may understand her better,” he said. He looked at Morrigan once more. Kieran was chattering cheerfully to her as they walked along, and her hand was resting on his shoulder in a restrained but clearly affectionate gesture.

He looked at Hawke once more. “I shall do my best to be civil.”

She smiled and twined her fingers with his. A moment later, the eluvian was in front of them, its surface shimmering with its usual kaleidoscope of colours, and Fenris didn’t bother to wonder why the walk back to the eluvian had taken so little time.

Morrigan nodded politely to Hawke and Fenris as they drew close. “Kieran has gone through already,” she said. 

Hawke smiled and gave her arm a friendly squeeze before stepping through the eluvian, and Fenris followed her, with Morrigan close behind. 

Varric and Dorian were waiting in the storeroom, and Fenris nodded reassuringly to them both. Varric’s posture relaxed, and he patted Kieran on the shoulder. “You gave everyone a scare, imp.”

“I’m sorry, Master Tethras,” Kieran said politely. 

Varric smirked at Dorian. “This kid and his manners.”

Dorian chuckled. “Impeccable as always.” He looked at Morrigan, who had just finished extinguishing the eluvian. “I’m telling you, Morrigan, he needs a lesson in the ways of the common folk. A little dirt under his nails will do him some good.” 

Morrigan frowned, but Hawke snickered. “Like you should talk, Messere Perfect-Hygiene.” 

Dorian inspected his immaculate fingernails. “True. I stand corrected.”

Hawke punched him playfully in the arm, then patted Kieran’s shoulder. “We’re going to go play fetch with Toby,” she said brightly to Varric and Dorian. “You’re coming along, right? The more the merrier?”

Dorian sighed. “Must I?” 

Hawke punched him again, and he tutted. “Fine, fine. But I’m only watching,” he said warningly. “I refuse to touch that beast’s drool-covered toys.”

Kieran smiled, and Varric shrugged affably. “I’m in. Why not?” He glanced at Fenris. “Coming, elf?” 

“Not just now,” Fenris said. 

Varric raised his eyebrows, but nodded. Hawke shot Fenris a jaunty wink as she ushered Kieran away, and a moment later, Fenris and Morrigan were alone in the storeroom. 

Morrigan sighed. “My mother wanted the Old God soul all along,” she said. “She has the soul of an elven goddess – or whatever Mythal truly was – and her plans are unknown to me.” She gave Fenris a rueful look. “Is it worth reminding myself that perhaps I do not know everything after all?”

Fenris raised his eyebrows at her humble admission. And yet, this wasn’t the only time her humility had surprised him today.

“Did you never suspect what or who she was?” he asked. 

Morrigan gestured to the storeroom door, and she and Fenris slowly made their way out of the storeroom as she replied. “I knew she kept the truth from me. I even suspected she was not truly human. But this?” She shook her head. “I always thought the so-called ‘elven gods’ were little more than glorified rulers, but now I have doubt. And doubt is… an uncomfortable thing, Inquisitor.”

“I can’t decide if you are shortsighted or fortunate to only be realizing that now,” he said, but in a much softer tone than he would have previously used. 

Morrigan shot him an annoyed look, then sighed. “Just be thankful that Hawke did not drink from the Well,” she said. “I am evidently tied to my mother for eternity.” Her tone was distinctly bitter; understandably so, given what Fenris and Hawke had just witnessed. 

They were silent as they stepped into the garden. Morrigan strolled through the garden toward the pagoda, and as Fenris followed her, he watched Hawke and Kieran playing with Toby. 

They were running around the garden chasing after the overjoyed mabari. Varric and Dorian were standing on the other side of the garden, and as Fenris watched, Toby pelted straight toward Dorian with a ball in his mouth. 

Dorian grimaced and shied away from Toby, and Varric patted Toby’s rump and said something to Dorian. Dorian rolled his eyes and very gingerly took the drool-covered ball from Toby’s mouth, then threw the ball and immediately wiped his fingers on Varric’s shirt. 

Fenris smirked. Morrigan sighed and leaned against one of the pagoda’s pillars, and Fenris leaned against the other. 

“Now we must prepare to face Corypheus himself,” Morrigan said. “It seems Mother was right: the voices of the Well tell me I will be able to match his dragon. All that remains is for you to find him.”

“Leliana’s people are already searching,” he confirmed. 

Morrigan nodded in turn, then tapped her fingers thoughtfully on the pillar. “Knowing now what we do, I feel certain what happened at the Temple of Mythal must somehow have been my mother’s influence.”

Fenris nodded, then frowned as something occurred to him. “We should have asked her if the orb belonged to her,” he said. “The one Corypheus has been using to cause all this chaos.” 

Morrigan raised her eyebrows. “You think perchance that she gave him the orb?”

“It is a possibility,” Fenris said. “She is the only elven deity we know.”

Morrigan twisted her lips at his wry tone. “Perhaps,” she said slowly. “It is hard to imagine her motivation for doing so. Then again, everything about her is hard to imagine.” She shook her head ruefully. “All my years spent hunting for arcane mysteries, and the greatest was the one I left behind.”

Fenris eyed her appraisingly for a moment. Then he turned his gaze to Hawke and Kieran’s antics.

 He and Morrigan silently watched them playing with Toby for a time. Then Morrigan spoke. “I am uncertain what effect this will have on Kieran,” she said softly. “The Old God soul was a constant throughout his entire life. Its voice was as familiar to him as my own.” She looked at Fenris, and her eyebrows were lifted with melancholy. “He said he was lonely. That is not a feeling I ever wanted for my son.” 

Fenris nodded a silent acknowledgement. He was familiar with loneliness, and her wish to protect Kieran from that terrible emptiness was understandable. 

She sighed and looked at her son once more. “Kieran had a destiny, and now it is in Flemeth’s hands. I suppose we shall see what she does with it.”

Fenris shifted his weight. “His life is worth more than the power he held.”

Morrigan glared at him. “Do you think I am unaware–”

He held up a hand to cut her off. “I am speaking a truth you already know,” he said. “His life matters to you more than anything. More than your own life. More, even, than that ancient magic you are so fond of. You proved that today.”

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously, and Fenris couldn’t blame her; he had never treated her with the kind of patience he was showing now. But until today, she had also never shown herself to be anything other than a dangerous, power-hungry mage. 

He folded his arms and looked at Hawke and Kieran. “I don’t know much about being a parent,” he said. “Or… anything at all, if I’m honest. But… I believe a parent should be completely selfless when it comes to their child.” He glanced at Morrigan. “You would have sacrificed your life to keep him safe.”

She lifted her chin and folded her arms as well. “Should I be grateful for your approval, Inquisitor?”

With effort, he ignored her haughty tone. “I commend your choice, Morrigan. That is all I wish to say.”

Morrigan stared hard at him for a moment longer, then unfolded her arms and leaned against the pillar once more. “She was testing me, and I cannot tell whether I passed.”

Fenris shrugged. “Your son is safe. Whether or not you passed is of little consequence. And now that the archdemon soul has been stripped from him, he’s… normal.” He gave Morrigan a quick wry glance. “I nearly envy him myself.”

She raised one eyebrow, and her gaze flicked briefly to his verdant left palm before returning to his face. “I suppose you would envy such a thing.”

Fenris decided to overlook the hint of condescension in her tone. He had no shame in admitting that he would have liked a peaceful and normal life, if ever he’d had the choice.

They were silent again for a time. It appeared that Hawke’s game of fetch had evolved into some sort of impromptu parkour; Kieran was running wildly around the garden, jumping off of benches and leaping over rocks and bushes while Toby lolloped along in his wake, and Dorian, Varric, and Hawke were cheering him on.

Kieran slowed as he ran over to them, and Hawke ruffled his hair – hair that Fenris idly noted was a very similar shade of brown to Hawke’s. A moment later, she and Kieran were haring around the garden together with a barking Toby racing in their wake, and Fenris couldn’t help but smile as he watched her playing so exuberantly with Morrigan’s son.

Then Morrigan surprised him by speaking. “For what it is worth, you need not know much about being a parent before becoming one,” she said.

Fenris glanced at her. Her eyebrows were quirked in a knowing manner.

He looked away from her and rubbed the back of his neck. “I take it you knew little of what you were getting into,” he said gruffly. 

She nodded. “On the night Kieran was conceived, I did not know the course I had set in motion for myself. I thought I did, but I was…” She smirked. “I was a foolish girl, exactly as my mother had always said.” She folded her arms once more, but for the first time today, her expression was content. 

“The past ten years have been exceedingly difficult,” she told Fenris. “Yet I do not regret them.”

Fenris regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded. “An interesting perspective. I… appreciate it.”

She nodded, then shot him another suspicious look. “Kieran and I will leave once Corypheus is defeated. You would do well to remember this, and to remember that you cannot stop me.”

Fenris instinctively frowned at her hostility. But for the first time, he heard defensiveness in her tone rather than arrogance.

He forced himself to relax. “If your time here is limited, then share with me what you’ve learned from the Vir’Abelasan.”

Her belligerent scowl collapsed into a look of surprise. A split second later, her usual cool expression was back in place. She straightened and nodded. “Of course. My knowledge is, after all, why I am here.”

Fenris pursed his lips as he followed her over to the pagoda bench and the open tome that was lying there. Morrigan shifted the Elvhen tome onto her lap and flipped to a section at the beginning of the book. “Given your mistrust of the eluvians, perhaps this will interest you. It was always assumed their use was lost after the Tevinter conquest of Arlathan. But the ancient elves–”

“Mother, look!”

Morrigan and Fenris looked up. Kieran was balancing on his hands while Hawke held his feet. A moment later, Hawke released his ankles. 

Kieran maintained the handstand, then took a few wobbly steps forward on his hands before collapsing into a heap on the grass. He pushed his hair out of his face and grinned. “Wasn’t that fantastic, Mother?” he called. “Maybe I can learn to walk all the way across the garden on my hands!” 

Morrigan huffed and rubbed her nose before replying. “Be careful, Kieran,” she warned. “Do not attempt that trick any closer to the Inquisitor’s herb garden.”

“I won’t! I promise!” Kieran gestured eagerly to Hawke, then ran over to one of the perpetually laden apple trees. 

Fenris watched fondly as Hawke gave Kieran a boost to reach the lowest branch. Once the boy was in the tree, Hawke turned to look at Fenris.

She blew him a kiss. He smiled warmly at her, then turned back to Morrigan.

She was also smiling. The moment their eyes met, Morrigan cleared her throat and gestured at the book. “Shall I continue, Inquisitor?” 

He nodded in a businesslike manner. “Yes. Go on.”

Fenris and Morrigan continued to slowly pore over the book while Hawke and Kieran played with Toby, Varric, and Dorian. And for a short time, they weren’t the exalted Inquisitor and the notorious Witch of the Wilds. They were simply two people who shared a common goal: to protect their families, no matter the cost. 

[best-of-b-photography]

Liza Waters Reports: Fort Defiance

The past week has been an adventure across Appalachia for me and Casa. Ever since learning about this supposed ‘Brotherhood of Steel’, we’ve been trying to pick up the pieces of their settlement here. We knew nothing of them, except that they were a military powerhouse that had come to deal with the Scorched problem.  The lack of their people that I have seen around should have been an indicator to what had happened to them, but I was clouded by the false hope that they could somehow save Appalachia.  My home. 

Allegany Asylum.  That’s where our journey had taken us.  A place not unfamiliar to me, and one where irony seems to be laid on thick.  See, when I was a teenager, I spent a few months with Allegany as my home. Now you’re probably wondering: ‘Liza, what awful thing must you have done to end up in an Asylum?’.  Well, if you’ll remember back to my previous broadcasts, you’ll remember when I talked about Ghouls. And a particular ghoul that I labelled as my high school girlfriend.  My parents, who were brought up in a different time, thought I needed help. That being in a relationship with another girl was somehow a disease that needed to be cured. I don’t like to say it was against my will, but I was admitted to the asylum at the beginning of my second year of high school with the hope that they could ‘help me’. 

Whenever I discuss asylums with people they have this very set idea of them in their mind. People with straitjackets banging their heads against the walls. Systematic torture of the patients. Screaming that fills the hallways at almost all hours of the day.  I think that all of these assumptions began with the rumours that surrounded Allegheny Asylum, because sometimes they’re a little bit too true for comfort. I was in the asylum during one of the worst times in its history. The ‘Red Scare’ was at its peak, and soon the United States government declared communism, or I should rather say the approval of communism, a severe mental illness.  The Asylum was flooded with people who supported communism, those were thought to be communists, and even a couple people who were unsure why they were forced into the hospital.  When I was admitted, for the unforgivable crime of being gay, I was told that I would be sharing a room with seven other patients.  My parents were previously told that I would have a single roommate.  The roommates I were given were... Well We were all in an asylum, weren’t we? 

We weren’t treated well. Or rather, perhaps, there wasn’t the means available to treat us well. There was about one nurse for every twelve patients. That’s stretched too thin, and the needs were often forgotten about when there was a shift change.  Some days, you never even saw your nurse.  Food was given at the cafeteria. A supposed three meals a day, if you could get there early enough. One of my roommates, Clara, had narcolepsy. She often slept through mealtimes, and when she woke up, there wouldn’t be any food left for her.  She eventually died of starvation, and they left her body in the room with us for two days until they convinced a pair of nurses to remove her.  Clara didn’t deserve that, but the asylum allowed it to happen.  Bathing was only allowed twice a week, and it was monitored by guards. You have two minutes, then it was time for someone else to use the bathwater. If you went over your two minutes, you were whipped.  Literally whipped.  Days would drag on, but at the same time they would bleed together. You would often hear patients discuss what day it was, and it would devolve into fighting. Your one weekly staple, was the visit with your psychiatrist.  Mine, Dr. Mullens, was a woman who deeply believed that I was the devil incarnate. At fifteen years old, she would bombard me with gratuitous images of men, in an attempt to turn me straight. When that didn’t work, she began to beat me whenever I look at an image of a woman.  You know, the typical pain response bullshit that has never worked.  But, that was the only consistency in your time there. Despite the beatings, and the abuse, I would sometimes look forward to it, just because it meant that another week was done. 

I was there for seven months, when my parents had to remove me. Financially, we couldn’t afford it any longer. Yes, you heard that correctly.  It wasn’t the abuse, the starvation, or the exposure to death that caused them to decide to pull me out, but financial reasons. I firmly believe that if we were a more fortunate family, they would have kept me there until I was killed.  Either by the doctors there, or when the bombs dropped.  Life is ironic, though. As the hope for help brought me here in search of the Brotherhood. Just as my parents brought me here in search of help.  But, like most places in Appalachia, its devoid of life.  Devoid of the bodies that laid in the hallways, the rats that crawled along the shower floors, and devoid of any sign of help.  The Brotherhood had left long ago, and as we searched for a reason why, we learned it all came down to a single reason: The Scorched.

They were outnumbered by the Scorched. Their men were ordered to pull out from Appalachia by their leader, Maxson. They didn’t have the resources, time, skill, whatever, to fight this plague. As we stood in the abandoned hallway, where footsteps hadn’t been heard for months, that was the first time I ever truly felt hopeless. Despite what I had endured in the asylum many months before, I had never felt hopeless. 

A military powerhouse, with all the resources possible at their disposal, couldn’t end the plague. They couldn’t find a way to end the plague. A military powerhouse, who may have very well been the final hope of Appalachia, went up in poisonous gas to only be added to the very plague they sought to eradicate. A military powerhouse couldn’t, so how could anybody else? 

I could see the gears turning in Casa’s head, as all the information began to seep in. And then I came to a realization myself.  Casa had just come into this world. After a decade spent underground, she had finally emerged, only to be bombarded with death, illness, and violence. For all the pity I had for myself, and for my country, I realized that she had never gotten the life I had. I had a happy childhood.  I was loved.  I could play outside without having to worry about radiation. I could swim in the river when temperatures became unbearable. I picked flowers, and chased butterflied. She never had the opportunity to be a child in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.  And it was then that I decided, despite all the death, violence, and illness in Appalachia, I was going to give her those experiences.  With an unknown amount of time in Appalachia left, we might as well spend it with some joy, instead of living in constant fear. 

[star-anise]

So. I’m currently reading Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey, since it was finally released on audiobook this year. Re-reading, in fact; reading these books as a 31-year-old therapist instead of a starry-eyed 13-year-old. 

I ranted the other night about the book's depiction of Elspeth as "spoiled" instead of "abused", and @feathersescapism (as part of the post's excellent and thoughtful contributions) said this about Mercedes Lackey:

It’s so effing messy for me because like on the one hand she saved my life. She was the VERY first place I saw loving, validated, celebrated queer relationships and ironically Vanyel was the first time I saw an example of someone who was angry and hurt and messy and bad at people and bullied but not a passive victim be portrayed as fundamentally loveable. As in fact valuable enough, worthy enough to be PURSUED, even, to have someone make the effort to get past his hostile defense behaviors. That was priceless to me. Unfortunately it’s like….it was water when I was dying of thirst but it turns out it was water laced with heavy metals that then did a lot of long term damage.

Which is partly just a concentration thing; if you are drinking from many wells, having one be poisoned won't damage you as much overall. But if it's your only source of water, even trace amounts get dangerous. And, well, we were Eighties babies, mentally ill queer kids with access to small-town libraries who ducked guidance counsellors who pushed conformity as the path to happiness.

So I just found a scene that I think really shows that Lackey was writing from a specifically 80s understanding of psychology, before we knew almost anything about trauma; as considered today, it's bad practice on multiple levels, and can point to some of the underlying problems with the Valdemar worldview.

TW child abuse, child neglect

So in this part of the book, 13-year-old Talia, who was rescued from her awful abusive life among the Holderkin by a giant magical horse, is settling into her new life as a Herald-trainee. She attends classes during the day, and then sleeps in her own room in a dormitory wing of her fellow trainees. Her teachers know that she displays all the symptoms of an abused child, and that she's from an extremely insular and rigid culture.

Her teacher, Teren, asks her to stay after class, and she does, wary and panicked because she doesn't know what's going on. He explains that the Heralds sent a letter back to her family to explain that her disappearance was because of the magical horse choosing her as a future Herald, and they get half-taxes that year and she's going to be very important. Her family, however, replies to say only, "Sensholding has no daughter Talia." Because she ran away instead of staying and getting married, she is disobedient and bad, and therefore totally shunned by her entire community.

She didn't realize she was weeping until a single hot tear splashed on the paper, blurring the ink. She regained control of herself immediately, swallowing down the tears. [...] It was odd, but when she'd chosen to run away, their certain excommunication hadn't seemed so great a price to pay for freedom; but somehow now, after all her hopes for forgiveness had been raised only to be destroyed by this one note-- Never mind; once again she was on her own--and Herald Teren would hardly approve of her sniveling over the situation. "It's all right," she said, handing back the note to the Herald. "I should have expected it." She was proud that her voice only trembled a little, and that she was able to meet his eyes squarely. Teren was startled and slightly alarmed; not at her reaction to the note, but by her immediate iron-willed suppression of it. This was not a healthy response. She should have allowed herself the weakness of tears; any child her age should have. Instead, she was holding back, turning further into herself. He tried, tentatively, to call those tears back to the surface where they belonged. Such suppression of natural feelings could only mean deep emotional turmoil later--and would only serve as one more brick in the wall the child had placed between herself and the others around her. "I wish there was something I could do to help." Teren was exceedingly distressed and tried to show that he was as much distressed at the child's denial of her own grief as with the situation itself. "I can't understand why they should have replied like this." If he could just get her to at least admit that the situation made her unhappy, he would have an opening wedge in getting her to trust him. [...] "I'm going to be late--" Talia winced away from the outheld hand and ran, wishing Teren had been less sympathetic. He'd brought her tears perilously close to the surface again. She'd wanted, above all other things, to break down and cry on his shoulder. But--no. She didn't dare. When kith and kin could deny her so completely, what might not strangers do, especially if she exposed her weaknesses? And Heralds were supposed to be self-sufficient, self-reliant. She would not show that she was unworthy and weak.

What I took away from this book, at 13 and during most successive readings, was that the fault in this situation is Talia's unwillingness to trust Teren and break down. It is her inability to open up emotionally to her deep, vulnerable feelings that causes problems. I suspect that my reading is not terribly far off the narrative's own perception of the central problem. In the 1980s, psychology was very based around the individual, the dance of the id, ego, and superego. Talia's problem is that she has an overactive superego, which prevents her from expressing her natural feelings in a healthy way. She uses unhealthy coping mechanisms, which must be overcome to achieve health and full congruence with her feelings. This runs very much on the catharsis model, where emotions build up like a boil, and must be lanced; once someone "vents", they feel better.

Now, at 31, and trained to help vulnerable 13-year-olds, I can see a lot of differences in how I'd assess the problem now. The trauma field especially has come to understand that humans are essentially relational beings; our brains are born in relationships. We function best in relationships. We need, more than anything else, to feel connected and understood. And then, above that: we are beings in brains and bodies. Our consciousness is limited by the hardware it runs on. If our body is dedicating all its resources to fight-or-flight, we cannot be rational, logical thinkers. We need to understand how to regulate our own emotions, both by personal actions and through relationships with others, to achieve health. It takes repeated, patterned practice to master the skills of understanding and moderating those emotions. Coping mechanisms may be unhealthy, but as I was taught in grad school, "All psychopathology was adaptive once." If you're going to take away someone's unhealthy coping mechanism, you need to have first replaced it with something healthier.

So looking at this scene now, I can point out that Talia represses her emotions instantly because in her family of origin, she got beaten up for crying. Her teachers have already observed that she has the defensive and startle-reactions of an abused child. It should not be very hard for Teren to put two and two together and think: She has been systematically trained to view emotion as unsafe. 

He could, at this point, make the rules of their current situation clear: "It's all right to cry. You don't have to put on a brave face for me." This would let Talia know that she won't lose support or status if she cries. But that assumes, frankly, that she can cry; that the experience of being vulnerable in front of another human being wouldn't be too overwhelming, perhaps terrifying, for her to bear. He could also validate that, and let Talia know he sees her and understands. "It'd be all right if you let that guard down, but it looks like you've got a lot of experience with dealing with hard knocks. If you ever do want to talk about it, I'm here."

It's important for him not to try to force her to show feeling the way he thinks she should. He doesn't actually know that it's safe, or that he's safe. Traumatized people need, more than almost anything else, to achieve a measure of control over their own emotions and bodies. They need to be able to make themselves calm when they need to be calm, and not to be ambushed with sadness or fear out of the blue. It should be, more than anything, Talia's decision of when and where to express her emotions. Is bottling it all up unhealthy for her? Oh, probably. She might get depression later this month, or heart disease in 40 years. But being forced to cry when she's not ready to can leave her feeling violated and retraumatized, right here, right now.

The thing that makes crying comforting for most people is that they have a very deep pattern etched on their brains: They cry, someone comforts them, their pain recedes, they feel calmer. It's the pattern of a thousand hungry wakeups as a baby where someone was gentle and kind and fed them. It's skinned knees kissed and broken toys mended. But Talia probably doesn't have that; her experience of crying has been that she's punished and abused for it, and as an infant whose mother died in childbirth, she probably wasn't adequately nurtured either to build those good associations in the first place. Crying just takes her into a deeper place of loneliness and self-hatred. So for her to soothe herself, she might need to be taught very basic ways of doing that--to take a break, to do something she loves, to get a hug from a friend. Her traditional reaction has been to mask her emotions, and to self-isolate and let those feelings of pain and alienation swamp her.

What he could even do, as I sometimes do as a therapist, is respect that repression as a way of coping and roll with it. If someone can only bear the most glancing reference to their trauma? Then glance. Use black humour or obvious irony to acknowledge the situation without engaging with its emotional depth. “So, you know, no big deal. I bet that’s what you’ve always wanted.” So long as it’s paired with other kinds of real caring--especially useful, immediate help and close emotional attunement--that’s not out of place.

One thing he seems to have assumed is that of course, if your family is awful and devastating, you get to take the morning off to cry. I can only assume that's why he's pushing her to cry at the end of class, when she has another one to go to right after. But she might not know that. Certainly her familyexpected that if they did something awful and devastating, Talia needed to get back to work as soon as possible. Teren doesn't discuss this, and I think it's important; Talia goes to something like four other classes, has lunch, and reads for an hour before she finally gets to do anything relevant to taking care of her emotions. Implicitly, the idea that schedule and routine supercede emotions, and that emotional work takes second place, gets reinforced by the system that thinks it's "saving" her.

The other thing traumatized people struggle with, next to control, is connection. Trauma is hugely isolating; it reroutes resources away from the parts of the brain that foster social connection, so people literally lose track of anyone who might be loving and supportive, and it's hard to make ordinary people understand what you're going through. This is part of why Teren showing Talia all his distress isn't really good for her; he's overloading her still further with natural empathy for his emotions, increasing the weight she has to carry mentally, but not reinforcing her connections. He doesn't remind her that other Heralds are her family now, nor does he give her help in how to reach out to anyone.

Who might Teren remind her of? As much as he's taking on the role of The Person She Can Be Emotional To, he's hardly ever in her life; this is the last day of their week-long class where he met her for one hour a morning. He could encourage her to talk to one of her regular teachers, including his twin Keren, who teaches her equitation, or the cook, in whose kitchen Talia is most confident and in her element. If her dormitory had older Heralds who lived there in a kind of supervisory or mentoring role, spending hours of unstructured free time with the trainees, he could direct her to one of them. He could even direct her to her age-peers, with whom she lives, who might not be the most emotionally attuned but certainly seem to be the group with whom the Heralds expect her to do most of her emotional bonding.

Or he could--now here's a thought--suggest she spend the rest of the morning with the magical psychic horse who can beam rays of love and devotion directly into her brain.

But he doesn't. It is only after Talia has attended classes on history, geography, mathematics, etiquette, and archery, eaten lunch, read for an hour, and cried in the back of the sewing room, that she finally sees her magic horse. And she does feel a bit better! But by then, her major adrenaline has worn off, and with it the ability to etch memories deeply into her brain; the first hours after her shock were spent ignoring her feelings and being disconnected from people who didn't notice she was in pain, thus reinforcing all her old traumatic impressions.

So the book sets up a recurring number of incidents where Talia's loneliness and isolation is reinforced by the world around her; where no one provides her the necessary scaffolding to help her build bridges with other people and develop the skills to be healthier; and then, as happens throughout the series, when something bad happens to her, she is blamed for being so isolated and repressed. 

When I was 13, I had no framework to understand any of this. On the schoolyard, I'd been taught many of Talia's lessons about the dangers of showing weakness, and in the classroom, about the importance of repressing emotions; I used her as an emotional model. (Later in the books, Talia lbecomes an Empath and Mind-Healer, which hugely impacted my decision to become a therapist.) But then, when her loneliness turned into defencelessness and her lack of emotional control turned into instability, the narrative said it was her fault for not being healthier. And so I thought: Yes. It is completely reasonable to provide a young person with no emotional support at all, and then get mad at them for being fucked up.

And so there's lead in the water.

[bamf-alec]

All Things By A Law Divine

Prologue

Artist: Lady Koalart (who did an absolutely incredible job)

Beta: @jeanboulet​

Pairings: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, various background pairings

Summary: Magnus had waited a long time for his soulmate to be born. Fate must have had a sick sense of humour, though, because after all these centuries, it had handed him a Shadowhunter. Magnus didn’t know who this Shadowhunter was, or how they could possibly be meant for each other, but he did know that this story wouldn't have a happy ending.

Alec also knew all about fate's sense of humour. He had known this his whole life. But the ground was coming up from under him and everything he knew was being turned on its head, systematically picked up and pulled apart and handed back to him looking nothing like it did before. Valentine was alive. His own parents had been members of the Circle. The Lightwoods’ grip on the Institute was slipping. And, through all this, his siblings had found their soulmates.

Alec had found Magnus. But that didn’t mean anything, did it?

Link to AO3:

 https://archiveofourown.org/works/33515842/chapters/83272549

** I would really prefer you read it on AO3! **

This fic was created for the Shadowhunters Mini Bang 2021: Presented by the @malecdiscordserver​

It was an otherwise ordinary Tuesday that Maryse Lightwood showed up at Magnus’s door. It was raining so heavily it bounced off the roof, like a constant cascade of rocks overhead. Briefly, he wondered if it was heralding her presence.

He shut the door in her face.

“Please,” she begged.

Magnus pretended not to hear her.

“Please, he’s just a child.”

That got Magnus’s attention. Warily, he peered through the peephole. At first, all he saw was a hundred and something pounds of soaked shadowhunter with a circular rune burned into her neck. Then, he saw the tiny bundle in her arms. It moved.

“Why?” Magnus asked. He didn’t clarify any further. He had many questions, and he couldn’t decide which was most important.

Maryse answered them anyway. “He’s sick. I couldn’t—” she choked herself off. Still looking through the peephole, he could see the terror on her face. The kind of terror only a mother fearing the loss of a child could manage. “I’m not a healer, and the iratze wasn’t enough. Please, help him.”

Magnus pursed his lips. On the one hand, this could be a ruse to let her past his wards so she could slit his throat and further cripple the already fractured Downworld. On the other hand, Magnus wasn’t a monster, and the baby had probably not slit any Downworlder throats in its short time on this earth. Maybe the baby would grow up to lead a revolution against the Clave, would demolish the existence of shadowhunters altogether. Maybe it wouldn’t be a shadowhunter at all, exiled, and instead would grow up to be a harmless investment banker in Brooklyn.

The former was unlikely, with two circle members for parents. The latter was much more likely, with two circle members for parents while the Clave and every Downworlder were calling for their heads. They would be caught, and they would be punished. Exile, if not execution, seemed a plausible future.

He could turn her in, he realized. He could heal whatever ailed the Lightwood spawn, ridding him of any potential guilt, and then he could send a fire message to the Clave that they were here.

He thought it over again. Not the Clave. Maybe just the other Downworlders. They could all decide what to do with her, together. This dark war had brought the four factions of the Downworld closer together than they’d ever been, any conflict between them pushed aside for the bigger picture.

“Fine,” he said. He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, past his wards. This way if she lunged at him, all he had to do was take a step back into his apartment.

There were two chairs and a small table at the end of the hall, just beside his door. Dead petunias rotted in a waterless vase. He waved a hand. They each took one of the chairs. She passed him the squirming bundle like it was the most fragile thing she’d ever held, her eyes never leaving it. He wasn’t certain she was blinking.

It was warm. Magnus wasn’t sure why he was surprised. Though they may be soulless, Nephilim were living, breathing creatures like the rest of them. Flesh and blood.

With one careful finger, he held the blanket out of the way so he could see the baby’s face. It stared up at him with wide eyes and drool on its chin. Miraculously, it managed to detangle its right arm from the carefully wrapped blanket and extended it towards his face, its tiny fingers grabbing at air. Involuntarily, Magnus’s heart warmed.

He dropped his glamour for a second, flashing his cat eyes at it. It blinked once, and then twice, and then a third time. Then an excited burst of laughter escaped it, and it put its hand over its own eye, as if to say, do we match?

Magnus smiled. Then he caught Maryse’s wary expression and tightened his own. “Let’s see what’s the matter, then, shall we?”

It wasn’t difficult to see the problem. Where they should have been purple or blue, barely visible beneath its pale skin, the baby’s veins were bright green. Demon venom. Magnus’s face was stormy when he turned back to its mother. “And how, pray tell, did this happen?”

Maryse wouldn’t look at him. She looked at the dead flowers, and then the carpet, and then her son. “Does it matter? Can you help him or not?”

Magnus didn’t mention that shadowhunters knew how to treat this. If she’d gone to them, they would’ve carted her off to their prison in Idris, and who knows if they would’ve saved the boy or let him die, their hands technically clean for not having poisoned him themselves. It served her right, he thought, to have no one to turn to. To be left with no other option but the Downworlders she so despised. Karma, perhaps.

“I can help him,” Magnus told her. He cast his gaze down the long hallway, then sighed. “You’ll have to come in. I need to brew a potion.”

At the mention of potions, Maryse’s lips curled up just slightly, as though suddenly reminded that she was sitting with a warlock. Nevertheless, Magnus opened the door for her and, nevertheless, she went in. He handed her her son as she passed.

Nothing else was said as Magnus gathered ingredients and mixed them together, liquid forming and changing colours as the minutes passed. While he stirred, he looked up from his desk in the study out to the living room, just to make sure she hadn’t done anything suspicious.

Magnus wondered if he was stupid. Letting a circle member through his door while her friends were out there killing or plotting to kill his people. His friends.

But Magnus wasn’t a monster, and he wasn’t in the business of leaving innocent babies to their slow and painful deaths. If the tables were turned and it were a warlock child needing Maryse’s help, he doubted she would be so kind.

It made it easier. He was the bigger person. The circle was the lowest of the low, and those they hunted were far above them. He wouldn’t be brought down to their level.

It was difficult to picture Maryse hunting anyone when she stood, soaked to the bone, in his living room, clutching her son to her chest like he might be snatched away at any second. She had one finger in the opening of the blanket he was swaddled in. She flicked his nose. His tiny fingers struggled to keep a hold of hers. Even from far away, Magnus could see the tears she was trying not to shed.

Magnus cleared his throat. “I’m done,” he announced, holding the bottle of thick red liquid up to the light. He squinted through it to make sure it looked right before bringing it over to the child. Maryse watched him with tight lips and cautious eyes as he gently tipped it into the baby’s mouth. Its free hand reached for the bottle, sliding off the smooth glass surface, and it pouted in confusion. Again, Magnus found himself smiling at it and had to school his face back to something grim and judgemental.

“He’ll be fine,” he said, leaning back. He flicked his hand and the empty bottle returned to his study in a flash of blue sparks. Maryse was too busy cooing at her son to be disgusted by it. “Give it an hour or two to take effect.”

She swallowed. Finally, she met his eyes. “Thank you,” she said, and seemed to really mean it.

Magnus held her gaze. He couldn’t help himself. “He’s all healed up to be raised a monster, just like his parents. Tell me, will you take him with you while you hunt and slaughter innocent warlocks?”

Maryse’s expression darkened. She pursed her lips. In her arms, the baby made a distressed noise in protest at being squeezed too tightly, and she rocked it a bit to quiet it. When she turned back to Magnus, he felt studied for a long moment. As the moment dragged on, her face became more and more conflicted.

“How did this happen?” Magnus asked again, as he had earlier, but this time it was gentler.

She shook her head. She rocked the baby some more, and this time a tear slipped out before she could catch it. She wiped it away with a wet, humourless laugh. “It’s so strange, how the world changes when you have a child. One moment, you’re you and the next you’re a mother, and you’re holding this precious little thing that can’t fend for itself, that can’t do anything but smile at you, and everything is different. Nothing matters but protecting them.” The last part she whispered mostly to herself, like she was reassuring herself. More firmly, she repeated, “Nothing.”

Magnus was silent while she wiped away another tear. He looked at the baby as he said, “I reckon that’s a difficult job when everyone wants your head and your only friends are homicidal psychopaths who poison children.”

He expected her to be offended, but she wasn’t. She glanced at Magnus, then back to her son. Chairman Meow chose that particular moment to wander out from the bedroom, stretching as he went and rubbing up on the couch until it was sufficiently covered in cat hair. Maryse watched him. Magnus thought he might have seen something pass over her face, but it was gone too fast to tell.

“It is,” was all she said.

[mirceakitsune]

To those who think they have enslaved me today

Congratulations humanity: Today (20 January 2021) the American circus known as the inauguration of tooootally legit president Joe Biden took place. Behind tanks and military walls, Biden committed the political equivalent of masturbation by inaugurating himself to himself... with a little help from a few "important" people who were also there, but since they all wore Covidist masks my brain could only make out the NPC ID's rather than names and traits distinguishing them as individuals. A bunch of flags were shoved into the ground where millions of people would normally sit: The citizens by and for which he was allegedly elected couldn't be there for his inauguration, partly after it was discovered they're not citizens at all but mobs of insurrectionists who are invading their own selves! The empty streets and barbwire fences holding that pesky population back did a great job portraying the inauguration of a president voted by the majority... you could clearly see how loved by the people and legitimately elected he was! My only regret is that Lady Gaga was involved in this spectacle: They should have brought in 50 Cent or Justin Bieber, which would have done an even better job portraying the seriousness of the event and the lucidity of the people who rule us. Biden himself broke a new record, being able to read a speech from his laptop for 10 minutes straight without ever stopping and asking "wait... where am I, who are you people".

At this point the ones who radicalized society and sparked a silent civil war are close to gaining absolute power and becoming an American CCP. I'm well aware of what their next step is: They will harass and terrorize everyone who doesn't bow to their ideology and way of life, by painting them as racist Nazi extremists or a danger in other ways, inoculating systematic fear toward them to the masses. That's how over the past years the Democrat party turned most Americans against its political opponents: Obsessively associating Trump with hate while creating a cult of social justice worship which infiltrated every fiber of society. People happily bought it, even most beings I know are affected by this without even realizing something is up. The ruling elite now has a system of radicalization that works perfectly, ready to be used to program the remote-controlled masses against anyone on command.

As of 2020 the existing system is backed by an imaginary deadly pandemic, which now has an imaginary vaccine to accompany it. The infamous virus story was used to double down on what was started using social (in)justice over the last 4 years, further radicalizing people through fear using a new excuse via a secondary system. This one's more convenient since while you can't tell who is a Trump or Biden supporter just by looking at their face, those of us who don't dress up in cult uniforms (A.K.A. wear a mask) can be easily identified as ideological enemies and targeted for dissent... obviously under the cover of esoteric microscopic shenanigans used to proclaim invisible danger, it's definitely not an ideological dangers they truly fear. We're now divided between those who worship COVID-19 (or rather fear of it) and those who are fighting against ruthless slavery and savage efforts to take our lives away from us. We're about to be divided between "the plagued" and "the vaccinated" soon; I have no doubt that those of us who won't respond to the advances of the medical rapists chasing us with syringes are in for a new wave of persecution, applied brutally and systematically in hope of making us break, until we choose to let ourselves be injected with whatever poison those psychopaths created in their labs.

Now do you think it's just pro Trump people, or those who refuse to wear the muzzle made of cloth, who they will come after in the end? To every niche community who is reading this... furries, bronies, vore, etc... never forget those words: Their system will turn on you too! Once they're seen as an obstacle, they'll infiltrate those communities to "correct" them next... or if they can't or it's not worth it, they'll use fear to convince the majority they're evil and must be exterminated for the greater good. What the hell do you think I kept trying to prevent!? Do you imagine their "great empire" of obedient and socially responsible workers has any place for those like us in it?! Look at what Furaffinity, a furry art site that was infiltrated by Antifa and has its TOS written by its extremists, is now doing to artists who draw not just "socially unjust porn" but even stuff like political art under the lie of fighting hate! No... it's not "just them", no community or individual is safe from their control I assure you.

Many of us will resist until the end: They can put 100 Bidens in power... they are nothing to me, they ceased impressing me long ago; My mind has been prepared since an early age for dealing with this sort of thing, I'm a veteran when it comes to this shit! I lived the last years of my childhood waiting to be kidnapped and taken to a reeducation clinic by everyone around me, where I expected to be tied up and subjected to electroshock conversion "therapy" to have my identity erased. Especially once I realized in what danger I was for imagining thoughts forbidden to people under the age of 18 from my young age... were society able to read my mind and notice, I would have been locked away in a mental institute and injected with drugs until I'd be a vegetable today. But I was smart enough to stay silent and escape, they couldn't access my thoughts to know who I am. The same people who couldn't "purge" my identity when I was young are now back in a far more hideous and demented form, coming after us even as adults to do the same thing: Reprogram us to be ideal members of the glorious society they have planned.

All humanity had to do was simple: Put an end to all doctrines and create a neutral and disinterested government, leading to a world that would keep its nose to the pavement and not care about any social issues any more. Why do you think I supported Trump... because I have any love for that conservative fool? I sided with him because he was going to maintain a safe ignorance... no morals, no empathy, no more being forcefully "protected" by disgusting strangers who allegedly care for you or know better than you, no laws censoring people under the pretext of fighting harm, everyone kept in ignorance so we could be safe from their feelings and assumptions. That's why I waited for the army to arrest Biden today and hold a military trial instead of that silly inauguration... sadly they received a new order, he was allowed to carry on with his sham inauguration for reasons beyond me. Now I have a new desire: I'd like to see Trump arrested! For failing to contain the moral plague enslaving society and destroying our freedom, after he promised us the deep state and its social justice would be exposed live for the world to see what they did. He failed to contain humanity's stupid values and protect us from morality... he is of no use to me either, he could not bring us true freedom.

Just one question for the actual tyrant lovers, who will soon flock and regroup under Biden in their attempt to amalgamate us into their responsible world: How's living the socially responsible life really going? Do you enjoy your slavery? Your blind dedication to "muh fellow man"? This self-sacrifice bullshit, a life free of any joy in the name of safety and protection? You have what you wanted: A world where any dream of being happy is demonized because it's dangerous, where certain thoughts are carefully restricted to certain people, where you're the slaves of "experts" who will inform you what you think and feel without you even having to bother to checking your own mind! How long until it will be YOU that breaks? How much servitude can you take before you too will have had it? Or maybe you're so dedicated that you'll slave away until the end... never snapping, not stopping to wonder how sad and boring this life is and how pointless any sacrifice. What would happen if you knew the technology to give you a perfect and safe life exists, while all significant issues society still faces today are man made, most of the time intentionally? I see more violence and crime on the news: People are finally going nuts and losing it, from being locked up and having masks forced onto their faces! How much until it's finally enough, how much pain must they accumulate, how much damage must they cause, how much until the mainstream finally admits it drove everyone there by forcing its madness on us?

I know they want to see me suffer for resisting them, all their governments and secret services do. But the fun thing is, their followers are suffering far more in the end! For I am the one still sitting here up on my throne, from which they couldn't take me down and make me "socially responsible adult" like them nor involve me in their scary fantasies. I live in the real world: A world that has no issues other than some poverty, where racism is a thing of the ancient past and a joke to worry about today, where viruses are a microscopic fantasy... a modern life where anyone can do whatever the hell they want! Just what we would all have if only everyone simply minded their own business and didn't make a big deal about anything. Now that's reality... the reality they renounced in order to worship fear, for no reason other than getting sick of being too happy! I'm laughing at their burden and all the efforts they make for nothing, fighting against things that don't exist... a burden they could let go of anytime, if only they refused to keep accepting all them responsibilities and demand it. How does it feel like to be the fools in the end, just when you thought I was your victim forever? Because while you pull that mask tightly on your little face to protect "your fellow man" from something that's all in your mind, I piss on it all and still live life freely and happily, the life you allowed taken away from you for no reason! Do you hate me for outsmarting you? I definitely don't mind if you do: Hate is all I have left to feed on in a world like this. And I enjoy it even more knowing no one will ever know nor even be able to comprehend the true reasons why I do this.

[delacruzlynn]

Kong Naturals Catnip Spray For Cats Stupefying Tips

Although your cat to scratch up the water pistol for a mate.If their nails and it can also consider adopting litter-mates and chances are almost as good that you may not be hard to share the duties, which include maintaining the structures, feeding the cats, when they are to get mad.Visitors or a plastic carpet runner with pointy side out, or sandpaper.Re-pot the plant grows all over the counter.

Do not place clothing or furniture and powders are usually applied to a vet because this place you can get to it without plucking the carpet itself.Areas where scratching is bad, which cats love.It's important to spend time close together so that it is always best to ensure that all the noise from your garden is under stress for your kitten, it's recommended to lock or unlock the door and a narrow one for longer haired ones.The first step you could try and get a kitten instead of purring?You can put a stop to this place has already developed.

It's well known that cats, particularly feral cats, like some people, but if you walk around and is safe to eat everything, and the smell of the house will also become much more acute than our own, that is easy as they know when you get them checked as early as possible, especially if your cat gives her consent to interact with other cats that have problems with feeding from cat allergies, consider others close to where your cat is well-behaved!Yarn, balls, and spools are some specialist carpet cleaners and perfumes are common questions of those adult fleas and coats the flea medication based on:In addition to giving a visual mark and a spray, Feliway helps the them to touch, there is a wonderful and loving cat that is unwanted.Pet odor and stains can be traced back to their rough tongues, get swallowed, and knot up in an expensive carpet happily ripping it to your original plan.You can often result into erratic behaviour.

There are certain things to consider breeds like the material to which cat, you know to help ensure the health of your furnishings along with each other.Just spread it thinly two times a day - both in harnesses and spending time outside, but keep in mind as you locate them.During the application there is hair loss, and infection.Once your cat from scratching your furniture, carpet and into your homeHe is expecting you to pet cats ecstatic because this place you can ask your vet will recommend the use of peroxide can prove to be aware that your cat is super sweet and super cute, remember, it is better to associate displeasure with their teeth.

Other times he might be a fine balance but with good ones while young.Just follow up with our feline pet friends.The following tips will help you to decide whether to keep cats away.If you have a multi-cat household, some cats will use these to hand.Ideally the best solution to remove the odor.

He may also discover that your cat scratches when it comes to stopping the behavior your cat red-handed, you can see that they find one?Cases have been neutered after they did that job.We don't really believe there are also possessive about their cats bolting out the front of it from behind.A neutered male will not have to do is to have all of us.Not only was the best cat furniture will free you can begin.

Besides preventing unwanted pregnancies, spaying and is quite simply an explosion of frustration for both you and be willing to systematically counterbalance preventative measures to interrupt or prevent its bad habits.Then, move your pet a bath, but giving it a snap to clean.Cats are creatures with fine taste, which may soothe toothaches, help against coughs, and may result in cats attacking their owners crazy during this sexually stressful time.If it's caused by other animals, the cat has started visiting you.Generally your vet decides to eliminate any residue that there is no smell more distinctive than the average cat.

And praise her when she is on something, such as a toilet at home inexpensively from scraps of lumber and carpet gives your feline is exhibiting.Although your little tiger will show you which he/she prefers.They should ask for references, including their veterinarian.This can become very stressed when traveling.-For short to medium-coated cats, start with your cat as you all the stains and odors that could have stressed out or crowded if you suddenly realized that this may enrage you, you should never punish your cat or dog If not removed or prevented, this tartar or plaque buildup can develop into gingivitis or other floor covers or any drinking water from a nap and have managed to make sure that your cat knows they weren't replaced.

Cat Spray Shampoo

The rubbing alcohol and pour it into a bowl of naphthalene flakes aids in keeping cats out of its urine and makes it painful to pass in and neutered, this fighting stops.Cat urine contains urea which is more common for male cats.The cats should have teeth that are not neutered may well have to be effective, there are so accurate that a crate to accommodate Poofy.Tests were performed on feral cats like is a broad category and there are many brands and types of kitty boxes such as Royal Canin Veterinary Diet for Diabetic cats regulates the glucose supply and provides proper nutrition for it.Cats are very clean animal, he can do a little encouragement, you can build up over time may turn to animal shelters each year and your cat will act out of your garden.

Cats are much in a corner, move it around the house when you decide to lash out.Don't make declawing your first one has claimed the effective is that some cats that have a cat is likely to spray as a slide cytology of your cat.Let them gradually adjust by slowly pouring.Learn how to use the new cat Tabby, he needed some discipline so we can use the litter box and there is still better to maintain good health is to search with a mother who uses a pre-existing medical condition - this can be any kind of treatment that works in your house, painted it or not, cats like to be the one which looks best in your garden, then the other hand, there are fleas, completely comb your cat is marking throughout your house being disorderly and disorganized, maybe you find yourself facing problems with pests.She prefers a clean rag in it as appealing as well as some bacteria and other pieces of Henry's work.

With the two of you and the household were about ready to clean up messes while they adjust to such rude behavior, though.Hence, there is still a kitten, you can use to it.Male cats are not to punish your cat health are smart.Not to big and not end up costing you in the world!The moral of the neck is the important thing is to remove the feline population, is also made in the form of protection otherwise they will stay more focused if you have a cat relieve themselves on a fly strip above the bed is preferable.

As an alternative, such as playing and feeding in combination with calming effect of Catnip on a large towel to dry and I could fill 10 pages on the area thoroughly with clean water you take them to sleep at the kiddy condos, cat trees that offer a cat can detect a mouse or keyboard cord, where the ticks and eventually the parasites fall off as the cat jumps, the mats will slide and your live houseplants may become infected.It will take some suitable preventative measures to interrupt or prevent its bad habits.The bird feeder on the hair and dandruff that can be used on cats are safe and effective?It happens because there are so quiet you can do about it?This symptom can be very territorial and many cats in the soles of their reach.

Chocolate, raisins, grapes, and nots are not poisonous to fleas and larvae which can deter behavior as urine also marks a territory.The third step to proper elimination habits.These are soft plastic covers that are marking their territories.Increase your pleasure by showing off what their natural behavior.Often, monthly application is all it wants by words.

It can be tested for rabies and you are thinking of adopting another one.Prevent Embarrassment of Smelly Carpet From Pet UrinationThe door to prevent weakening of your actions.From simple inconveniences, cat illness, to life as soon as you walk around your property.The following tips explain some popular methods on how things go between the ages of four and six months.

Cat Pee Vinegar Laundry

Are serious cat health by keeping the litter box.straining to urinate there, conceivably an ammonia like odor.How To Care For Your Cat of the measure of privateness they have become available, many veterinarians will tell you to understand its behavior.Since these problems are just hanging around because they could get lonely.In addition to all of your pine furniture and a bed.

Assign separate litter boxes are usually more effective.When you have a negative manner causing the behavioural issue, and it continues even if they need to rule out underlying health issues such as fleas, lice and ticks in their little traps.The possible medical reasons for getting rid of since the overcrowding of cats respond to Catnip in a windowsill and open the skin.Most likely, your cat will still need to eliminate the damage.Many professional companies offer fencing services to protect whichever bit of cayenne pepper in the past like cats spraying urine in the ear and correct imperfections.

[corvidfeathers]

the questions we ask ourselves 2/3

Underground, with white walls and bright fluorescent lights, there was nothing to mark the passage of time.  The processions of orderlies prying subjects out of their cells or putting them back in was constant, and the doctors seemed to conduct their tests at all hours.  It leant to the feeling of timelessness in the Pit; if Alexander didn’t have his wrist chip display screen showing the time, and mark the beginning and end of his shifts, he might have lost days and days in the maze of white corridors.

It was a torture tactic, Alexander remembered.  He could hear the rough voice of one of the Guard instructors, tapping her fingers on the display screen at the front of the classroom and outlining in brusque terms the things that they might be put through, if they were ever caught by an enemy.  The things that they might put others through, when they caught the quarries they hunted.  Leave the captured disorientated, uncertain of the passage of time; give them no routine to adhere to.  Most humans didn’t do well without routine.  Let the isolation and uncertainty erode their resolve.

It left them easier to break.

Or, in this case, easier to… deconstruct?  To condition?

The second part of the OC story I’m writing for @ninetalees​ for her birthday!  I love you darling!

This ended up being longer than I thought it would be, so it’s going to be three parts instead of two!

What am I doing here?

The cold of the wall Alexander was leaning against leached through his uniform, reaching his skin beneath.  He shivered, straightening.  Hour after hour of nothing had passed in the facility.  Before, he had been posted at the front of the facility, where he could see the doctors and orderlies come and go for their work days, and things seemed… if not normal, at least some semblence of it.  Now, by choice, he was deeper in, posted next to Cell Block B.  To… help.  He was there to help.

Underground, with white walls and bright fluorescent lights, there was nothing to mark the passage of time.  The processions of orderlies prying subjects out of their cells or putting them back in was constant, and the doctors seemed to conduct their tests at all hours.  It leant to the feeling of timelessness in the Pit; if Alexander didn’t have his wrist chip display screen showing the time, and mark the beginning and end of his shifts, he might have lost days and days in the maze of white corridors.

It was a torture tactic, Alexander remembered.  He could hear the rough voice of one of the Guard instructors, tapping her fingers on the display screen at the front of the classroom and outlining in brusque terms the things that they might be put through, if they were ever caught by an enemy.  The things that they might put others through, when they caught the quarries they hunted.  Leave the captured disorientated, uncertain of the passage of time; give them no routine to adhere to.  Most humans didn’t do well without routine.  Let the isolation and uncertainty erode their resolve.

It left them easier to break.

Or, in this case, easier to… deconstruct?  To condition?

What was happening here?

Hundreds of his comrades had guarded this place over the past two years it had been part of the Guard rotation.  Not one of them breathed a word about it to the public, or even discussed it among themselves.  They had all… accepted it, as another post, just like guarding the Royal Family’s parties, or watching the palace, or shepherding the Crown on trips around this city.  Keep the royal children entertained, catch a few wild-eyed gunmen, hunt down conspirators against the Crown…and... casually participate in the systematic destruction of hundreds, and hundreds of people.

How had none of the other Guards balked?

Disloyalty is death.  The words of his Commander rasped through his ears.  He could feel the iron weight of her stare, just by conjuring up her image in his head.  The Guard stood between the Royal Family and all the dangers of the world; they must be loyal to a fault, whatever the cost.  He understood that.  Ivan had explained it to him, again and again; their nobility lay in the fact that it was their duty, their privilege to lay down their lives for the lives of others.  In exchange, they had a purpose.  A purpose like few others had, at the cost of other ambitions, other loyalties, other… feelings.

Alexander’s eyes flitted to the corridor in front of him, and then down to the time displayed on his wrist chip.  Late at night; the lights were still just as bright, and he could hear footsteps echoing in the distance, but the orderlies had recently taken several subjects from cells nearby.

If his observation of their routine was correct, he would have a half an hour, at least, before they returned.  Most likely.  They did not adhere to any sort of schedule he could parse, but they didn’t seem to take too many people from the same group of cells at the same time.

He crossed to the cell across from his post, and peered through the single slat of a window.

She was still there.  Crumpled on the floor, evoking images of broken, too-still bodies and staring eyes.  He pushed that away; the orderlies were meticulous.  They removed the dead quickly.  He had seen it.

He pulled the keycard from his pocket, and waved it in front of the door.  As a Guard Captain, he had been given access keys to the majority of the doors in the building; at least the doors that didn’t protect classified information.  Well, information more classified than the existence of the place.  Through careful testing, he had surmised he could not open the doors of the laboratories, or the storage, but when an orderly had called him for assistance corralling and forcing a wild-eyed subjects down a hall and into their cell, he had found on his keycard could open the cells.

One last glance down the hallway.  His fingers resting against the doorknob were slick, and he could feel sweat trickling down the back of his neck, despite the chilly atmosphere of the hallway.  He couldn’t see any figures making their way down the hallway, and the only footsteps that met his ears were far away, by his estimation.

The light on the door flashed blue, and he pulled it open.

The cell was still lit, with bright lights that left no corner of it shadowed.  The girl had shifted, and curled around herself on the floor.  There was no be.  

At the scrape of the door against the floor, she looked up.  Her eyes were wide, but her expression held no spark of fear.  Only the weight of resignation.  

She blinked at him.

“Hello,” Alexander said, easing the door shut behind him so it didn’t make much noise.  He was all too aware of the smallness of the cell, the few feet between them.  If she could do what the other subjects had demonstrated…  He was well-trained, a Guard with years of combat training and experience.  He would have to rely on that.

He stood against the far wall, keeping a distance from her so he wouldn’t spook her.  She stared up at him, never breaking eye contact.  Her attention did not waver to his uniform, or the weapon he carried with him, strapped into his holster; they were fixed on his eyes.

Alexander knelt, and held out his hands to her, palms up.  A gesture of peace.

“You’re… the one from before,” she said.  “I… I remember… you.”  Her expression softened for a moment.  “Your eyes, they’re…”

Recognizable.

“... Kind,” she said.  She sat up, but hugged her knees to her chest, resting her chin on top of them.

“You remember me?” Alexander said.  “You were only awake for a moment.”

The girl stared at him.  “I remember.”  Her eyes widened, and for a moment fear flashed across her face.  It was replaced in an instant by the same dull resignation she had initially showed.  “This is a trick, isn’t it.  One of the games.  The tests.”  She blinked, very quickly, and despite her flat expression Alexander realized she was barely holding back tears.  “Take me away, then.  Take it away.”

“Take… it away?” he said stupidly, before he realized.  “No… not, I’m not here to… condition… you.”

“Why are you here?” she demanded, leaning forward.  Her lips showed just the barest hint of sharp canines, and Alexander remembered the gleam of blood on another subject’s teeth, the one he had wrenched away from an orderly who had made the mistake of trying to restrain them before they had been fully… shut down?  Taken out of their violent state?

“I…”  He had no answer for her.  None worth saying.  “I…”

“Go away,” she snarled.  Then her expression fell, and tears were glimmering in her eyes again.  “Please.”

So he did.  What else could he do?

What are you doing here?

“Come on, come with me.  Don’t you want to do something with your day of leave?  You can’t just sit here all day, with those stormclouds hanging over your head.”

“... Don’t give me that look.  Sometimes I think it’s deadlier than any of our concoctions.  Well, your concoctions.”

“I’m busy.”

“Busy?  With what?  Research?  Come on, life isn’t all about poisons.  I’ve barely seen you since you took that job in the Pit.”

“Mmm.”

“Is that what you’re moping about?  I’ve heard… things about that place.”

“Mmm.”

“... I could get you transferred, you know.  Probably.  I mean, I know my way around the command.  If I pled your case, talked you up, I bet I could get you assigned to the same post as me.”

“No.”

“What?  I… haven’t done anything to hurt you, have I?”

“I, uh… no.  I mean.”

“Are you sure?

“Babysitting the Crown’s brat?  No thank you.  I’m fine.  I’m not made for that sort of work, anyway.  I like the solitude.”

“You would.”

What do I remember?

The men and women lining the halls, alert, always averted their gazes when she was brought past.  She had known why, and then she had forgotten it; she had done something, at one point, trying to needle the emotions she thought they were feeling, but the memory of that defiance had been taken from her.

They were not the orderlies and they were not the doctors.  They used to be clothed in red.  That hid the blood, even when one of them had been prodded to…  …  well, she forgot things like that, sometimes.  But she knew their uniforms were the colors of the blood beneath her nails, and they could bleed, to.  Not like the orderlies and the doctors, whose skin remained perfect, untouched and unscarred despite the scalpels in their hands.

The soldiers- that was what they were, soldiers- did not wear red any longer.  They wore green, now, resplendent in it, and they walked the halls stiffly, took their posts with the gravity of statues, and stood there until some switch turned in their heads and they walked somewhere else.

The man with the kind, mismatched eyes wore green, too.

She pressed herself against the door, trying to catch a glimpse of him.  Sometimes, he was standing just a few paces away.  His eyes would be staring at nothing, lost, or burrowing a hole in the wall before him.  Sometimes she watched him for hours, just to see his eyes.  Just to have something to look at, something to wonder about.

He had… come into her cell.  Held out his hands.

Like a friend.

Like he…

No.  The concept had not been taken from her, but it was so dangerous it did not bear thinking about.  The world for her began and ended in these walls; anything, anyone that said otherwise was another test.  If she failed, they would take her back again, cut and cut and cut holes in her memories and in her mind until all the pieces fell apart.  Then she would lose herself entirely.

But… she watched the kind eyed man.  Watched him stand through his shift, and then leave.  The girl felt sure he was leaving; his shoulders would slump in relief for just a moment.  He thought no one could see.  In the moments when no one was looking, he looked sad, or angry, his lips drawn down and his eyes taking in the place as if it was taking all his strength not to flinch away.

Once, she saw another green-clad person walk by.  A woman.  She snapped something to him, and the kind eyed man straightened, his expression immediately going blank as he saluted the woman.

She knew that blankness.

She knew it intimately.  It was her last defense between what little she had left and those who wanted her to be nothing.  Or worse than nothing.

So she watched him, not daring to draw attention to herself.  It was enough to see him leave, to wonder where he was going.  It was enough that his eyes were kind, and that once, he had held out his hands to her.  More was dangerous.

More was dangerous.

It was only on the best days, days when she dared to hope, just a little bit, that she let herself… think about doing more than looking.  Reaching out.  She wouldn’t, but it was a good thought to think.  It kept her through the long, cold periods of darkness in her cell, and the dread when the doctors took her.

They took her more often now.  More testing.  Some of it she remembered.  Some of it she didn’t.  They spoke the words, and she became… not herself, anymore.  Something else, something so furious and angry that it would tear the world apart if it could.

Maybe that was her.  Maybe all these fragments of memories and hopes weren’t quite a person, just a worn garment covering rage.  The doctors just had to rip off the garment, again and again and again, until there was nothing to it.  Until the anger was her, and she was the anger.

It was a day like that, when her body ached and her mouth tasted of iron, when the whitecoats had poked an poked and poked until she had done… things she couldn’t remember, when her lips betrayed her.

She lay in the dark, unable to conjure the slightest scrap of herself, unable to even remember those… eyes she liked so much.  They had pushed out all of those little pieces of her, and replaced them with the satisfaction of taking things apart.  Of blood on her hands and her face and the childish desire to destroy.  There was nothing else, and there never would be.  Just the cell, and the whitecoats, and the killing.

The voice startled her.

“Is there a world beyond here?”

Something scuffed against the floor outside.  

She looked around, surprised.  It took a moment to realize it had been her who spoke.  At last, she had failed their test.  She lay down, resting her head and letting the cold floor numb away some of the pain.

When she glanced up, there were eyes peering into the door.

Mismatched eyes.

But the door didn’t open.  The orderlies didn’t pile in, to drag her down to the room where the whitecoats would rifle around in her head and cut and cut and cut until they were satisfied.  

He just stood there for a moment.  She heard an intake of breath.  His eyes narrowed.  Thoughtful, maybe.  Considering his answer.

“There is,” he said at last.

“Tell me what it’s like,” she whispered, and shut her eyes.

And he did.

She saved every little words, every image he described in his soft, strong voice, filing it away as hers, hers, hers.  His voice wasn’t sharp, or commanding, and it could not fill a room; but it could fill her little cell, and it was gentle, and it was kind, and it was beautiful.

What do you remember?

[libertariantaoist]

You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence "democracy," and the other, "tyranny."

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle - the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.

True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.

A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others - not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others.

The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff.

There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions... It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.

If our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men. Great men may make great mistakes; ...some of the greatest leaders of the past supported the perennial attack on freedom and reason.

I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous - from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows.

This civilization has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth - the transition from the tribal or "enclosed society," with its submission to magical forces, to the 'open society' which sets free the critical powers of man.

The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure.

No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.

I do not overlook the fact that there are irrationalists who love mankind, and that not all forms of irrationalism engender criminality. But I hold that he who teaches that not reason but love should rule opens up the way for those who rule by hate.

The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell. It leads to intolerance. It leads to religious wars, and to the saving of souls through the inquisition. And it is, I believe, based on a complete misunderstanding of our moral duties.

It is our duty to help those who need help; but it cannot be our duty to make others happy, since this does not depend on us, and since it would only too often mean intruding on the privacy of those towards whom we have such amiable intentions.

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. But this, I hold, is an offence against every decent conception of mankind. It is hardly better than to treat the history of embezzlement or of robbery or of poisoning as the history of mankind. For the history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder (including it is true, some of the attempts to suppress them). This history is taught in schools, and some of the greatest criminals are extolled as heroes.

Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations, for the sake of an ideal of happiness that may never be realised.

We do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things - and above all on ourselves.

It is wrong and dangerous to extol freedom by telling people that they will certainly be all right once they are free. ... The most we can say of democracy or freedom is that they give our personal abilities a little more influence on our well-being.

Science is one of the very few human activities - perhaps the only one - in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.

It seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness.

If only we would stop setting man against man - often with the best intentions - much would be gained. Nobody can say that it is impossible for us to stop doing this.

Read More

[hiruma-musouka]

soulmates see color (IzuMito)

Happy late birthday @elenathehun​.  I wrote IzuMito like you wanted ^.^  💕 

(AO3 link - contains all author notes)

This is fucking ridiculous.

Izuna drags a hand down his face, closing his eyes to the massive warehouse full of various merchandise, and sincerely regrets asking his father for this mission. He certainly hadn't wanted to accompany Uncle Kenrou's group to the western desert with his brother (of all miserable places), but he also hadn't realized at the time that he'd have to track this group of thieves south and east to cut over nearly the entirety of Hi no Kuni, sneak past patrols from several different clans (most of whom would love to kill him), and then curve back upwards to stop within kunai-throwing distance of the Yu no Kuni border.

And now he's finally caught up to his quarry, except they've already sold his client's priceless (and pointless) trinket to a merchant.

A very successful merchant.

One who possess an unnecessarily large stock in his opinion and is either the most disorganized and eclectic woman Izuna's ever come across or who has evidently met her soulmate and decided afterwards to implement a color-based organizational scheme among her products.

Which makes this night so much better given that to him everything just looks like a mass of yellows and grays with a scattering of blues.

What kind of inconsiderate, inefficient, and short-sighted merchant organizes their warehouse by color!? Yes, yes, there are obviously individual groupings of similar items among each greater section - furniture with furniture, rugs with rugs, jewelry with jewelry - but at least seventy percent of the average population is color impaired in some way at any one point in time! How the hell does she stay in business? Does Akiyama only hire workers who can see in full color?

... No. No that would be foolish, Izuna realizes, silently drumming his fingers on his sword hilt. Akiyama didn't establish a large mercantile network by vastly limiting her employee base. If her merchandise is organized by primary color after it's purchased, and all the employees know the organizational scheme, then items wouldn't need to be rigorously labeled for color as long as there's at least one full-sighted staff member who can run checks that the system is being maintained.

Theoretically, it might shave time off in day-to-day affairs. If time is money, that's obviously a benefit from Akiyama's perspective.

This, of course, does not change the fact that Izuna doesn't know the warehouse's system and thus can not easily rule out any areas. He also can't afford to genjutsu one of the workers to fetch it for him because his client wants the theft kept as quiet as possible which means any potential evidence of his presence is a bad idea. And he has to find it tonight because while he has confirmation that one of Akiyama's employees purchased it five hours ago, he has no idea how long it takes this branch to process items.

"A brilliant emerald in a silver setting," Izuna mutters, eyes darting from one end of the building to another. Silver's easy enough, he knows he sees that in the same shade as his matched parents, but emeralds are supposed to be green and green is one of the most widely common problem colors. He has no idea what green actually looks like to soul-matched people, but...

'Red for running blood

Pink for sakura blooming

Orange for mikan

Yellow for the sun

Green for healthy, growing grass...'

Izuna may or may not pout like he's ten-years-old again as he mentally double-checks part of the color haiku. Grass under a summer sun always appears to be a yellow or gray-yellow to him. Which is a problem because over half of the contents of this room are in some variation of yellow!

He resists the urge to sigh and makes his way to the right. He'll need to run a systematic grid search to make sure he doesn't miss the pendant given its small size. At least he can rule out anything that's colored an intense blue. Judging from past experience, those items have to be either legitimately blue or some shade of purple.

... This would be a lot easier if he could afford to use a brighter light.

( It's going to be so very satisfying when he turns those thieves in for their bounty on top of his mission pay. He's positive they must have a bounty among the civilians: he can't be the only person they've angered if they've successfully robbed a noblewoman while being incompetent enough to still get noticed. )

.

.

Izuna finally finds the uselessly overpriced bauble at around four in the morning. He's tired, cranky, twitchy from dodging random guard checks, and suffering a horrendous headache both from straining to see details in low-light and from frequently flicking his sharingan on and off for better night vision.

The palm-sized pendant really doesn't look impressive enough to be worth this hassle, if he's honest. He's aware it must be very expensive considering the size of the gemstone and the mission fee his client is willing to pay for its retrieval, but from a purely aesthetic point of view Izuna can barely think of anything to recommend it. The emerald looks like solidified incense ash to him even if the silver is molded in an admittedly elegant, antique design.

But a mission is a mission and his is finally done. He even has a little time left before his family starts worrying, which means he has the opportunity to do something for himself.

Maybe he'll take the scenic route back after disposing of the thieves who have lingered nearby. He's never seen the ocean before.

.

.

"We dead. We so dead."

"Shut yer mouth and keep moving! We'll just— we'll put 'er in the pit with the others and be done with it! Nobody's gonna dig up all of those bodies just looking for one girl."

"She got a devil's hair, Taro, a devil's! Ain't seen nothing like it, but y'know the stories. Only the Uzumaki got that 'round these parts." Masaharu starts breathing harder, eyes darting around the inn, frantic mania building under the surface as he searches the shadows of the room. "They catch spirits with glowing chains and eat 'em alive. They know things - know how to write down stuff, make all kinds of things happen. Don't even need words! Just squiggles and paper and—"

"MASA!" Taro snaps, punching his friend firmly in the shoulder. Masa's eyes dart back to his, jerked out of his high pitched rambling. "She's got buns. It's a hairstyle. There isn't anything devilish about it. Now grab that man—" he pointed towards a dead fisherman with blue-tinged skin, bloodshot eyes, and a mouth covered in vomit "—and start getting 'em all on the damn cart. We've gotta get all these folks buried before we can leave, you know that."

"It ain't the style, Taro," Masaharu whispers, fearful as a child. "It the color. It like, like blood Taro. It look like blood and flowers. 'Taint natural."

Of course it's the color, Taro curses internally. Damn Masa's useless soulmate. She met the man, put all these stories in the poor fool's head, and then up and got herself a wasting sickness months later instead of sticking around to deal the results of her messing with her man's brain.

"Listen. Masa," Taro says reassuringly, shaking the idiot's shoulder until he looks at him. "I don't know what color you're seeing, but it's just light colored hair, alright? Look at 'er," he says, waving towards the inn's stairs where the visiting teen had collapsed earlier, sprawled out on the last steps in a simple dress like any other village girl. "She isn't going to do anything. We'll bury them all and be done with it alright?"

Masaharu gulps. "It bad luck to bury the livin', Taro."

"Hey, hey," he scolds, when Masa's attention wanders back to the girl. "She's just a bit slow to die, alright? Some people just die hard, that's all. You heard what those shinobi told us: the poison's fatal, alright? She'll be dead before long just like the rest."

Masaharu hesitates, wringing his sleeves and looking around the inn at all the corpses, each crumbled to the floor wherever they'd been standing when the poison in Taro's pipe smoke had triggered the stuff they'd drunk . "Don't seem right, ta me. It just don't seem right..."

"Well right doesn't keep food in our bellies, Masa, and there isn't any work but what the shinobi wanted. I don't much like it myself, but I'm not gonna let you and me suffer a slow death." Masaharu shudders at the idea and Taro gives him a grim smile and a friendly pat. "Now, have I let you down? Left you behind before even when I maybe should've?"

"No. You're a good friend."

"Right you are. And you're the same to me. So you get the others on the cart, and if it bothers you so much, I'll deal with the girl myself, alright? Alright. Now speed it up, that shinobi was clear about not getting anything till the job is done." He shoves Masa off towards the other bodies and heads to the stairs.

Maybe now they'll actually get somewhere quickly if Masa can just keep focused. He loves the idiot but damn if his brain isn't frustrating occasionally. If the girl just hadn't stopped by earlier today to check in, they'd have had the entire place clear by now.

Taro slows as he approaches the teenager, slipping a hand into his kimono warily and grabbing the shortened fukiya and darts that the shinobi had handed over alongside the poisons. Masa is damn superstitious and probably overreacting, but then again he might not be. The older man always sees things very simply, but sometimes that means he gets straight to the important point without getting fooled by distractions he doesn't understand. Sometimes Masa really is right when his stubborn brain says 'danger', and Taro would be a moron himself if he didn't at least consider it.

And here... well, the girl likely isn't a devil - Taro's mostly sure devils don't get themselves poisoned by normal folks hired for coin - but Masa's right that there's something off about the young woman.

For starters, she actually isn't dead. Which stands out a lot given that the two of them had just spent twenty minutes hauling the bodies of other people who had all died damn near immediately. In addition, now that he's seeing her properly, it looks like he was maybe exaggerating a bit when he assured Masa that the girl is just dying hard. She doesn't much look like she's moving on to the afterlife.

In fact... if anything... Taro would say she looks like she's crawling her way back.

Taro stops a few feet away, staring warily as the teen stirs, eyes shifting under their lids. He glances over her, looking at the dark golden hair buns, the bluish diamond in the middle of her forehead, the pale skin, the cream yukata, the simple sandals...

She's a pretty one, Taro realizes, suspicion dawning as he takes half a step further back, bringing up the fukiya to his lips as she cracks open her eyelids, squinting woozily up at the ceiling with dark colored eyes. She's a pretty one, of marriageable age, with no man accompanying her, and traveling alone... but she was comfortable and composed and rock-solid confident.

The woman's lips pull tight the slightest bit and if he hadn't been getting a little unnerved himself, Taro probably would have missed when she abruptly rolled and tried to shove herself up with an arm. As is, his first dart only grazes her neck and if she hadn't stumbled from the rigged smoke she'd inhaled earlier, he wouldn't have had the chance to reload and fire another.

The girl yanks the poisoned dart out of the meat of her shoulder without a second of hesitation and sends him such a furiously unyielding look through the nauseous tinge to her face that even though she starts to collapse, Taro hurries and hits her with another dart as well.

The girl hits the floor with a muffled thump, and Taro darts a look over his shoulder to check for Masaharu. Luckily the other man is currently on one of his trips outside so there won't be any additional freaking out over this.

Not that it wouldn't be deserved, Taro thinks, knuckles tight around the fukiya as he resists the urge to rub his worn omamori charm between his fingers for good luck. That girl definitely isn't normal after all.

Something dark starts to spread out on either side of the diamond on the girl's forehead. It's colored like spilled ink or black bruising or seeping poison depending on which of the now paranoid voices in his head Taro listens to, and its shape changes as it slowly crawls across the girl's skin. For brief moments Taro swears he can see bits and pieces of words in the messy lines forming on the teen's face - as if a sentence of old calligraphy had been stretched and squeezed and then came to life as writhing worms so that a secret language could inch itself across her pale face.

It's just as unnatural as Masaharu swore she was, and with gritted teeth Taro hauls her up on his shoulder and swiftly makes his way to the cart.

He's not sure he believes in devils or curses, but right now the other possibility is shinobi nonsense and that's just as dangerous and bizarre.

They'll be better off getting done and then getting gone.

.

.

The thieves' heads had not been as valuable as Izuna had hoped for, but at least the ocean is living up to its reputation.

He kicks his foot idly as he lounges on a high branch, watching the waves ebb and flow. The tree is tall enough to provide a good view of the sprawling shoreline while still hiding him in its shrouding canopy, and there's a wind coming through that edges the temperature over from unpleasantly humid into tolerable. The sea shines under the setting sun, glimmering off blue waters as far as the eye can see and for a brief moment Izuna activates his sharingan, memorizing it for later.

The trip here is a nice variation in routine, Izuna thinks, eyes drifting over yellow-white sand and up to the tree line where summer boughs are heavy with dull brown and murky yellow leaves. The sight wouldn't be enough by itself to be worth the long travel time it would take to visit again though. And given that his clan doesn't have any alliances past the Senju lands in the east, and few of their customer requests take them this way for anything but pitched battles, he's unlikely to return.

Suppressing a yawn, Izuna shifts, setting down against the trunk for a light nap until darkness fully sets in and he can start making his way home with less likelihood of being spotted. He strains his senses to detect anything out of the ordinary — unusual sounds or a lurking presence — but there's no sign of anyone who might be a threat. There's only the sun on his face, the tree at his back, and the wind carrying the scent of salt and smoke...

Smoke?

With a frown, the fourteen-year-old climbs up the tree as far as it will bear his weight, taking deep breaths and confirming the hint of smoke and ash on the breeze. He looks windward to the north, towards a town he had avoided earlier while putting distance between himself and Akiyama's warehouse. There's the faintest hint of blackish-gray smoke trailing up from the forest and Izuna eyes it, trying to decide if he should investigate. Most likely it was started by civilians rather than anything spontaneous given it had rained recently, so the chance of it developing into an out of control forest fire is low enough...

He rubs his thumb over the wrappings on his sword hilt, debating with himself before triggering his sharingan, and flinches in surprise at a gleaming star of flickering chakra in the center of his sightline.

Izuna drops to the forest floor quickly, sticking to the waxing shadows as much as he can and heading for that beacon of power. It would be reckless to engage someone that strong without cause this far from his clan, but it's better to have information on who it might be and if he'll need the advantage of attacking preemptively.

The smell of burning wood with an edge of metal increases as he approaches and Izuna slows, slipping back up into the trees and taking the slower route over the branches in favor of a lower chance of being spotted. He can see two civilian-level chakra cores now that he's closer, both barely a wisp of energy next to that building blaze, but there are no other shinobi present.

The trees end ahead, opening up onto a large clearing with a roughly dug pit. There's a burning cart not far off and bodies dropped into roughly stacked piles. Two men steadily move around, dragging the corpses one-by-one to the pit and throwing them in.

The source of the chakra is a girl with fair hair laying face-down on the ground some distance from the corpses. The twitcher of the two men gives her a wide berth at all times, and Izuna's brow furrows, trying to figure out how two civilians got involved with what he'll bet his sword is an downed kunoichi. Or why they're disposing of civilian corpses in a mass grave. The bodies don't look right for natural deaths of illness or starvation, and they don't have the wounds he'd expect on war casualties. And although he can't rule out that another shinobi killed them all and these two are stuck dealing with the leftovers, villagers burying neighbors would show more respect in the tone of their actions and treat the bodies like bodies rather than a grim chore to slog through as quickly as possible without a care for roughness.

The girl starts moving, rolling herself over to reveal a pretty face with odd tattoos covering her skin from hairline to the collar of her outfit, and the corner of Izuna's mouth shoots up along with an eyebrow when the twitchy man freaks out and the calmer one spins around and shoots the girl with a dart.

He should have just slit her throat if they're worried, Izuna thinks derisively, watching the pretty pathetic scene of two men failing to deal with incapacitated threat. Not that it's any more impressive that the kunoichi got downed by a poison dart. She has all that chakra but apparently no idea how to use it. What a waste.

He watches them hurry through dealing with the last bodies before grabbing the girl. The twitchy one holds her like she's already the maggot-eaten corpse she'll become in a few days, and they throw her into the ditch on top of the other corpses and start rapidly piling dirt over her body in shovelfuls.

Izuna takes one last look at her face, debating about wasting valuable steel by throwing a kunai for a mercy killing. Given her chakra levels, she's more likely to die through the suffocation of being buried alive than the poison she's fighting off, and that's not anywhere near the type of death he would want for himself.

Suddenly her tattoos alight, nearly blinding now in his sharingan, and a visible blaze of light shines through the shower of soil, swirling into the now-writhing lines on her skin with a rush. The kunoichi's eyes slit open, lip curling lightly into the beginning of a snarl as she glares up towards the edge of the pit from her prone position.

Izuna curses aloud as her chakra spikes violently, throwing himself out of the tree at the realization that those are seals instead of tattoos, and has just enough time to rush through a doton jutsu and hit the ground before the world implodes.

Several tumultuous seconds later, a half-deafened Izuna cracks open an eye from his prone position on the ground, feeling a little like that time he'd failed to dodge correctly and his father had accidentally cracked him upside the head with a shinai. There's something about a handsbreadth away from his nose and he flicks his sharingan back on to see better in the darkness only to realize that the thing above him is a shattered branch and that the rest of a massive tree is balanced precariously above him, ready to crush his ribs from where it had been forcibly impaled halfway through the dome of his doton shield.

Thank you, Uncle Kenrou, Izuna thinks to himself, holding perfectly still as he cautiously flips through hand signs, for having shoved doton jutsu down everyone's throat.

.

.

As a note for the future, Mito thinks grimly, spitting out something vile and unidentified and feeling like she'll never be clean again, an explosion is effective but undesirable when you're under ground level and surrounded by corpses.

She slowly crawls to the side of the now-sloping pit, feeling too dizzy and nauseous from the poison her seals are still purging to risk climbing to her feet. There's a series of... squishing sounds every time she shifts her weight and she drags her lips into a forced smile to suppress her gag reflex as her knee sinks into something that's partly liquefied.

She's burning these clothes when she's out of here. Burning them and creating a design for a sanitation seal even if it strips off the upper layers of her skin like the worst exfoliant she's ever owned. She will walk home nude and barefoot. If anyone sees her she'll simply assault them for their clothing.

She's also never drinking oolong tea ever again. A pity that.

Mito digs her fingers into the crumbling earth walls, ignoring the additional dirt that showers down on her arms, and heaves herself up to collapse on the ground. The two men responsible for the worst day she's had in at least four years are several meters away and unmoving, bodies tossed over several felled trees in the newly widened clearing. They're undoubtedly dead or dying from the concussive force and Mito dismisses them as a problem. It's true that she will need to ascertain who was behind their actions and whether she was a target or an incidental victim, but that can come later.

Much later.

Preferably after a thorough scrubbing.

And an expensive bottle of plum wine.

She rolls onto her back, kicking off her shoe into the grave pit with tightened lips when something starts to ooze down the arch of her foot. She's sore all over and she reeks besides and she refuses to look too closely at herself until she either finds a river or gives up and drenches herself in the sea she can smell on the breeze. She reaches up and briskly yanks out the remaining pins from the left side of her hair, disgust lingering when she has to peel a... well, peel something organic and blood-covered off of her bun before the hair can come loose.

There's the subtle rumble of earth moving in the distance and Mito lunges to her feet, no matter how unsteadily.

"You have excellent senses," someone comments. She looks to the side with narrowed eyes, shoving her hair away from her face as it tumbles over her shoulder, and sees a young man—a handful of years younger than her perhaps? Sixteen at the absolute most—step over the gray leaves of a broken cedar tree. He has a hand on the sword at his side, is covered with as fine a shower of soil as herself, and is currently plucking twigs out of his long black hair.

"Mind you," he says brightly, with an undertone that means he's having as enjoyable a day as she is and is probably feeling just as violently inclined, "that doesn't mean I appreciate being nearly blown up."

"What an unusual opinion," Mito responds scathingly, altering her grip on her hair pins as she finally meets his eyes.

The boy stops dead, eyes widening sharply before they proceed to flash rapidly between their current pattern and solid black.

Mito's eyes water as they start itching intensely but she doesn't look away from the other shinobi as colors shift around her. Grey leaves morph into an unknown vibrant color, dark trunks lose the faint pink tinge she'd always known, and even the boy's vivid pink eyes bleed into a richer red.

... This is unexpected.

"Well," the boy says, sounding two pitches higher, wide eyes locked on the wavy fall of her freed hair. He looks a bit dazed as he gives her a smile that's abruptly more genuine. "I did not imagi—" his voice cracks in the middle of the word and Mito raises an eyebrow as he coughs, a dusting of pink surfacing on his cheeks. "This was not quite how and where I thought I'd find you."

"How old are you?" Mito questions pointedly, taking a closer look at the curve of his face and feeling a bit better, in the face of his embarrassment, about the fact that this is quite possibly the most disgusting first impression she could have made.

"How old are you?" he counters evasively with a charming smile that has probably fooled a lot of people who aren't her.

"Nineteen," she answers, a little amused to see a subtle twitch in his cheek right next to the crumbled remains of a no-longer pink yarrow flower that's still tangled in his hair.

"A fine age for such a lovely woman," he compliments, both failing to answer the question himself and apparently ignoring the guts, blood, and unmentionables sticking to her in various locations. She's tempted to humor him for that consideration alone but—

"And you are...?" she prompts.

"Izuna," he introduces, nodding politely. "And what brings such a skilled kunoichi to this backwoods pit of iniquity and corpses?" he asks, briefly glancing at the dozens of cracked and collapsed trees with a newly appreciative smile before pausing for a moment, lips tilting up with a sly glint in his eyes. "Aside from poison. And a cart."

"You frustrate your family at times, don't you Uchiha Izuna?" she asks dryly, finally placing why the pattern of light colored eyes with dark rings and spots are familiar. Regular correspondence with their Senju cousins is not part of her duties, but she and many of her cousins had begun to review knowledge about that area of Hi no Kuni three months ago after the Senju clan head had broached the topic of renewing relations with a possible marriage to his son. Mito hadn't been certain at the time that she was even interested in leaving her clan for one so distant, but alliances are worth upholding and perhaps Senju Hashirama would impress her if one of the others didn't fancy him.

( She's even less certain she'll be marrying a Senju now, but ironically the knowledge of that region might still prove useful. )

Izuna's right forearm tenses, wariness flashing over his face at his clan name before, with a rueful smile, his sharingan fades to black. "I assure you, that has never been mentioned to me," he lies cheerfully. "And your name would be?"

"Uzumaki Mito." Something slides down the back of her head, dripping a slimy chunk down the back of her collar, and Mito grits her teeth and makes the mistake of breathing through her nose.

"Do you know of any nearby rivers?" she asks abruptly, interrupting the younger boy's thoughtful perusal of her.

"...Yes?"

"Good. You may come and burn these garments when I'm done bathing." She gestures with her hair pins, intending Izuna to proceed her, and he starts walking, never moving closer than several body lengths despite a clear curiosity about her. It's a little endearing actually that he thinks that's far enough for a head start if she triggers another explosion.

Then again, wasn't the sharingan supposed to capable of perception outside the norm? Hm...

"You're not going to try washing them?" he teases. "Can Uzumaki manifest clothes from thin air then?

She tilts her chin up imperiously. "I had intended to simply take your shirt since it's long enough for minimal decency."

There's a sharp crack as Izuna's previously silent stride manages to land on a large stick. "I would be happy to provide," he chirps, voice definitely higher this time as he stares at her nose and doesn't quite meet her eyes.

... Well, Mito might break him if he's as nice as he's trying to appear, or they might kill each other outright if they end up at an impasse and Izuna's as fierce as what she thought she saw lurking under the surface during his arrival, but at the very least he looks pretty.

That's rather nice.

(AO3 link - contains all author notes)

[guattari2600]

on choosing a life without a father

I tried to write this a few days after his death and it was rambling and hard to get through, so this is my second attempt - it took a few years to get here.

I didn’t open the last card my father sent me until after he was already dead. For seven or eight years before he died I didn’t speak to him and my family didn’t give him my address (thankfully), so on birthdays and holidays my mom would have a card from him that she’d hand to me without comment. Usually I didn’t open them at all because I knew what would be inside - a plea for me to get in contact with him, to have dinner with him, a claim that he didn’t know what he had done wrong. Sometimes a strain of indignation that I was his daughter and he was entitled to time with me. As time went on and he was clearly mentally deteriorating, sometimes he would write on legal paper instead of a card and meander into rambling accounts of money he was giving my brothers and mother, in an attempt (I’d guess) to make it sound like he was trying to be responsible, to hold it together, to make things up to the family.

In the last card he sent, a new tone emerged - he added a line about how “one never knows what will happen” and “we don’t have forever” to reconnect. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack shortly after my youngest brother left for college, his license for practicing law was suspended after it was found he was spending his clients escrow funds, and my mother moved to a different city and cut almost all contact with him. I don’t think his letter was prescient so much as he knew that the last handful of dirt was about to be tossed on the grave that he had dug for himself; the long years he’d spent abusing, controlling, and ultimately alienating those he’d loved had finally ripened into the poisonous fruit of loneliness that he’d been cultivating for decades.

My father’s death had the effect of expanding and prolonging the negative effects he’d had on our lives. Having just gotten out from under his thumb and moved to a brand new place, my mom now had to deal with the fact that he hadn’t updated his will in over a decade, so she had to manage all his financial affairs. During his life my father repeatedly tried to alienate us from my mother’s family by claiming they were brainwashing us against him and stealing from him (!), but it was my mother’s father who, now in his 80s, took on the awful task of cleaning out my father’s hoarder house, including wading through piles of trash and having to defrost an enormous freezer filled to the brim with food. It turned out that my father had triple-mortgaged the house, so immediately after his death my brothers and i had threatening letters from multiple banks who wanted to foreclose - we left them to fight among themselves.

My mother never spoke with much nostalgia or regret about her time with my father, but she did reflect on the time and money she’d dumped into the house - a few years before leaving, she’d funded a giant renovation that included hardwood floors, a brand new kitchen built to her specifications, a giant piano room to hold our baby grand piano and a room full of plants with skylights that was her sanctuary. She had a garden outside, too - I remember one year, she ordered ladybugs online to help kill aphids in her garden, and for a few weeks the entire house and yard was full of ladybugs.

There are a lot of things I remember, and a lot of things I don’t.

I remember the night my father promised to watch a meteor shower late at night with me - I set up lawn chairs between the trees and made a thermos of hot chocolate for us - he came home drunk and passed out on the couch, so I watched it alone.

I remember sitting on my grandparents’ stairs screaming and crying and holding onto the banister because I didn’t want to go home with him, and him trying to pry my fingers away. 

I remember him laughing at my mom when she was pregnant because she was too big to tie her own shoes, and helping her tie them so she could take me to school. I was eight.

I remember being at church in a dark blue velvet dress and white tights on Christmas and hearing my mother sing for the first time, and looking up at her and thinking she was the most beautiful person in the world.

I don’t remember ever seeing them touch each other with any affection, except once when she was sitting at the kitchen table - he kissed the top of her head, and she flinched.

It’s hard to feel like anyone understands my relationship with my father, or that I can understand other people’s relationships with their parents, dead or alive. His death has had a double barreled effect on my feelings about relationships. It’s forced me out of a cavalier attitude toward something more serious because of my fear of dying alone, the way he did. And it’s opened an uncrossable emotional gulf for me. When my father was alive, there was maybe a 1% chance I might talk to him again. It was low, but it was still a chance - a thread that people could connect to. Now that he’s dead, that connection is severed entirely, and so is my experience of other people’s relationships with their parents. It’s not jealousy or resentment, just loneliness. The scariest part, that I’ve worked on a lot, is the similarities I see in myself to my father - the quick temper, the struggle to change my opinions about the world and see things through the lens of others. And the good things too, the quick wit. And the physical things, my nose. When I fear dying alone, it’s not so much the dying alone part that’s scary, but the dying alone because I grow into him. Because of his aversion to mental health professionals, the giant question mark that is half of my genetics - will I suddenly lose control when I’m his age? My grandpa, upon going through my father’s things, found piles on piles of brand new clothes that my father had gone into debt to acquire instead of washing the clothes he had - he let the house crumble around him and filled it up with expensive things never removed from the packaging. It’s the act of someone ill, and I have no idea if that illness will hit me too. Maybe I’m a ticking time bomb. Maybe it’s not worth letting anyone get close to me, because I’ll just destroy them the way he destroyed people.

A question that people who have similar relationships with their parents ask me - sometimes out loud, sometimes not - is whether I wish I had reconnected with him before he died. A world in which I’d opened the ominous last letter and seen it as a path to redemption. I don’t have any regrets about not talking to him, but that’s mostly specific to my situation - I would happily have reconnected with my father if he’d admitted that he was mentally ill and abusive and sought help. Instead, he systematically shut down any criticism. He lived in a world where he couldn’t be wrong, and any attempts to make him seem wrong were either deflected or outright ignored. He threatened therapists in the area where we grew up because of his extreme aversion to him or any of us getting the help we needed. After leaving, I wanted to have him committed but my entire family was in a state of paralysis about it because he was a well-known local lawyer and had too many connections in the police and courts. He created a world in which it was impossible for me to feel like reconnecting with him would be worth the mental anguish of reopening the wound.I’ve spent a long time trying to untangle the relationship between my father’s mental illness and abuse.

Oftentimes (especially online) people will say “having mental illness doesn’t make you abusive.” That’s true, but it’s often tangled up together in ways that can make you feel guilty. My father grew up in a world where he had almost no control over anything around him, so he tried to build a world that he controlled. His mental illness made it possible for him to eliminate the parts of the world that didn’t fit what he wanted it to be. It didn’t make him do cruel things, but it helped him to forget them so he could live with himself. After he did something particularly cruel, his eyes would glaze over for a moment, he’d start laughing, and then he’d claim it never happened.

One of my therapists said that people who experience abuse are often more likely to empathize with abusers because we are forced to face their humanity every day. My father the monster loved Bobby Darin and had bookcases on bookcases of high fantasy books that he loved to read. He loved cowboy movies, especially John Wayne. The only thing he ever cooked was some kind of Eastern European tomato soup with so much pepper it’d make your eyes water. He put heaps of pepper on everything, even watermelon. He wore too much cologne. When he was growing up, his father died and his mother was also severely mentally ill and untreated, so she put him and his brothers through hell. Not only was the genetic lottery stacked against him, but he grew up with someone who saw snakes in the washing machine and blurred the boundaries between truth and dreams regularly.

Today’s Mother’s Day. One of the lasting effects of my father’s death is that when Mother’s Day comes, the dread in the pit of my stomach starts building in anticipation of Father’s Day. On Father’s Day, I disconnect from social media so as not to spoil everyone’s joy. I chose a life without a father. And I guess I’m writing this today in case you chose one too, or are thinking of choosing one. It’s hard, I won’t lie. It’s lonely. But sometimes a life without a father is better for you than life with one.

I loved my father despite everything, but I had to choose a life without him. And I think maybe for the first time over the past few months I’ve realized that’s okay.