#like do I get why some people might have assumed juliette might have left early sure yes but also idk like PEOPLE ARE FALLIBLE

[tabithatwo]

(x)

(this is a pls stop blaming juliette lewis for nat’s arc and death post <3)

[jacpotts]

No More Drama | Juliac

Who: @heyjuliette , @jacpotts

When: Saturday, May 18th

Where: The WHS gymnasium

What: After months of awkwardness over Julie’s ex, Jac and Julie finally address the bad blood that has been between them their whole lives. 

Jac was having a lot more fun at this baby prom than she'd anticipated. Of course, at first she only chaperoned to keep an eye on Teegan, but he seemed to be faring well by himself. She'd even broken her tradition of wearing a sensible pantsuit or jumper and opted for her own recreation of the famous 13 Going on 30 party dress, so maybe that was what was making her feel so spry and fresh. She was able to maintain a professional demeanor as a chaperone, of course, but she felt so light. It all reminded her of a way simpler time. When the familiar opening chords of (You Drive Me) Crazy started blaring through the speakers, though, Jac knew that her professional demeanor had to come down for a small dance session. She started pumping her arms upward and out, but didn't get too far before accidentally elbowing someone next to her. "Oh! Pardon," she started, before noticing it was Julie...In dog ears. "Oh! Juliette...Pardon. I -- um," she gestured to her head with a furrowed brow. "...what's so early 2000s about being a dog? Are you the Beverly Hills Chihuahua?"

Julie wasn't really much of a chaperone type person. If anything, she was still the type of girl that needed to be chaperoned. But after Mairi had enjoyed the Valentine's ball so much that she hadn't stopped talking about it for weeks after, Julie couldn't resist signing up to chaperone the Morp so that Mairi could have another fun time at a dance. However, Julie had forgotten how old the youngest castle kid in Walt was and hadn't expected to see anyone from home at the dance. At least until she got elbowed in the middle of keeping her eyes on Mairi learning to spin from the Morp DJ and found out that Jac was also chaperoning. "You're fine, Jacqueline. Whatever." Julie replied, stepping back rather than actually wanting to engage in an interaction with her least favorite person. "No. Mairi wanted me to be the Tinkerbell to her Paris Hilton." Julie replied, politely but reluctantly, gesturing towards her little girl up at the DJ booth in a short blonde wig, tiara and pink dress. "What are you? Vomit?"

Jac followed Julie's gesture to see Mairi up at the DJ booth giggling and learning from the DJ, and her heart sunk. She put on a smile, albeit a sad one, and clasped her hand over her heart. "Of course she knows about Paris Hilton," she chuckled, unable to hide on her face how much she missed babysitting the little girl. "I'm Jenna from 13 Going on 30 during the party scene!" She held her arms out and twirled, feeling the skirt bubble up around her hips. "I don't usually wear dresses out, but this felt like more of a costume party anyway." She held her small purse meekly to her chest and gave a sigh. "As long as I've got you here, Juliette -- I wanted to let you know how much I miss being around Mairi." Of course she could see her while Crannog was there, and in passing whenever she would visit. But it wasn't the same as babysitting. "And not that you'd let me know if she missed me, too, but I can assume she does. This is all kind of getting a little petty and out of hand, don't you think?"

Julie Julie might have felt a little shitty about how she'd banned Jac, seeing her now and knowing full well how much people, especially those who were damn near family like Jac was, tended to love her daughter. But in Julie opinion, it would've been too much of a bitch move if she hadn't upheld Crannog's decision that dating would only confuse Mairi, right down to the letter. "What can I say, I like to keep my baby cultured." Julie looked over Jac's outfit once again and shrugged as if she'd never even heard if that movie before (even though she absolutely had). Jac looked nice, of course. But Julie would rather die than let her ever know that. "Bold of you to assume that Mairi even mentions you, but okay." Julie didn't look away from Mairi, to answer Jac. Just in case some of the truth about how Mairi occasionally asked for Jac to babysit would be visible in her eyes somehow. "There's nothing petty or out of hand going on, Jacqueline. Crannog was the one that came up with the idea that dating anyone would only confuse Mairi in the long run. I'm just listening to him. If I wanted to get out of hand with you by now, you know exactly how I'd go about it."

Jac raised her brows at Julie's subtle dig, but kept her shoulders high. She hadn't known that Crannog had said that...But maybe he didn't consider what they were doing to be dating. Which she didn't have time to overthink and agonize over in her woman-brain that wanted to run to him immediately and ask if they were dating or just hooking up or what. "Well, I didn't know he'd said that but...People change their minds, Juliette. Have you two discussed whether or not he's changed his mind? I think I'm kind of different than him or you bringing home some stranger. She's known me her whole life." She didn't even think to mention that maybe it'd be more confusing for a child to have two parents who weren't together but also didn't seem to be romantically interested in anyone just for her sake. "I really don't know what I've done to make you dislike me for so long. I've wanted nothing more than for you to consider me family and maybe if you had, I'd find some reason not to pursue Crannog. But considering how you've never treated me like anything but the daughter of the help, I can't do that."

Julie turned to Jac finally and raised an eyebrow at her question. "We discussed it at the dance and it's barely been more than three months. So doubtful." Julie crossed her arms and momentarily considered just walking away from Jac and not entertaining anymore conversation. But part of her wanted to keep talking just so in the end she could remain the bigger person. "If Crannog won't be with mewho's known Mairi for longer than she's been alive, there's absolutely no say you'd ever be the exception to the rule." Julie narrowed her eyes at Jac's claim that she didn't know what she'd done to make Julie hate her so much and stepped a bit closer to the other girl. Even though they were both the same height, Julie had worn higher heels and knew exactly how to hold herself to seem intimidating anyway. "You don't think I hate you because your mother's my family's housekeeper, do you? I genuinely could not care less who's kid you are. I didn't like you when we were kids because every time I wanted to hang out with my twin brother, you were always in the way. And somehow twenty fucking years later, you managed to get the literal love of my life away from me. As far as I can tell from the De La Betes and the Potts, that's not how either of us was raised to treat family. So why should I have ever treated you like something you're clearly not?"

Jac nodded, bringing her arms down to her hang by her sides so as to appear calm and casual and not at all tense like she was definitely feeling. " 'Won't" be with you? You make it sound like you've been trying to get back together," Jac rolled her eyes knowing that that idea had to have been preposterous. Crannog would have told her...right? And then Julie mentioned the real reason she had been so awful to her their whole lives, which Jac kind of already figured out on her own, but there was something gratifying about hearing the juvenile reasoning straight from the other girl's mouth. "That hardly sounds like my fault at all. And besides, you had the rest of your life to be around him after I left but then you ran off to join the circus or whatever, so it looks like we both still abandoned him." She let out a shaky breath, then, realizing the rest of what Julie had said. "...The love of your life? Julie, I -- " she stammered, her heart sinking as her brain tried to comprehend that idea. She softened, stepping closer to the other girl. "...Julie, I did not know that. I just assumed that if you were living together and not together, that it was over for good. If I had known -- if Crannog had known, we would not be doing this. You should tell him you still have feelings."

Julie glared at Jac's eyeroll but didn't bother to correct her statement. She had an old ass wound to get off her chest and it was a little more important. "It felt like it when I was a kid, especially when you had so many brothers and all I had was my twin and my way more fragile little siblings. And an orchestra is much more interesting than whatever you did for years, so don't even start." Julie crossed her arms over her chest and stepped back when Jac softened and stepped closer in a way that was a lot less confrontational than she had. Julie knew how to do weird tense conversations with Jac, not whatever the other girl was trying to do right then. But then she couldn't help but let out a loud bitter laugh. "Crannog does know. I told him on New Year's and then he was making out with you a month later. So yeah, you are doing this with him knowing full well how I feel."

Jac didn't necessarily see what her having so many siblings had to do with Julie and Rainier's relationship, but she conceded anyway. "Juliette, you know that what you and Rainier have is irreplaceable. I could never take your spot and would never even try. I got a little overzealous with the realization that I'd found my soulmate, but I was also like -- five," she chuckled bitterly to herself as the walls seemed to come down between the two of them, which made the dropping of the bomb that Crannog knew of Julie's feelings fall even harder. "Oh," was all she could say for a second, finally letting her woman-brain do its worst in her head. "I really didn't know. Men, right?" She tried to joke, but knowing that both she and Julie felt so strongly for Crannog, just lumping him in with the shitty majority felt wrong. Even if it was true. "And here I thought you were just being a spoiled little princess who doesn't know how to let go of an old toy. I'm standing down. You two have something to work out, and I'm just complicating it." It stung to admit, but now that she knew Julie's side of the truth, it was necessary.

Julie rolled eyes this time and uncrossed her arms to flip her hair over her shoulder. "I know that now, Jacqueline. But I was like barely older than you and by the time logic had kicked in that it was a little psycho to always be pissed about my brother having a pal, I'd already made up a million other stupid petty reasons to hate you." Julie shrugged, her lips quirking up into a hint of a grin as she realized just how funny it all sounded out loud. And she almost laughed for real when Jac attempted to make a joke about Crannog. But since Julie did have something of a heart behind all the crazy, she did sort of feel bad for Jac in a way she'd probably feel gross about later. "I wouldn't give me that much credit. I'm totally a spoiled little princess who doesn't know how to let go of an old toy. But I think that old toy might just be my soulmate?" Julie had noticed that Jac's mention of Rainier as her soulmate didn't sound like something that wasn't true anymore and she didn't know exactly what she'd do with that information just yet, but she would think about it more if it ever came up again. "Thanks for stepping down, Jac." Julie said, testing out using Jac's nickname for the first time...ever? "I know the dick was probably bomb."

Jac noticed the twitch in Julie's smile and felt her own do the same. This was all so...stupid, now that they were fully adults. "Well I'm sure all one million couldn't have been made up. I do tend to -- I don't know, leave the lid peanut butter jar just oh-so slightly unscrewed?" She could think of a million reasons of her own to hate herself, definitely, but they were more introspective than funny. Her brows cocked up when Julie used the same terminology about Crannog that she had used about Rainier. Hearing it like that...Well, if she hadn't already stood down, she would've right then. Imagining, say -- one of the Lumos girls falling for Rainier...Just the thought nearly had her breaking out into hives. She almost placed a gentle hand on Julie's shoulder, but stopped short when she made the comment that fully sent her over the edge into laughter. Once the gut-busting subsided, Jac wiped the corners of her eyes where tears of hilarity had built up, and sighed. "....It kinda was, not gonna lie. But I'd prefer to have a clean conscience over all the 'bomb dick' in the world. And to finally have a moment with you where I don't feel like I'll leave with a knife somewhere in my body that wasn't there before."

Julie actually started to grin at Jac's response and shrugged. "Well I think your accent is a little cray sometimes but it's still not worth all the energy of hating you." Julie joked, now that they were trying to get along it was really nice to laugh together about silly shit and their now mutual ex's dick like gal pals. Like a little taste of what their lives could've been like for decades now if they'd had learned to share a little better. "I don't think I have anything on me tonight, so you would've been fine either way but yeah. I like not wanting to leave you with a knife somewhere in your body." Briefly Julie wondered if they should hug or something to really complete the moment, but then her gaze flicked up to Mairi again up at the DJ booth before returning to Jac's face. "Uh you wanna come say hi to Mairi? We should be going back home soon and she has soooorta been asking about you."

Jac laughed out loud this time, shrugging. "I will agree that my accent is pretty cray. You got me there," she nodded. This was nice -- she'd never thought about what it could be like with Julie without them hating each other. She almost made another quip about the knives before Julie mentioned Mairi. Her heart nearly burst at the mention of getting to say hi, and even more at the confirmation that she had, indeed, been asking about her. "Really?!" she asked gently with a sigh, gazing up at the little girl at the DJ booth. "I'd love that," she nodded in Julie's direction and, without thinking, threw her arms around her in a hug.

[mldrgrl]

The Ties That Bind

by: mldrgrl Rating: R (language and subject matter) Summary: Back from the honeymoon, Stella receives some unsettling news she has to share with Hank.

*****spoiler warnings behind the cut*****

******************************Normally I do not do this, but some people might find the topic of this fic unpleasant.  DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DO NOT WANT SPOILERS OR WARNINGS.  This piece will touch on the subjects of miscarriage and abortion.  As in Juliette, the things discussed in this piece are the experiences of the characters only. *************************************************

Stella tapped her pen lightly against the agenda clipped to her folder.  It was half past three and they were behind schedule.  For a meeting to discuss interdepartmental efficiency, it was not a good sign.  Only two items remained, but budgetary restrictions was the current hot topic and there seemed no end in sight on a debate over the cost effectiveness of upgrading their servers.  It was a relevant subject, but they weren’t there to make decisions, they were only there to discuss options.

Beside her folder, the cell phone she’d on the table vibrated softly and she glanced at the display.  She frowned slightly and excused herself to take the call, but no one seemed to notice when she left the conference room.  Karen rarely called her, so she could only surmise that it must be of importance.

“Karen?” Stella answered quietly, keeping close to the wall as she headed to the end of the corridor away from the conference room.

“Stella?”  

“Yes.  Were you looking for Hank?”

“Is, um, is Hank with you?”  

Karen’s voice trembled and was punctuated by soft sniffles, two qualities that Stella had dealt with quite frequently when interviewing the recently traumatized.  She automatically responded with the tone she’d cultivated throughout the years when speaking with victims, empathetic yet firm.

“No, he isn’t,” Stella said.  “I’m at work.  Can you tell me what’s the matter?”

“I can’t call Hank.  It just...It...you have to…”

“Karen, tell me what’s happened.  Is it Becca?”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone and then a cough and a sob.  Stella put a steadying hand against the wall and took a deep breath.

“Something has happened with Becca,” Stella stated.  “What is it?  Karen, what’s happened?”

“Accident,” Karen stuttered.  “Uh, I…”  Her voice trailed off and then there was a staticky sound and low murmur of voices.

“Karen?  Karen?”

“Stella, this is Fish.”

“Fish, what’s happened?  What’s going on?”

“Sorry about Karebear, I told her I’d call you but she couldn’t wait.”

“It’s Becca?”

“Car accident.  The Beckster’s in ICU, but they say she’s stable and it’s temporary.  They just have to...I’m sorry, hold on a second…”

Stella brought the back of her hand up to her mouth and bit lightly at the skin over her knuckle.  Her chest hurt and her stomach churned.  She was brought back to the time when she’d been told that Hank was in an accident and those initial moments of shock and concern.  It was her job to remain calm in the face of extreme stress, but it was hard to do when things were personal.

“Stella,” Fish said, back on the phone.  “I’m sorry about that.  Listen, Karebear called you because she doesn’t want Hank to hear about this over the phone.”

“I agree it would be best to tell him in person.  I’ll head home now.  We’ll catch the first flight out.  I want to know everything about her condition though.  Whatever you can tell me, don’t spare the details.”

“Yeah, um, let me just...there’s not very good reception right here...Karebear, I’ll be right back.”  A brief silence followed and then Fish came back, his voice a little hushed than it had been before.  “Becca will be alright,” he said.  “What we know right now is that she’s got a broken collarbone and some cracked ribs, facial lacerations, and whiplash.  She needs minor surgery on the shoulder.”

“Why is she in the ICU then?”

“Well, she was pretty disoriented at the scene, apparently, and...they weren’t quite sure why there was so much blood loss at first.”

“Blood loss?”

“Uh, I’m just gonna say this, Becca was pregnant.  She was...well, she lost the baby.”

“Oh, for Christ sake.”  Stella put a hand over her eyes and sucked in a breath.

“Look, we didn’t know about...well, we didn’t know.  Did you or Hank?”

“I wasn’t aware.  I’m sure if she had told Hank, he would have told me.  How far along was she?”

“Don’t know.  Becca would have to be the one to tell us.  They’ve got her sedated right now.  We haven’t seen her yet.  We just got here though.  The police called before they put her in the ambulance and we drove straight down.”

“How did this happen?”

“She was in a taxi and some chowderhead blew a red light, is what the police said.  He hit the car going through the intersection.  The taxi driver is banged up as well, but the chowderhead has minor injuries.  Fuckin’ chowderhead.”

“Alright, I’m...call me if you have any news.  I’ll head home now and fetch Hank.  We’ll be there as soon as we can.  Will you text me the hospital details?  You’re in New York I assume?”

“Sure, sure.  It’s New York Presbyterian.  I’ll send it over.”

“Anything, any change at all, you call me.  We may be in the air, but call me.”

“I will.”

Though she wanted to take a moment or two to breathe and compose herself, Stella also didn’t want to waste any time.  She headed back to the conference room and gathered her folders while the budget argument still raged.  Her office was one floor down and she took the stairs.  The administrative assistant posted outside of her office, Gemma, looked startled as she hurried towards the young woman’s desk.

“I’ve an emergency,” she quietly told the assistant.  “I would appreciate it very much if you would please book two flights from Heathrow to JFK as quickly as possible.  What time is it?  If we’re quick about things we can be there at half past five.  Any flight as close to six o’clock or thereafter will be fine.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gemma answered.  “Do you have a return date?”

“Not at this time.”  Stella grabbed a Post-it on Marie’s desk and began writing out the passport and relevant information that she had memorized for her and Hank that Gemma would need to book their flights.  “Any issues arise, text me at once.  I’m stopping by home first and then headed immediately to the airport.”

“Yes, ma’am.  Is everything alright ma’am?”

“No, it is not.”  Stella finished writing out the necessary details.  She was not inclined to elaborate, but her assistant had proved to be discretionary in the few short months she’d been assigned to her.  “My daughter has been in an accident in New York.”

“I hope she’s alright.  I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

Stella nodded briefly and left Gemma’s desk for her office.  She quickly gathered her coat and shoved her laptop into her attaché.  She planned to email her superior from the car and request a short leave of absence.

“I’ve called your car,” Gemma said, as Stella closed the door to her office.  “I told him you’ll be needing to go on to the airport after dropping home.”

“Thank you,” Stella said.  She hadn’t even remembered to ask for her car to be sent around, and she was momentarily struck with a feeling of overwhelming gratitude for something so small.

“I’ll see to your flight now.  My best to your daughter.”

“Yes.”

After sending off an email on her phone, she agonized over how she was going to break the news to Hank when she got home.  He was likely to be upset.  Any little thing regarding Becca sent him into a frenzy, and hospitalization was no minor incident.  Fish texted her with a brief update that Becca also had ten stitches for a cut above her eyebrow and they’d be taking her into surgery shortly.  Gemma texted a flight itinerary to her with a note that she’d reschedule her upcoming meetings for the week and to just let her know if she needed anything further.  She did the calculations in her head.  They’d need to be out the door in under ten minutes to have sufficient time to make the flight.

Hank was at the downstairs table with his typewriter when she came in.  She hadn’t come up with anything to say to him that wouldn’t be upsetting, so she’d decided the only course of action she could take would just be to say it.

“Hey, Sherlock,” Hank said, not turning from his typewriter.  “You’re early.”

“Hank, I need you to look at me and listen to me right now.”

Hank turned, his brows raised.  Her request came out a little more forceful than she’d intended.  “You have my attention,” he said.

“Karen called me just a bit ago.  Becca’s been in a car accident and we need to go to New York.  My assistant has booked us a flight that leaves at 5:55 p.m.  You need to go upstairs and pack a bag and we need to get in the car within the next ten minutes.  You can ask me any questions on the way.”

Hank blinked at her and his lips curled up as though he was about to laugh, but then he sobered and jumped out of his chair, knocking it over in his haste.  

“You’re joking,” he said.  “This is a sick, fucking joke.”

“Hank.”

“What car accident?  When?”

“This morning.  In New York.”

“What happened?”

“Hank, we don’t have ti-”

“Just tell me!”

“She was in a taxi and the taxi was hit.  What I know right now is that she has a broken collarbone, cracked ribs, and some facial lacerations and a cut that needed stitches.  She’s under sedation and she needs surgery on her shoulder.”  She stopped short at telling him about the miscarriage.  It was not the time.

Hank stared at Stella for a few beats and then swiped his phone off the table and turned his back to her as he opened his contacts.  Only seconds later, before she could intervene, he was shouting at his phone.

“What the fuck, Karen?  Becca’s in an accident and you don’t even fucking call me?  I should be the first person you fucking call.  Numero fucking uno.  What the actual fuck?  No, I won’t calm down!”

“Hank, stop,” Stella said, putting a hand on his back.

Hank shook her off of him and then growled and hurled his phone across the room.  The screen shattered as it hit the kitchen tile.  He kicked the overturned chair.

“Stop!” Stella demanded, grabbing his arm.

He whirled around and yanked his arm free from her.  “My fucking daughter is in the hospital!”

Without thinking, Stella slapped Hank across the face with so much force that it hurt her hand.  Hank gasped and stumbled back, his hand flying to his cheek.  She cradled her stinging palm and grit her teeth.

“You hit me,” he accused.

“I understand that you’re worried,” she replied as calmly as she could.  “But that does not give you the right to behave like a child.”

“You hit me!”

“Go upstairs,” she ordered.  “Pack a bag, get your passport.  Do it now if you want to make the flight.”

“You hit me,” he said again, like a pouting, petulant child.

“Yes, and I’d do it again if I had to.  File an incident report if you’d like.”

She glared at him, unwavering.  They did not have time to argue about this.  Logically, she knew that upset people behave irrationally, but he’d never be allowed on a plane if he was belligerent.  He also needed to pack a bag and so did she.  Though there wasn’t much to throw together, they had things at the loft in the city, there were still things to grab.  Passports, for one.  She wanted to change out of work attire to fly as well, though she’d go as she was if they ran out of time.

Finally, Hank turned and shuffled towards the stairs.  “She hit me,” he muttered to himself, still holding his cheek.  Stella retrieved Hank’s broken phone and looked it over.  The screen was shattered, but it was still in working order.  She tucked it in her attache and pulled out her own phone to call Karen back and apologize.  She got her voicemail.

When Stella went upstairs, Hank was sitting at the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, crying.  She went to him and rested her hands on his head.  He wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his face into her belly.

“You can fall apart later,” Stella told him, her hands on his shoulders.  Her palm still throbbed from when she’d struck him.  “We need to make the plane.”

Hank nodded and then pulled away and wiped his eyes.  He threw a few t-shirts and some underwear in a duffel bag and Stella added a change of clothes to it as well as some toiletries.  She quickly changed into a pair of jeans and a sweater.  She made sure their passports were in her hand and grabbed her purse and attache.  She checked her watch.  Eight minutes had passed between when she’d stepped out of the car and back onto the front landing.  They were on track to make the flight, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

On the ride to the airport, she debated whether or not to tell him about the baby.  She didn’t want to keep anything from him, but she didn’t want to upset him further either, especially as they were about to get on a plane.  It was a hard decision for her to make, but ultimately she decided she needed to wait until they got to New York.  He would probably be angry with her for withholding information, but at least they would already be in the city.

When they checked into their flight, with just about twenty minutes to spare, she made the executive decision to upgrade their booking to first class.  It hadn’t occurred to her when she’d asked Gemma to get the tickets, but having experienced travel with Hank before, there was always a chance he’d be recognized, and people were less likely to bother him in first class.  She’d install him in the window seat and be the first line of defense between him and any fan club member that wanted to harass him about his books.

They boarded the plane without any incident, but Hank was agitated and restless.  She took his hand when they sat down.  He bounced his knee and pulled at his bottom lip as he stared out the window.  The boarding process dragged on, always a test of patience on a good day, but for people in an urgent situation, there was no such thing as patience.

“Why aren’t we moving?” Hank asked, stretching his neck to look towards the cockpit.  The last of the passengers seemed to have trickled in at least five minutes ago but the cabin door was still open.

“Do not make a scene,” Stella told him, squeezing his hand and pulling him back down.  “Do not get yourself thrown off this plane.”

“Why aren’t we moving?”

“Because we’re not moving.  We will be.  Try to stay calm.”

“I need vodka.”

“You absolutely do not.”

“I can’t last for eight fucking hours without a drink.”

“Yes, you can.”  Stella was actually desperate for a glass of wine, but sobriety was a priority.

“No calls?”

She checked her phone.  There was an email from her superior sending his sympathies and advising her to contact HR when she could to submit a leave of absence.  God knew she had accrued an obscene amount of personal time over the years so she wasn’t worried about that.  She would email HR after they spoke with Becca’s doctors and were fully appraised of the situation.

“Nothing,” she told him.  “No news is good news right now.”

“Why the fuck aren’t we moving?”

Once they were finally in the air and cruising altitude, Stella pulled out her laptop and bought the internet package for the duration.  Her text messages were linked to her computer, so she simply left it open on the chance that Karen or Fish might try to communicate with her.

It was a challenge keeping Hank in his seat and away from the alcohol.  He refused the inflight meal and refused to watch the movies offered on the personal screens at their seats. He did listen to music for a time, but mostly he stared out the window like he knew the route and like he could will the plane into moving faster somehow.

Stella tried to work on revising a report, but it was too hard to focus.  At some point in the flight, Hank began crying again, his head bent low and shoulders shaking.  The cabin was dark and quiet with most people engaged in their movies or games.  She unlatched her seatbelt and raised the armrest between them.  He beat his fist against his thigh and she leaned against him, bringing her hand down to cover his fist and stop him.

For one of the first times in her life, Stella was unsure of what to say.  Even if she knew for certain that Becca was going to be alright, Hank wouldn’t be satisfied until he saw her for himself.  She understood, she really did, but her natural inclination was to identify a problem and solve it.  The current solution was unfortunately hours away.

“This is a nightmare,” Hank said.  “I’m going to wake up and you’re going to tell me it was all a bad fucking dream.”

“We’ll be there soon,” she said.

“I want to be there now, god dammit!”

“I know.”  Stella glanced towards the front of the plane where a flight attendant had leaned out of her area to check on the slight disturbance.

Hank had already lost steam from his outburst though and he was back to his shoulder-shaking crying.  At the very least, it was mostly silent.  She used the napkins given to her with her Diet Coke to dab at his cheeks.  The message notification on her computer pinged, which she heard, but Hank didn’t.  She read the message from Fish out of the corner of her eye.

Surgery went well.  Beckster awake.  Groggy and incoherent.  Doesn’t remember the accident.  Doc’s going to put her back under so they can put a temp cast on her shoulder.

Stella quietly read the message to Hank.  It calmed him a little.  Enough that he stopped crying and wiped his eyes.  He would sporadically wipe his eyes for the rest of the plane ride and he kept his gaze out the window after that.

They arrived at JFK just before 9 p.m.  Instead of waiting in the taxi line, they flagged down an unmarked livery car.  Rush hour was over, so traffic was lighter than usual.  Stella waited until they had crossed the bridge into Manhattan to put her hand on his leg to get his attention.

“Hank,” she said, keeping her voice low so the conversation would be as private as possible.  The driver didn’t seem to be paying much attention to them though, there was a Bluetooth in his ear and he mumbled every so often as though he may actually be on the phone.

“What?” he asked.  

“There is something else you need to know, and I hope you understand why I waited to tell you.”

“Just fucking tell me,” he said, warily.  He turned his bleary eyes to her and he looked so haggard she cupped his cheek, not the one she’d slapped earlier, the other one.

“Apparently, Becca was pregnant.  The accident caused a miscarriage.  We don’t know how far along she was.  She didn’t tell anyone about the baby.”

There was a mystified look in Hank’s eyes, like he hadn’t understood a word she’d said.  After a few moments of silence, he merely nodded and looked out the window.  She kept her eye on him and listened to their driver carry on his hushed conversation as he mindlessly followed the orders of his GPS.

When they pulled up to the hospital, Stella was mildly surprised that Hank didn’t immediately bolt from the car.  He waited for her while she paid, and even remembered to grab their bag from the trunk.  

“Fourth floor,” Stella told Hank as the sliding doors opened and admitted them into the lobby.

They had to follow signs to the ICU, turning down one corridor and then another until they found a waiting room and Karen and Fish.  There was only two other people in the waiting room, an elderly man with his eyes closed and a woman Stella assessed to be in her early 20s reading a book.  Maybe it was the late hour or it was just a slow day at the hospital, but she expected there to be more there.  

Stella took Hank’s hand as they walked through the door of the waiting room.  Karen looked up from her hunched position in her chair as Fish patted her on the back and nodded to Stella and Hank.  She first made eye contact with Stella and then Hank and time seemed to stand still for a few moments.  Almost foreseeing what happened next, Stella let go of Hank’s hand and he dropped their bag.

Karen got up from her seat and both she and Hank crossed the room towards each other, meeting in the middle and crashing into an embrace.  They clung to each other like the drowning to life preservers.  Stella could’ve felt threatened by such an obviously palpable connection between the ex-lovers, but instead she found it sad.  They were so very alike, Karen and Hank, that it made them immensely incompatible.  Of course, when times were good very them, she was sure they were very, very good, but when times were bad, they both crumbled.  It was where people like herself or Fish complemented them so well.  Hank and Karen could offer spontaneity and adventure, but Fish and Stella balanced it out with stability.  They were ports in the storm to the forces of nature that were Hank and Karen.

“I’m sorry,” Hank told Karen.

“I couldn’t just...not over the phone,” she said.

“I know.”

“I didn’t know how.”

“I know.”

“Any change?” Stella asked, directing her question more at Fish than Karen.

Karen and Hank broke apart and Karen moved on to hug Stella fiercely.  Fish answered that there was no change, but they were expecting one of Becca’s doctors to come around at any moment with an update.  Hank sank down in one of the chairs across from Fish and Karen stayed standing, holding Stella’s hands.  Her eyes were wet.

“I saw her briefly,” Karen said.  “When they were bringing her back from having her shoulder wrapped.”

“How did she look?” Hank asked.

“Like she’d been in a car accident,” Karen answered, her voice pinched and strained.  Stella squeezed her hands gently.

Shortly thereafter, the doctor they’d been expecting came into the waiting room.  Stella thought the girl looked not much older than Becca herself, but she spoke authoritatively and confidently.  She was young, but clearly experienced.  She explained that Becca would be kept in ICU overnight as a precaution, that the shoulder would stay wrapped for a few days, but then the temporary cast would come off and she’d need some physical therapy.  There was some protesting when she suggested they go home and come back in the morning, but as though she foresaw a compromise was necessary, she said she would allow them a quick five minutes in Becca’s room for reassurance that she was doing well, and that they would be permitted to see her under the normal rules and regulations of visiting hours as soon as she was installed in a regular room upstairs.

They made a melancholy crew, the four of them, following the doctor down the hall to Becca’s room.  Stella was fairly certain she was the only one, aside from the doctor, with experience in visiting an ICU, and she knew from experience, most treated the experience in the same somber, anxiety-fueled way they might treat a visit to a funeral home.  She’d seen people completely break down, seen them refuse to even enter a room, seen the get angry, seen them bear the sight of a loved one in distress with restraint and stoicism.  She was prepared for the reactions of Hank, Karen, and Fish, but she was unprepared for her own.  As they neared the door, her impulse was to turn away.  She did not want to see Becca in this position.

Had Hank not grasped Stella’s hand tightly when the doctor opened the door to Becca’s room, she may not have followed them inside.  She did her best to remain cool and collected, but it was difficult.  Rationally, she knew Becca was alright, that the damage could have been so much worse, but looking at her lying in her sedative-induced state of unconsciousness, the left side of her face cut and speckled with dried blood, a gash across her forehead, shoulder plastered and immobile, it was one of those obnoxious reminders of how fragile life was.  She dealt with it on such a regular basis that she considered herself to be fairly numb to tragedy.  Maybe numb was the wrong word, but she was rarely affected.  The personal experience was almost indescribable.

“Can she hear us?” Karen asked.

“Well,” the doctor explained.  “She isn’t in a coma.  She’s asleep.”

“We used to turn the HiFi on when she napped as a baby,” Hank said.  “And she didn’t wake up.  Do you remember that?”

Karen nodded.

It was the only conversation to be had.  For the rest of their time, the group maintained a silent vigil over Becca’s bed until the doctor looked at her watch and cleared her throat.  Hank bent over and kissed the unmarred side of Becca’s face and Karen ran her fingers lightly over her hair.  Stella was compelled to make a connection with Becca herself, to let her know she was there in some small way.  She touched her wrist and slid her fingers down to her pulse.  Feeling the tiny beats of life gave her a reassurance she didn’t know she needed.  She backed away, and the doctor ushered them all out of the room.

Their morose bubble of silence burst as soon as they were back in the waiting room.  They were all empty of their adrenaline-fueled energy once they’d seen Becca for themselves and it was clear just how tired everyone was.  Fish was thumbing his car keys begrudgingly.

“It would be an act of insanity to drive back to Connecticut tonight,” Hank said, turning to Stella.  “They should stay at the loft,” he said to her, and then turned back to Karen and Fish.  “You should stay at the loft.”

“Of course,” Stella agreed, she’d been about to make the suggestion herself.

“Is that…”  Karen seemed momentarily unsure, but then nodded.  “It’s closer.”

“And we should take a taxi,” Stella added, looking into Fish’s bloodshot eyes.  “You’ve been here all day.  It’s nearly 4am London time.  I don’t believe any of us are fit to operate a vehicle at the moment.”

“Sounds good to me,” Fish said.

Karen pulled out her phone.  “I’ll look for a Lyft.”

They were home in under fifteen minutes, shuffling like zombies onto the elevator.  The attache over Stella’s shoulder felt heavier and heavier as time went on.  Hank practically dragged their duffle bag behind him.  They pointed Karen and Fish to the separate den area that served as a guest room, mostly used by Becca, and left them to get settled.

In bed, Hank curled up behind Stella in a loose fetal position with his arm over her hip.  His head was pressed lightly between her shoulders.  She was exhausted, but she couldn’t seem to fall asleep.  Neither could Hank, apparently.

“My biggest fear when Becca was a baby was somehow, inadvertently killing her,” Hank said, suddenly.

“I’m sure that’s quite common,” Stella replied.

“It was stupid shit, like what if I fed her something and it turned out to be poisonous for babies and I didn’t know.  Or what if I was holding her and taking out the trash and I accidentally threw her down the trash chute instead because my brain somehow couldn’t tell the difference between a trash bag and a baby.  Or what if I was taking her uptown in her stroller and I got too close to the edge of the platform and her stroller went over and she got hit by a train.”

“That sounds awful.”

“It was.  And I always told myself it would get easier as she got older, because she would be less dependent on us as time went by and one day I’d stop congratulating myself for getting through 24 hours without killing my daughter.”

“When did it get easier?”

“It didn’t.  It just became different.”

Stella shifted and then turned over.  She bent her neck so that her forehead touched his and she cupped the back of his head.  Her fingers sifted through his soft hair and her thumb traced the shell of his ear.

“That fear has been there since...not when I found out Karen was pregnant, but when I knew she was keeping the baby.”

“Was there ever a question?”

“Yeah.  Yeah, there was.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I keep wondering now if Becca had that same fear.  And just...fuck, why didn’t she tell us?”

“I don’t know.”

“When you told me about it, all I could think about was finding the little fuckface that knocked up my kid and kicking his sorry ass.”

“Hank-“

“And that’s probably why she didn’t tell me.”

“Or perhaps she didn’t know.”

“She used to tell me everything.  I was the one she told when she lost her virginity.  Me, not even Karen.  It made me nauseous at the time, I think I even threw up in my mouth a little, but...but…”

“She knew she could come to you.”

“Yes.  Exactly.”

“I’m sure she still knows.  If she has reasons, the only thing you can do is respect them.”

“I just...I need to see her awake.  Even if she just sits up and tells me to fuck off, I need to see her eyes open.”

“You will.”

“Sherlock, I’m...I’m grateful that you’re here with me.”

There wasn’t an answer Stella felt like she could give for that, so she sought Hank’s lips in the dark and pressed her mouth to his.  He rubbed her shoulder and returned her kiss, but it didn’t last long.  He sighed when they broke apart and turned over, curling into a tight little ball.  She put her hand on his back and waited until his breathing evened out to close her eyes.

Stella wasn’t sure what what her in the morning, maybe jet lag or a noise, but she opened her eyes to find that neither she or Hank had moved much during the night.  He had loosened his body a little and she had moved close enough that her knees touched the back of his thighs, but their positions were the same.  Judging by the grey shadows in the room, it was still early, but she felt rested enough.

A soft clatter outside the room caught her attention and she sat up.  One of their houseguests were awake and her money was on Karen.  She slipped out of bed and grabbed her silk robe from the back of the bathroom door, tying it on before she went out into the main living area.  Sure enough, Karen was in the kitchenette, peering into cupboards.

“Can I get you something?” Stella asked her.

“Shit!” Karen said, turning quickly.  “I woke you?  I’m sorry.”

“I was awake.  What are you looking for?”

“I was gonna make coffee, but…”

“I don’t know that we have any.  We tend to frequent the bodega around the corner when we’re in town.”

“Well, that explains it then.”  Karen rubbed one of her arms and looked around the room.

“I could go down and pick some up.”

“Oh, no, you don’t have to do that.  I could...I mean, I woke you-”

“You didn’t wake me.”

“Can I go with you?”

“Of course.  Give me a few minutes to get dressed.”

Stella went back into the bedroom and quietly shut the door.  There was a nervous, fretful energy coming from Karen that she hadn’t experienced from her before.  She supposed it had to do with the situation with Becca, but she had a feeling there was more to it than that.  She dressed quickly in a dark blue wrap dress, clipped her hair back, and brushed her teeth.  Hank was still sleeping, though he looked distressed.  His jaw was slack, but his brows were pulled together.  She ran her thumb lightly over the crease in his forehead and kissed the corner of his mouth.

“Going to pick up coffees with Karen,” she whispered.

Hank grunted softly and his mouth fell open.  His brows twitched together with more tension, but then relaxed.  She grabbed her wallet before she left the room.

It was cool outside, but the crispness of Spring was gone.  It would likely be a pleasant day, not hot or cold.  Morning traffic hadn’t reached peak yet, but horns still blared in the distance, and it was too early for the boutiques and restaurants on their street to be open, so pedestrian traffic was light.

“How’s Hank?” Karen asked suddenly.

“Fine,” Stella answered.  “And not fine.  The same as you I imagine.”

“You think I’m not fine?”

“Did you sleep?”

“Not really.”  Karen looked up as though she were studying the townhomes they passed with an interest in their design, and perhaps she was.  “I just forget sometimes, you know?”

“Forget what?”

“That Hank isn’t my responsibility.  I feel like I’ve spent half my life making sure he was okay.”

“Were you up worrying about Becca, or about Hank?”

“Yes.”  Karen stopped abruptly and took Stella’s arm to stop her as well.  “It’s almost impossible for me to think of them as two people.  If you knew what it was like...when Becca was a little girl, it was like...like they were one entity.  What happened to one happened to the other.  If Becca was upset about something, Hank was more upset.  If Hank was upset, Becca was inconsolable.  They liked and disliked the same things, which was cute, you know, it really was, but also almost...otherworldly.”

“Were you ever jealous of that connection?”  Stella’s thoughts turned briefly to her own mother, but if she knew one thing for sure, Karen was nothing like her mother.  

“No.  Yes.  Not jealous.  I didn’t wish to have that extreme kind of connection, but it made my bond with both of them feel weak in comparison.”

“I do know what that’s like.”

“You do?”

“I was close with my father as well, but my mother couldn’t cope with that.  She divorced him and blamed me for ruining their relationship.”

“How old were you when your parents divorced?”

“Around two.”

“Two!” Karen exclaimed, a look of outrage crossing her face.  “She blamed a two year old for...Jesus Christ what a fucking cuntface!”

A soft laugh tumbled out of Stella’s mouth.  It came and went quite quickly, but she couldn’t stop the smile it left behind.  

“Hank more or less expressed the same sentiments,” Stella said. “To her face.”

“Oh my god, he didn’t!”

“He did.  I only wish I’d been there to see hers.”

“You still keep in touch?”

“No, she passed away just a few months ago.  Shortly after the wedding, actually.  The one and only time Hank met her was the first time I’d seen her in over a decade.”

“I want to tell you I’m shocked and can’t imagine not being present in your own child’s life, but then I suddenly remembered that I have no idea when the last time I saw my parents.”

“They’re still living?”

“Yeah, they retired to Florida what seems like a million years ago.  They weren’t hugely supportive of my choices in life and I guess you can say we just drifted apart as people.  I mean, we do speak on occasion, birthdays or holidays, and that’s about it.  God, I hope Becca never feels like that about me, or Hank.”

“I think that’s unlikely.”

“Why didn’t I ever know that about your mother?”

“It isn’t really dinner party conversation.”

“But, I mean...I don’t know what I mean, actually.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but you are so present in my daughter's life, and mine by extension, it seems strange not to know you better.”

“I don’t know that much about you either.”

“I would’ve thought that Hank...oh my god, how fucking narcissistic of me.”

“Of course Hank talks about you.  That’s his perspective, however.”

“Well now I feel like I’m on a blind date and I don’t quite know what to say.”

“Let’s go get the coffee then and maybe something will come to both of us.”

“Coffee, yes.  I almost forgot what we were doing out here.”

At the bodega, they picked up four coffees and breakfast sandwiches.  Both Hank and Fish were up and about when they got back to the loft.  Fish was rumpled, but I’m good spirits as usual.  Hank was shirtless with his jeans partially unbuttoned and a bad case of bedhead and morning stubble.  It was actually one of Stella’s favorite looks on him.  She put her hands on his chest and leaned close to him as he hooked an arm around her shoulders and sipped his coffee.

“Ah, ladies,” Fish said, sighing appreciatively over his coffee cup.  “Moody, we got the best girls in the world, right here.”  He clapped Hank on the back, causing him to splutter and coffee to dribble down his chin.  Stella held his coffee for him as he wiped his face with a napkin.

They arrived at the hospital before visiting hours and were made to wait in a smaller, less comfortable waiting room on the sixth floor.  Becca had already been transferred out of the ICU.  They just had to wait until the requisite hour and they could go in, two at a time.  They all agreed that Hank and Karen should go in first.

A half an hour after Karen and Hank went into Becca’s room, they came back out.  Hank seemed agitated and Karen had a list of items she wanted to get to make Becca more comfortable for the next few days she’d be in the hospital.  

“Go on in,” Hank told Stella.  “I just want to take a walk.”

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“It’s fine.  I just feel like taking a walk.”

Fish decided to go with Karen, so Stella went into Becca’s room alone.  The girl was awake, but drowsy, probably an after affect of the medication they put her on.  She regarded Stella with heavy-lidded eyes, but then stretched her fingers out to her and Stella took her hand.

“Do you have a mirror?” Becca asked.

“I don’t think so,” Stella answered, her hand going to the small handbag pressed to her hip.  “Wait, I’ve my phone.  That could work.”

“Yeah, good enough.”

Stella brought out her phone and opened the forward-facing camera on it before she handed it to Becca.  Becca inspected her face in the mirror and lightly traced the line of stitches along her forehead.  The right side of her face had been spared any damage, it was only the left that suffered cuts and bruises.

“There probably won’t be much scarring,” Stella said.  “Except for that cut above the brow.”

“Scars don’t bother me.  They’re like little badges of an interesting life.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

Becca handed the phone back to Stella.  “Mom wouldn’t let me look.  I thought I must look pretty hideous or something.”

“You don’t look hideous at all.  How are you feeling?”

“Drugged up.  Everything feels heavy.  It’s kind of weird.  I don’t remember the accident.”

“That happens a lot.”

“Are they mad at me?”

“Who?”

“Mom and Dad.”

“I can’t imagine why you’d think that.”

Becca turned her head a little towards the curtain separating her bed from the other bed in the room.  It was empty.  Stella had to pass it on her way to Becca’s.  The curtain seemed to be closed out of habit than necessity.  

“I guess you all know now,” Becca said, cutting her eyes back to Stella and then turned her gaze down.  She plucked at the fuzz on the blanket next to her hip.

Stella sat down next to Becca.  “Did you know?”

“Yeah.”

“How far out where you?”

“Six weeks.  I’ve only known though for like a week.”

“Is the father in your life?  Should we call him for you?”

“We have more of a casual thing.  I didn’t tell him.  He’s just a friend.”  

“Your friends would still want to know that you’re in hospital, I’m sure.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Okay.”

Becca stopped plucking at the fuzz on the blanket and moved on to chewing at her bottom lip.  Her eyes became glassy and pooled with tears.  She blinked and one rolled down the side of her cheek over the little cuts on her face.  Stella took a tissue from a box next to Becca’s bed and dabbed lightly at the track left behind.

“I hadn’t decided what to do about it yet,” Becca said.  “So, I didn’t tell anyone.”

“I’m sorry this is how we found out.”

“I almost called you a few days ago.  I thought maybe...maybe you’d know what…”

“Are you asking if I’ve ever been in your position?”

“No, that’s none of my business.  I mean, in your line of work maybe...I mean you must have seen…”

“I have been in your shoes, Becca, and I’ll tell you that without shame or regret, but I am not you and you are not me.  The only advice I can give you is that you should do what you feel is right for you.  It’s your decision to make, and only you can make that choice because only you will have to deal with the consequences of either decision.”

“Not anymore,” Becca said, with a tinge of bitterness in her voice.

“I wish that hadn’t been taken away from you.”

“I don’t want kids.  It should’ve been easy.”

“Darling girl, it’s never easy.”

“I still feel sad about it.  Is that stupid?”

“No.”

Becca sighed a little and then turned to look out the window.  After awhile, her eyelids began to flutter and then closed.  She shifted and sort of melted into sleep quite quickly after that.  Stella waited for some time, just watching her, and then she quietly slipped from the room.

Hank was back in the waiting area when she came out, his head tipped back against the wall, eyes closed.  She sat down beside him and put her hand on his thigh.  He didn’t open his eyes.

“How is she?” he asked.

“She’s asleep.”

“Good.”

“Why did you come out of her room looking so disturbed?”

Hank blinked his eyes open and stared at the ceiling.  “She apologized to us for our trouble,” he said.  “Like it was her fault some asshole plowed into the taxi she was riding in.  The only person who should be apologizing is that asshole, to my daughter.”

“That’s what upset you?”

“She’s too good to have anything bad happen to her.”

“Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work like that.”

“It should.”

“You’re right.”  She squeezed his thigh and relaxed back in the chair next to him.  “She gets it from you, you know.”

“Gets what?”

“You’re a good man.”

“Bullshit.”

“You are.”

Hank shook his head just as Fish and Karen came Into the waiting room.  Fish was holding a gigantic helium balloon shaped like a teddy bear supported by a long plastic wand.

“What the fuck is that?” Hank asked.

“The others were too dinky,” Fish answered.

“You’re not in with her?” Karen asked.

“She’s asleep,” Stella answered.  

“Go sit with her,” Hank said, nodding at Karen and looking up at Fish’s balloon.  “Go give her that scaryass mylar monstrosity.”

“He’s using his big boys words ‘cause he’s threatened,” Fish stage whispered to Karen.  “You hear that, he said ‘mylar.’”

Karen rolled her eyes a little and tugged on Fish’s elbow.  “Come on,” she said.

“Still think I’m a good guy?” Hank asked, after they’d left.

“No, I’ve completely reversed my opinion of you after the terrible manner in which you insulted a balloon.”

“See.”

“Do you trust my judgment, Watson?”

“Always, Sherlock.”

“Do you think I’d be with you if you weren’t a good man?”

“Sounds like a trick question.”

“Why?”

“Because I have to answer honestly.”

Stella moved her hand off Hank’s thigh and laced their fingers together.  She leaned back like he was, but put her head on his shoulder.

“If it makes you feel any better that balloon was quite hideous.”

Hank chuckled and displaced Stella momentarily to put his arm around her. “It does,” he said.  “It does make me feel a thousand times better.”

The End

[fae-fucker]

Shatter Me: Chapter 10-11

Chapter 10

Last time we were in this heck hole of a book, Adam had been revealed to be a soldier and we were introduced to Warner Bros., the resident sexy bad boy who has offered Juliette a job as his personal weapon. 

Adam leads Juliette through some hallways and she’s like totally hot for him still.

I feel him shift in the darkness and soon his body is too close so disarmingly close to mine. His hand is on my lower back and he’s guiding me through the corridors toward an unknown destination. Every inch of my skin is blushing. I have to hold myself upright to keep from falling backward into his arms.

“I’m 100% convinced this man wants to kill me but hotdamn I’d still tap that.”

I can’t even start explaining how much sense this all just makes, you know?

I’m painfully excited but I haven’t felt natural light on my skin in so long I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle it.

This is why people hate first person narration. Fucking look at this garbage.

The air hits me first.

It’s my phantom fist.

Juliette is in awe of all the outside that she’s feeling right now before Adam stuffs her into a tank. A TANK. She also mentions soldiers looking at them and I have to wonder what kind of facility this actually is.

They drive off and Juliette angsts about how shitty everything is and how the world is dead. We also get more information -- if you can call it that -- about how the Reestablishment came into power and became the Establishment, if you will.

I remember there were rules. No more dangerous imaginations, no more prescription medications. A new generation comprised of only healthy individuals would sustain us. The sick must be locked away. The old must be discarded. The troubled must be given up to the asylums. Only the strong should survive.

Ok, so this sounds like good ole fascism right there, so this could theoretically be a thing (because it kind of is right now). It’s got that proper us-vs-them mentality that’s at the core of most authoritarian governments. But then Tahereh gets greedy:

No more stupid languages and stupid stories and stupid paintings placed above stupid mantels. No more Christmas, no more Hanukkah, no more Ramadan and Diwali. No talk of religion, of belief, of personal convictions. Personal convictions were what nearly killed us all, is what they said.

This is just dumb. People in power often use religion to justify their toxic views, and I’m having a hard time seeing humanity (which has gone to war over religion over and over again) giving up all of their religions just because some dingdongs claimed it would help.

Now, I’m not shitting on religious people here, I’m just stating the facts that I do not see humanity accepting this new hardcore atheist government that says that being a person with beliefs and convictions is bad.

Usually dictatorships and authoritarian governments are based on an us-vs-them mentality. The people in power pick a target that they label as “other” and create propaganda to “unite” the people against a common “threat”. “Our” group is presented as strong, righteous, and good to reinforce the love for their own group while strengthening the hate for the “other”.

Forcing the population to war against ... itself? Convincing a population that they’re all terrible to the point where they’ll all just go “yeah I guess we are, please control us”? I don’t see it. Many YA dystopias are based on this idea and I honestly don’t see how this could ever work. 

A potential leader telling you that you’re the best, better than that guy over there, let’s go kill him? That clearly works on a population. A potential leader telling you that you suck and that you should give them the power over you so they can fix you? That’s suspicious as fuck. This sounds more like a cult than a government, and sure, cult tactics do work, but cults target very specific individuals that they slowly groom into accepting their views, and they’re often small as a result of this and the fact that they isolate their members from society. Doing this to a whole population? Nah.

I think this kind of is a side-effect of YA authors being afraid of taking a side? You don’t wanna write about a nasty white dude taking power and making everyone believe that everyone other than a white dude is a piece of dirt because that might upset the white dudes, so you just kind of write governments that are weirdly diverse but are “evil” because they hate ... humanity in general? And we’re all humans, so clearly we’ll think they’re evil! Easy! 

This is also why YA dystopias often create worlds that are super hardcore and oppressive, but conveniently never racist or misogynistic or homophobic, so they’re somehow more advanced than we are when it comes to equality but also more barbaric. *insert I’m not [thing], I hate everyone equally joke here*

And I get it. Writing about real-life oppression mirrored in a fake world is hard and icky and uncomfortable. But if you’ve set out to write a proper dystopia and you end up with this, you do kind of cheapen it all by making your dark-haired white girl oppressed because of her cool superpower/rebel spirit while the government is made up of a diverse cast of bad guys who are all bad because the narrative said so.

I think I went off on a tangent. What I’m trying to say is: people take elements from 1984 even though the parts they take from it don’t make any dingdang sense in the context of their worlds.

Anyway, Juliette tells us that there is, in fact, an underground rebel movement that’s waiting for the right moment to strike. I don’t know how she knows that and I don’t know why they’re waiting, but whatever.

We pull up to a structure 10 times larger than the asylum and suspiciously central to civilization. From the outside it looks like a bland building, inconspicuous in every way but its size, gray steel slabs comprising 4 flat walls, windows cracked and slammed into the 15 stories. It’s bleak and bears no marking, no insignia, no proof of its true identity. 

Political headquarters camouflaged among the masses.

How bad is this camouflage that Juliette, who presumably has never been inside, is able to figure out what it is? I can’t accept the idea that she’s supposed to be super insightful, for obvious reasons. 

Chapter 11

Dirty money is dripping from the walls, a year’s supply of food wasted on marble floors, hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical aid poured into fancy furniture and Persian rugs. I feel the artificial heat pouring in through air vents and think of children screaming for clean water. I squint through crystal chandeliers and hear mothers begging for mercy. I see a superficial world existing in the midst of a terrorizing reality and I can’t move.

[...]

They filled our world with weapons aimed at our foreheads and smiled as they shot 16 candles right through our future. They killed those strong enough to fight back and locked up the freaks who failed to live up to their utopian expectations.

Ok so um. I see the point you’re trying to make here and I agree that rich people are the devil and that we should eat them, but in this world that you’ve created, this kind of makes no sense.

How ... How exactly are they “stealing” or “wasting” money if they’re in charge of the economy and the production of everything? Who exactly are they stealing from if they’ve murdered most of the population anyway? Are they paying people to have those Persian rugs made? Isn’t it more logical to assume they’ve just taken stuff that has already existed, since nobody else was using it? 

Like, you have real-life examples of how politicians and corporations get rich, and this ... this isn’t one of those ways. You don’t blast a population to death and then start producing wealth out of nowhere. New wealth doesn’t just magically appear once you’ve stolen “everything” from the population.

You know for someone who was complaining about how evil the eestablishment are for taking away art and fancy things, she sure doesn’t want any of this art or fancy things. The Reestablishment was also established (hueh) to promote a “simple” lifestyle, and yeah, usually dictatorships do that to the population while they live like kings, but Juliette hasn’t noted this hypocrisy yet, she’s just cringing at the fancy things so far.

Let’s hope she does.

Whatever. Juliette is all disgusted with the luxury around her and sees blood all over (See because she thinks people have been sacrificed to Big Corporate for all this fancy stuff. It’s poetic you see because poor people have uuuuh died for all this stuff and all that.), so much so that she has a breakdown.

I’m in the air. I’m a bag of feathers in [Adam’s] arms and he’s breaking through soldiers crowding around for a glimpse of the commotion and for a moment I don’t want to care that I shouldn’t want this so much. I want to forget that I’m supposed to hate him, that he betrayed me, that he’s working for the same people who are trying to destroy the very little that’s left of humanity and my face is buried in the soft material of his shirt and my cheek is pressed against his chest and he smells like strength and courage and the world drowning in rain. I don’t want him to ever ever ever ever let go of my body. I wish I could touch his skin, I wish there were no barriers between us.

Ok so first you get all upset over how these guys are evil for having all this stuff, and the next second you’re creaming yourself about how you totally wanna bang this dude you don’t know and who you’re convinced wants to kill or otherwise hurt you?

Makes that whole previous freakout seem a bit cheap now, dontcha think?

Juliette begs Adam to kill her because she just can’t handle how horny she is for him how rich and evil these people are, but he’s like naw dawg, can’t kill the protagonist in a trilogy this early. 

Adam takes her to a room and Juliette complains about how pretty and luxurious it is.

Listen. I don’t care how strong her ess-joo spirit is. Girl has been locked up in a cell all alone for 200+ days. Justice for the poor should be at the very back of her head, not her main concern. She should be shitting herself with joy right now.

“Please don’t let go of me put me down,” I tell him.

Tahereh ... sweetie. You can’t do this in dialogue. That’s not ... that’s not how anything works. Did she actually say this and then quickly correct herself? I should be enchanted by this riveting dialogue, not be taken out of the experience trying to figure out if this girl has two voices like she’s possessed by Pazuzu.

Juliette asks Adam to leave her alone, which he says isn’t an option, since Warner Bros. considers her a threat and has thus decided that Adam must watch her at all times. Which means he’ll be moving in.

Yikes. I know it’s all a (rather fanfiction-y) setup for their “romance”, but still, how creepy and uncomfortable is that?

I want to hate him and judge him and scream forever but I’m failing because all I see is an 8-year-old boy who doesn’t remember that he used to be the kindest person I ever knew.

Yeah, can’t wait until he’s suddenly written to be super evil so Warner Bros. can swoop in and save you. 

And, really? “I know he’ll be invading my privacy for who knows how long and I’m pretty sure he wants me harm or at least wouldn’t mind inflicting it if ordered, but he was a nice kid back in school, so I can’t bring myself to hate him!” Great.

Adam tells her that she has to change into less icky clothes and says that there’s a bathroom. 

I see a door connected to the room and I’m suddenly curious. I’ve heard stories about people with bathrooms in their bedrooms. I guess they’re not exactly in the bedroom, but they’re close enough.

1) This narration is completely OOC for Juliette, and also really dumb.

2) So we went from “fuck all this rich people crap!!” to “ooh, my own bathroom? sweet!!” Consistency who?

 Adam says that there are no cameras in the bathroom, which means that there are cameras in the bedroom. Juliette is only mildly concerned with this.

Adam says that Warner Bros. will be expecting her for dinner, and then goes to show her how the stuff in the bathroom works. 

He then acts a bit weird, looking around and putting his finger to his lips to tell her to be quiet, and Juliette assumes he’s about to rape her and wishes she could kill herself.

He of course isn’t and leaves when he realizes why she’s freaking out.

So uh. This suddenly got dark. 

[allofusandco]

Stakeout

With @eswareinmaleingrimm

On a stakeout, Sean flips out when Nick appears to die in the passenger seat.

Sean:

Captain Sean Renard replaced the receiver on the landline and rubbed across his temples. Whether this was a blessing or a vast inconvenience, he couldn’t yet say. Tensions were high, and alliances fragile, but there was work to be done.

He brought up his email account (the usual, portlandpd.gov account which was as secure as a government email address could really be) and answered a couple of quick enquiries. Fired off terse emails to human resources and the CSU. Read through the messages that had been left on his desk.

He could feel his jaw grinding. Not a good sign, minutes after eight in the morning.

He stood and stretched. Body feeling strangely confined. Some days the job itself felt like a constrictive uniform but it was necessary, and the work he did was important to maintaining some degree of balance, for however long such a balance could be maintained. He slipped the blazer from his shoulders and hung it carefully on a well-padded coat hanger suspended on a rack. He rolled the cuffs of his shirt, once, twice, and indulged himself a moment, gazing out the window. Sunny day, but it was cold outside.

He hit the button on the intercom. “Send Burkhardt in, when he gets here,” he said, not waiting for an acknowledgment before he released the button and returned to his chair to peruse a manila folder.

Ten minutes later, and still far earlier than he was expected, Nick arrived. He raised his eyebrows.

“Shut the door and take a seat,” said Sean, but didn’t wait before continuing. “Detective Griffin was been called to Sacramento with a family issue. He won’t be back for a few days. Which might be fortunate.”

He dropped the file on the other side of his great desk. “You’ve been investigating this man?” He didn’t wait for confirmation. “I can only assume you haven’t met him yet. He’s Wesen. I had no idea he was in Portland. My feeling is we should stake out his home tonight and yes, before you ask – this is about keys.”

–––––

Nick:

Nick didn’t like the loft.

There was nothing wrong with it, it was in the better parts of Portland, actually a lot closer to the precinct. The neighborhood seemed friendly and the apartment itself was big enough to fit his belongings (even when half of everything was still stored away in boxes which were lining the living room’s wall). Monroe and Rosalee had helped him control the chaos and actually managed to make it look like a place you would feel good at and yet he just couldn’t seem to get used to it.

It was too lonely, too quiet.

Not home.

It was hard getting used to living alone again, more than once he caught himself picking up the phone to call Juliette if he had to work longer or ask her if she wanted him to pick something up on his way home. Only to realize, over and again, that she wouldn’t answer.

No, he really didn’t like the loft.

So he started to avoid it. Spent his evenings after work at Monroe’s or Hank’s, at his favorite bar when they needed some time to themselves and basically used his place to rest and sleep. And once he got up he basically left for work, sometimes even before his shift began.

Just like today.

He’d just sat down at his desk, nursing the first coffee of the day, when he was called to see the captain in his office. Apparently he was not the only one who had nothing better to do than be at work.

Nick got up from his chair and approached the office, mentally going over the case he was working on. Maybe it was a new lead…

It wasn’t, and the fact that Hank had been called away because of family business almost made him sigh, but then the captain distracted him.

“Wesen? You know him?”

He picked up the file and, sure enough, it was one of the cases they had been working on. Nick looked up to meet Renard’s gaze, frowning.

“You seem worried, is there something about him I should know about?”

Spending the night on a stakeout with him, after everything that had happened, didn’t exactly sound like something he wanted to do, but he didn’t have a choice.

“Is this family business again?”

Your family?

He didn’t add it, but it was obvious what he meant, if this Wesen had something to do with Renard’s family he needed to know about it.

–––––

Sean:

Sean leaned back in his chair, feeling his lip curl, shrugging in mild irritation. “Not personally. But I know his face, I know his name. He’s a Fuchsbau. One of the worse of his kind. Loyalty is generally to the highest bidder, and he’s been known to be in pursuit of keys before.” He met Nick’s eyes. He looked tired. He glanced at the small clock on his desk – Nick was early, too. That was interesting.

Impossible not to hear rumors in a precinct building of this size, and though Sean tried not to pay too much attention to them, but when those rumors were about the resident Grimm he paid a little more attention. And he suspected that the rumor about Nick and Juliette must be true.

He reflected on, and regretted, briefly and intensely, his own part in the mess. He reminded himself that he had done what he thought was necessary. The blame belonged to Adalind, the shrew. He resettled his shoulders. “This concerns you because this particular Fuchsbau is know to be in contact with Reapers. His presence in Portland… is problematic, to say the least.”

He reached for his mug, drained the last of the bitter brew. He was sleeping poorly. “So for now, no. This is not about my family. But in the end, when it comes to keys, it always is.”

Family. Such a laden term. If Nick had any idea of the paths he walked, negotiating any degree of peace in that asylum, he’d look at him differently, he suspected. Might even one day forgive his part in Juliette’s illness, and departure. “If you’re confident about this address, I suggest we stake it out. Tonight. Leave it for today. I mean it. I don’t want him thinking anyone is paying any kind of attention. He is no Rosalee Calvert,” he added, quite unnecessarily. He didn’t bother to point out that the overtime would not be paid, either. This wasn’t exactly police business. “Go about your day,” he said, by way of a dismissal. “We’ll leave here at six.”

He nodded, and turned back to the computer.

–

When six o’clock came, the station was far quieter. Sean turned the computer off at six precisely, and slipped his jacket on over his shoulders, collected his duster, briefcase, checked the ammunition in his pistol, and waited.

–––––

Nick:

Nick didn’t like what he heard, sometimes he actually missed the days when his cases didn’t include Wesen-details. Mostly because he never knew what to expect, especially in a case like this, when the captain obviously knew more. Nick was familiar with Fuchsbaue, of course, but the whole thing sounded like Renard knew more than he let on. And someone working with Reapers was always bad news.

“That’s the address he was seen at a couple of times this week.”

Okay, stakeout. With the captain. Fine. He could do that. It wasn’t exactly official police work, but it was still his job. No problem. He even welcomed the chance to work through his paperwork for a change and get some stuff sorted out. Funny how walking around as a zombie had had such a big impact on almost every part of his life.

“I can do that, there’s enough paperwork to be done to keep me busy for two weeks.” Especially now that I have to do most of Hank’s part, too.

He forced himself to smile at Renard, wondering for a short moment how they were supposed to spend a whole night together in a car when even five minutes in the office with him seemed twice as long as they were. But he pushed that thought aside, scolding himself mentally. Not very professional.

“I’ll be outside.”

____

The day was slow, he got a call from Hank telling him he wouldn’t be back for a couple of days but that his father was doing better. Monroe invited him for dinner (which he declined) and a long list of other people kept him busy until it was time for the stakeout. He was grateful for the ‘break’, he finally got to do some paperwork that should have been finished weeks ago, made a few appointments with various people he needed to see and all in all spent a rather quiet day at his desk.

At six he got up and took his jacket and when he turned around, the captain was already waiting for him.

“There’s a restaurant close, Wu says the takeout is edible and we should try the pasta.”

Sort of felt like an olive branch he wasn’t sure why he was holding it out, but this wasn’t about them and the past, this was a case.

“You ready?”

–––––

Sean:

Sean nodded briskly, although he suspected Wu’s ideas about edibility might differ distinctly from his own. Dinner was in order, though.

“Yes.” Of course Sean was ready. It was now seven minutes past six. “We’ll take my car.” Bigger, more comfortable. Though he didn’t like eating in it. Sometimes things were just necessary.

He was somewhat aware that he was quieter than usual, taking the lift to the basement. He glanced down – it seemed to startle Sean every day how much shorter Nick was than him. Nick still looked rather tired. Well, never mind. They could sleep in shifts, if it got late enough.

A buzz in his pocket  was an irritant. Carrying a second cellphone for family business was second nature but there were times when it would stay still and silent for months at a time. Right now, it never seemed to stop. He scrolled through three new messages, careful to keep his face neutral.

Nick gave him an inquisitive look.

“Family issues,” Sean said, dismissively. In truth things were getting increasingly complicated, and he’d spent half the day wondering when exactly he should tell Nick the more complete truth. It could wait. This Fuchsbau – whatever name it was that he was using just now – needed to be dealt with.

It was only three blocks to the restaurant. The wait wasn’t long, but there was some unease which made it seem longer. Sean loosened his tie absently, rolled his sleeves again. Some symbolic recognition that the work day was over, and similarly that the real work was yet to begin.

He wanted to say something. Something… kind, he supposed, something that might make things less tense, show Nick he had someone in his corner. But commenting on Juliette’s absence seemed cruel, under the circumstances.

Very sorry about your girlfriend. She was a very good kisser.

He dismissed the urge. Again the phone buzzed in his pocket. Again he read the message with irritation. Informing him of the same problems fifteen times didn’t make him any better informed than telling him once. The pasta arrived, and they headed back to the car.

“Significant family issues,” Sean allowed.

He wished he knew how to relax better. Nick made life in Portland easier, in a lot of ways. In others, his presence complicated things.

He parked regulation distance from the house they were watching, and pulled plastic containers of pasta from the bag at Nick’s feet. “I hate plastic cutlery,” Sean said, absently, noting which windows had light coming from them. Only two, and not bright enough for anyone to be doing anything. Could well have been left on by accident. He wondered about the inhabitants of the house. Once they were done, that would be dealt with through more official channels. “Too light. Too thin.”

What an odd thing to comment on. Plastic cutlery.

“I might need to tell you a little more about what’s happening, back at… with my family,” he said. “When it becomes necessary. I may need to ask for your help.”

–––––

Nick:

Nick was tired, but these days that was nothing new. He didn’t sleep well at nights, nothing big or worrying, just a general restlessness that was annoying. It didn’t affect his work and nobody ever commented on it which was why he didn’t consider it to be worth of mentioning. The stress, probably, new apartment, a part of his life lost, gone forever—

Nick almost flinched when the captain’s voice sounded next to him, maybe he was a bit more tired than he thought. The captain’s car, that was okay with him, it was bigger than his and he wouldn’t have to drive. He was quiet in the lift, going through everything he remembered reading in the file. If captain Renard had not told him it was a Fuchsbau they were dealing with, he never would have suspected he was anything but a human, there had been nothing that even remotely suggested a Wesen in the notes and –

The buzz of a phone pulled him out of his musings and he looked up, arching an eyebrow.

Of course, family issues. He should have guessed. The captain’s face didn’t give any clue about how important or worrying the news were, but then again he had rarely, if ever, seen him smile or relaxed so he probably wasn’t the best to judge his emotional state.

The drive to the restaurant was mostly silent, a couple of directions, then they pulled over and got out. He’d done this a hundred times before, with Hank, with other cops, with Wu, once, when they’d had to have two stakeout teams out at two different locations. He’d learned that day that there was no way to shut Wu up that didn’t involve threatening him into leaving the car and waiting outside in the cold for the rest of the night. Wu was also one hell of a guy to have at your back when shit hit the fan and a simple stakeout turned into the mother of all shootouts.

Not the topic right now.

Once again the phone went off and Nick noticed the captain tense. Bad news then, he supposed, judging by the tight quality of his voice and the more than short, dismissive answer.

And then the topic switched to plastic cutlery and Nick was momentarily at a loss. What was he supposed to say to that? Did it even require an answer? He’d never stopped to think what kind of cutlery he preferred, as long as the food got where he wanted it to get he honestly didn’t care about it.

He probably was a lot more tired than he had realized before since now that he had started to think about it, he somehow couldn’t stop. Did he even have cutlery anymore or had Juliette taken it? He couldn’t remember. Had he honestly never eaten in his apartment the whole two weeks he’d been there?

In the end he decided on putting some of the food into his mouth—with the plastic fork—and giving him a nod.

That turned into a frown at the next words.

“What do you need?” It came automatically, and he couldn’t even say why. If he took everything that had happened recently into account, then there should be no way Renard would even consider asking for his help. Unless it somehow already involved him as a Grimm and if that case there really wasn’t a way to stay out of it.

“Is this about your brother?”

–––––

Sean:

It had been easier before. When Nick had been in the dark. Hadn’t known his cover was sheer as glass, hadn’t known Sean was wesen at all, let alone disgraced semi-royalty. He rubbed his eyes, and picked at the pasta. Too creamy. Still, he was hungry. Lunch had been a little thin.

He never lost his focus on the house, though he was also acutely aware of Nick, sitting beside him. Twice the phone buzzed. Nick had to be aware of it, but since Sean was ignoring it, he seemed happy to as well.

“Everything,” he said quite drily, and with only the faintest hint of bitterness, “is about my brother. Always has been.”

He supposed Nick would take that exactly the way it sounded – the bitter half-brother, the bastard, jealous for some time in the spotlight, but it couldn’t have been further from the truth. He’d have liked to be able to step away from his responsibilities completely, make no claim to his royal blood. But it wasn’t possible. And far worse; with the vacuum created by his brother’s death starting to draw in all sorts of trouble, he was, soon enough, going to have to step in and more actively fill a role he had no interest in taking on. But responsibilities were responsibilities.

He closed the lid of the pasta, and set it on the carpet behind his seat. Worst thing about a stakeout was that no car ever had enough space for Sean’s legs, but this one was luxurious enough. He stretched out as well as he could, one elbow up on the window ledge, a finger against his top lip.

He glanced at Nick, face so serious, still working through his meal, and decided it really couldn’t hurt for him to be somewhat primed. If he’d been raised knowing who he was he’d have learned a lot of this a long time ago.

“My brother has left a hole, in the governing bodies; several different kinds, really, as he knew how to get his fingers into a lot of different pies.” He watched the house, spoke only as loudly as he needed to. “If my blood was pure, I would almost certainly have to leave my life in Portland behind and resettle in Europe. Austria. But I’m the royal bastard.”

He allowed a small smile at that, but didn’t meet Nick’s eyes. Enough that he knew he could laugh at himself. He didn’t need to prove it to anyone else. “Unfortunately, there are a lot of… not-quites squabbling over power right now, and it’s a problem. People are forming alliances. There have been more weddings since Eric died than in the last five years.”

He shifted in his seat, reached for a bottle of coke sitting in the cup holder. Terrible sweet stuff but he could use the sugar, and the caffeine, so boredom didn’t send him off to sleep.

“If it becomes an issue here, I might have to call on you.”

–

It had been hours. Quiet, dull hours. Not so much as a peep. Only a dozen cars total had even passed them in the street. Sean glanced at the time. “I think you should probably get some sleep. I’ll wake you in three hours to switch.”

–––––

Nick:

Nick had never had siblings, but he’d always wished for someone at his side. Someone who would move from town to town with him, just one familiar face around him whenever he had to go to a new school, had to make new friends and meet new people. Most of which he wouldn’t know for longer than a few months before they would move again. So the idea of a brother (or a sister) had always been a nice one, something he would have wished for.

Apparently the captain thought differently about this topic, not that he could blame him.

“Your brother had a certain… impact on people.”

It was the most polite way of saying ‘your brother was a manipulative psychopath and I don’t feel sorry about his passing’ he could think of, but he suspected that the captain would be able to read the truth on his face if he could see enough of it in the darkness. Nick concentrated on his food, listening to the captain’s words.

It made him think, they weren’t so different in a way, both of them had been born into a family tradition, both of them had to struggle because of a past that was forced onto them. Both of them didn’t have a choice, couldn’t change who they were or where certain people thought they needed to go.

Both of them betrayed by their families one way or the other and yet they were doing their best to somehow live with the consequences of their decisions (and those others had made). Of course he had no idea of the path the captain would take, just as he couldn’t foresee what his own future had in store for him. It wasn’t something he spent much time thinking about, he believed in actions rather than elaborate plans and schemes, so whatever would happen, he would find a way to deal with it.

The captain was still talking and Nick realized he’d been zoning out for a moment. He was really tired, he needed a break, and soon. One word did catch his attention, sending a stab of pain through his chest that woke him up.

There have been more weddings since Eric died than in the last five years.

He didn’t want to, but his mind flashed back to the night he’d asked Juliette to marry him, to the moment she had shattered his dreams and had taken the first step into a direction that had pushed them apart. It wasn’t her fault, he didn’t blame her, couldn’t blame her for anything that had happened, but her absence from his life felt like someone had ripped his heart out, leaving behind an open wound that stubbornly refused to start healing.

Focus, he needed to focus, he couldn’t let personal feelings distract him from his job, especially not with the captain around. Again he forced himself to pay attention to his next words.

“If it becomes an issue here you only need to tell me how I can help and I will.”

There was silence after that, a quiet understanding, and then the stakeout. For hours they didn’t talk much and Nick found it increasingly difficult to remain watchful. The captain must have noticed and when he suggested the break Nick felt a hot flash of embarrassment, started to shake his head, opened his mouth to say I’m fine—but he didn’t. It was common (if unofficial) procedure for a situation like this for one of the officers to rest while the other kept watch and he needed a break. Nick got as comfortable as possible and barely managed to nod in agreement before he already felt himself start to drift off…

–––––

Sean:

Sean watched the house, still as a cat, vaguely aware of Nick’s soft breathing beside him. There was still no light, nothing was changing. He glanced at the time, every now and then, which was stupid. Made time pass more slowly, or feel like it was. He checked his private, secure email and winced in irritation. The most recent plan had been to encourage Sean to ‘marry well’ – code for whoring himself out on a long-term basis to ensure he stayed where he needed to be. He’d suggested dating. They’d suggested he didn’t have time, and that no one would believe anything that wasn’t guaranteed to last.

As if a wedding guaranteed anything.

He read the list, though. Every woman on it was either insufferably dull or devious. And any one of them would have married him in a heartbeat. It was too dangerous. Too many people plotting, too many people whose loyalties he absolutely did not trust. He emailed back, terse.

If I wanted to marry I could find someone myself.

Finding someone who wouldn’t assassinate him was another story entirely. He thought about the stories, those rare stories of a mate bond forming between a Grimm and a wesen; he wondered if Nick had a cousin somewhere who had been triggered. Seemed like something he would have mentioned.

Although.

He glanced at Nick. He was unflinchingly loyal. Could he act? Certainly, he might be willing to try. What a horrific thing to ask of someone. But if Sean brought Nick to court – a Royal, mated to a Grimm, his position of power would be cemented forever. No one would question that; they wouldn’t even care that Nick was a man. The mate bond was always simply accepted.

And he’d offered.

Well, he might not have if he’d known he’d be asked to pretend they were a mated pair.

Perhaps if he planted the seed. It was already time to switch, and Sean needed some rest. The silence was getting to him.

He shook Nick’s arm. “Nick. Wake up. Switch.”

Nothing. His mouth twitched into something like a smile. Nick had been downplaying how  tired he was. But still, nothing.

That was when Sean realized that Nick wasn’t moving. Wasn’t breathing.

She shook him again. Harder. How long ago had he stopped breathing? Sean shook him again, and then made a decision. He started the car, and headed out fast. Nearest hospital was Portland General. He careened out of the street, grabbing his phone. “Call Rosalee,” he said, and Siri’s too-chipper voice obliged. When they passed streetlights, Nick looked grey.

But Rosalee didn’t answer. Perhaps she turned her phone off at night? Sean had no idea. He threw the phone down, heedless. Nick was not dead. He hadn’t nurtured him for this long to lose him now. Not when they’d reached this point, actually working together. Not when Nick was needed to help him balance the problems of both Portland and the wider world. Not when he was beginning to almost enjoy Nick’s company.

He shook him again, knowing nothing would happen – and it did. Nick sat up, looking shocked. “What the hell happened?” Sean said, pulling over. “You were dead. You weren’t breathing.”

–––––

Nick:

Someone was shaking him, pulling him out of a deep sleep and into reality without a warning. Nick sat up, eyes wide, blinking into the darkness surrounding him, then brought up his hands to shield his eyes against the lights of an oncoming car. So he was in a car and the captain was talking to him, sounding as tense and worried as he had ever heard him—

The stakeout.

His brain was still struggling to get back online, but Nick made an effort to look out of the window, frowning when he realized they were not in front of the building anymore.

“Where are we? What’s happening?”

Captain Renard was staring at him, silent for a heartbeat as Nick waited to tell him that something had changed, that they had been called to a different location, maybe, an emergency, something—

You were dead. You weren’t breathing.

The words finally registered and Nick’s eyes went wide.

“What? I was—what? What are you talking about?”

The captain was watching him closely, like he was expecting him to just fall over and die on the spot. Nick didn’t know what to say, he was feeling fine, still a little bit tired—actually, a lot tired, like he wouldn’t mind going to bed right about now—but nothing out of the ordinary.

“I’m fine,” he said, but the frown on the captain’s face told him he wasn’t very convincing. And it didn’t make any sense.

Renard wouldn’t joke about something like this. They had their differences, they had a somewhat strained relationship at the moment, but all in all there was still a level of trust between them, even though Nick couldn’t explain why. This wasn’t something the captain would make fun of so something must have happened while he had been asleep. Not dead.

“I feel normal,” he said and while the captain still didn’t look a hundred percent convinced, at least some of the worry had disappeared from his eyes. Nick looked around, trying to figure out where they were and it was then that he finally realized that they had to be on their way to a hospital—at least that was what he would do if someone suddenly decided to play ‘dead’ in his car. Renard must have really been worried…

“I don’t remember anything, you told me to get some sleep and then you were shaking my arm…”

The captain was still staring at him, he didn’t look as he was going to start the car and turn around to drive back to the stakeout any time soon. Nick straightened in his seat and turned to face him, expression determined.

“We should go back to the house, captain, I’m okay.”

–––––

Sean:

Sean pulled over onto the shoulder of the road as soon as it was safe to do so, heart in his mouth. His hands gripped the steering wheel white-knuckled. He stared. He knew he was staring. Okay. Not dead. “Nick, you -”

The phone buzzed, the damn phone. He pulled it from his pocket and called the number from which the message had been sent. “If you message me again in the next twelve hours with anything less than a life or death problem you will regret I ever trusted you with this number,” he said, in the same calm voice he used ninety-five percent of the time; but the threat was clear. And the idiot holding the other phone disconnected. Sean spent a good long time breathing.

“You were cold. You weren’t breathing. Your face was grey.” He didn’t add that it had taken a good few moments for the redness in Nick’s eyes to dissipate. He hadn’t looked like he had with the… infection, but he hadn’t looked well.

He cursed himself. The week before, Hank had said… when Nick had rescued the Nayad, he’d been underwater for too long. Far too long. And when he’d come up, he’d looked grey. Sean had dismissed it as mild hypothermia. Was it? Or was it this? Hank had only expressed relief, and worry. Hank was a good friend to Nick, and a good cop, and had proven he knew when to keep his mouth shut.

“No,” he said, starting the car up again. “No, can’t go back there without arousing suspicion. And besides, I think we have more important things to worry about. I’ll take you home.” No, Nick’s car was at the station. “I mean, back to the station. And tomorrow morning, I want you to report to Portland General.” He took a turn, swinging into the curve, just barely under the speed limit. “I’ll be ordering a full battery of medical tests. I need – Portland needs you healthy,” he said.

Could he say more? Should he say more?

“I’ll be honest, Nick. It’s looking increasingly like I might need you to accompany me to Austria. To the seat of the resistance, as it were. And that can’t happen if you’re not healthy.”

He couldn’t bring himself to speak out loud of the rest of his half-formed plan. He was debating leaving that out entirely until they reached Vienna. If Nick said no, they still had a good chance of swaying opinions.

Well. Better than even odds, perhaps. And it was such an odd, ugly request. And he had no idea how he’d put voice to it. He pulled up outside the station.

“Don’t come in until you’re done at the hospital,” he said, hands twitching, stretching over the steering wheel, and he gave a nod. “Tomorrow, we’ll discuss Vienna, see if it’s something you might be able to manage.”

–––––

Nick:

He wanted to protest, he wanted to demand they go back to the house they had been watching. It didn’t make sense to call off the stakeout when he was feeling fine, when everything was normal and the captain had obviously got worked up over something that had not happened.

He didn’t get very far, one look at the captain’s face and he knew the evening was over. A full battery of medical tests?

So he was worried, worried enough to make this an order instead of suggesting Nick should do it. And judging by the expression on Renard’s face he wasn’t willing to talk about it. Well, it couldn’t hurt to get himself checked out, if anything it would be proof that he was indeed healthy and there was nothing to worry about.

And there it was again, whatever was happening in the captain’s family seemed to be getting out of hand. Again. For Renard to be asking him to accompany him to Austria it had to be more than just the usual threats, especially considering what had happened only weeks ago. Could he do this? Leave the country, his job and his friends for however long it would take? This was more than just stopping a Wesen from hurting people, anything involving the resistance meant becoming part of a political system he didn’t know anything about.

He still wasn’t sure how much he trusted Renard, their current relationship was nothing more than a very uneasy alliance. If they left together he had to be able to trust him, had to be sure the captain would have his back.

Was he sure?

Could he do this?

Nick realized he had fallen silent and the captain was looking at him, waiting for an answer.

“I’ll see you after the tests then,” he said and turned to get out of the car. “Don’t tell Hank about this, I don’t want him to worry about nothing.”

If Renard noticed the slightly annoyed tone of his voice, he didn’t comment on it. Nick watched as he drove off. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

*** *** ***

9 hours, 5 tests and one surprising voicemail later, Nick was on his way to the captain’s office. Just like he had predicted, he was fine, “in perfectly good shape”, as the doctor had told him. Well, he had not exactly put it like that, the man— Nick had already forgotten his name— had wondered if the running machine was broken since no matter at which speed he was tested, Nick’s heart rate and blood pressure always remained the same. Something which should, apparently, not happen, but since Nick was feeling fine and none of the other tests had showed anything wrong with him, he was declared fit enough to work.

Captain Renard was already waiting for him inside the office and Nick entered without knocking.

“Good morning, captain,” he said with an almost cheerful smile on his lips. “I think there was something you wanted to talk about with me?”

–––––

Sean:

Sean was gazing almost unseeingly at his email. Budget… something. And overtime approval. And all he could really think about was the cruel face of his brother. The instability in Europe which was already starting to become a problem right here in Portland. Not even weakness in ruling parties – just the idea of it, and Wesen were already climbing over themselves to cause problems.

Sean had a headache. He rubbed at his temples. Stress, or more? Perhaps a visit to the spice shop? No. Rosalee’s nervous, condemning face – he wasn’t ready to look at it again any time soon.

He looked up as Nick opened the door. “Close it behind you,” he said, pushing out of his chair. He crossed to the window into the precinct and closed the blinds.

Two perfectly good armchairs, and Nick stood. Sean glanced at them, shrugged almost invisibly and sat on the edge of his desk, crossing his arms.

“Your medical report was – they tell me you’re quite fit for duty. Exceptional, actually.” He paused a moment. He didn’t actually believe it. Three lines in an email – they hadn’t seen what he’d seen, and confidentiality meant he wasn’t given any kind of hint about what distinguished Nick’s ‘excellent’ results from anyone else’s ‘good’ results. He hoped Nick might furnish him with some details.

Nick only nodded, earnest and unsmiling, waiting for him to get to it.

“I haven’t told you much,” Sean admitted. “About what’s been happening. Quite honestly you’re busy enough here and it shouldn’t be your problem. It’s not your problem, actually, it’s mine. I’m just becoming increasingly sure I can’t handle it without your help.”

He took a sip of water, mouth suddenly dry.

“The Wesen Royalty has fingers everywhere. Every branch of government and every monarchy in Europe, and they’re not shy on exerting pressure over here, either.” He rolled up the cuffs of his shirt, and strummed his fingers over his bicep. “Without strong leadership, my brother’s assassination is only going to be the first of many. There have been attempts on a number of very important lives in the past few weeks. The enemies are growing bold, and we don’t know who those enemies are.”

Sean hated feeling this powerless.

“Alliances are critical, at times like this. And there have been a number of moments in history where an alliance between a member of the Royal family and a Grimm has created stability when the world was about to collapse in bloodshed.”

This was all entirely true. There was no need to mention that in most cases, it had been a royal who had – he hated the word, didn’t believe in the concept – found a mate, in a Grimm. Not always – but usually. And there was no reason to imply this façade was a necessary one to create. No, they could do this as partners. “You don’t have any good reason to trust me,” he said, carefully. “But I trust you, and I will make you a promise right now that I won’t ever lie to you, not even by omission. I think we can turn this around, Nick. You and I together would pose a great threat, to the people who believe Wesen should rule the world, treat humans like prey.”

He glanced at his knee a moment, and then met Nick’s eyes again. “We can’t do it from here. We’d need to travel to Vienna, and soon. And I’m not asking you this as your boss. I’m asking this as someone with a great deal of respect for what you do. And before you ask – you can refuse. But I’ll have to leave in the next day or so, with or without you.”

–––––

Nick:

The captain was tense. Worried. Not an unusual look for him, in fact, Nick would have probably asked him if he was okay if he had looked relaxed. He shut the door, then crossed his arms in front of his chest, quietly signaling that he was listening— but for some reason unwilling to sit down.

He was about to say ‘I told you so’ when Renard mentioned the test results, but something told him it was only a side note, nothing they would be talking about now. It wasn’t the reason why he was here.

It was a lot to take in. A lot about a world he had only heard of so far, had only very briefly had to deal with. A world he didn’t really know anything about.

It was the kind of situation that usually made him pick up his phone and call Monroe, ask him all the questions he probably should ask the captain now instead. First and foremost, though, there was one thing he needed to figure out for himself: Did he want to get involved?

It was a tough question, it was one thing to have the captain on his side when they hunted Wesen here in Portland, here he knew the rules (or at least the basics) and he had friends who had his back if he needed them.

In Europe he would be on his own.

Was the captain in danger? Was he one of those who needed to fear for their lives now? The idea that he as a Grimm could actually make a difference, could, maybe, save people and ‘create stability’ was one that appealed to him on a very instinctive level. It was what he had always been working for during his years at the police and he was beginning to get used to it as part of his new life.

The captain trusted him. Whether it was true or just an attempt to win him over, Nick couldn’t say. Although, considering what had happened, between them and his role as a Grimm in general, there wasn’t really any reason why Renard should be the one doubting Nick’s loyalties.

It was a tough decision, one he would have liked spending some time thinking about, but it was urgent, he could sense it in every word the captain said.

And was it really a question? Could he stay here after hearing all this? Knowing the captain would be out there, alone, probably in danger. What if something happened to him, something that could be avoided if he accompanied him?

Maybe it wasn’t such a difficult decision after all.

“When are we leaving?”

[complete thread]

[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 11/8/2018

Good MORNING #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Thursday 8th November 2018. Remember you can read full articles for FREE via Barbados Today (BT) or Barbados Government Information Services (BGIS) OR by purchasing by purchasing a Daily Nation Newspaper (DN).

SHADOW CABINET – During its five-year tenure, the incumbent Government of Barbados led by the island’s first female Prime Minister Mia Mottley, will be closely monitored by citizen organization, The Shadow Cabinet. The recently formed group which is led by youth and community activist Corey Lane, also includes social development and community activist Kemar Saffrey, community worker Melissa Savoury, social commentator and the first youth Prime Minister of Barbados’ Youth Parliament Jason Carmichael and leadership specialist and missionary Imran Richards. The organization was established because of the changed political landscape following the May 24 election, with the Barbados Labour Party recording a landslide victory and securing all 30 seats. For the first time in the island’s history, there was no Opposition. The frontbench position normally left to the Opposition has been assumed by Lane and his team of young independent thinkers who seek to not only scrutinize the policies and actions of Government but also provide sound alternatives and educate the masses as well. Interim chairman of the Shadow Cabinet, Corey Lane told Barbados TODAY that the body sought to use social media and traditional forms of media to reach the public. They will also be employing the use of an app, Cit View, where Barbadians can receive real time information on policies passed in Parliament and ask questions. Lane said the organization had no political preferences and would not serve to act as a mouth piece for Government or other political institutions. “I have fundamental problems with adversarial politics because at every step of the development of a small nation like Barbados you have 50 per cent of itself fighting against itself. A nation against itself cannot stand which is why we are saying let us have some intellectuals, let us have some independents, let us have some voices both young and old analyzing what is happening,” said the interim chairman. However, as the island embarks on the Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) Plan, there has been much debate about its last in first out approach. “Simultaneously with modernizing Government, you are using the last in first out which mainly displaces young people. So you are going to modernize the Government system with the older people in the system. Obviously that cannot be the best way going forward. “I believe that a good mix of experience and youthful creativity and exuberance could augur well for the Barbadian economy and society,” Lane said. The community activist also commended the Mottley administration for its quick response and carefully thought out policies during their 164 days in Government but said the ball was dropped in its delivery. “Where my disappointment comes is really in the implementation, the nuts and bolts of the engine room. I think that is where they are falling down,” Lane said. Lane also expressed concern over the lack of youth engagement and conversation on the country’s changes and the public’s reluctance to educate themselves on the country’s economic future. “A lot of people listen to rumor and heresy so that is why this body needs to come, do the reading, do the research and do the unbiased analysis as much as possible,” he said. The Shadow Cabinet will be made up initially of ten members and will seek to have a full slate of 21 Shadow Ministers by January 2019.  (BT)

‘IN POOR TASTE’ – LASHLEY ON ‘SICK MP’ COMMENT – Former St Michael South East MP Hamilton Lashley has described as being in “poor taste” a call by Democratic Labour Party (DLP) General Secretary Guyson Mayers to gear up supporters for a possible by-election because of a sitting MP’s illness. The comments were an apparent reference to his successor as MP Santia Bradshaw, who has gone public with her fight against breast cancer. “I would not be part of any talk of a by-election as a result of [anyone’s] health because I want them to get better and that would mean that the individual would continue to fulfil their role. Right now at this moment any talk of by-election is out of synchronization with reality and in poor taste. I believe all parties should be wishing the [sick person] well,” said Lashley. It was during a meeting of the DLP’s three St. Philip constituency branches last month that Mayers told  the party faithful: “We do not have five years put down; we have a Member of Parliament who is very ill, and no one knows if or when there will be a by-election in that constituency, and we hear there are rumblings in the party with one of your (St. Philip) candidates whose head is on the cutting board, so we have to be in a state of readiness in case things fall apart, as they sometimes do.” The DLP General Secretary did not state the constituency or the name of Members of Parliament to whom he was referring. But Lashley told Barbados TODAY that while he is not clear to whom his former party colleague was referring to, such talk could be seen as insensitive to anyone fitting the bill, which may include Bradshaw. Back in August during a meeting with her constituents in the presence of Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Bradshaw announced that she had been recently diagnosed with the early stages of breast cancer. “I come to you tonight in the spirit of openness… a few weeks ago I discovered a lump in my breast… the good news is that it is treatable because they have found it early,” she said at the time. On Tuesday, Bradshaw returned to Parliament for the first time since beginning treatment for illness. She received a rousing welcome from her colleagues in the Lower House. Lashley extended best wishes to his successor and implored all political parties to do the same. “First of all, I want to wish Bradshaw a very speedy recovery and believe everyone across the political divide should wish well. We cannot let politics get in the way of how we treat one another and how we behave to each other as human beings,” Lashley stressed. (BT)

CANCER MEDS DELAY – SOME CANCER PATIENTS in Barbados are having difficulty sourcing vital chemotherapy drugs. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) says there is no shortage, but there are problems with equipment which mixes the drugs and a temporary solution has been put in place. Reports reaching the DAILY NATION indicated the hospital had run short of the required medication, with some people turning to Trinidad to source them. Management at local pharmacy Collins declined to comment, while president of the Barbados Cancer Society, Dr Dorothy Cooke-Johnson, said they were offering assistance. “We are aware the QEH is having difficulty with the medication so we have been providing some for a few patients, those we already have been assisting in some way. I do not know why this is happening as I have not enquired, but I hope it can be rectified soon. It’s too difficult a situation for a country to cope with, not to have chemotherapy drugs,” she said. Hospital chairman Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland sought to allay any fears, saying the hospital was not short of drugs as this would be catastrophic. (DN)

20 YEARS TO FIX HOUSING MESS – Minister of Housing, Lands and Rural Development George Payne fears it will take 20 years to fix the housing “mess” he said was left by the last Government. Payne said the National Housing Corporation (NHC) was grappling with millions of dollars in losses at housing projects across the island. The St Andrew MP also told the House of Assembly yesterday that while the authorities could “point fingers at individuals” regarding some unspecified financial matters in housing, “we just do not have the evidence to go further and it is a loss that we will have to accept”. He noted there was an NHC waiting list for Barbadians seeking housing, but the country’s housing stock was “depleted”. Payne did not foresee this problem being solved within the next five to ten years. The minister was wrapping up debate on a resolution to vest Crown lands at Chancery Lane, Christ Church, in the National Housing Corporation. The resolution was passed. “We have a situation now where in the present economic situation, notwithstanding how we might feel in terms of the Government being responsible for housing everybody, it is more or less an impossible task,” he said. “What we have seen in the past ten years is a number of structures. You may call it a so-called housing programme by the Democratic Labour Party. Some of us have been critical of the National Housing Corporation but obviously even the National Housing Corporation has been sabotaged by the last Government.” He said the NHC lost $4 million on the first phase of houses built at Lancaster, St James, and a $1 million loss on the second stage. This was in addition to about $500 000 lost on the housing project in Parish Land, St Philip. “As I speak, Constant [St George housing project] has just been completed and . . . the average cost per house is something like $270 000 and the houses were sold at $100 000,” he added. The attorney also referred to “a situation during the past ten years where contractors were assigned to various developments [and] the National Housing Corporation was not at all involved. “I am not saying that the minister was the person who personally selected those contractors, but you have situations where the contractors were selected, the ministry had no knowledge with respect to the selection of the contractors, none of the contracts went out to tender, the National Housing Corporation at the level of the chairman and the management of the National Housing Corporation did not know about the contractors,” he told the Lower House. The NHC’s challenge also included people not paying rents owed, and the minister said there were situations at the NHC “where tenants were specifically told not to pay rents, and rents have accumulated to the tune of $59 000”. In such circumstances, said Payne, “it is difficult for us to figure what we will do with respect to those persons who have applied to National Housing Corporation for housing because . . . the housing stock has been depleted.  (DN)

BAD PATH TO TAKE – Every effort must be made to ensure some public transportation remains in Government’s hand, and not allow the private sector to control it all. That was the call from the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) yesterday, as it gears up for a meeting with Transport Board workers on Sunday to discuss the organisation’s future. “We have been meeting with the Transport Board and it has put forward an idea of the vision, which the ministry and the chairman of the board together have for the future of transport,” Sir Roy Trotman, consultant to the BWU general secretary, said during a Press conference at Solidarity House. “And my concern is that we have to guard transport systems. If there are three important things in which a Government in office has to treat as a first social obligation [they] are medical care, education and transportation. (DN)

NEW ROUTE – Route taxi and minibus owners have delivered a fresh wish list – including a long-standing call for a bus fare increase – to Prime Minister Mia Mottley, the bus owners’ spokesman said today.  “That [bus fare hike request] is still very much on the table,” Mark Haynes, the AOPT public relations officer told Barbados TODAY.  The president of the Association of Public Transport Operators (APTO), Morris Lee, said the proposals followed the Prime Minister’s instructions to the body.  Industry stakeholders, including chairman of the Transport Authority Ian Estwick and Director Alex Linton met recently at Parliament Buildings to discuss progress on the proposals. But officials have continued to decline spelling out their details. “[The meeting] was just an update on what the Prime Minister has asked us to do, that we have done and sent back to her. We are waiting to hear what the Prime Minister’s response is going to be,” Lee told Barbados TODAY. “The Prime Minister told us to prepare a proposal that speaks to improvements in the sector. We did that. She further had instructed that when it was done, to pass it onto the Minister of Transport and have further discussions with him, which we have completed. And she indicated that after those discussions were completed that the Minister of Transport would report back to her,” he said.  The APTO president said that after this process was concluded, the Prime Minister would then summon another meeting to discuss the state of the transport industry.  “We have done what we were supposed to do in terms of compliance and therefore we are awaiting a response to the compliance that we have essentially participated in,” he added. Back in late August, one of the groupings of PSV owners insisted it still wanted a fare rise following talks with Prime Minister Mottley and Minister of Transport, Works and Maintenance, Dr William Duguid. Amid reports of a likely increase in fares from two to three dollars, the Alliance Owners of Public Transport (AOPT) has said it would continue to demand an increase for ZRs and minibuses until an agreement was reached with Government.  “The cost of the fuel tax [which took effect on July 1] has really placed a burden on the sector. We have that still on the table and we are in talks with the Government on an increase. We have been asked to submit proposals and we acceded to Government’s request,” Haynes stressed. The PSV owners have also complained that the new fuel tax of 40 cents per litre on diesel and gasoline, and five cents per litre on kerosene, was having a devastating impact on their businesses with spending for route taxis increasing to $6,741 from $2,250, while minibus operators are paying out $10,861, up from $3,625. Following the July 10 talks with the Government, Lee had said the owners were optimistic that their cries would be heard.  “We had a very productive meeting. Essentially the Government recognizes the significance of transport to Barbados and the contribution it has made over the years. We have agreed to come together on this because we understand that it would take more than one meeting. We have been given a blank sheet on which to draw on in terms of what we want to bring to reality,” Lee said then. The operators have also been seeking duty-free concessions on new vehicles. Despite calling for a bus fare hike, Lee expressed confidence that a solution could be arrived at that did not increase the burden to commuters or put additional drain on the public purse. (BT)

ROAD CHECKS VITAL – If Barbados undertook proper inspections of its major roads and highways it would save the country some valuable money when it came to road repairs. So says consultant engineer to Government, Grenville Phillips II, who is responsible for overseeing the Ministry of Transport, Works and Maintenance’s ongoing roadworks on the ABC Highway. He was speaking to the DAILY NATION Tuesday night as crews from C.O. Williams Construction were digging up asphalt on the section from West Road to the streetlights at the top of Hinds Hill, St Michael, in preparation for repaving. During the process, they discovered a number of deep cracks that had penetrated the underlying surface. Phillips said a continuous road inspection programme would also cut down on the time it took to fix them. (DN)

CONCESSIONS LEAKING REVENUE? – A top official of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has suggested that Barbados and other Caribbean islands review the tax incentives they currently grant individuals and businesses. Deputy Division Chief in the Caribbean Division 1 of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department Dr Arnold McIntyre, expressed concern that regional governments could be losing millions of dollars in revenue from these concessions. This, he said, was not healthy given that the region was struggling economically. “When we look at what is underpinning these large deficits and we look at the revenue side, we have pervasive tax incentives,” McIntyre told the 33rd Adlith Brown Memorial Lecture at the Grande Salle of the Central Bank of Barbados on Tuesday night. He said IMF estimates suggested that legislative and discretionary tax incentives being granted by some Eastern Caribbean states were leading to revenue losses of between four and nine per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). “We have significantly undermined our revenue base. In many ways, the granting of tax incentives has been seen as a single panacea to overcome the widespread distortions and inefficiencies in the countries. That is, we have provided a solution but we haven’t tackled the problem,” he said. Pointing to Mauritius, McIntyre said that country’s parliament had decided some time ago to remove the ability to grant tax incentives from the authority of the minister, adding that “there is a lesson there” for the region. He said Caribbean economies also had weak expenditure controls, pointing out that there was especially “significant” fiscal risk in relation to state-owned enterprises. He explained that in the region central government finances amounted to about 8 per cent of GDP, compared to the five per cent of GDP in emerging markets. However, the economist said when government expenditure extended beyond central government to include the non-financial public sector, that wage bill could reach up to 20 per cent of GDP. “We have built up a very large state and what has happened, it has become costly and we don’t have the growth rates and associated revenue streams to maintain it,” he said.   (BT)

JOB SEARCH – Scores of displaced Government workers have been interviewed by recruiters from Ross University, which is set to start operation in Barbados from January next year. The interviews were held at the Warrens Office Complex, between 9 am and 4 pm. on Wednesday. Many of those interviewed had submitted their application letter and resumes online. There were also those who received word the interviews were taking place and turned up at the location, with their qualifications, asking for a chance to be interviewed. “Ross put out their vacancies and anybody can apply to those vacancies. Given the fact that we had persons displaced, she [the Prime Minister] had made the arrangement with Ross to interview Government workers and give them an opportunity to get their foot in the door,” Acting Director of the Barbados Employment and Career Counseling Service, Yvette Walcott-Dennis, told a Barbados TODAY team. The Acting Director said she was happy displaced workers were given a chance to be employed once again. She said her department was happy to be able to facilitate the process. “I think the interviews are going very well. Initially they had said they would interview about 75 persons, but today we had around 90 workers that we entered to be interviewed, and some persons still turned up anyways because they would have heard from a friend or something, and we asked that they be accommodated. “But, understandably, we know that we cannot accommodate everybody. The whole process though is a Ross initiative, they are filling their vacancies, we are just coordinating this end to assist the displaced public workers,” Walcott-Dennis said.  (BT)

CHILD CARE BOARD HEADQUARTERS TO CLOSE EARLY TODAY – The Child Care Board has advised that its headquarters, located at Cheapside, Bridgetown, will close at 12:30 p.m. today, Thursday, November 8. This closure is to facilitate attendance at a funeral for a former employee. Director of the Child Care Board, Joan Crawford, has advised that this closure will only be applicable to its headquarters and all other departments will remain open. (BGIS)

FRAUD OF NIS CHECKS – The National Insurance Department is reminding businesses that before they disburse cash for National Insurance Scheme (NIS) cheques, they should enforce strict procedures to verify the validity of cheques and the identity of the recipients of the funds. The department issued this reminder today, and indicated that it had received reports of fraudulent activity involving pension cheques. “Businesses are cautioned that banks, credit unions and post offices are the authorised institutions for the encashment of National Insurance cheques, therefore honouring such cheques would be at your own risk,” the department warned. (BGIS)

CCJ PRESIDENT RESPECTS THE OUTCOME OF REFERENDA IN ANTIGUA, GRENADA – President of the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Justice Adrian Saunders, said that the court would continue “ongoing initiatives with justice sector bodies” in Antigua and Barbuda and Grenada despite the population in those two Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries voting in favour of retaining the London-based Privy Council as their final court.  “While the news is not what we hoped for, we respect the people of both nations and their decision,” Justice Saunders said in a statement following Tuesday’s referenda in the two countries. “One of the positives that came out of this exercise is that there was sustained public education in both nations and the conversation about the CCJ intensified. We can see the fact that there was more interest in our website, ccj.org, and on our social media platforms, on LinkedIn and Twitter.” “As we begin to implement our strategic plan for the 2019-2023, which includes a renewed focus on public education, we will certainly be taking advantage of the increased audience, and the interest that has been piqued, to provide more information about the work of the Court,” Justice Saunders said. The governments in Antigua and Barbuda and Grenada had hoped to join Belize, Barbados, Dominica and Guyana as the only CARICOM countries that are full members of the CCJ that was established in 2001 to replace the Privy Council as the region’s final court. The CCJ, which has both an Original and Appellate Jurisdiction, also functions as an international tribunal interpreting the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas that governs the 15-mdmber regional integration movement. Justice Saunders said despite the defeat, the CCJ “will naturally continue ongoing initiatives with justice sector bodies in each of these countries, and the wider Caribbean, through the JURIST project and otherwise”. The turnout in the referendum in both countries were low. In Grenada, of 21 979 votes cast, some 9 846 persons voted to adopt the CCJ as the final Court of Appeal, while in Antigua and Barbuda, there were 9 234 votes against and 8 509 votes in favour of the adoption of the CCJ.“These results will not, of course, deter us from serving with distinction those nations that currently send their final appeals to us. As well, the Court will also continue to process and hear applications from all CARICOM States, and from CARICOM itself, in our Original Jurisdiction, and our justice reform work in the region will also continue,” Justice Saunders said. The CCJ noted that Grenada has an Original Jurisdiction case currently before the Court and that the JURIST Project, which is a multiyear justice reform project being implemented by the CCJ on behalf of the Conference of Heads of Judiciary of CARICOM states, is working on a Sexual Offences Model Court to be housed at the High Court of Antigua and Barbuda in 2019. The CCJ Academy of Law is also hosting a legal conference in Jamaica in December 2018 at which jurists from both countries, as well as the wider Caribbean, are participating, the CCJ added. (DN)

JUDICIAL REFORM A MUST – Opposition Senator Crystal Drakes says with a price tag of over $30 000 a year to house an inmate in HMP Prison Dodds, Barbados has to look at “serious judicial review and reform”. She is also suggesting Barbadians should engage in self-examination to discover the motivation behind the kind of violence sweeping across the island. In her contribution to debate on the Offences Against the Person (Amendment) Bill 2018 earlier today, Drakes was worried about the rampant gun violence plaguing Barbados as well as the high level of incarceration at Dodds. She noted the Barbados Prison Service 2016 report put that figure at the end of December of that year at approximately 919 offenders, and argued because of what it was costing taxpayers to keep prisoners behind bars, “we now cannot simply say lock them up and throw away the key”. The Opposition Senator commended the Government on moving “towards a more holistic approach to sentencing” in amendments being made to sections of the existing laws. Government Senator Crystal Haynes supported the Amendment stating Government was taking meaningful action to address the crime situation. With 950 cases awaiting trial, it was appropriate she said, to have appointed three judges to address the backlog. “We really have to have a deeper conversation on how we as Barbadians see justice; how we administer it along with enforcement of penalties such as fines, community service, curfews,” Haynes said. She also suggested restorative and rehabilitative programmes should be discussed “openly and frankly”. (DN)

SENATOR MCCONNEY: START CRIME PREVENTION PROCESS EARLY – Government Senator Kay McConney has said if we use the current systems we have in place to deal with deviant behavior among school children more effectively, we should see a difference in the levels of criminal activity on the island. She made this point during her contribution to the debate on the Offences Against the Person Bill Amendment, which seeks to do away with the mandatory death penalty in murder cases. She mentioned the success of the Royal Barbados Police Force’s Juvenile Liaison Scheme, which caters to children up to the age of 16. “That scheme not only deals with the child but also their parents. Police officers charged with looking after it do not only deal with children who end up in trouble, but they also speak to principals about any potential ‘problem children’ in their midst. The last statistics I got from them date back to 2010, and showed that only about 20 per cent  of the children they were tracking found themselves back in the penal system after coming under the programme, which meant that 80 per cent of them stayed on the straight and narrow path.” Another programme she mentioned was the Princes Trust, which she said has reaped considerable success in its two years in existence here. “We have had  four cohorts with 12-15 young people between the ages of 16 and 25 and there are residential and community projects associated with it. So far, some 70 per cent  of the students who have passed through it have either gone back to school, vocational training, or found jobs.” Senator McConney said, “This level of primary intervention is important, and we should also consider studies determining the levels of peer contagion among our youth, that is, the people our children associate with influence their behaviour for better or worse, as this might be helpful in the long run.” Senator Lindell Nurse agreed with her suggestions, adding that “Every child should be involved in some sort of extra-curricular activity, whether it is Cadets, Scouts, Brownies, Guides, music, dance or sports, as these will keep them busy and bring about a level of discipline that will help them to resolve conflicts.” He also said a bigger issue was at hand. “We are fixing the legislative part of it, but you cannot legislate behavior and there are a lot of psychological issues behind criminal activity. Unfortunately Barbadians still stigmatize mental health conditions, but seeing specialists in that field may be helpful to people who find themselves in these situations.” (BT)

TIME WASTING – A prominent local attorney-at-law is fuming over what he sees as blatant time-wasting in the Barbados court system. This morning a frustrated Andrew Pilgrim QC questioned the logic of scheduling cases for dates that the magistrate is on vacation, thereby adding to the slowdown of an already overwhelmed system. Noting that that the issue is by no means new, Pilgrim, an outspoken and respected lawyer, expressed fresh annoyance in statement sent to Barbados TODAY. The release came after his clients, businessman Arthur Charles Herbert and Christopher Glenn Rogers, had their matters adjourned until March 27, 2019 when they appeared at the No. 1 District ‘A’ Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday. Sitting Magistrate, Douglas Frederick is currently on vacation. Meanwhile, co-accused Walter O’ Neal Prescod, a sailor, will return to court on December 4, this year. “Almost every media house yesterday referred to the fact that Charles Herbert, Chris Rogers and Walter Prescod will have to return to court for a new date and they will have to wait to have their matter resolved. I just wonder if anybody in Barbados is getting the bigger picture here that we adjourn matters to dates when we know there will be no hearing, deliberately wasting the time of litigants,” said Pilgrim, who argued that the occurrence only served to delay justice. In his four-minute lament, the attorney contended that it was not only his clients whose time is being wasted but he predicted that for the remainder of the month close to 40 litigants per day will turn up to the court in question in vain. “On every day probably during this month 40 or more Barbadians will turn up to the District ‘A’ Court Number one. There will be no magistrate and their time will be wasted for the entire day and their cases will not be advanced whether to be dismissed, tried or otherwise. It is a complete waste of our time that was avoidable,” he pointed out. This morning Barbados TODAY contacted the office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court Barbara Cooke-Alleyne QC, but efforts to get a comment on the claims were unsuccessful. However Pilgrim made it clear that there could be no reasonable excuse as vacations were planned in advance so therefore provisions should have been made. “ Either those cases should have been adjourned to a period when the magistrate would have returned or they should be dealt with by a magistrate who was put on while he is not there. Is it so hard to work out when the magistrates are going to be on vacation so that you could have someone holding on for them? If that is the case, then adjourn the matters to a date outside of the vacation,” he stressed. Pilgrim said “This is a whole month that is going to be a waste of time for 40 litigants everyday. This is time that Barbados does not have to give. We need our people to be productive instead of standing in a line outside of a court to get a date on which nothing will happen.” (BT)

NEW COURT DATES FOR DEATH ROW CONVICTS – Almost a dozen inmates who are currently on death row at Dodds prison will have to be resentenced once the Offences Against the Person Bill 2018 is amended. That is the word from Leader of Government Business in the Senate, Senator Dr Jerome Walcott, as he spoke today during debate on the amendment which seeks to repeal the mandatory death sentence for persons convicted of murder in Barbados. He said the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), the island’s highest appellate court, had already ruled that it was unconstitutional. “They are currently 11 persons who are on death row in Barbados and based on this ruling, they will now have to be resentenced because their sentences are now considered by the CCJ to be unconstitutional,” Dr Walcott said. “There are 62 persons awaiting trial for murder and six for manslaughter. If we were not to pass this bill today, it would put our judicial system in a quandary. You would have 68 persons who are there to have trials done and at the back of that, at the end of it all, judges will know that they are confined by the mandatory death sentence, but if they convict someone and sentence them at the end of the day they know that the CCJ has already ruled that that is unconstitutional.” Dr Walcott explained that the amendment was not about removing the death penalty from the statute books. However, he contended that Barbados had signed on to several conventions which clearly state that a mandatory death sentence was not lawful. “I believe that we are in a bind. We have survived over the years. We have discussed and we have utilized our mandatory death penalty and we have debated it. We have made promises to amend it. We’ve made promises to the UN and we’ve made promises to the Inter-American Court of Justice, but I think our reckoning time has now come.  (BT)

REPORT ORDERED – The Magistrate’s Court has asked for a probation report on a 26-year-old man who pleaded guilty to drug possession. When Chad Aaron Lynton, of Corner of 4th Avenue, New Orleans, St Michael appeared before Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant today he admitted that he had five grammes of marijuana in his possession yesterday. Police were on duty in Lynton’s community when he was seen riding along a footpath. He jumped off the bicycle when he saw the police and began walking back in the direction from which he came. He was detained when he entered a nearby shop. Lynton was given a February 1, 2019 date to return to the No. 2 District ‘A’ Magistrate’s Court after his $1,500 bail was accepted. (BT)

BAIL ON ASSAULT CHARGE – A 26-year-old Guyanese man accused of assaulting his wife is now on $5,000 bail. Khayum Kharoon Nazmoon who lives at No. 2 Apartments Villa Road, Brittons Hill, St Michael is alleged to have committed the offence against Premawattie Katwaru on October 22 occasioning her actual bodily harm. The prosecutor had no objections to bail but asked Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant that the accused surrender his passport to the District ‘A’ Magistrate’s Court and requested that he stay away from his wife. The order was made and Nazmoon, who was represented by attorney-at-law Samuel Legay, was released after his surety was accepted. The accused will make his second appearance in court on January 29, 2019. (BT)

COSTLY TRIP – Drug trafficker Tyrique Kheele Michael Cuffie who arrived in Barbados on Monday with more than his personal effects in his suitcase is facing two years in prison. The 21-year-old Canadian from Lombard, Toronto, was sent to HMP Dodds today after he was unable to pay a $20,000 fine by the end of the day’s sitting at the Oistins Magistrate’s Court. Cuffie arrived at the Grantley Adams International Airport on around 3:39 a.m. Station Sergeant Glenda Carter-Nicholls said he then proceeded to customs where his suitcase was searched and 20 vacuum-sealed packages containing a vegetable substance were found. “I know drugs in my suitcase,” Cuffie allegedly told police when asked to account for the 7.6 kilogrammes of marijuana which had an estimated BDS$60,800 street value. Addressing Magistrate Elwood Watts, Cuffie apologized for his actions before the fine was imposed on the charge on importation. He was convicted, reprimanded and discharged on the charges of possession, possession with intent to supply and possession with intent to traffick the illegal substance. (BT)

NSC LIGHTS STILL OFF – THERE was still no light at the end of the emergency meeting, as the floodlights at a number of National Sports Council (NSC) facilities will remain off for the time being. A furious NSC chairman Mac Fingall says the issue of tampering and vandalism of token boxes must come to an end, following the thousands of dollars which the sports council lost due to illegal usage of the lights. It comes after a more than two-hour long meeting on Tuesday night at the Garfield Sobers Gymnasium chaired by Fingall, at which players, coaches and administrators of local sports took the opportunity to voice their concerns about the situation. General secretary of the Barbados Football Association (BFA), Edwyn Wood, director of cricket at the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA), Stephen Leslie, and president of the Barbados Road Tennis Association, John Chandler, were all present. Two weeks ago, Fingall revealed that Barbadians had cheated the NSC out of a large sum of money. He said at least $560 000 was lost in lights last year.  (DN)

SENIOR FAILURE – Despite an abysmal international record after 10 years in West Indies colours, middle-order batsman Kieron Pollard’s place in the team has been justified by outgoing coach Stuart Law. Speaking after the Windies’ loss in the second Twenty20 International against India yesterday, Law said Pollard was a motivator in the dressing room and quite capable of performing on his day. Pollard has made 20 runs in two innings so far and his solitary over in a tight situation in Kolkata went for 12 runs and shifted momentum towards the hosts. India were reeling at 57 for 4 at one stage. But Law said Pollard brought much more to the table, and not just on the cricket field. “Pollard brings a lot, both on and off the field. With the youngsters in the squad, it’s someone like Pollard who motivates them in the dressing room. “He’s a senior member of the squad, and we all know what he’s capable of when he gets going. But yeah, Pollard isn’t in the side only because of what he brings inside the ground. He’s one of the biggest motivators of the youngsters, and he’s just a game away from reminding us why he’s such a T20 force. Look, Pollard himself would not be pleased with his show on the tour so far, and he’ll be itching to finish the series in a blazing manner.” After 101 One-Day Internationals, the burly Trinidadian has managed just 2 289 runs at an average of 25.71 with three centuries and nine fifties. The white ball specialist’s record in T20I is even worse, having played 58 matches, scored 788 runs at 19.70 with just two fifties. His List A record is just slightly better with 3 134 runs at an average of 26.55 with three centuries and 15 fifties. In 433 T20s played across the globe in franchise cricket, Pollard has amassed 8 531 at 30. 14. Law addressed the potential of the squad, noting there were a number of fantastic cricketers in the team “We have got some fantastic T20 players. But, now it’s just about playing for pride. It’s time for them to dig deep and play for pride, and give it everything in the last game. If we play anywhere near to our potential, we can beat any team on the day. We need to improve a lot to get to that stage.” “The team does have a lot of potential, and ‘potential’ is a horrible word because talk is cheap and actions speak louder. But it’s the experienced guys who need to stick their hands up and do the bulk of the work. They’re supposed to usher the youngsters in, but they’re not quite doing that. It’s a young team, though, and they’re learning on the job. Regardless of being the current T20 champions, we don’t have the same team here and learning on the job against India in India can be mighty tough.” The West Indies will now travel to Chennai earlier than the hosts as the India players embark on a two-day Diwali break. But with the series already decided, there’s an opportunity for them to field left-handed hard-hitter Sherfane Rutherford possibly in place of Pollard, and the left-arm quick Obed McCoy in the final T20I to see what those two bring to the table. Captain Carlos Brathwaite bemoaned the fact that West Indies were without two designated opening batsmen. Brathwaite said that the makeshift approach taken by the management – with regards to their opening pair – had forced the West Indies to always have a rocky start with the bat in the series. In the first game in Kolkata, West Indies’ opening pair of Denesh Ramdin and Shai Hope – neither batsmen are regular T20I openers – lasted all of 15 deliveries, scoring only 16 runs between them, while in Lucknow, a new opening pair of Hope and Shimron Hetmyer fared only marginally better with a combined tally of 21 runs in 22 deliveries. With Chris Gayle and Evin Lewis opting out of the series due to personal reasons, Brathwaite said that the team was simply trying to make do with the resources that were available to them. “We didn’t come to the tour with an out-and-out opener, so we are still trying to find our best opening combination. There were a few theories in the first game and also this game, on how we wanted our batting order, for different reasons. Ultimately neither worked, because we failed to get a good start. But we’re working with the players we have on tour, and it’s difficult to choose the best batting pair, but we’re trying. Up until a theory works out, it will look bad and give the pundits something to say,” Brathwaite said. While expressing disappointment at the team’s bowling in the second T20I – including his own – Brathwaite heaped praise on right-handed batting all-rounder Fabian Allen, who bowls left-arm orthodox spin. Alleyne has bowled well in both matches so far. “The way Fabian Allen bowled in the middle, and he kept the openers under wraps and eventually got Shikhar out. It is hard to look at the negatives sometimes, just need to take the small positives and go away with them.”  (BT)

HOME BOYS BOW OUT – Predictably, mighty United States ruled the pristine conditions and waves on the East Coast at Bathsheba yesterday, but not a single hometown boy advanced to the quarter-finals of the Live Like Zander Pro surfing event at the Soup Bowl. Jacob Burke, Caleb Rapson and Ocean Gittens all failed to make it through to the quarters of the event named in memory of Barbadian surfer Alexander Venezia, who died last September. The United States landed 14 of the last 16 spots, with Japanese-American Taro Watanabe, delivering the best wave score of the day, an impressive 9.5, that comprised four impressive manoeuvres.  Burke was arguably the best of the Barbadian juniors on show, but he had to settle for third place in Heat 5 behind Crosby Colapinto of the United States and Thomas Debierre of France. This event for entrants under the age of 18, carries a first prize cheque of US$2 500.  (DN)

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