#like thousands of imprisoned pregnant women

[bthump]

Just re-read the chapter where Ganishka levels himself up to answer an ask and I gotta say, I love how similar the vibes are to Guts' breakdown.

Oh fuck fuck fuck I couldn't even touch him, he's untouchable we're nowhere close to the same level! I gotta do something stupid as fuck now. Something that gives me more power and levels up my inner darkness and turns me into an animalistic monster who no longer recognizes other humans. Then I'm gonna pursue Griffith who is now the only shining light left in my world.

[thegayhimbo]

I’m watching the 60 Minutes clip about current Ukranian Prisoners of War and the horrors they’ve experienced in Russian camps.

They talk about the fight at the steel mill in Mariupol that led up to their imprisonment: Thousands of civilians killed. Children’s head being blown off. Ukranian friends and family being brutally slaughtered. Nonstop fighting. One of the women fighting was pregnant during this time. Russians killing unarmed men.

They talk about the fear of being captured. Being tortured with electricity. There were Ukranian men that were raped and beaten badly. Women had boiling water poured on them. One woman was told she would have her child taken away from her and moved from orphanage to orphanage so that she’d never find them.

And all of this is coming from the testimonies of Ukranian women who were POW’s in those camps.

If there’s any doubt about Vladimir Putin being evil and Russia not giving a shit about human rights, this should remove that. The Russian camps are exactly like the Nazi Concentration Camps from WWII. If they can’t have Ukraine, they will exterminate it.

Stand with Ukraine.

[lya-dustin]

Cupid kills with arrows

Chapter 3

Cw: trauma, refrenced past sexual assault

The wedding ---despite the attire of those attending--- is great.

Aemond is attentive if a bit too reserved, a good dancer even if he tries not to act as if being on display like that was comparable to being stung by a thousand bees and capable of behaving unlike his elder brother.

“Time to get it wet, little brother.” Aegon whispered, and Aemond turned to stone.

They had been fine up to now, Aemond had grown comfortable enough to even flirt with her and kiss her in the middle of a dance.

“Do not pay him any mind, he is always like that.” Helaena quietly apologized for her brother-husband.

She is pregnant with their third child, the last one, she whispered with relief.

There were a lot of things wrong with this family, and Aemma had lost the only chance to escape it.

If Aemond proves to be what he says and more, perhaps it will be bearable. Or better yet, allow her to meddle and fix things.

But the Aemond from the garden has been replaced by an Aemond who is colder than ice and tries to stop her from noticing a slight tremor in his hand when they call for the bedding.

How anyone thinks being manhandled and stripped down by mostly drunk men and women fun is beyond her.

The real fun comes when she and Aemond are deposited in front of the bridal chamber, same chamber every royal bride ---willing and unwilling--- has been bedded since King Aenys.

The formfitting knee-length shift is left on and Aemond’s linen braies as well for the sake of modesty, but Aemma has never felt more violated in her life.

He has no eyepatch and his sapphire eye glitters in the candlelight making him look like a fae from the stories.

A king seeking to imprison the young maiden intruding in his realm, a cursed prince waiting for true love to melt his heart of ice.

He tastes of wine when he kisses her roughly, not the chaste thing from earlier. Much better than the one at the Sept too.

He is a good kisser, so good Aemma wonders if the Wylde girls had been wrong on their assessment of him.

And yet, he is nervous, acting as if one wrong move will have her running for the hills or worse, laughing at him.

Aemond wordlessly carries her to bed. There is desire and some determination to enjoy the moment even as the shadow of whatever plagued him embraced him like a cloak as he lays her gently on a bed covered in rose petals and other flowers that invite love, passion and children into their marriage.

“Valzȳrys,” Aemma whispers as she tugs him to join her after she

Aemond brought his lips back to hers, moving atop her as he did and she thinks the whole of the Crownlands can hear the wanton sounds he elicits from her like a bard with his lute.

“Ābrazȳrys.” He leans over her between her legs, one elbow propped beside her head and his free hand bunching up her shift.

Aemma shuts her eyes in anticipation to what comes next. She wants him in her, to feel the pleasure she’s been told about by women of dubious reputation and mother who had gone as red as the curtains on the windows in her room.

Except it does not come.

His hand briefly hovered over the warm skin of her inner thigh and then it was gone.

Aemond looking ashamed of himself, pulls away as of the mere idea of touching her replused him and mutters an apology before leaving the bed all together.

“I am sorry, Aemee.”

Aemond washed his face with the water he poured into the wash basin in the dressing room.

There was a bed for a maid in it to hide the fact it was used by men who do not wish to share a bed with their bride after.

Aegon had slept in it, their father and Daemon as well.

Aemond just like them would sleep on it too.

And just like Daemon, he had not been man enough to take his wife’s maidenhead.

No matter how much he tried, he could not banish the memory of that night.

On the night of his three and tenth nameday, Aegon had talked him into going into the Street of Silk.

Of course, he had not said it was their destination.

I have a gift for you, little brother.

Aegon was not always horrible, there are good days and bad with him.

Aemond had mistaken his sudden interest in him that day as a good thing.

Why are we here? Aemond had asked burned with shame when the sight of scantily clad women did not repulse him.

“This is your gift. Tonight one of these ladies will make you a man out of you!” Aegon’s proclamation was met with cheers, drinks and whores for everyone there.

“I have chosen her for you.” Aegon had shown him a woman older than mother, in fact it was said she looked like her if you were drunk enough or so his brother said.

“Time to get it wet.” And with that Aegon had locked the door behind him.

Aemond had retched when it was over as he mourned his stolen innocence and pummeled Aegon at the tiltyard the morning after.

The feeling of shame, of disgust and the mocking laughter from his brother and the whores never did leave.

Every time he tried to give into the overeager ladies who gladly let him into their beds, he could never do it.

The moment he grew aroused and brave enough to fuck a woman, Aegon’s cruel laughter came back and turned him back into the boy with no eye crying in the brothel mistress’ bed.

It was fucking foolish of him to think it would be different with Aemma.

To think he could erase those wretched nightmares and replace them with Aemma, his Aemee who wanted him and would never hurt him.

Aemma who was stunned as he left her and asked him what was going on with her face wracked with worry.

Aemma who he knows is crying alone in the bridal bed mocking them with its crushed hopes and petals.

Aemma who does not know he may never be a true husband to her.

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

I was 15 years old when I first learned about the true impacts of Ireland’s strict abortion laws.

It was 2012 and the 20th anniversary of a landmark Supreme Court case that should have altered Ireland’s legislation around abortion but didn’t.

I remember my mother solemnly explaining the case to me as a documentary aired on TV.

In 1992, a 14-year-old girl informed her parents that she was suicidal due to being pregnant as a result of rape. A family friend in his 40s had been sexually abusing her for two years.

The parents took their daughter to the United Kingdom — where, for decades, Irish women had been forced to travel to access abortions — but informed the Irish police because they wanted to press charges against their daughter’s rapist and believed they might need evidence of the abortion for their case.

The day the family traveled, the Attorney General obtained an injunction preventing them from leaving the country. 

They returned home and thus began a Supreme Court case that eventually ended with a ruling which allowed a threat to the life of a pregnant person to be grounds for abortion. It took over two more decades for legislation on the matter to be introduced.

The girl never accessed an abortion and she suffered a miscarriage shortly after the trial. Her rapist was imprisoned in 2002 for the rape of another teenager.

Between the ages of 15 and 19, before Ireland eventually voted to legalize abortion beyond its previous restrictions, the nation’s oppressive reproductive laws became increasingly obvious to me.

Ireland’s anti-choice laws seemed to seep into the lives of friends and loved ones in the worst possible ways.

When I was 18, a friend told me she was pregnant. She’d been trying to find a way to break up with her controlling boyfriend for months. Now she could be tied to him for life.

The last time I had seen her, he was dragging her by the arm into a taxi because a man who she had spoken to for a matter of seconds offered to buy her a drink at the bar we were in.

As a woman in Ireland, jokingly telling your friends that you’d be on the next boat to England if you found out you were unexpectedly pregnant was common.

Suddenly, the isolating journey that thousands of Irish women were making every year didn’t seem so funny. 

She didn’t know how far along she was, her period had been irregular for years, but she suspected she may already be 11 weeks in.

Her parents were devout Catholics, her boyfriend would never let her end her pregnancy, and making a trip to England was costly and not discreet. 

For days we scrambled for options. Eventually, her cousin in Northern Ireland told her she could order abortion pills online and drive them to her.

On a Thursday evening, while other friends headed out to bars, I held her hand and she writhed in pain on her bathroom floor after taking two pills —mifepristone and misoprostol — possibly after it was already too late to do so.

I can still hear her sobs as I frantically Googled how much blood was too much and whether we could be arrested if we went to a hospital.

This isn't the whole article. There are more stories in it. I think every single forced birther should not only read this, but never sleep a single night without dreaming of themselves in situations like the ones in this article.

[deargodsno]

Of course, millions of abortions will continue to occur, but they will be performed in unauthorized and illegal facilities with no uniform health codes or sanitary restrictions in place, and most will be performed by non-physicians, particularly in those states that have already passed laws imposing criminal or civil penalties for obtaining the procedure.

A useful template for the social and economic impacts caused by the imposition of such a nationwide ban can be seen in the case of Romania. As explained in this 2019 report by Amy Mackinnon, writing for Foreign Policy, Romania, under the regime of Nikolai Ceausescu, outlawed all abortions in that country in 1966 in an effort to boost the country’s birth rate. Initially, the birth rate did jump, with the average number of children born nearly doubling. However, as women began to work around the ban, the birth rate quickly dropped again.

As Mackinnon notes, not only did the ban not achieve its “desired” result, the harm it caused was immense:

Romania’s prohibition of the procedure was disproportionately felt by low-income women and disadvantaged groups. ... As a last resort, many Romanian women turned to home and back-alley abortions, and by 1989, an estimated 10,000 women had died as a result of unsafe procedures. The real number of deaths might have been much higher, as women who sought abortions and those who helped them faced years of imprisonment if caught. Maternal mortality skyrocketed, doubling between 1965 and 1989.

As reported by Melody Schreiber, writing for The Guardian, current estimates of the impact of a national abortion ban in the U.S. suggest that maternal mortality rates will rise by 21%, with a substantially higher death rate for people of color:

A nationwide ban would result in a 21% increase in pregnancy-related mortality across the country, but it would be even worse for people of color, with a 33% rise in deaths, according to a study by Amanda Jean Stevenson, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The economic effects of a nationwide abortion ban are staggering, not only to those who are forced to give birth but to state and local economies. More harrowing is the fact of hundreds of thousands of children born to parents (or in most cases a single parent) who cannot or will not (for whatever reason) be capable of providing for them. In Romania—and presumably in this country as well, should such a nationwide ban on abortion take effect—many became wards of the state, with disastrous consequences:

Another consequence of Romania’s abortion ban was that hundreds of thousands of children were turned over to state orphanages. When communism collapsed in Romania in 1989, an estimated 170,000 children were found warehoused in filthy orphanages. Having previously been hidden from the world, images emerged of stick-thin children, many of whom had been beaten and abused. Some were left shackled to metal bed frames.

Charles Nelson, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School interviewed for Mackinnon’s article, noted that many of those children ”were left with severe developmental impairment and mental health issues.” In some, their actual, physical brain size was reduced.

Of course, Romania is not the United States. Perhaps Republicans in those states prohibiting abortion already have a plan to feed, house, and educate those unwanted children (and the many more they are likely to be responsible for if this legislation ever passes).

One of the most vivid recollections of that time frame in Romania—by women who suffered through it—was how the very act of sex became something to be fraught with fear and anxiety, rather than pleasure. As Mackinnon reports:

“Sometimes a woman couldn’t even tell her husband or best friend that she wanted to have an abortion as it would put them at risk as well,” said Irina Ilisei, an academic researcher and co-founder of the Front Association, a Romanian feminist group, and the Feminist Romania website. “For many women, sexuality represented a fear and not a part of life that can be enjoyed,” Ilisei said.

And that, in sum, probably best represents the Republican Party’s ultimate goal here: to punish behavior of which they disapprove. Especially the behavior of women.

Now that the stakes for these 2022 elections have been made quite clear, hopefully, more people—including young people who will have to measure out their lives through this bleak and terrifying new world Republicans want to create for them—will choose to vote.

[imagine-loki]

Hiding in Plain Sight

TITLE: Hiding in Plain Sight

CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 12 Final Chapter.

AUTHOR: wolfpawn

ORIGINAL IMAGINE:Imagine coming from a line of nobility or royalty and being in an arranged marriage with Loki in an attempt to strengthen your kingdom / alliance with Asgard. You’re not entirely on board with the idea but figured that the best you could do was to get to know your fiancé. You form an agreement with Frigga for you to pose as Loki’s personal servant for a few months so you can get to know who Loki really is – beyond the veil of his responsibility to the Asgardian throne, behind all the masks he wears when facing the public, to really know who Loki is behind closed doors as you slowly fall for each other.How long will you keep up the ruse with the God of Lies?

RATING: General Audience

NOTE: final chapter

Loki scoured his desks and shelves for those letters. When the knock came to his door, he gave a nod to Tatianna to open it. The maid, who had been working diligently with him in search of said letters, rushed over to check it was who she had been sent for. “The Postmaster, Lord Johan, Your Highness.” She introduced as the Postmaster came in. 

“Lord Johan.” The Postmaster bowed. “Prince Loki, I came as soon as I could.” “Thank you.”

“How can I assist you, Your Highness.” “My brother has informed me that three letters were brought to my rooms over a period of months from the Ljósáfar palace.” 

The Postmaster’s eyes widened. “You did receive such, Your Highness. I organised them for your rooms myself as I do all the mail for your family. They even had the name of the sender on them, the Princess Raven of Alfheim. Such fine writing she has too. Artistic and neat.”

Loki nodded and took little heed of the statement, It was well-known that the Postmaster was a graphophile, he supposed a few millennia of looking at different handwriting would turn almost anyone into one. 

“I have never received them.” The Postmaster’s mouth opened to speak. “I am not, for one moment, suggesting you to be telling me falsities, Lord Johan, I know of the due care you put into your work but also I know you have entirely no reason to lie.”

“On two of the three occasions, they came alongside other post. On the final one, it did not and I ensured they all made their way to your rooms. Because of their importance, I placed them in the centre of your desk rather than the usual place.” Loki’s eyes widened and he looked at his desk, which was kept clean for when it was needed for work matters but there was nothing on it at present. “It begs the question then, where did they go, and why would anyone do such a thing as to move them?” He looked at Tatianna as he spoke. The maid shook her head slightly. Loki did not suspect his maid. He questioned her for a moment upon returning to his rooms, asking her if she recalled such letters but she stated that she did not. He had no reason to suspect her, she did not have anything to gain from dishonesty and she had even been readying the rooms in case Raven was to be joining Loki in them. She had tidied shelves in case she too was a reader and had books to join Loki’s. She had gone through each and every item of clothing of his that she could find, discarding the damaged, repairing others making room for the new princess. If anything, Loki suspected she was half excited to have a woman to assist tending to. She loved fashion and hair meaning having a princess to assist with events would undoubtedly be something pleasant for her. “Tatianna, have you tried behind those scrolls?”

“No, Your Highness, I will try now.” She darted off to do that. “Do not forget, Your Highness, Her Majesty insists you turn up for dinner. Missing lunch was unacceptable, missing dinner is...well…” “Let me guess,  if I do not turn up, I will have Gungnir force me to turn up?”

“Something to that effect.” 

Loki rolled his eyes at his parents’ attempts at threats. “Very well, you keep searching.” She nodded and did so. “Where in the realms are they?” Loki muttered to himself. * The prelude to the dinner did not fair as badly as Loki had worried that it would. For most of it, he spoke with the Ljósáfar princes, all of whom seemed amiable in their own ways, but what he did notice was his mother looking worriedly at him, though he barely acknowledged her unless she spoke to him directly as he did not want to embarrass his family and that there was no sign of Raven. 

When dinner time arrived, he began to feel insulted that she had been able to avoid it while he was being forced to endure it. The fact that it was a public dinner made it all the worse. The whole realm would hear the announcement of the forthcoming wedding and she was not even present. What also caught his attention was the Vanir that Thor was clearly speaking within an intimate manner before the meal but who was sat down separately for the meal. He recognised her. She was of good personality but little on looks but she was from a powerful house and Asgard’s tie to Vanaheim had to remain strong so he suspected that she would be announced as Thor’s betrothed as soon as Loki’s marriage ribbon was tied. Raven was of far better looks and he knew from her knowledge of literature that she at least was not without a mind but he still felt angered by it all. 

Thinking in his own mind, he heard nothing of the talk around him. It was only when he noticed a severely tense atmosphere around him that Loki got pulled from his thoughts as a shadow came into view beside him. At first, he thought the tense atmosphere was from Raven, who finally decided to grave them with her presence but after a moment, seeing her meek demeanour, he noticed she was the subject of the tense atmosphere, not the instigator. Sitting beside him, she did not even try to look at him or engage him in any manner. 

“It’s good to see at least that your brothers and parents disapprove of your actions,” Loki growled lowly to her as the noise around them increased, allowing them some privacy to speak. 

“My parents do not care in the slightest about that. They were more worried about me embarrassing them by learning to sew and such than anything. They were simply glad that I was no longer there being of age and unmarried.” She stated in a monotone that still seemed to seep sadness. 

Loki frowned slightly. “So what has them all looking at you as though you are a disgrace?” His curiosity got the better of him. 

“I should not be in public at present. It’s disgraceful. They disagree with your parents insisting that this dinner go ahead, they felt it should have been postponed.”

“I am very much inclined to agree with that sentiment. Though, I doubt our reasonings are the same, are they?” 

“I very much doubt it.” She toyed with her hands. 

Loki watched the action carefully, realising she had been doing so with nervousness and anxiety clearly for at least the day if not longer from the marks on them. “You will pull the skin off if you keep doing that.” She stopped and put her hands to her side. “I’m curious, what happened to the woman that stormed my room today and called me a...was it a pretentious prick?” Raven’s eyes widened and she looked around at her parents, praying to every Norn that they had not heard. 

Loki studied her reaction. Thor’s and his mother’s words coming to the fore of his mind. They were both right, he didn’t like this more than he disliked a woman that would snap back. He didn’t like being called a pretentious prick but the silent and moping creature next to him was a thousand times worse. “So, you have left two things unanswered, how you shamed them enough to want them to call off this dinner announcement and where you hid the woman that barged into my rooms?” Raven said nothing for a moment, her tongue toying with her teeth as she considered her answer. “I should not have done that and I sincerely apologise for having done what I did to…”

“Norns, stop. I don’t want to hear it. Just answer my questions.” Loki hissed. 

“Because I am bleeding.” She said nothing more and waited for his reaction, awaiting disgust. 

Loki did not comprehend as to what she was referring to for a moment. He was going to insist that she head to the hospital wing for herself when it dawned on him what she was referring to. In his own mind, he thought to make a comment about it explaining her attitude towards him but he knew that was a cheap excuse. She had stated several times she was told off by her parents for being sarcastic and outspoken. Even when they were waiting for dinner to begin, her brothers had made comments on her behaviour being seeing as unlike other Ljósáfar women. “I am failing to see how that affects things. I am aware it is not an overly pleasant situation for a female but there are surely some things that can assist?” Raven gave a small smile at his innocence to the situation. “In Alfheim, high-born women are not seen while bleeding, or pregnant, or not until she is a certain date past childbirth, it’s seen as shameful and dirty.” “But they are basic parts of being female.” Loki didn’t even think over his reply, it came straight out of his mouth before he could process it. He looked at her, seeing the agreement in her eyes making him realise her earlier words on trying to see if she could be forced to continue such a life and how much they actually meant. Suddenly, he realised there was some sense to her actions. Insane as they were. He knew his and Thor’s lives were restricted by their positions in society, but what Raven was describing was nothing short of a form of imprisonment to him. “Obviously, it is different here. Mother did not retire from court until she was almost due my brother and myself.” He didn’t know why he used that example, she made it clear she did not like the idea of even having children but he wanted to settle her some bit. 

Raven merely nodded. 

As Loki was going to ask her about the letters, Odin rose to his feet silencing the room. He spoke on and on of the honour of hosting the Light Elves, the sharing of ancient magical knowledge and other such things, how they have been allies through several wars, nothing, of course, on the ones they were adversaries and other such words. No one spoke through the Allfather and when he ceased that speech, there was a cheer and raising of cups and tankards. When he spoke of the marriage, Loki gave a slight nod, as would be expected, while Raven looked around in a manner that she hoped offended no one yet knew it would offend her family terribly. When another cheer was made and another drink was taken, the talking began in earnest. 

Raven seemed to think to do nothing but swirl the contents of the cup. 

“Have you had mead before?” Loki found himself talking to her both out of boredom and curiosity. 

Raven shook her head. “It’s nice, though.” She kept her voice down. 

Loki pursed his lips. “Could the woman from today who sassed me please come out? Is there a button that activates her or is it only until a certain time of day, then at night, this meek creature emerges?” Raven’s eyes flickered toward her father, which Loki caught. “Ah, that explains things.” He leant closer causing her to shift slightly in her seat. “As of tonight, you realise you are supposed to adhere to Aesir norms, not Ljósáfar ones. Now, I need to discuss a matter with you.” 

“Regarding?” “Some letters.” Raven frowned at him. “It was brought to my attention today that you sent letters to me before this...charade.” Raven looked at him suspiciously. “I did. Three.” 

“Yes, Thor mentioned and the Postmaster confirmed.”

“And going by your reaction, you doubted this?” “I never received them.” Raven could not help pursing her lips in disbelief. 

“I did not.” “You leave all of your post on that platter, you never miss anything. I saw that myself.” Loki studied her carefully, seeing the disbelief in her eyes. “You think I discarded them without reading?” “You read everything, this I know.” “I never received them.” He stared straight back at her, his rich green eyes willing her to see he was being truthful. “The Postmaster placed them on my desk but I never got them.”

“All three escaped your notice?”

“It appears they did.” “One I would believe, three, I am sceptical.” 

“So was I when I heard such for the exact same reason,” Loki admitted. “Did you move them when you came?” “I...They would not have still been there by the time I came.” 

“But you did not see them in the room, since you organised things in it?” “No, you’re not listening, they would not have still been in existence. I used paper made with Cat’s Claw oil, meaning…” “It dissolves within a month,” Loki completed. “Why, though?”

Raven nodded. “Yes, I did not want private correspondence with headed paper to be at risk of forgery, so I use that oil. Don’t you?” “I will now.” Loki could not fault her logic. If anything, he was embarrassed he had not thought of it. “What did you write?”

“Nothing too taxing. What were the best books to understand Aesir court and history best? I had heard you were an avid reader, so who you enjoyed? What other hobbies you had, nothing too intimate. The first and second were similar as I thought you had not received the first for whatever reason. The last was a tad more abrupt. Then I stopped trying.” She toyed with her hands again. 

“You’re damaging your skin.” Loki admonished. “I am sorry your letters went unanswered. I don’t know what happened to them, I will find out but I did not ignore them.” “I believe you.” 

Loki could see she meant it. “If I had seen them…”

“We could be dealing with a different situation right now. Not that it excuses my actions.” 

Loki nodded slightly. 

“I am sorry for what happened. I truly wish I had not done such. But thank you for your concern also.” 

“Concern?”

“When I told you I would be leaving your service and I seemed upset, even though you were upset, you were adamant that if I was being mistreated, I could tell you. Even when you felt terrible for yourself, you showed concern for me, even when you did not like me. I think it showed me so much about you.” She gave a small smile. “Even if you think little of me as I truly am.” 

Loki was going to challenge that but he saw the slight smirk and playful glint in her eye. “Norns, you switch between two different demeanours faster than the Bifrost travels realms. It will be exhausting to keep up with.” “I think you forget that I know what you are like. We will be suffering together.” 

Loki chuckled to himself, thinking that this situation may not be entirely terrible if they tried. Seeing the hopeful look on Raven’s face, he suspected with some work, perhaps they could. 

Raven found herself looking at a certain someone staring at her disapprovingly in the crowded room. She took a moment to realise just who it was before giving the other woman a raised brow. For her part, the other woman seemed genuinely startled as to the Light Elf she had previously spoken down to. With Loki’s interest in the princess and the princess knowing full well who she was and what she had said, she knew there was no manner to get into her good graces under false pretences but also that the Light Elf knew full well about everything and could ensure she kept a close eye on such, so she looked at her food again. 

[ladyartemesia]

▨ FIC • PREVIEW ▨

The Mark of Yun-Ki

Pairing: Min Yoongi x Reader

Genre: Hybrid AU  • Royalty AU • Fantasy AU • Daechwita AU

Summary: For a thousand years the tiger god Yun-Ki has marked the heirs of the Min Empire and thus only a marked heir can inherit the throne. When the beautiful daughter of the Min Emperor’s loyal warlord rescues a mysterious tiger hybrid from the imperial prison, she unleashes a secret that the throne would kill to protect. The young emperor claims to be the chosen heir... but who really bears the Mark of Yun-Ki?

Word Count: (preview) 2280 (final word count approx. 7K)

Rating and Warnings: Preview is rated M(ature) but final fic will be E(xplicit) for heat sex among other thing. Warnings for the preview include sexual innuendo and mature themes.

Author’s Note: One of the reasons I wrote this was in response to a prompt given to me by @mindays​ like MONTHS ago (I have included the original prompt at the bottom of the preview) • I really hope you like it! Sorry I took so long.

“Why is he blindfolded?”

The guard beside you shifted uncomfortably. 

“The Emperor ordered that his eyes be covered at all times.”

Your gaze traveled covertly over your surroundings, assessing the dimly lit chamber with practiced disdain. 

“Leave us.” 

“My lady, I cannot-”

“Do you know who I am, soldier?”

Your voice slashed through the air like an icy whip. 

“Y-yes, my la-”

“Then you know it is unwise to displease my family.” One jeweled hand came to rest dramatically on your chest. “Your daughter is not yet 15...such a pity to orphan one so young.”

The soldier bowed almost too quickly. 

“I will be outside, my lady-” he bowed again and again as he backed toward the door, “I meant no disrespect-”

Then you were alone… save for the notorious prisoner bound and blindfolded in the cell before you. 

He was clearly aware of your presence, but made no move or sound of acknowledgement, not even when your footsteps brought you to the very edge of his enclosure. 

“Prisoner AG-D2... name unknown... crime unknown...” your hand travelled up to your hair to withdraw a long silver pin, “no date of birth, no date of arrest...”

The prisoner jerked suddenly when the sound of your pin tripping the cell’s iron lock reached his unnaturally sensitive ears. 

His nostrils flared as an almost familiar scent - buried beneath a decade of fury and fear - curled through him. 

“Who are you?” 

The words were more of a growl than a question, but the only answer he received was the sound of his cell door creaking open. 

“Why are you here?” he tried again. 

“I am here to tell you a story...”

The prisoner barked out an empty laugh at your strange reply.

“I love a good story,” he whispered bitterly. The corner of your mouth twitched a bit at his spirit. 

Wrists bound together, eyes covered… but still every inch the proud warrior. His clothes were worn, but well cared for and the body beneath them was sleek and strong. This was not a man accustomed to being bound. 

“You were not raised like the rest of our people... the tales of our customs and our gods were - deliberately - never taught to you...but it is past time that you knew of them.”

He grinned, granting you a wicked flash of razor sharp fangs.

“Are all of the Emperor’s captives tortured with fairytales?”

“Charming,” you snorted, dragging a small stool from the corner of his cell. The prisoner’s ears flicked curiously at the sound.

“Aren’t you afraid of me, storyteller? What if I’ve been imprisoned for devouring beautiful women like yourself?”

You shook your head in amusement as you settled onto the stool.

“Have you devoured many beautiful women then?”

“Oh absolutely-” his grin took on a decidedly sinful slant, “but I doubt that’s why I’m here.”

A strange fluttering stirred in your chest at his words, though you did not fully understand the cause. You could not afford to waste time dwelling on such things, however.

“So... why are you here?” 

The prisoner was silent for several moments as he weighed the risk of being honest with you. 

“I don’t know,” he whispered finally, “I was told the Emperor himself ordered my arrest… but I was never told why.”

Your fingernails dug painfully into the palm of your hand, but you offered no other outward reaction to his words.

“What do you know of the current Min Emperor?”

“Not much. I’ve heard he is young... Stories say he has the temper of a demon, but his people endure it because he is the favorite of an ancient god.”

Your jaw clenched.

“That is correct. Our citizens are privileged to serve and obey the Emperor because the great tiger god, Yun-Ki has chosen the House of Min as his sacred bloodline. It is believed that the Mins are descended from Yun-Ki himself...”

“How ironic,” the prisoner scoffed, “considering that the Mins despise hybrids. They claim we are the unnatural children of the spirit realm and the earth. Surely they would be ashamed to be the product of such… blasphemy.”

Feminine laughter filled the air. It had been so long since the bound man had heard anything so beautiful. The ache it stirred in him was nearly as foreign as the sound itself. 

“Yes it does seem rather hypocritical... especially in light of the events which bring me here.”

Your scent was stronger now. It tugged at the edges of his mind in broken pictures and flashes of sunshine. He knew it...

But he could not recognize it. 

Nor could he explain the heat it began to stir in him. 

“Yun-Ki’s chosen heir bears his sacred mark .... Every child of the emperor’s seed is checked for it the moment they are born. And no concubine or wife of the emperor is ever so exalted as the one who produces a marked heir... except of course, the mother of our current emperor.”

The prisoner leaned forward, fascinated in spite of the strange circumstances.

“The dowager empress is widely revered. I may not know your fairytales, but a hybrid’s ears are better than most. My guards speak of her often.”.

You nodded

“The dowager is indeed very highly regarded… but she is not the emperor’s true mother.”

“Lady…” the prisoner shook his head irritably. “What nonsense is this? And how could it possibly affect me?”

You chuckled softly and the small hairs on the back of his arms rose up in response. 

“Patience, prisoner, the truth I offer you is worth more than both our lives.”

“The fine jewelry I hear clinking around your neck is worth more than my life, lady,” he hissed. “Speak your peace and spare me these cryptic declarations.”

It took every ounce of self-control you possess not to flick him right in his arrogant nose. 

“As you wish,” you replied with heavily affected sweetness. “The story begins with our current emperor’s father. The old emperor was a man of warfare and his spies discovered that the Prince of neighboring PyonKang planned invade our territory, he marched his armies in and occupied the small kingdom without mercy…” (you paused here significantly) “He even took the Prince’s sister as his war prize...”

The prisoner snorted. 

“Did he know what she was?” He smiled coldly. “The royals of PyongKang do not share your nation’s distaste for hybrids or the pleasures of mating with one-”

There was a sharp spike in your scent when he spoke the words; a darker - richer essence than the one he detected earlier, but this time he had no trouble identifying it. 

Arousal. 

Blood churned chaotically beneath his skin, rushing to answer your body’s unspoken request. His mind clouded suddenly and for a moment...he could almost taste you. 

This is dangerous. 

The fabric of your gown rustled as you shifted uncomfortably in your seat - driven to relieve some of the unexpected pressure in your core. 

“He did not know. The lady bore no hybrid indicators. So the emperor assumed - quite incorrectly - that she was not a hybrid.” 

“I’ve heard of such things…” he sighed, sifting through his memory till he found what he was looking for. “A physician I met in Eastern Wei discovered that some hybrids manifest internally. They retain the outer shell of a human, but their inner parts reveal the truth.” His head tilted as he recalled the old doctor’s exact words. “The face of man could hide the heart of a snake.”

You drew your lip between your teeth and nibbled it nervously. 

“You are correct. Except, in the case of the emperor’s war prize concubine, the face of a beautiful woman hid the heart of a tiger.”

The man before you scrambled to his feet in a move so sudden and unexpected, you nearly cried out. 

“You mean to tell me that the current Min Emperor is a tiger hybrid? Surely I would have heard of it. The world would have heard of it.”

You drew a deep breath - almost as if to brace yourself for the words you planned to speak.

The prisoner’s eyes were covered, but he could still make out shapes and shadows through the rough cloth. Your shadow seemed unnaturally still. When you spoke again, your tone was softer and the sound of it resonated deep within him like the bells of the old temple near his childhood home. 

“The princess of PyongKang became pregnant, and gave birth to twin boys. The younger was strong and pale, gifted with the strange golden hair so many of the Min bloodline seem to possess. But his elder brother...”

Your hands opened and closed reflexively in your lap as you worked to calm your pounding pulse. 

“... The elder brother’s hybrid heritage was quite evident.”

You moved then, stepping slowly and carefully until you stood before the prisoner face to face. Your scent swelled erotically with every step until it wrapped around him like a velvet vice. The urge to lean into it - into you - was nearly unbearable. 

“One of the twins bore the tiger god’s mark... but not the one who sits on the throne now.”

Your hand stretched slowly toward the edge of the prisoner’s blindfold. 

“The emperor executed his hybrid concubine immediately, yet even he was not bold enough to kill Yun-Ki’s chosen heir...”

Your fingers hovered a hairsbreadth from his skin. Once you touched him, everything would change. The truth you chased for eleven years would be within your grasp. 

“He sent the child to a poor family of fox hybrids who worked and lived on the estate of his most loyal warlord. The boy was never to know what he was… who he was...”

You could almost feel the moment he grasped the implication of your words. The subtle bond that always hummed strangely between you remained strong despite the years of separation. 

“The warlord had a daughter who loved to ride her horse near the lake.” Your voice trembled ever so slightly as you continued. “One day the horse was startled by a snake and it threw her into the water...”

A single tear wet his blindfold as the alluring tendrils of your scent merged chaotically with the treasured echoes in his mind. 

“Tiger hybrids hate the water,” you whispered, gently drawing the cloth up over his head, “but you dove in to save me anyways.”

Your lungs and throat burned from coughing out the water you swallowed, yet the pain was far preferable to the finality of drowning. The heavy fabric of your gown weighed you down as soon as your body crashed into the lake. 

Death reached for you, but the strange boy cradling you tightly to his chest had pulled you back before you were lost to its embrace.

“Little one, can you hear me?”

His eyes scanned frantically over your small drenched form for signs of serious injury, but you were completely distracted from your almost untimely end by the two feline ears twitching conspicuously amid the boy’s sodden curls. 

“You’re… You’re a cat!”

The boy’s jaw dropped open indignantly. 

“I’m tiger hybrid! Not a cat.” He shook his head irritably. “Have you never seen a hybrid before?”

“I’ve only heard of hybrids. I’ve never really seen one-”

Your fingers itched to touch the soft fur of his ears and you stretched forward almost absently to do so till he lashed out and snatched your wandering hand. 

“What are you doing?!” 

“Oh… I was going to...pet you?” you murmured sheepishly, prompting an irritable growl from the boy. 

“Little One, you do not pet tigers.”

He stood to his feet abruptly, dumping you into a soggy heap in the process. It took considerable effort for you to pull yourself upright while wearing 4 layers of thoroughly soaked cloth, but you eventually managed to regain your bearings and scramble after him. 

“Wait! Come back please I EEP-” 

The water dripping off your dress made the grass rather slippery… Both legs flew out from under you and, for the second time in less than a minute, you found yourself flat on your back. 

After a few moments of gazing miserably into the sky, a familiar face hovered over yours. 

“What a strange girl you are, Little One.”

You grinned.

“What is your name, tiger?”

He sighed deeply and held his hand out to pull you up. 

“I’m Yoongi.”

“Hello, Yoongi.” You tried to manage a proper bow, but only ended up losing your balance again. Yoongi grabbed your sleeve just in time to prevent you from crashing face first at his feet. 

“You’re completely hopeless,” he chuckled, endeared in spite of himself. 

Then you smiled. 

It was a fierce, blinding thing and Yoongi became aware of a subtle yet profound shift deep within the recess of his soul; something his primal half recognized immediately, but his human mind could not begin to comprehend. 

“No one’s ever said that to me before, even though I know they all think it.”

“And why is that?”

You shrugged. 

“They are probably afraid of my father.”

Yoongi’s eyebrows raised in alarm. 

“You’re the warlord’s daughter?!”

“Yes,” you replied with all the haughtiness a ten-year old could muster, “and I’m quite used to getting what I want.”

Yoongi felt a grin tug at the corner of his mouth. You were such an adorable little brat. 

“And what is it you’re wanting now, Little One?”

You nibbled your lip for a moment, suddenly shy before the handsome hybrid boy whose beautiful feline eyes danced with unconcealed mirth. 

“I want you to be my friend.”

Thirteen years later, those same golden eyes locked with yours as a strangled sob bubbled up from the back of his throat. 

“Little One?” his face lit suddenly with pure joy “...is it you?”

Please let me know in the comments if you would like to be added to the taglist!

I would love to know any thoughts or theories you have! Thank you for reading! This story will be published on or around 7/31!

This is the original prompt which inspired this story...

[inky-duchess]

History Bites: Bad Ass Moments (Women)

In History Bites, I pick the best moments of history and the antics historical figures in order to give you inspiration for your WIP. Think of History Bites like prompts, only juicer and 90% accurate (results may vary).

Today, we will discuss the bad ass moments of history (women). This post may have a part two. Let's get to it.

Arsinoë IV was the younger sister of Cleopatra. During the civil war between her elder sister and brother who were meant to be jointly ruling, Caesar besieged Alexandria on behalf of Cleopatra, taking the royal family hostage within the palace. In the confusion after the Library of Alexandria was accidentally burned down (I mean Caesar, I love you but you're fucking dick for burning the library), Arsinoë escaped the palace and took command of the Egyptian army. Under her control, the army enjoyed success even trapping Caesar as he tried to take the Lighthouse of Alexandria. This was an important symbol to the city as well as a masterful weapon, whoever controlled the Lighthouse controlled the harbour. To escape, Caesar had to swim across the bay throwing off his great purple cloak and fine armour, holding up his important papers as he limped back to dry land, defeated by a 15-18 year old girl.

Katherine of Aragon handed Scotland its biggest defeat in history. She led troops at Flodden, winning a battle where the Scottish King died. When she wrote to Henry as well as sending him the Scottish king's coat and banners, she mentioned that she had wanted to send the body of the king but the nobles were being pussies and said no. It may have been the shadiest letter of all the Tudor period.

Artemisia Gentileschi was one of art and history's all time bad asses. She was a skilled painter at a time when women were not permitted to attend art schools. She surpassed her father's own works and some of his other students. At 18, she was raped by another artist. In a time far behind today's understanding of rape and justice, Artemisia took a great risk in publicly accusing her rapist. She underwent numerous tortures so the judges could be sure she was telling the truth. The rapist was convicted (a major win). Artemisia went on to become one of the Baroque period's most powerful painters.

Marguerite de Bressieux was a 15th century noblewoman in France. When her father's castle fell to the armies of the Prince of Orange, Marguerite and the other women of the castle were all sexually assaulted. As the French army passed through the devastated lands, they came by a group of twelve knights armoured and mounted, bearing a black banner with an orange pierced by a spear. The commander revealed their face... it was Marguerite. She asked to join the French King's forces and he allowed her though he was quite taken aback. At the Battle of Autun, each of the female knights and Marguerite hunted down the Prince of Orange's men, unmasking their faces before they killed their rapists so they would know just had come.

Harriet Tubman was an American slave who ran the Underground Railway, ferrying slaves off to freedom. After escaping herself, Harriet refused to leave others behind. Known as Moses, Harriet risked life and limb to free slaves from the plantations. During the Civil War, she worked for the Union first as a cook then as scout and spy. Over her life, Tubman released over 300 slaves.

Countess Constance Markievicz was the first woman to be elected to a British Parliament ... while imprisoned for her art in the numerous acts of rebellion in the last years of English rule. Markievicz was one of the figureheads for Irish freedom, even acting as a sniper during the 1916 Easter Rising. When the rising was over, she was imprisoned but not executed (being a woman and a high status woman) which made her angry. She believed that the fight for Irish freedom was not just a male one. Her advice to women and girls of the time was "Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank, and buy a revolver"

Grace/Grainne O'Malley, the Pirate Queen of Ireland was one of the Lords of the West of Ireland. On her father's death, she inherited his lands and fleets as his heir, turning her into one of the most powerful lords of the west. She fought in the Nine Years War, becoming a thorn in the side of the "Governor" Richard Bingham. When her sons and half brother were captured and threatened, Grainne turned her sails to London to speak with Elizabeth I. Grainne did not bow to Elizabeth and began hammering out the terms of a peace. Bingham was fired, her sons and brother were released on the terms that Grainne would stop supporting Gaelic uprisings. Grainne didn't.

Jeanne de Clisson or the Lioness of Brittany, was a 14th century noblewoman. Her husband was imprisoned by the French King who suspected him of being a spy who had lost a battle on purpose. He was executed. Jeanne went immediately to the fort her husband had commanded. The garrison let her in. Jeanne's army took the fort. By the time the French King heard, Jeanne was gone. After a treacherous crossing over the Channel where she lost at least one child, Jeanne resurfaced in England. The English king granted her three ships which she used to wage war on France in revenge.

Ching Shih was a Chinese pirate queen, formerly a prostitute. When her husband died, she took over his fleet of ships. Ching Shih went about on tightening the reigns on her sailors. They could not rape captives, if they did they were beheaded. If they wanted to have one of the women, a sailor had to marry her and treat her right. To disobey a superior twice was death. As she got the fleet into shipshape, Ching Shih began her reign of the seas amassing millions. The government fought her a few times but soon gave up their war, paying Ching Shih to go away. She retired as a respected millionaire.

Osh-Tisch or "Finds Them and Kills Them” was a Native American warrior. She had been born male but chose to live as a woman also known as a baté, a person which two souls in their body. Osh-Tisch took up arms along with the other batés when her tribe went to war with the Lakota, winning the war. As missionaries came to to stick their noses in where they weren't wanted, Osh-Tisch and the other batés were subject to horrific abuse. Batés were forced to dress and act as their assigned gender by the dickheaded missionaries. Osh-Tisch disregarded the missionaries and continued to work with batés across America in order to support one another.

Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in the years preceding the Civil War. Harriet refused to leave others behind and returned about nineteen times to volatile south to rescue slaves, under the name Moses. During the war, Harriet served as cook, nurse and spy for the Union. Harriet saved over 300 slaves.

Matilda, Lady of the English once escaped a besieged castle. How did she do this? She walked out of the gates and left. She was wearing a white cloak which camouflaged her against the snow. She walked eight miles in the snow to continue her fight for the crown.

Cleopatra VII (that Cleopatra) was once summoned to Tarsos go meet the new Governor of the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire, Mark Antony who wanted to borrow some money. They negotiated back and forth on who should come to who. Cleopatra refused to go... but then showed up in Tarsos on luxurious barge. While feasting with Antony at his expense, Cleopatra claimed that she could host the more expensive meal. She dropped a pearl earring into her wine, where it dissolved and downed it like a queen.

Caterina Sforza was an Italian noble woman in the Renaissance period and you could literally not find a bigger bad ass. She rode at the head of an army to occupy the great fortress of the Castel San Angelo in the name of her husband, while being seven months pregnant. At the siege of Ravaldino, Caterina and her children were prisoners of the treacherous Orsis family who had killed her husband. Caterina persuaded the commanders to let her enter the city to negotiate the surrender of the castle. One inside, she climbed the battles and cussed out the besiegers. Utterly stunned, one commander threatened to kill her children but Caterina lifted her skirts and flashed them, claiming she could make more. OK, that may be a rumour. She may have touched her belly or claimed to be already pregnant but still it was a moment. It ended up buying her enough time for more forces to come and beat the army outside.

Catherine the Great born a minor German Princess overthrew her husband Peter III in a successful military coup. A few days before the original coup was going to commence, a co-conspirator let slip to another guard that it was happening. The man was arrested. When the news got to her, Catherine left the palace via carriage commandeering horses along the way. She went to the barracks of the Ismailovsky regiment dressed in burrowed military uniform and made an impassioned plea to the soldiers to earn their support which they gave her. She was crowned sole ruler of Russia and forced her husband to sign his crown away.

Khutulun, the great-grandaughter of Genghis Khan was badass from the beginning. She was the only girl in a family of boys and grew up to be the fiercest. Khutulun was a highly sought after bride. She didn't hate men but felt she shouldn't be married to somebody unequal to her. Every man who sought to wed her had to wrestle her or pay ten horses. She had ten thousand horses by the time she died.

Boudicca was the Queen of the Iceni, a Celtic tribe in England. Her husband, an ally of the Romans, left half his kingdom to Rome and the other half to his daughters. When he died, Rome took it all. When Boudicca spoke out against it, she was flogged and her daughters were raped. Boudicca decided that it was time for the Romans to fuck off and die. Raising a massive host, Boudicca burned three major Roman settlements down Londinium (London), Verulamium (St. Albans) and Camulodunum (Colchester). She was the greatest threat the Rome since...

Amanirenas, Queen of Kush was an African Queen who fought the Romans. Kush lay south to the new conquered Egypt, which meant it was next on Rome's agenda. Kush moved first. Though one-eyed, she was an able warrior who survived at least a dozen battles. Though the Romans burned the capital and took slaves, Amanirenas still fought on bringing Rome to its knees. Rome and Kush signed a peace treaty, preventing Rome from crossing the border ever again. Amanirenas's badass moment came thousands of years after when archeologists were digging up the tombs. Found under her the foot of statue, was the head of the Emperor Augustus.

[missnight0wl]

What’s happening in Poland?

Hey. I might stop my regular posting for a day or so because frankly, I’m quite overwhelmed with what’s happening in Poland. And I actually want to talk about it. You don’t have to read it, but I’ll be grateful if you do. I don’t have a big reach, but it’s always one person more knowing what we’re going through, and I guess that getting attention is the most we can do now, at least outside our country.

The Catholic Church and its value are extremely important in Poland. Unfortunately, it has little to do with love and mercy, but a lot with hatred: towards women, towards LGBT people… towards anyone different. It happens that the leading party, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS; Law and Justice), is proud of their connection to the Church, which basically means to us that while the Church officially doesn’t have power in Poland – it really does. There’s also one person who decides about everything in our country: Jarosław Kaczyński. The sad thing that technically, he’s nobody. I mean, he is the leader of PiS, and he’s been designated as Deputy Prime Minister recently, but… that’s it. Yet, we all know that he controls everyone, and everyone is scared of him. Our president is a wuss who can only sign things which Jarek tells him to sign, our Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, is incapable of independent thinking as well. The government is failing terribly at dealing with the pandemic, and said Prime Minister, claimed in June what coronavirus is in retreat, and that people don’t have to wear masks (sic!). Now we’re having at least 10 thousand new cases daily. And what they’re doing? They sentence all Polish women for hell.

Since 1993, abortion in Poland was allowed in only 3 cases:

if the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest,

if the mother's health was at risk,

in case of foetal defects.

On October 22nd 2020, Poland's top court ruled abortion due to foetal defects unconstitutional, basically making abortion illegal.

The law is not valid just yet, but it will also mean hell for doctors. Because it says about things like that anyone who causes the death of an unborn child, will be punished with three years of imprisonment. In other words, a doctor who’d be about to try to save a mother while risking death a child will probably decide to do nothing. Why? Because if a child and/or a mother dies, they’d have to not only live with that fact. They’d have to deal with it while in jail. Also, ectopic pregnancy won’t be able to remove such pregnancy until a woman starts bleeding out, even though he could do it safely BEFORE her life is at risk.

After the decision was announced, women went protesting in front of Kaczyński’s house. The police arrived, and eventually, the pepper spray was used. The next day when more protests were planned, the police showed on the streets in helmets and with shields. It is also said that Kaczyński was moved “somewhere safe”.

Morawiecki decided that starting tomorrow, the army will help the police, which allegedly is connected to coronavirus, but somehow, we all know it’s because of the protests. And we’re scared. I’m personally also scared to join the protests because of covid, and it’s not even just about me getting sick. My roommate is a teacher in kindergarten, and they’re still open. If I get sick, I’d bring it to her, and she’d bring it to her work... Well, the government will probably say that more infection is women’s fault anyway… They want to distract us from how much they’re failing, and they did it in the most harmful way.

And the sad thing is that this decision is not only incredibly cruel – it doesn’t even make sense in their own logic! A lot of those pregnancies might end with mother’s death or complications leading to her not being to get pregnant EVER AGAIN! How does it help in creating your fucking beautiful catholic families? But that’s the problem, they don’t understand that and they don’t want to understand that. They’re really calling it a win for the life because apparently, they think that women get an abortion for own pleasure and ONLY when it’s about a child with Down syndrome. Seriously that’s like the single example they’re using. They can’t comprehend that there are children born without a heart, without a brain, without lungs. Children who WON’T SURVIVE. But it gets better as they also want to ban all prenatal examination. Because you know, you have to give birth anyway, so what’s the difference? You’re just gonna have a surprise whether you’ll have to buy a crib or a coffin.

We’re calling it a war. The government pretends that nothing happens.

The public media (also controlled by PiS) claims that there were a couple of hundreds of protestors. There are THOUSANDS of people in every Polish city. They compared the symbol we’re using (the red bolt) to the symbol used by Schutzstaffel.

They complain that the protests are so vulgar (the most common slogan is “Wypierdalać!” which mean “Piss off!”), but that’s the only language they can understand. One of the far-right activists criticizing the protestors called them “wulgarne kurewki” (“vulgar little bitches”). Besides, we’re just tired. We’re just so fucking tired of this government that no other words can express it. And they’re getting the respect they deserved for.

We’re tired, we’re scared, we’re angry, we’re pissed off. I just feel like crying when I think that there are such people, with no empathy for the others. That they have partners, wives, daughters, granddaughters… and I don’t understand how they can look them in the eyes.

[bigboysdrinkmilk]

The hypocrisy of the right on abortion is astounding. But we’ve seen it before, right-wing wives and right-wing mistresses pressured into abortion facilities or right-wing politicians sneaking themselves into one. And now Trump, supported by the pro-life movement, is taking therapies derived from fetal stem cells.

The justifications are always the same:

This time is different than when other people want it.

God hates abortion but he’s telling me to do this.

I have a pro-life voting record so even though I’ve pressured my 24 year-old mistress into having an abortion, it’s okay this time.

Let’s not mince words: How and when someone decides to give birth is deeply personal. Even people actively trying to have children may experience a thousand heart-wrenching complications. Giving birth isn’t easy. And it isn’t cheap. And even if you do everything right, something may go wrong that endangers the life of the pregnant person or the fetus.

Fetuses are alive. And anti-abortion measures threaten to imprison people who have miscarriages (and up to 15% of people who know they are pregnant will have a miscarriage) because of something that is entirely not their fault. These measures do this because they are confusing and equating the fetus’s alive-ness with a pregnant person’s, well, personhood.

If you truly believe abortion is wrong because you are “pro-life,” I encourage you to look at the issue you see and determine what the best approach is. Because supporting politicians like Trump who don’t actually care about this beyond finding an excuse to punish people with uteruses isn’t it.

Banning abortion is a purely “down the river” approach. At the bottom of the river you’re seeing abortion. And maybe it’s upsetting you. Maybe you want to punish the people getting it or benefiting from it. Maybe you want it to stop entirely. Maybe you see facilities like Planned Parenthood that perform abortions and want them to close to make it harder for people to get abortions.

But if you look up the river, you’ll see that the events floating your way had a myriad of causes. And there are real actual things you can do to reduce abortion rates upstream.

Support paid leave for both parents during and after a birth. Giving birth isn’t easy. But we can make it easier, helping families during one of their most important times.

Support universal healthcare. Giving birth isn’t cheap. But a person who is fully supported financially is not only more likely to have a child but also more likely to be able to care for them in the best ways.

Support reproductive health programs like Planned Parenthood. Despite what you might think, Planned Parenthood wants people to have healthy, happy babies, too! Just, at the right time. They provide services like birth control, condoms and dental dams, plan b, and so many more services for reproductive health to ensure that people are able to have children at the right time.

Support universal basic income. People who can afford to care for children are much more likely to keep a pregnancy and once they do, much more likely to be able to care for the child.

More and more policies could be listed here, but the common factor is treating abortion as what it really is—a last result that we can prevent by being compassionate instead of punitary. And they work better than restricting abortion, fundamentally and factually.

Colorado reduced its teen abortion rate by 42% by provided free or low-cost long-term contraception to teens and low-income women.

Hawaii reduced its abortion rate by up to 30% between 2010 and 2014 without restricting abortion. Instead, it introduced comprehensive sex education alongside many other tools the state could use.

Louisiana has seen a 12% increase in abortion rates since 2010, even as the number of abortions around the country decreased. Louisiana also has the fourth highest infant mortality rate in the country (up since 2012), and the sixth highest rate of teen pregnancy. Louisiana has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, but few “upstream” solutions.

To my pro-life friends: You and I may disagree on the morality of abortion. That’s okay. Because we can and should agree on the solution for abortion. It is empowering people in their every day lives with upstream solutions that help all of us.

We can come together for that tomorrow. It’s time to stop voting in politicians that scare-monger by attacking things like Roe v Wade and start voting in politicians that are truly pro-life. Pro-life for starving children in our schools who just need a healthy lunch. Pro-life for black people assaulted on the streets by white supremacists. Pro-life from people whose lives may be saved from stem cell research. Pro-life for corona patients. Pro-life for LGBT people. Pro-life for poor people, disabled people, at-risk people. Pro-life for the pregnant woman who isn’t sure she can afford a new child and might not have the insurance to ensure her own medical safety during a pregnancy. Pro-life for all of us. Not just fetuses.

Accomplishing that means, for now, voting blue down the ballot. I hope you will join me this November in supporting Biden, Harris, and countless Democratic candidates down the ballot to show America what “pro-life” can really mean.

[dancesdescygnes]

Cute Stuff[TM] about Louis and Antoinette from my own readings

1. 24 July 1771, Ambassador Mercy writes to Marie Antoinette's mother, the Empress Maria Theresa

Mme la Dauphine (Marie Antoinette) reproached M. le Dauphin (Louis Auguste) because of his immoderate taste for the hunt, which was destroying his health, and because of the rough and neglected look that exercise was giving him. M. le Dauphin thought to shorten the scolding by retiring to his apartment, but Mme la Dauphine followed him there and went on discussing in strong terms the drawbacks of his way of life. That language so upset M. le Dauphin that he started to cry. Mme la Dauphine also started to shed tears and the reconciliation was very tender. Mme l’Archiduchesse did not forget that the dispute had begun at Mme la comtesse de Provence’s (sister-in-law); she brought M. le Dauphin back there. M. and Mme de Provence asked whether they were reconciled; M. le Dauphin answered with a very good grace that lovers’ quarrels never last long.

2. The sight of his wife dancing even elicited a wistful comment from the Dauphin who was so clumsy himself. When a court lady praised Marie Antoinette, Louis Auguste replied: “She has so much grace that she does everything perfectly.

- The Journey by Antonia Fraser

3. Louis that summer [July 1773] fell in love with Antoinette; he kissed her, even in public, every evening he arranged for plays to be performed for her privately in his apartment … They walked about arm in arm, and this unusual practice became the fashion[.]

- Louis and Antoinette by Vincent Cronin

4. Fun fact: They've been trying to consummate their marriage as early as 1773 (3 years into their marriage). But it was found later on by Antoinette's brother (after his talk with Louis) that they've been doing it wrong the entire time. On a letter, Antoinette's brother confided that they achieved penetration but after that, Louis stays completely stationary (while inside) and there is no ejaculation. According to The Journey, MA mentions it on a letter to her mother and was narrated in the biography titled The Journey:

During the summer of 1773, the wise counsels of Dr. Lassonne took their effect. Louis Auguste managed to achieve some kind of physical union with Marie Antoinette. Naturally the momentous news was conveyed as soon as possible to Maria Teresa: “I think I can confide to you, my dear Mama, and only to you,” wrote Marie Antoinette on 17 July, “that my affairs have taken a very good turn since we arrived here [Versailles] and that I consider my marriage to be consummated; even if not to the degree that I am pregnant.

- The Journey by Antonia Fraser

5. The real consummation, however, happened on 1777:

On 30 August, no longer an unhappy woman, an ecstatic Queen was able to write to her mother about her feelings of joy—“the most essential happiness of my entire life”—beginning eight days ago. This “proof” of the King’s love had now been repeated and “even more completely than the first time.”

- The Journey by Antonia Fraser

6. In April 1777, Emperor Joseph II paid a visit to the French Court to advice the young King and Queen. At the end of his stay, the heartbroken Marie Antoinette, felt as if her brother's departure "left a void I cannot fill". Fortunately, her husband Louis was present and offered her the most tender consolation. On a letter to her mother, she wrote:

At the time of this departure, when I was most desperate, the King showed me attentions and thoughtful tenderness that I can never forget and which would make me love him if I didn’t already do so.

7. Since this was the court of France, and for the first time there was no royal mistress in sight, sporadic efforts were made to put other women in the King’s way. In January 1778 even Marie Antoinette had braced herself for the King taking a mistress now that their marriage was fully consummated. She promised her brother Joseph in a letter that if there were liaisons, she would do everything to win the King back.

- The Journey by Antonia Fraser

8. "[When Marie Antoinette speaks] I have a thousand times seen [Louis XVI]’s eyes and face light up with a love and enthusiasm which even the most beloved of mistresses could hardly hope to inspire."

- the Baron de Besenval (commander of the Swiss Guards)

9. “I am convinced that if I had to choose a husband from the three brothers, I would still prefer the one heaven gave me: his character is steadfast and although he is awkward, he is as attentive and as kind as possible to me.”

- Marie-Antoinette to Maria Teresa, Dec. 15, 1775

10. During the spring of 1779, the Queen caught the measles and therefore had to be isolated to prevent the transmission of disease. According to a letter from Ambassador Mercy, the Queen, originally, "had demanded out of concern for the King, that he never come to see her". The King, naturally, obliged to this request; however, the companions of the Queen during her isolation stirred up a bit of intrigue by "[daring to] criticize the King’s obedience to the Queen’s wishes so that she became angry at her husband" - probably misleading her to believe that the King's refusal to visit her was a refutation of his devotion to her rather than a show of his respect for her wishes. This malicious scheme unfortunately succeed in convincing the Queen in her vulnerable state so that she became upset with her husband. Mercy says that he tried in vain to reason with the Queen, but it was not only until her tutor and advisor the Abbé de Vermond intervened that the Queen was finally brought "back to her senses". Mercy ends the story with a moving conclusion saying:

"[The Queen] wrote a few words to say that she had suffered much, but that what annoyed her the most was to be deprived for a few days more of the pleasure of kissing the King." The Queen in her own letter shares that she and the King have been "[writing] each other every day," adding that she "saw him yesterday from a balcony outside".

- Mercy to Maria Theresa, Apr. 15, 1779; Marie-Antoinette to Maria Theresa, Apr. 1779

Now about the sad stuff:

• Once, Louis left for Paris while the revolution is heating up in order to smooth things over.

The Queen restrained her tears, and shut herself up in her private rooms with her family. The silence of death reigned throughout the palace; they hardly dared hope that the King would return. The Queen had a robe prepared for her, and sent orders to her stables to have all her equipages ready. She wrote an address of a few lines for the Assembly, determining to go there with her family, the officers of her palace, and her servants. She got this address by heart; it began with these words: "Gentlemen, I come to place in your hands the wife and family of your sovereign; do not suffer those who have been united in heaven to be put asunder on earth."

- Memoirs of Madame Campan

• During the royal family's imprisontment in the Tuileries, an angry mob broke in once.

the Queen was asked if she had been “much afraid.” “No,” she replied. “But I suffered from being separated from Louis XVI at a moment when his life was in danger.”

- The Journey

• In the past, several royalists cooked up a plan in attempt for the escape of MA alone since she was the only one whose life was in danger from the angry Parisians at the time; however,

the Queen had refused to go, saying “avec un grand caractère” (with a great determination) that if the Parisians came to assassinate her, she would die at the feet of the King.

- The Journey

• During MA's imprisonment inside The Temple, she was allowed to keep a degree of liberty. She may visit the gardens whenever she liked and for when she wanted to get some excercise. However, after Louis' death,

"the widow could not eat and would not even take the air because the route to the gardens meant passing the King’s door."

- The Journey

[sweetbutteryspacejesus]

A class of History :)

Basically I’m tired of seeing comments from people who directly support Francisco Franco. It is not a post to mess with anyone, I will only tell historical data for people to make their own idea. 

The Spanish Civil War was a civil war in Spain fought from 1936 to 1939. (17 July 1936 – 1 April 1939)

Republicans loyal to the left-leaning Second Spanish Republic, in alliance with anarchists, of the communist and syndicalist variety, fought against a revolt by the Nationalists, an alliance of Falangists, monarchists, conservatives and Catholics, led by a military group among whom General Francisco Franco. 

Nazi Germany's actions included the formation of the multitasking Condor Legion, a unit composed of volunteers from the Luftwaffe and the German Army from July 1936 to March 1939.

German operations slowly expanded to include strike targets, most notably the bombing of Guernica which, on 26 April 1937, killed 200 to 300 civilians.  Germany also used the war to test new weapons, such as the Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 87 Stukas and Junkers Ju-52 transport Trimotors (used also as Bombers), which showed themselves to be effective.

According to historian Paul Preston, the minimum number of those executed is 130,000, and is likely to have been far higher, with other historians placing the figure at 200,000 dead.

This included the execution of school teachers, because the efforts of the Second Spanish Republic to promote laicism and displace the Church from schools were considered by the Nationalists as an attack on the Roman Catholic Church. 

About the Republicans;

“The Red Terror” Scholars have estimated that between 38,000 and 70,000 civilians were killed in Republican-held territories, with the most common estimate being around 50,000.

Now the consequences

 Spain was devastated in many areas, with completely destroyed towns. The Spanish economy took decades to recover.

After the War, Spanish policy leaned heavily towards Germany, Portugal and Italy, since they had been the greatest Nationalist supporters and aligned with Spain ideologicall

The White Terror  describes the political repression, including executions and rapes, which were carried out by the Nationalist faction during the Spanish Civil War  and during the first nine years of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.

The Francoist Spain They chased: Loyalists to the Second Spanish Republic , Liberals, socialists of different stripes, Protestants, atheists, intellectuals, homosexuals, Freemasons, and Basque, Catalan, and Galician nationalists.

This process led many to exile or death. About 400,000 people fled to France.  

About 5,000 Spaniards died in the Mauthausen concentration camp.

When Nazi Germany occupied France, Franco's politicians encouraged the Germans to detain and to deport thousands of Republican refugees to the concentration camps.  15,000 Spanish Republicans were deported to Dachau, Buchenwald (including the writer Jorge Semprún), Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg (among them the politician Francisco Largo Caballero),  Auschwitz, Flossenburg and Mauthausen (5,000 out of 7,200 Spanish prisoners at Mauthausen died there).  Other Spanish Republicans were detained by the Gestapo, handed over to Spain and executed, among them Julián Zugazagoitia, Juan Peiró, Francisco Cruz Salido and Lluis Companys (president of the Generalitat of Catalonia) and another 15,000 were forced to work building the Atlantic Wall. Moreover, 4,000 Spanish Republicans were deported by the Nazis and were forced to work building fortifications; only 59 survived.

The Spanish Church approved of the White Terror and cooperated with the rebels.

When Heinrich Himmler visited Spain in 1940, a year after Franco's victory, he claimed to have been "shocked" by the brutality of the Falangist repression. 

“trials going on every day at a speed which I would call almost summary... There are still a great number of shootings. In Madrid alone, between 200 and 250 a day, in Barcelona 150, in Seville 80"

While authors like Payne have cast doubts on the democratic leanings of the Republic 

"fascism was clearly on the other".

At the end of the Spanish Civil War the executions of the "enemies of the state" continued (some 50,000 people were killed),  including the extrajudicial (death squad) executions of members of the Spanish maquis (anti–Francoist guerrillas) and their supporters  Thousands of men and women were imprisoned after the civil war in Francoist concentration camps, approximately 367,000 to 500,000 prisoners were held in 50 camps or prisons.  

Thousands of university and school teachers lost their jobs (a quarter of all Spanish teachers).  Priority for employment was always given to Nationalist supporters, and it was necessary to have a "good behavior" certificate from local Falangist officials and parish priests. Furthermore, the Francoist State encouraged tens of thousands of Spaniards to denounce their Republican neighbours and friends. 

Republican women were also victims of the repression in postwar Spain. Thousands of women suffered public humiliation, sexual harassment and rape.

Furthermore, thousands of women were executed (for example the 13 roses) among them pregnant women. One judge said:

 "We cannot wait seven months to execute a woman".

Furthermore,  a woman needed her husband's permission to take a job or open a bank account. 

The divorce and marriage legislation of the Republic was retroactively reversed, with the divorces retroactively unmade and the children of civil marriages made illegitimate.

Homosexuals were first sent to concentration camps. Then the 1954 reform of the 1933 "Ley de vagos y maleantes" ("Vagrancy Act") declared homosexuality illegal. Around 5,000 homosexuals were arrested during Francoism due to their sexual orientation. Like the Poet Federico García Lorca.

A lot of people were sent to fight in the Nazi side. Mostly young mans of 18 or 14 years old. 

So yes, keep supporting this stuff.

[sheikah]

The sad reality is that no other character gets the amount of hate Dany does, no other character has the same volume of horrible toxic theories and meta written hoping for and trying to prove a terrible ending for them, and no other protagonist has so many people actively rooting against them. There is hate in this fandom against many characters but nothing touches the anti Dany crowd. Just in the past six months alone I’ve seen actual arguments saying:

Jon is only pretending to be in love with Dany and will betray her to take everything away from her and give it to the North/Sansa

Jon truly believed Dany couldn’t get pregnant so when he finds out she is pregnant, he will dose her with moon tea in secret or convince her to abort the baby

After finding out about Jon’s parentage and competing claim to the Iron Throne, Dany will go “dark” and turn on all of her allies because she is so power-hungry, and will kill Northerners despite the onset of the Long Night

If Dany doesn’t go dark she will still die either in battle or childbirth. Jon and Sansa can raise her baby

If Jon does love Dany, it’s only because he needs someone to kill to fulfill the Azor Ahai prophecy. She is his Nissa Nissa and Jon will stab her in the heart to forge Lightbringer 2.0. 

Dany and Jon are both Targaryen, so despite hundreds of years of Targaryen lineage on the books (and thousands for the Valyrians as a whole) Jon and Dany’s child will be a disgusting abomination that is the result of inbreeding

A coin is flipped when a Targaryen is born, madness or greatness, and Jon is the greatness and Dany is the madness

Jon is “dead,” Dany is a necrophiliac for allowing him to come to her room and have sex with her

Jon looks ugly, fat, and old this year and that has been done on purpose to show that being around Dany makes him miserable because she’s so awful. She’s so evil and poisonous that she “ages” him. Poor Jon

Dany’s face is too serious in the promo material, indicating that she is plotting like a villain

Dany smiles in the promo material and it’s a really inappropriate time to be smiling. She’s so cocky and arrogant and smug. She needs to die already

Dany is a murderer and a monster, just like her dragons. Sansa and Arya will see right through this and will hate her from the start. They will never welcome her into their home, and they shouldn’t. She’s only there to take it from them

Randyll and Dickon Tarly, Kraznys Mo Makloz, and Mirri Maz Duur were problematic but innocent people who Dany should have spared. She is a ruthless killer

Dany allowing Drogo to kill Viserys was wrong. He was her brother, and his explicit death threats, physical, sexual, and psychological abuse of Dany do not excuse her standing by while he died

Dany “used to be a sweet kid” when she was Drogo’s property and too frightened to stand up for herself, even when she was being raped. She’s not a sweet kid now

Dany’s speech where she admits to being assaulted and imprisoned was such a cry for attention. You don’t see Sansa talking about her trauma like that

The dragons are horrifying weapons of mass destruction. Only literal psychopaths like Dany and Arya can view them with awe. Look at how rightly afraid the smallfolk are!

Dany is a villain for ruining the economy in the Slave Cities by freeing the slaves

Dany is literally a slaver and the big shocking betrayal won’t be Tyrion but will actually be Missandei, the true mastermind of the series, and Dany’s unwilling slave who has been biding her time waiting to overthrow her master

Dany is a rapist because Irri is her paramour in ASOS. Dany wanted to have sex with Jon on the boat after the wight hunt, and he was too injured to consent, so this would also have been rape

All of this is obviously nonsense but I compiled it for a reason. There are so many characters who are so much more obviously problematic than Dany who get virtually free passes in the fandom by virtue of their being either men, or women who are, conveniently, not impeding anyone’s shipping preferences. But the abuse that the fandom heaps on Dany and people who like her has gone on virtually unchecked for the past couple years, and I think the thing that bothers me more than anything else is that people outside of Dany stans for the most part ignore or excuse it. I’m kind of tired of people accusing us of being “victims” for speaking out about having to see arguments like the above all the time. I’m kind of tired of people pretending that we are the ones who have brought the fandom to the point of wank and negativity it’s at now. We absolutely participate in wank, but defending against or pointing out hate is not the same thing as creating it. With a few radical exceptions, we’re not the ones doing this. 

And it’s gotten bad enough that our fandom existence is always on the defensive. I was just talking to a friend about how much we were dreading the trailer. That’s ... not normal. We shouldn’t have to dread new content from our favorite show just because we know that people are going to shit on it (and by extension, us for liking it) immediately and constantly. 

As much as I’m excited for the show to finally come back, I’m more excited for all of these poisonous people to finally stop and leave us alone to love Dany in peace. Because I feel and see the consequences of the culture on this website (and tbh twitter too) every day, and it’s so, so ugly. 

[thecomicsnexus]

THE SANDMAN #10-16 NOVEMBER 1989 - JUNE 1990 BY NEIL GAIMAN, MIKE DRINGENBERG, MALCOLM JONES III, CHRIS BACHALO, MICHAEL ZULLI, STEVE PARKHOUSE AND ROBBIE BUSCH

SYNOPSIS (FROM DC DATABASE)

In a private Threshold in the Dreaming, Desire plots against its sibling, Dream. Desire summons its twin sister Despair to a private gallery. It tells Despair about the coming of a dream vortex in the form of a young woman. The two decide to wait to see how things play out before intervening.

Meanwhile in the real world, Miranda Walker and her daughter Rose take a jet from the United States to England. At the airport, a solicitor ushers them into a limousine and drives them to the home of an apparently rich and eccentric woman, who sent them the cryptic invitation to come see her. On the way, Rose falls asleep in the back of the vehicle and has a dream.

In her dream, she sees Lucien visiting the House of Secrets, taking a census of all of the House's occupants. He is in the process of taking a census of all the inhabitants of the Dreaming for the Lord of Dreams. When complete, he reports his findings to Dream, noting that four of the major arcana are still missing from the Dreaming: Brute and Glob, the Corinthian and Fiddler's Green. Lucien adds that there have been rumours of a dream vortex floating about, and Dream reveals that he already knows that it is a girl, and points to Rose, sitting in the corner of his castle. As they look at her, she wakes up.

The dream ends as the limousine pulls up to a home for the elderly. They are greeted there by the doddering Unity Kincaid, who reveals that while she was in a coma for several decades, she gave birth to a child, and that child was Miranda Walker. She is her true birth mother. Miranda is incredulous at first, but before long, Unity convinces her of the truth. Having stepped out of the room, Rose wanders the house and has an encounter with the Hecatae. They each speak in riddles that confuse Rose, but Mordred makes a point of warning her about the Corinthian and the coming of Dream. Rose tries to press them for more information but the strange sisters suddenly disappear.

Rose returns to Unity's room, where her mother is in tears of joy as she accepts the truth about her own parentage. In the room is an intricately carved doll's house on a nightstand, one of the only keepsakes that Unity managed to maintain during her coma. A light in one of the doll house's upper windows flickers on, and Dream peers outward and smiles at the three women. None of them is aware that he is watching them. As a gift, Unity offers a ring to Rose - the same ring that Rose dreamed about. She begins to fear that her dreams are coming true.

In Amarillo, Texas, the Corinthian, a sadistic nightmare entity, captures a boy named Davy. He binds and gags him and tosses him into a bathtub at the Love Inn Motel. The Corinthian removes his sunglasses, unsheathes a large knife and tells Davy "It's playtime".

On the advice of her new-found grandmother Unity Kincaid, Rose Walker moves into an apartment in Florida with a number of eccentric housemates. In addition to Hal - her cross-dressing landlord, Barbie and Ken - a yuppie couple, Zelda and Chantal - a pair of collectors of dead spiders, and Gilbert - a so far unseen man of British descent, Rose has been frequently visited by a raven. In a dream, Rose's long-lost brother Jed dreams of being taken flying by Hector Hall and his wife Lyta. However, the pleasant air of the dream is fouled by the appearance of Brute and Glob, and Jed falls to the ground. The boy wakes in a dark boiler room and feels his way along the wall, urinating into a corner, and then returning to sleep. 

Rose writes back to her mother and grandmother, updating them on her progress in finding her brother. She has discovered that her father died, forcing Jed to live with their grandfather, Ezra Paulsen; a lighthouse keeper. Four years ago, Ezra Paulsen drowned, and she has not yet found out what happened to Jed as a result. 

In the Dreaming, Dream calls his raven, Matthew to his side. Matthew has been spying on Rose for him, with the knowledge that as a vortex, she will soon attract the four errant members of the major arcana that have gone missing. Matthew reports that Rose is seeking her younger brother, and Dream takes an interest. He tasks Matthew with finding a picture of the boy so that the Lord of Dreams can find him.

Later, Rose attends one of Hal's drag revues, and thinking it would be safe, she uses the shortcut through the alley back to her apartment. Unfortunately, at midnight, it is not so safe, and a group of thugs accost her with intent to rob and then rape her. Fortunately, an imposing figure appears and pulls out a sword, scaring the thugs off. It turns out that this man is Gilbert. Congenially, the portly Brit offers to walk Rose home.

One day, Rose convinces Hal to teach her some of the dance moves from his act, but she becomes distracted when she catches the raven stealing her photo of her younger brother. Afterwards, Gilbert interrupts to inform them that the private investigators that Rose called have found her brother. She rushes out to pick up the phone as Matthew returns to Dream with the photo. In Alabama, the Corinthian, having recently murdered two more people, makes a call to a person called Nimrod, hoping to arrange a meeting in Georgia between like-minded individuals - killers. 

Meanwhile, the private investigators have determined that Jed is living somewhere in Georgia, and Rose plans to go off in search of him. Gilbert insists on accompanying her, noting that perhaps she is not prepared for the sort of situations she'll be in. Situations like the other night when he had to save her life. Reluctantly she agrees. On the road, she explains that Jed is apparently living with her second cousin Clarice on a farm. They're claiming nearly $800 per month from the state for him, so she hopes they're using it to take good care of him. Of course, Jed is actually chained to a pipe in a dark basement, trapped in a nightmare. 

Dream locates the boy, and realizes that Brute and Glob have actually managed to sneak into Jed's mind to hide there. They have severed him from the Dreaming, breaking the laws of the Lord of Dreams. Dawning his helm, he prepares to resolve the situation.

Six months pregnant, Lyta Hall wakes up in the Dream Dome. Her husband Hector has been absorbed in his work, cooperating with Glob and Brute as the new Sandman. Hector becomes aware of an entity approaching. He believes that it is a nightmare, and that he must fight it. Lyta interrupts, and wonders aloud why she hasn't given birth yet, given that she was pregnant two years ago when they first came to the Dream Dome, and it has not changed since. Meanwhile, Jed Paulsen is dragged from the cellar in which his second cousins Clarice and Barnaby keep him locked day and night. They warn that an inspector from the welfare office is coming to be sure that they money they get to support him is going to the right place, and threaten him against revealing that they are mistreating him.

While Hector believes that the coming entity is a nightmare, it is actually Dream - the Lord of Dreams. Brute and Glob are well aware of this, and they fully expect Hector to lose his battle against their former master, but they hope it will buy them time to escape. 

After their rental car breaks down, Rose Walker and her companion Gilbert walk back to a hotel, which is unfortunately hosting a cereal convention, which has booked it up. They talk their way into getting a room for the night despite the lack of vacancies.

As Hector goes out to face Dream, Jed begins to realize that something is going on inside his head, and Lyta begins to notice that the Dream Dome is falling apart. Dream is amused by Hector's efforts, knowing that the man is already dead. Hector's delusion amuses Dream further, but eventually he brings the dream to an end.

Bringing everyone out of the dream, Dream, Lyta, Hector, Glob, and Brute find themselves in the cellar in which Jed has been trapped. Dream demands an explanation of the two nightmares. They had hoped to build a new Dream King of their own making in their master's prolonged imprisonment. Annoyed, Dream cleans up their mess for them and condemns them to the darkness for thousands of years.

Turning to Hector, Dream unceremoniously commands the dead man to go to the land of the dead, and Hector is ripped away from his wife. Lyta is angered, refusing to accept that her husband has been dead these last two years. Dream makes it clearer to her, but before leaving, he warns that the baby she carries belongs to him, and that he will return for it. Seething, she promises that he will only get the child over her dead body.

Meanwhile, Jed escapes to the road, and is picked up by a car. The driver turns out to be the nightmare known as the Corinthian.

In the year 1389, Dream and his elder sister Death enter a local pub with the hope of getting the former to relate more to humans in their waking lives. In this pub is a man named Robert "Hob" Gadling, who believes that men only die because it's what they expect that they are meant to do. He feels that there is so much more life to lead than just a few decades' worth. Staunchly, he announces that he has no intention of ever dying, and that it is a mug's game. Intrigued, Dream and Death decide to allow Hob to remain alive until the day that he truly desires it. Dream approaches Hob's table, and offers that if cheating death is what he wants, the two of them will meet again in the same place in one hundred years' time. Though his companions think it a joke, Hob takes the offer seriously, and promises to be there.

One hundred years later, Hob is surprised that Dream returns, though no less surprised than he is to still be alive. Hob marvels at how much things have changed in just 100 years, with the invention of the chimney and the handkerchief revolutionizing to a small extent the way that people live. The mortal has been working as a soldier, and still has no intention of dying. With that said, Dream responds that they will meet again in another hundred years. The next century, Hob seems to be doing well for himself. His business savvy has earned him a knighthood. After 200 years, Hob has finally taken a wife and fathered a son, and he is excited by the richness of the times. Dream is distracted when he overhears a conversation between a young William Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe discussing the former's prospects as a playwright. Will considers Kit's play Doctor Faustus a work of genius, and claims that like the titular character, he would give up his mortal soul to be able to write plays that live on in memory forever. Intrigued, Dream offers Shakespeare a deal. Hob, meanwhile still intends to go on another century.

By 1689, Hob has become a drunkard, and the pub won't allow him to enter. Fortunately, Dream steps in on his behalf. Hob's wife died during childbirth, and his son died twenty years later in a bar fight. Later, he pushed his luck by staying in the same town for too long, and they tried to burn him as a witch. Of course, he survived, but now he is always hungry, with his fortunes lost. He admits that he has hated every second of the last 80 years. Dream wonders, then, if he has finally decided to die. Pausing for a moment, Hob smiles and states that he will go on.

100 years later, Hob has taken up slave-trading, and got back onto his feet. Despite having met several times now, Hobs admits that he knows very little about his visitor, and wonders who he really is. They are interrupted by a woman, Johanna Constantine, who states that she could ask them both the same question. She introduces herself as two thugs put knives to the pair's throats. For years, there have been rumours that the Wandering Jew and the Devil have been meeting at this pub once every hundred years. She planned for two years for the day she would confront them. Both Dream and Hob deny being either of those beings, and Johanna is perplexed. She demands to know what nature of beings they are, but Dream uses some of his sand to incapacitate her, filling her mind with dreams of those whom she wronged in the past. Before he and Hob part ways, Dream recommends that his companion give up the slave trade.

On a dark knight in 1889, Dream makes for the tavern, but is interrupted by the scream of a prostitute who fears that he may be Jack the Ripper. He promises that he is not, and rebuffs her attempts to make him a client before entering the tavern. Upon reuniting with Hob, Dream reveals that he saw Johanna Constantine again, and recruited her to perform a special task for him. Hob comments that he has noticed others who do not die. He has met Jason Blood on more than one occasion, and Mad Hettie has been on the streets for more than a century. Dream admits that Death is capricious.

Hob leans in and suggests that there is more to their meetings every one hundred years than Dream merely being interested to see what happens to humans who do not die. He realizes that he hasn't grown significantly wiser in his five hundred years, and he doubts that he will ever seek death. He believes that Dream knew all of that from the start, and must be there for something else: friendship. Hob believes that Dream has come to him every century because he is lonely. Indignant, Dream storms off, claiming that it is beneath him to take the company of a mortal for loneliness. Hob calls after him that if they meet again in one hundred years, it will be because they are friends.

In the year 1989, Hob sits in the bar smoking a cigarette while young people dance to the music and discuss issues like the AIDS epidemic. He looks up to see Dream there, and admits that he wasn't sure that he would come. Dream smiles, and says that it is impolite to keep one's friends waiting.

At the hotel in which Rose Walker and her companion Gilbert are staying, a convention has been booked. While in name, it is a "Cereal" convention, it is in fact a convention for serial murderers - collectors. Each of the people attending murders and then collects some part of their victims, physically or spiritually. The man called Nimrod is anxious to get started, but he hopes for a big name to do a keynote speech. He is aware that an idol of his, The Corinthian is meant to be coming, but he has not yet arrived. Nimrod meets with the manager of the hotel to be sure that the place is empty of outside guests, but the manager admits that there are still two guests there who have been ordered to stay there by the police.

Rose had called her second cousins in advance, to let them know that she'd be coming to pick up her younger brother Jed. Unfortunately, due to events she was unaware of, the police answered instead, and they told she and Gilbert to remain at the hotel for the time being.

The serial killers mingle with one another and share each other's stories. One of them claims to be the Bogeyman, a killer who remembers the eyes of each person he has killed. He makes some small talk with another killer called the Doctor, who flays his victims and makes leather ties from the skin. There are movies planned and panels occurring all weekend. Finally, the Corinthian arrives, and he is met with great respect from the others when Nimrod introduces him.

Later, the Corinthian meets the Doctor outside an elevator, and informs him that the man claiming to be the Bogeyman is a fraud, and that the real Bogeyman died in Louisiana some years back. The elevator opens, and Gilbert and Rose are already inside. Gilbert seems to recognize the Corinthian, but despite his being startled, he says nothing. Outside, he writes a name on a piece of paper and tells Rose to call it out if something should go wrong.

The Corinthian drags the Bogeyman up to his room, and accuses him of being a fraud. The Corinthian, the Doctor, and Nimrod have already discovered that this man is actually Philip Sitz, the editor of Chaste magazine, who is not one of them. Philip pretends to understand them, but Nimrod knocks him unconscious, and they drag him out to the Corinthian's car. They drive for a while, and hang him from a tree. When he wakes up, they announce that each of them is going to take turns collecting their specialties from him.

While the killers are having a disco party, Rose heads down and hopes to sneak in for some fun. A child molester and killer named Fun Land stops her at the door, stating that it is for conventioneers only. Rose apologizes and returns to her room, but Fun Land has already targeted her, noting that she looks much younger than she is.

The next morning, Rose tries to find Gilbert in his room, but all that she can see is a note. She goes downstairs, and catches Fun Land's eye again. When she returns to her room again, he follows her, and knocks on the door, pretending to be room service. When she opens the door, he thrusts it open, gripping her by the neck and trying to undress her. Desperately, she grabs the note with the name on it and says the name "Morpheus."

Instantly, Dream appears. He forces Fun Land to let Rose go, and makes him dream. He tells Rose to leave, and she struggles to stand, rushing out to the parking lot while Fun Land dreams of being forgiven by all the children he hurt. The Corinthian makes his keynote speech, but he becomes distracted when he notices Dream listening in the audience. Dream stands and disdains his creation for having become so petty as to leave the Dreaming and act on a physical level. He has wrought nothing of what Dream expected, merely given humans something to be afraid of. Rather than send the Corinthian back to the Dreaming, he uncreates him, with plans to do better later. Turning on the audience, Dream announces that he is going to remove the other killers' illusions that they are the maltreated heroes of their own stories. From now on, they will always know what they are, what they are doing, and how little any of that really means.

Out in the parking lot, Rose meets Gilbert who has collected Jed from the trunk of the Corinthian's car. He is unconscious, and needs to be taken to a hospital. Gilbert realizes that Rose called Dream, and knows that there will be consequences. 

Afterwards, each of the killers leaves the convention with a certain knowledge that there is something unholy inside themselves.

After spending days watching over her younger brother in the hospital, Rose Walker returns to her shared house in Florida. Her housemates welcome her back, but her mental and physical exhaustion are obvious, and they send her to bed as each of them retires as well.

That night, Ken dreams of money, sex and power while his girlfriend Barbie dreams of living in a fantastical world with an animal companion; a world that is better than her real life could ever be. Chantal dreams circular dreams of being in love with words and sentences. Zelda dreams of being a child again, and knows that her romantic relationship with Chantal would be frowned upon by her family. She has not yet dealt with her childhood emotions. Hal dreams of his quest for love as a gay man. He hopes to meet the standards set by his idols, the glamorous Hollywood actresses of the golden age. Rose on the other hand is unable to dream. She is too worried about her newly found grandmother, Unity Kincaid and her long lost brother Jed. 

Rose can't help but wonder what happened to her friend Gilbert. As it happens, Gilbert is in the hospital, watching over Jed as he sleeps. 

In the Dreaming, Dream and Matthew the Raven discuss the fact that Rose is a 'vortex'. Though Matthew asks what it means to have a vortex in the Dreaming, Dream brushes it off, sending Matthew to Jed's side at the hospital, and promising to deal with the vortex as he always has in the past.

Back in Florida, each of the housemates' dreams intensifies. Rose, meanwhile finally begins her dream - but it is unusual. The dream is vivid, and she has a strong feeling of lucidity. Extending her perceptions, she begins to sense the dreams of the other housemates, and comes to understand that what separates each person's dream is a very fragile wall. She gives those walls a nudge. The housemates find themselves sharing a dream experience in the Dreaming, steps away from the growing vortex. In the centre of the vortex lies Rose. Unaware of the repercussions, Rose reaches out, and begins trying to bring down the walls between dreams of everyone else in the city. Eventually Dream makes a stand, and draws Rose's attention to him. He warns her that her activities must end, as they have caused great damage to the Dreaming, though not so much that he cannot repair it.

Each of the housemates wakes in the night. Ken wakes aroused, and turning to Barbie, he finds her crying. She doesn't explain why, and he says something hurtful in response. Chantal and Zelda embrace as sisters for the rest of the night. Hal wakes with a feeling of dread inside, and decides to check on Rose. When he checks her room, he finds it empty. 

In England, Unity Kincaid regains consciousness long enough to suggest to her daughter Miranda that the old doll house she maintained from her younger days be given to Rose. With her mother and son potentially dying, Miranda hopes that at least Rose is doing alright.

Dream takes Rose out into a deserted region of the Dreaming, landing atop a Mesa. He states that something is beginning. Meanwhile, Matthew makes his way to the hospital, and is surprised to find Gilbert there. Gilbert is somewhat unhappy to see the Raven, knowing that he must soon return to the Dreaming and give up his life as a human. Gilbert is surprised to discover that Rose is a vortex, and realizes that the only way to stop her from destroying the Dreaming is to have her physical presence on the earth destroyed itself. The only time Dream is empowered to take a human life is when there is a vortex in the Dreaming. Resigned, Gilbert allows Matthew to perch on his arm, and they both return to the Dream world.

Out in a deserted section of the Dreaming, Dream reveals to Rose Walker that she is what is known as a "Vortex of Dream", and in order to protect the Dreaming, he must kill her. Rose hopes that it is a dream, that she will wake up, and none of this will have happened, but eventually it becomes clear to her that it is a dream from which she will never wake.

Meanwhile, Gilbert and Matthew the Raven return to the Dreaming, and rush to their master's location. Gilbert reveals that he was once a dream of a place known as Fiddler's Green, and he escaped 50 years ago to become a human in the real world. Now that he has returned, he hopes that he can find some way to prevent Dream from killing Rose, though he doubts he will succeed.

Dream explains to Rose that once in each era, there is a vortex - a mortal who briefly becomes the centre of the Dreaming. By it's nature, the vortex destroys the barriers between each dream until every dreamer is caught in one massive dream. When each dreamer dreams the same dreamer, they all become one, and the vortex begins to collapse on itself until it is gone, and the Dreaming is left in an irreparable state.

Dream admits that this has happened to completion once before, and it is his duty to prevent it from happening again. In the past, a vortex collapsed and it destroyed an entire world in another universe. He failed in his duty then, and he will not again.

While Dream is lord of the Dreaming, he is not omnipotent. He cannot simply make vortexes go away. They must be killed. He promises, though, that she could stay in the Dreaming, as Matthew has. Rose, however, does not want to die.

Elsewhere, Unity Kincaid bids goodbye to her daughter Miranda before falling asleep for the last time.

Finally, Gilbert and Matthew arrive, and Rose is very happy to see them. Gilbert offers his own life in exchange for Rose's, knowing that he will not go unpunished for escaping the Dreaming during Dream's imprisonment. Dream, however, states that it cannot be so. He chooses not to punish Fiddler's Green, but states that he must return to his former position. Sadly, Rose embraces her friend, and says goodbye. As he disappears, Gilbert invites Rose to stay within his green glades, should she choose to remain in the Dreaming. Moments later, they are surrounded by the lush greenery of Fiddler's Green.

Dream prepares to take Rose's life, apologizing for his responsibility. Firmly, she shouts that he should just get on with it. Before he can, though, Unity Kincaid appears, and announces that Rose will not die - she will. Unity explains that had Dream not been imprisoned away from the Dreaming for years, she would have become the next vortex, and not Rose. Instead, she was sent into a coma. Unity turns to Rose and asks for her to reach inside of herself and give her whatever it is that makes her the vortex; her heart. 

Cautiously, Rose reaches within her own chest, and pulls out a crystal in the shape of a heart. Unity takes it in her hands, and announces that now, she is the vortex. Suddenly, the crystal radiates a bright light, and Unity collapses in pain. In her bedroom, Unity suddenly bolts upright, startling her daughter Miranda. Finally, she lays back in the bed, and dies.

Dream reaches down and helps Unity up, revealing that the vortex is gone, and Rose will not have to die. Before sending her back to the real world, Dream promises that he will bring her younger brother Jed back from the shores of dreaming as a gift.

Six months later, Hal sends Rose a letter announcing that he is selling the house where she stayed in Florida, and is moving out west. Ken and Barbie have split up. Chantal and Zelda are buying the house from Hal.

Rose and Jed are living in a big house that their mother Miranda bought with money from Unity's estate. Rose has been depressed, though. She doesn't leave her room much except when her family is asleep. One night, Rose cuts and dyes her hair, and decides to return to her family. She knows that if her dream about her grandmother's death is true, then the world is not what anyone thinks it is. 

In the Dreaming, Dream visits his sibling Desire. He believes that Desire is complicit in the events which caused Unity Kincaid to become comatose rather than become the vortex, and allowing it to pass on to Rose instead. Dream has deduced that the one who fathered Miranda Walker - the man who raped Unity Kincaid while she was comatose - was Desire itself.

Angrily, Dream explains that the Endless are not the masters of men, but their servants. He warns that if Desire crosses him again, he will forget that they are siblings, and bring down the power of all of the other siblings against it. After Dream leaves, Desire simply forgets the warning, being driven only by desire, after all.

REVIEW

This is a very emotional story with a very different feel in some of its chapters. Disturbing at times, trippy at others, it is always enjoyable. It is clear that Gaiman doesn’t like writing the “same old archetypes”.

From gender-fluid characters, to Endless that change their mind depending on who they talk to, these characters feel real, which is interesting as they are very far out concepts.

Story itself is more than enough to enjoy this comic, but the art does an amazing job of complementing it. The use of colors and different techniques make this story more special.

To me, there are three moments in this long story worth mentioning: The long term friendship between Morpheus and Robert, the moment Morpheus puts an end to the “cereal (killers) convention” and of course, the moment Unity exchanges her life for Rose’s.

The whole “cereal convention” part of this story is creepy as (forgive my kiwi term, it’s not an incomplete sentence over here).

I give the story a score of 10.

[kaibagirl007]

Come Undone 4/6

( the fourth part of a mini side-fic series to accompany my RP with @dragontamer05 )

During the couple of weeks since agreeing to their truce, Seto’s days had been spent on his own between worlds whilst he continued to monitor his descendant’s irrational and fluctuating mood via their spiritual link. It wasn’t ideal, but after having realised that his constant presence and persistence only made Kaiba more reluctant,- and disposition and health worse,- he had hoped that the timeout might help the other reclaim some stability and develop a more optimistic frame of mind that would work for them both.

Nothing was altered though, but a small success came when a positive mood change was sensed with no trace of narcotics in use. Was this it? Had his descendant finally heeded some of the advice so many had offered which had been rejected until now? Something had certainly lifted the other’s spirit and he was curious to find out what…

The screeching and screaming sound of what Seto had once been told was ‘music’, filled the cockpit of the dragon jet as his ghostly form materialised in the seat behind the pilot. He peered out at the view beyond the cockpit and groaned as the aircraft looped, causing him to feel queasy. ‘Be thankful I do not possess a physical form’

“You’re not a fan of flying I see.” Kaiba quipped back in amusement as he turned down the sound of the symphonic metal band he’d been listening to. He kept calm as he refused to let the other’s appearance ruin his last remaining pleasure and the good mood flying in his jet gave him. Besides, he was,- rather surprisingly,- starting to miss human interaction these past few days and secretly welcomed the company.

‘If man were meant to fly, Ra would have bestowed us all with wings.’ Seto responded as he timidly glanced down at the earth below them. ‘How can anyone possibly find this enjoyable?’

“Heh, I thought you’d be used to looking down on the world from the afterlife.”

‘Sometimes your ignorance is astounding.’

“Oh, I’m the ignorant one?” Kaiba scoffed. What the hell had he said to offend this time? “That’s rich coming from someone obstinate gaijin who expects his outdated gods, rituals and beliefs to still be relevant thousands of years later, and on a world-wide scale!”

Both exchanged annoyed looks towards each other via a small angled mirror that allowed the pilot to see his passenger behind him.

“I never asked for you to be here, so leave if you so greatly disapprove… But if you choose to remain, don’t preach to me about the past. All that destiny bullshit you’ve been spewing is nothing but just that; bullshit.”

‘Unfortunately for you, it is all true.’ Seto kept his cool as he spoke, though he was gravely disappointed with the attitude that had failed to alter at all in his absence. Maybe if he tackled things from a different angle he’d have a better response? ‘Anyway, I am beginning to doubt if you are even the slightest bit deserving of Kisara.’

“Reverse psychology isn’t going to work on me.” Kaiba smirked as he flew his jet higher. Had the other just tried to play on his ego and expected him to argue his self-worth? Someone really hadn’t been paying attention over these last six months or so. He wasn’t worthy, not after what he’d done.

Silence filled the cockpit as the current track playing came to an end and neither of them spoke during that void. For a moment, Kaiba considered turning his music off altogether before changing his mind as the next track started. He wasn’t listening to it though as his mind focused elsewhere. “Why me? What is it that makes you so strongly believe I’m ‘destined’ to be with Kisara?”

The pharoah’s bait had been taken as his descendant now willingly sought information. ‘That would be my doing.’ Armed with the knowledge that the other had witnessed certain events of ancient Egypt due to the powers of the Millennium Items, Seto’s eyes stared out from the small mirror as he began his explanation. ‘During the days that followed Kisara’s death, I allowed my heart to overrule my head and sought the gods help to free both her Ba and Ka from the stone tablet she had been imprisoned in. It was a decision that divided my council, but as the newly appointed pharaoh, my judgement was final. And so, with Mana’s help, she and I conducted a ritual that made it possible for direct contact with the gods where I attempted to bargain with them many times, each to no avail..’

As Seto paused for a brief moment, Kaiba’s quick glance at the mirror saw eyes glazed in the memories that were now being recalled. Eyes that were far older,- and presumably wiser?,- than any he’d ever seen. There was also a sense of sorrow that seemed to run far deeper than that felt for a woman whom the other had barely known.

‘Lucky for me, my persistence had not gone unnoticed and drew Osiris’ attention. It was him who came to me and made the proposal I would accept.’

“And what proposal would that be?”

‘I was told Kisara would one day be reborn many years from then.’ Seto felt pleased that some kind of progress was being made by the other finally hearing him out. ‘That she and my descendant would meet, perform a ‘union of souls’, and her Ba free to move on into the afterlife once their time together was over.’

Despite what had been said, Kaiba still remained sceptical. Was he seriously supposed to believe that him wedding Kisara was the solution to everything? “If that’s one part of her soul, then what will happen to the other?”

‘Her Ka,- the Blue Eyes White Dragon,- is as immortal as the gods themselves and will remain anchored to the stone tablet. However, she would become free to roam as she pleases. Currently she is tied to the stone tablet, Kisara and your deck. There was another territory for her too, which I believe you destroyed with your own hands.’

“I did no such thing!”

Seto remained calm as a defensive flare in the other’s mood was felt. Even so, he ventured, ‘Are you sure?’

Kaiba felt his breath catch in his throat. Could it be possible that the incident where he had torn the fourth Blue Eyes White Dragon card is what was being spoken of? Is that what was considered territory for the Ka to roam? No, it couldn’t be. If it was, then that would only add weight to the whole ‘destiny’ bullshit… This is all just inside my head, NONE of this is real, it never has been! I’m experiencing a mental breakdown-

‘This is not breakdown, Seto. You are my descendant and destined to be with Kisara. Her love still burns for you, as yours does for her. Stop hating on yourself and fix things!’

Eyes narrowed at the face staring back at him in the mirror. “Heh, there’s contradiction in your words. Either I fix things or leave it to destiny; which is it?”

‘Destiny made you in my image, bestowed my name on you, and amplified far too many of my negative traits in your personality.’ Seto could feel the other in the early stages of shutting down and did his best to remain calm as he spoke. ‘Not only that, but destiny entrusted Kisara’s Ba to the pregnant archeologist who helped uncover the Blue Eyes’ stone tablet. Destiny then brought you both together in a fateful encounter where you unexplainably fell for each other at first sight. The rest-‘

“Is down to me? Pfft, your prophecy turned out to be a dud. If I were you, I’d ask for a refund.” The jet’s controls made a crunching sound as Kaiba forced the levers and control stick so that the jet performed a twisting u-turn and begin the return journey to the island retreat he owned where he had been staying the last few days to avoid his brother’s surveillance.

The jet’s manoeuvre,- something he sensed had been done on purpose just to spite him,- made Seto queasy and prompted an angry burst. ‘I have not spent three thousand years in solitude just to watch you defy destiny!’

“Three thousand years in solitude? Heh, and people have the nerve to call me antisocial.”

‘Forfeiting my place in the afterlife was the price I paid to Osiris. I cannot move on from my solitary limbo until Kisara is free.’

“Then more fool you.”

‘Grr!’ Seto grit his teeth in frustration. He couldn’t take this much longer and was losing his patience. ‘If you love her as much as you claim you do, you WOULD NOT want for her to be trapped for all eternity!’

“DO NOT blame this on me!” Kaiba was fed up of being accused of predecessor shit he’d had no part of and certainly wasn’t going to foot the blame for something that had happened thousands of years ago. “If you had loved Kisara at all then you wouldn’t have let her die like she did!”

‘I did not foresee, nor could I have prevented what transpired. But I loved her, as was evident by my actions-‘

“Mhmm, you loved her sooo much that you went on to copulate with other women.”

‘YOU are one to talk!’ Seto growled furiously as he stared at his descendant’s reflection. ‘As pharaoh I had an OBLIGATION to find a queen and father an heir. It was NOT because I felt so very little self-worth within myself!’

“Oh yeah?” Kaiba contested defensively at having had his destructive behaviour made light of. “Well, I’m sure your queen and offspring were ‘thrilled’ to be nothing more than commodities for you-“

‘HOW DARE YOU INSINUATE THAT I DO NOT LOVE MY WIFE AND CHILDREN!!’

A nerve had been touched upon, but had not brought the satisfaction Kaiba had previously hoped it would. The other’s choice to use ‘do’ as opposed to ‘did’ told him all he needed to know. Instead of gloating, he found himself concerned for his doppelgänger now struggling to conceal the grief that thousands of years of being kept apart from those he loved had caused. “This whole thing hasn’t just been about Kisara, has it? You’ve an ulterior motive too.”

The soft rumblings of heavy metal played in the background whilst Seto avoided eye contact in the mirror. There was nothing more he wanted to say. It would only be used against him in highlighting his selfishness for wanting to advance to the afterlife. Silently, he looked out amongst the clouds and saw white fluffy dunes as far as the eye could see. It wasn’t too dissimilar from the midnight sands he’d often stared out across from his bedroom window during times of contemplation. Okay, so maybe this sky view wasn’t as unpleasant as he’d first assumed.

His thoughts drifted into memories thousands of years old. Memories that any living being would have long lost the capability to recollect so vividly, yet he did each and every day: the unexpected romance that had blossomed with his wife several months into their arranged marriage; the births of all five of their children; the untimely deaths of two of them; his own death on the battlefield as he lay cradled in his eldest son’s arms, followed by his family,- and kingdom,- mourning him thereafter.

Eventually, the pharaoh swallowed his pride and confided in his descendant. ‘A wounded heart struggles to believe that it will ever love again. I bargained with Osiris before realising I would heal in due time. Not only did I fail to heed the warnings from those closest to me, I naively sacrificed everything beyond life in return for Kisara’s eventually release. There is a part of me that still loves her,- no doubt there always will be,- but I went on to find love again. Even though we’re apart, my wife and our children are where my heart truly resides. The separation from them anguishes me greatly…’

“I’m sorry.” Kaiba’s apology was unexpected but nothing short of sincere. He could not even begin to imagine what the other’s pain felt like to be parted from those he loved for thousands of years. “Had I known, I would have thought twice before acting like such a jerk.”

‘You were acting?’ Seto mocked. He withdrew his gaze from the clouds and returned it to the mirror where he saw a look of compassion awaiting him. He was amazed that it had been his own unbosoming to have broken through the other’s defences. It was progress for both of them which continued as he gave his own apology. ‘I too am sorry, for the burden that destiny-‘ he stopped and amended his choice of words, ‘-for the burden that I placed upon you.’

Hearing somebody apologise so earnestly and profoundly to him was a rarity that Kaiba had only ever experienced one,- possibly twice?,- before. Feeling a slight awkwardness descend on him as a result, his eyes wandered to the sky beyond the cockpit. “Personally, I blame the gods. They’re the ones who preyed upon your grief, toyed with you and then failed to deliver what was promised.”

‘Does your acceptance of the situation mean you will-‘

“No!” Kaiba was quick to interject. “I will not set things right with Kisara… At least, not yet.”

Seto frowned as he felt his descendant’s self-confidence clouded over once more. The absence of the emotional wall between them was a clear indication that some progress was being made, but how long was it going to take before the other rediscovered and found acceptance within himself and realised he was worthy of Kisara’s love? Weeks? Months? A year, five, maybe ten? However long it would be, he wasn’t about to abandon him during the process, though he would let things proceed at their own pace without interference from now on.

“Knowing what you do now, would you have done things differently back then and not made the deal?”

A response was momentarily mulled over before Seto gave his honest reply, ’No. Love is not an emotion that you can just turn on and off whenever you please. At times it may feel like it makes you weak but in actual fact, it fortifies and makes you stronger. I will not deny that it can sometimes seem terrifying too, but once you tame that fear, love becomes nothing short of euphoric. And in my experience, there is no greater feeling known to man than when it is reciprocated.’

Once knowing that feeling himself, Kaiba silently agreed. Having allowed his fear to get so out of control though, he doubted his actions would ever be redeemable for him to feel it again. Maybe they weren’t? “What if… you’re mistaken and I’m not the one mentioned in the prophecy?”

’There is no mistake about it,’ Seto assured in a calm and patient manner. ‘You are the last of my line.’

“You’re forgetting my brother; he and Kisara get along quite well.”

The pharaoh shook his head. ‘My descendants are by male lineage.’

“I assure you, Mokuba is all male.”

‘That fact is not what I am disputing- Oh!’ Seto’s eyes widened with realisation and surprise. ‘You genuinely don’t know.’

“Don’t know what?” Kaiba’s eyes flickered from the view outside the cockpit to the reflection in the small mirror. Why was his ancestor suddenly looking so uneasy? “Wait a minute… are you trying to say that he and I don’t share the same father?”

‘Yes. I am sorry that you found out this way.’

What?! Kaiba shook his head as his face twitched. ”No, that’s… that’s not true… Our mother, she… she wouldn’t… No! You’re wrong! DON’T LIE TO ME!!”

Seto could now sense all of the progress that had been made crumbling fast as the other’s resistance to him began to rapidly reform. ‘Regardless of who his father might be, he is still VERY MUCH your brother. Do not EVER forget that!’

Hot, confused and angry tears silently seeped from Kaiba’s now vacant stare. How was he ever meant to look at Mokuba the same from then on? A half-brother that was the end result of infidelity or rape. More tears symbolised that the remaining happiness of his past had now been well and truly obliterated. He suddenly felt very, very empty…

’Say something,’ Seto gently urged as he did his best to try and console his descendant. ’Do not keep it all in. We both know that only leads to extreme heartache.’

No response.

Aware of not much else besides the fact he was zoning out as he flew, Kaiba attempted to ground himself by focusing on the words of the track softly playing in the background:

…(Blaming it on life will never make you stronger)

BE PREPARED FOR THE CONFRONTATION…

The operatic and death metal lyrics seemed to resonate with Kaiba, like some sort of great epiphany had just occurred.  “Let’s play a little game,” he smirked as he pulled at the controls and took the jet even higher into the sky.

’A game?’ Whilst it wasn’t an unusual stance for his descendant to take when dealing with his issues, the pharaoh failed to see just how this had any connection to everything else.

“You want me to confront my fears, right? That’s what I’m doing.”

Seto made the mistake of looking down below them. ‘Holy Ra, this is EXTREMELY high up!’

Although Kaiba knew his jet was one of the most advanced out there, any higher than the 50,000ft he was now at, he’d be in danger of hypoxia; the air was already thin enough as it was. Not that it mattered, since he’d begin to descend soon enough. “I’m putting an end to this destiny bullshit once and for all.”

‘I do not understand how this-.’

“It’s quite simple. Will I hit the land/sea before the music track ends, or will I get the opportunity to pull up once the music track has ended? Destiny says I’ll live to fly another day, right?”

’That is NOT how it works!’ Seto argued in a panic. Judging from the wild look in the other’s eyes, he had very little chance of getting through to him. ‘What you are attempting to do is nothing but suicidal!’

“Oh, how easily you abandoned your faith!” Kaiba laughed. “Where’s your gods now, huh?” He cranked up the volume of the stereo just as the instrumental break led into more lyrics:

If you blame all your failures on someone else

You avoid every chance

(You've lost your last chance)

(To learn from yourself)

‘Don’t do this, Seto.’

Too late…The jet’s controls were thrust forward and it entered into a sharp nose-diving descent.

If you blame all your failures on someone else

Without any remorse

(Without your remorse)

’STOP THIS! YOU HAVE SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR!’

No response.

If you don't face the weakness of your own self

You will take the same course

(You'll take the same course)

Seto retreated into his descendant’s mind in the hope he’d be able to avert the situation from there. No such luck though as he found his route block by a fully erect wall and a sinister looking doppelgänger.

’ThIs OnE iS mY DiScIpLe NoW.’

We can't blame all our failures on someone else

FOR OUR OWN PROTECTION

(So much to protect)

’Who are you?’ Seto asked. He wasn’t the slightest bit fazed by the other’s appearance, the voice on the other hand gave him cause for concern.

’SoMeOnE yOu HaVe ChOsEn To ReNoUnCe.’ The doppelgänger’s face momentarily morphed into that of an animal which had been extinct for close to two millennia.

We can't learn from decisions in our own lives

WITHOUT SELF-REFLECTION

(We will never flee from contingency)

’NoW tAkE lEaVe, DeSeRtEr, AnD pRaY tHaT mY bRoThEr WiLl StIlL hOlD tRuE tO hIs WoRd.’ The god of chaos dematerialised through an otherwise impenetrable wall, and the pharaoh found himself banished to the realm between worlds once more.

WE WILL NEVER FLEE FROM CONTINGENCY

The track ended and the tail of the dragon jet skimmed the water’s surface as a sharp ascent was executed.

“I guess there’s actual truth to this destiny bullshit after all,” Kaiba mused aloud whilst experiencing the greatest adrenaline rush he’d ever known. He felt invincible,- no, he was invincible. Fuck everybody else, no-one was going to stop him from living life as he saw fit. TiMe FoR a PaRtY tO cElEbRaTe.

[anoutlandishfanfic]

Metamorphosis: Chapter 19. The Search.

HUZZAH!! The next chapter of Metamorphosis is HERE!!

Extra special thanks to @thefraserwitch for making sense of my nonsensical ramblings and @diversemediums for being my spectacular mama resource. I couldn’t do this without you guys, you’re the best and my saving grace.

You can find previous chapters here on my master list, or over here on AO3.

Mid November, 1743; Lallybroch.

“What are ye doin’, lass?”

Murtagh’s voice held more concern than consternation as he made his way towards me in the dim stable. I didn’t — couldn’t — look at him as I hoisted the saddle blanket onto the mare’s back, knowing that if I did, if I saw the fear he was trying to hide in his eyes, I would cry… or worse, lose my resolve.

“What does it look like?” I huffed as I turned my attention to the heavy saddle, “I’m coming with you.”

He was at my side before I managed to get it anywhere near the horse. A guttural Gaelic expletive left his lips and I forfeited the heavy tack to him, but made no move to surrender my position near the mare’s flank. I crossed my arms against chest, my gaze withering as he set down the saddle and turned to back me.

“Ye’ll no’ be riding with me,” he insisted with a dismissive shake of his head.

I knew better than to ask him why not, for there were a thousand and one reasons for me to stay behind while he forged ahead. I’d thought of each and every one, every horrible scenario playing out in my mind since he’d arrived with battered Ian in tow and still came to the same conclusion.

I was going to find my husband... with or without Murtagh’s approval.

My chest heaved as I stared him down. He met my gaze without so much as a twitch, but the crack and timbre of his voice betrayed his true feelings.

“Ye’ll stay here… where Jenny can tend to ye, where ye are safe,” his shoulders hunched with huge weight of the situation, his breathing labored as he tried to talk me down. “Wha’ happens to the bairns if ye fall, lass? ‘Tis a long way down and no guarantee of a bush or heather to land on.”

“I won’t fall.”

He snorted, “And if ye do?”

“I’ve fallen a good deal farther and they’re still here,” I grimly stated and shivered slightly, for the chilling nightmare I’d had while within the depths of the Thieves Hole had become a frequent visitor in the weeks since my imprisonment, each repetition more frightening than the last.

My comment tore down Murtagh’s mask of resolute strength and his hands shot out, gripping my upper arms as moisture sprang to his eyes, “I canna risk it, a nighean. Please… will ye no’ stay here?”

I shook my head, opening my mouth to protest, but he cut me off.

“I give you my word, Claire,” he vowed, desperate for me to stay behind. “I will find him and bring him back to you.”

“I don’t doubt it for a moment, but in what condition?” I spat, even as my voice cracked. “They flogged Jamie within an inch of his life the last time you broke him out of prison and I can’t imagine they’ll do anything less to him this time!”

The image of a hangman’s noose around my husband’s neck knocked the air from my lungs and I felt very much like I was going to be sick. My head spun as I lifted my hands to my face. A shudder ran through me in a desperate attempt rid myself of the sudden vision of Jamie swinging from the scaffold at Fort William. I felt my legs give way beneath me and my crippling fears swallowed me whole as the floodgates opened, a sob bursting forth from my lips unchecked.

Murtagh caught me just before I hit the ground, pulling me to him in an awkward embrace as my tears flowed freely. I’d been bolstered by Jenny’s strength and carried by my own stubborn determination, but the quiet darkness of the stable had been my undoing. I knew that, on their own, my tears would solve nothing… but I also knew that I wouldn’t solve anything if I didn’t allow myself to cry… here in the stillness, protected by the arms of the man my husband trusted above all others.

Working together, we could -- and would -- save Jamie.

We had to.

..

Two weeks later; Somewhere in the Highlands.

“Thank ye, Mistress,” the young boy nodded to me, going so far as to bend forward from the waist in a slight bow.

While I understood their appreciation, the almost reverence the village folk gave in the last few hamlets we’d traveled through was beginning to grow wearisome. I hadn’t even treated the lad’s wound yet and here he was acting as though I’d cured him of leprosy with a touch of my hand. Most of this was Murtaugh’s doing, I knew, and yet if it meant word spread more quickly or even made me more identifiable to Jamie, I would go along with the harmless charade.

Placebo pebbles, I’d mentally dubbed them when Murtagh explained his idea at the start of our journey. Highlanders were equal parts superstitious and religious and Murtaugh's plan was to capitalize on both. He told me of a folkloric woman, a sort of witch who was able to see the motivations of men and women alike, who could strike an evil-doer down with a single look. He thought he could use the structure of La Dame Blanche, as she was called, to create a Holy Mother-like figure who could see the future and give protection or healing with the aid of a stone. The rumors of a pregnant Sassenach wandering about the countryside telling fortunes and healing the sick using magic rocks was sure to make it to Jamie, wherever he was hiding. I only hoped he’d hear of us before they tried me for witchcraft a second time or even for heresy.

I offered the boy my best attempt at a smile, gesturing him to come closer as I placed the small pouch of stones into a more visible part of my work space.

“Does it hurt much?” I nodded to the bandage on his right hand.

“Och, nae,” he bluffed as he extended it to me. “Jus’ it gets in the way a wee bit, now an’ then.”

I carefully unwrapped it and noticed a little girl standing near a tree about fifty yards from us. She had her eyes trained on the boy, yet made no move to come any closer as I examined him. The two shared similar cheekbone structures, a smattering of freckles, and glittering brown eyes.   

“Your sister?” I inclined my head, trying to distract him as the last layer of his bandage slowly peeled away. He nodded bravely, but I caught the wince he tried to hide as he averted his gaze to where she stood.

“What’s her name?”

“Flora, Mistress.” His voice changed, rising in timbre as his discomfort grew and I began to examine what revealed to be a minor burn.

It had already begun to heal and was relatively clean, needing only minimal cleaning before my application of a basic salve and a fresh bandage, but I took my time with him. For once, there wasn’t a flock of people hovering about my skirts waiting to be treated, and I made the effort to do the extra things Murtagh had suggested.

Use just enough Gaidhlig to make them think ye have it.

Give them every reason to believe ye can do a great deal more than what yer doin’...  an’ tha’ the wee stones will do the rest o’ the healin’ for ye.

I kept my eyes on my work, but watched the boy out the corner of my eye as I began to slip in the phrases I’d been carefully taught, “And yours, a bhalaich?”

His head lifted in surprise to look at me, eyes wide with reverent awe and answered softly, “Michael.”

I nodded and reached for my medicine box, taking out the vial of salve I needed and a roll of fresh bandage. I set both down beside the small, leather pouch of stones before I looked at him again and found him unabashedly staring at me. My cheeks warmed, but I didn’t shirk from his gaze as I began to clean the wound.

Michael flinched as I cleared a bit of debris and dropped his eyes, staring the items table. I could see his mind working, but he didn’t speak. The cogs and wheels of his brain turned over each one until he came to the leather pouch. His mouth dropped open in excitement, then shut just as quickly as he tried to contain himself. He shifted from foot to foot uneasily and I knew this was the very result Murtagh had hoped for.

Jesus H Roosevelt Christ, here we go again.

“Would you like one, Michael?” I coaxed.

Murtagh would chuffed to know that I hadn’t needed to explain the purpose of the stones with this patient. The rumors had reached this village far ahead of us and done the work for me.

My patient’s brows drew together in concern, “I dinna have anything to give ye... and ye’ve already mended my arm. I canna ask for a wee stone besides.”

“Then a gift for your sister, perhaps?”

Michael’s smile threatened to stretch right off his face as he nodded, turning to beckon the child to his side. I caught the little girl’s nervous glance between her brother and I and smiled at her in encouragement. With a final look to Michael, she stepped out from behind the tree and ran to his side, burying her face in the back of his green coat.

“Hallo, a nighean,” I murmured and finished off applying the salve, wiping my hands on my apron.

The little girl’s arms wrapped around her brother’s waist and held on for dear life. He coaxed her in Gaelic, resulting in her peering around him, but not budging so much as an inch. Michael’s tone changed and she reluctantly let go, sidestepping to reveal a dirty blue dress and smudged face. My heart melted as she grabbed for her brother’s free hand, anchoring herself to him as she tried to decide if I was friend or foe.

I reached for the pouch and loosened the drawstring. Not looking at Flora as she studied me, I, in turn, examined its contents and made a great show of selecting which one I wanted to give her. I did have quite a few options thanks to a good deal of forethought, but it really made no matter which I chose, for they were all plain, benign, everyday rocks.

I eventually selected a small, white pebble that was near the top as I tried to focus on the task before me, but — as if the brother and sister’s presence called out in greeting to them — the lives within me stirred. They turned and prodded until I, in turn, had to move to appease them. I shifted uncomfortably on my hard, wooden seat and tried to nudge one, encouraging them to remove their heel from between my ribs.

Would they be brother and sister like these cherubs? Would I have a daughter and a son? One to favor me and the other Jamie?

A small, warm hand gently covered mine and I looked up in surprise to see Flora lean in towards me, a quiet lullaby tumbling from her lips. I couldn’t understand the words, but I didn’t need to. Her soft melody possessed an almost hypnotic charm, an intonation of the purest intent, a blessing from one child’s heart to another. The baby moved their foot and the both of them stilled, as if they could hear her song and were listening intently.

I held my breath as she finished, giving my hand a pat with her final, sustained note. My throat constricted as her wide, innocent eyes met mine and she gave me a shy smile. Tears burned at the back of my eyes as I gave her one in return, lifting my right hand to cup her face. I tucked a tangled strand of hair behind her ear and her smile grew, making her brown eyes dance.

“May our Heavenly Father keep you safe, my child.”

This time I truly meant the phrase Murtaugh had taught me, though I’d uttered them to nearly every patient I had treated, and my spirit echoed it, petitioning for the both of them to be safe and well in the name of our Lord.

Flora turned her face into my palm and kissed it, then moved my hand to rest where it had been on top of the curve of my abdomen. I opened my left hand and offered her the stone, adding my own hasty benediction, my brain scrambling for the words.

“May Christ Our Lord be your solid rock and cornerstone… May He cradle you in the palm of His hand and shelter you under His feathers… from this day on and forever more.”

The sweet child accepted my token and then crossed herself before stepping back to her brother’s side. I blinked rapidly in a vain attempt to keep my tears at bay as my mind scrambled to remember what the hell I was doing before I had descended into complete sentimentality.

Bandage him, you bloody sot, I chastised myself and reached for the roll of cloth.

My fingers set about their business, pure reputation having made them deft and capable of doing the work without a connected or coherent mental direction. My tongue was thick in my mouth, my lips suddenly felt clumsy as I tried to spit out the basic care instructions that he would need.

“Keep it dry,” I muttered, adding, “and change the bandage daily.”

Michael’s head bobbed enthusiastically, “Aye, Màthair. I will.”

The bandage now fastened off and talisman administered, the children simply stood and beamed at me, waiting for dismissal or further instruction.

“Right then,” I swallowed hard. “Off you go.”

With a parting wave, they flounced off and disappeared into the village’s market.

God go with you, dear ones.

…

Another week later.

The chill from the cave’s damp, stone floor was beginning to seep through the sheepskin beneath me. I shifted, pulling my woolen blanket up and over my shoulders, but it didn’t help… the cold and dark disquiet of the night still found me. My eyelids and every muscle in my body burned with fatigue, yet my mind refused to stop churning. It’s machinations kept me forever suspended in wakeful agony.

“Canna sleep?”

A short puff of air left my nose in frustration as I tried to ease the ache in my hip and lower back, as well as in response to Murtagh’s observation.

“Of course not,” I muttered in answer.

How could I sleep when I knew we’d been unsuccessful?

When we’d paraded through every village, hamlet, and croft and had no more information on Jamie’s whereabouts than when we’d left Lallybroch over three weeks ago?

I felt Murtagh’s gaze upon me and looked across the fire to find him studying me intently.

“What is it?” I raised a brow in slight annoyance

He’d grown more accustomed to my condition as both our journey and I progressed, but he was still more than a bit tongue tied about the whole matter. I didn’t know if it was due to the century and culture in which he lived, or if it was simply from lack of exposure, having never had a wife of his own. Either way, the fact that he had questions was evident and I often had to drag them out of him.

“Are the bairns troublin’ ye?” His brows furrowed in concern as he added, “Wi’ their movin’?”

I shook my head, “I think they’re asleep.”

This surprised the Scot and he absently stroked his chin in thought, a motion that amused me as I realized my hand closely echoed his, although it was hidden from his sight beneath my blanket.

“They don't always sleep when I do,” I explained, even while wishing they did, “but they do sleep.”

“When they wake…” he searched for the right words, “a bit like ye’ve swallowed fish, aye?”

“More like a small hippo,” I grumbled, wistfully remembering the days when the movements within me could have been something akin to the brush of a fish’s tail, instead of the hooves on fire they resembled of late.

“A wha’?”

“It’s a… it looks something like a pig,” I started, my gaze lifting to the dark, stone ceiling above me as I tried to conjure up the image of the beast. One had nearly capsized our boat when I was in Cairo with Uncle Lamb and — though I’d only been eleven or twelve at the time — it was certainly an experience that stuck with me.

I heard his astonished murmured acknowledgement as he shifted his mental image from something the size of a loaf of bread to a decent sized farm animal and grinned to myself as I added, “Except it’s bigger than a horse.”

His guttural reaction was incoherent to my Sassenach ears, but the shock, disbelief, and then reverent awe was crystal clear. Murtagh didn’t quite know how to change the subject and we both let a heavy silence fall.

It was now well into December, making me officially in my sixth month of pregnancy. The babies were growing rapidly and so, in turn, was I. It felt as though they were already running out of room… though I knew we still had a long three months to go.

The blessing of living on the road was that I hadn’t seen my reflection since we’d left Lallybroch. I firmly held onto that mental image of my figure, not wanting to think of what I looked like now, nor how big I’d be come the month of March. The fit of my skirts was evidence enough of how I was changing on an almost daily basis and I half wondered if the age old tradition of confinement was so that heavily expectant mothers could get away with wearing nothing but their shift all day… but come to that, I wasn’t sure if even my shift would fit for much longer.

“Ye’ll return to Lallybroch in the morn,” my companion’s command interrupted my wandering thoughts.

I stiffened, my head snapping to the side to search for him in the dark.

“No,” I responded simply.

I hadn’t the energy or the words to plead my case just now, but giving up on my husband was not an option and neither was returning home to Jenny empty handed. I would not go back to Lallybroch without Jamie at my side.

The dim light of the fire threw deep shadows across Murtagh’s face as he insisted again, “Ye’ll go, Claire.”

“I won’t,’ I countered, my temper flaring and swallowing my fatigue as I pushed myself up onto one elbow. “He is my husband.”

He rose one brow as if taunting me, his silent ‘do ye no’ think I ken that’ ringing loud and clear in my ears and I swallowed hard in a desperate attempt to keep my tears at bay.

“You can’t possibly know how it feels!”

Murtagh rose suddenly and strode to the mouth of the cave as he burst, “An’ ye’re the only one to lose someone ye loved, then?!”

The sky was clear and the moon shone bright tonight, silhouetting his hunched shoulders, usually so proud and stalwart.  

“I lost someone too,” he murmured, his voice betraying the deep, churning waters that flowed beneath an always unbroken surface.

“‘Twas at a MacKenzie gathering, many years ago… she was a canty lassie, bonnie as the day is long… but she had another suitor. So, I thought to prove myself to her, to be the kind of man she desired… During the hunt, I alone killed the wounded boar with nothing but my dagger… The MacKenzie was so impressed by the deed, he gave me the tusks… I had them made into bracelets… and gave them to her as a wedding gift.”

The bracelets.

Jenny had given them to me the morning Murtagh and Ian had returned and they’d been in my pocket ever since, a talisman of my own to keep Jamie’s presence with me. I pushed myself the rest of the way up, my hands patting at my skirts to find them.

“It was you,” I whispered as my fingers wrapped around the curved ivory, warm from being against my body.

Murtagh turned and I staggered to my feet, closing the distance between us as I held them out to him. He was at my side long before I made it to where he’d been standing and his hands shook as he took the bracelets, bringing them to his lips as his eyes slid shut. He swayed slightly and it was my turn to place a steadying hand on his arm, .

“Ye think ye’re the only one who loves Jamie?” Murtagh murmured after a moment, the silver light of the moon making his damp cheeks shine bright as he finally looked at me. I found my own pain echoed in his eyes, multiplied tenfold.

“He is a son to me, a nighean.”

I nodded, knowing that I couldn’t possibly form accurate words to convey the acheings of my heart… the overwhelming and soul crushing realization that he did, indeed, know how I felt and he’d been carrying the weight of it around for decades.

My hand gripped his arm and he pulled me to him, supporting me as I cried. His hand lifted to gently cradle the back of my head as I sobbed into his shoulder, my tears flowing free for the first time since we’d left Lallybroch.

The doubt crept in as I let go of my facade, making me ask, “What’s going to happen to me… to us, if he’s… if Jamie is...”

“If the lad is truly gone,” Murtagh choked out, his embrace tightening, “I vow to protect ye and the bairns for the rest of my life… just as I swore to Ellen to protect Jamie.”