Thinking about Jamie having his dad in his phone as “Dad” with quotations because he knows he’s never been much of a father and about him watching as Sam talks to his own dad on the phone and Sam is grinning so wide because his Dad is praising him and loving on him and Jamie stands there and knows he’s never, ever going to get that from James. Thinking about how he still goes to Higgins and asks him about his relationship with his own father. Thinking about “I try to love him for who he is and forgive him for who he isn’t.” Thinking about “look Jamie, whoever he may be, he’s your father, and that makes him a VIP!” Thinking that Jamie probably thinks of Higgins as a fundamentally Good Person and he’s trying and clawing so desperately to be a good person, too. Thinking about him wondering if the reason his Dad doesn’t love him is because he’s not a good person. Wondering if he’s incapable of being a good person. Wondering if it’s his dad that’s the problem or him, if it’s really been him along. Thinking about Jamie immediately searching out his father when he steps onto the pitch at Wembley, and letting him into the dressing room afterwards. How probably Higgins’ words are the ones in his head as he nods him in. How James lets Jamie down again–now always forever. How James rags on him in front of the entire team and questions his loyalty to Richmond in front of the entire team and shoves him when his back is turned in front of the entire team. Thinking about Jamie, who fights back and then is visibly shaking in terror afterward. How everyone is so thrown and no one knows what to do with that and so no one does anything except for Beard and Roy. Beard, who tosses James out only to be punished for it after, nearly killed. Roy, who hugs Jamie like he’s maybe understanding him for the first time. Like he can finally, finally see him, only this is the part of himself Jamie never wanted anyone to see. Even Roy. Especially Roy. Thinking about how Jamie hugs him back anyway. Desperately. Like Roy’s the only solid body left on earth. Thinking about how the show moves on and we don’t get to see if Roy took him home after and we don’t get to see how their relationship changed after, if at all, and we don’t get to see anyone–not Ted or the team or Keeley or Higgins or Roy–ask him if he’s okay. How the next time we see Roy with him Roys back to fighting with him and headbutting him. How the narrative moves on like James didn’t come into that locker room and change everything. How James disappears from the story entirely after that until he reappears somewhere in Amsterdam a season later as a phantom still hovering over the scene, over everything. Still haunting Jamie. How Jamie still looks for him in the stands when he walks onto the pitch in Manchester during Mom City. How Jamie can’t shake him and can’t be made free of him and how Higgins’ advice turns into Ted’s advice turns into a voice in Jamie’s head telling him to forgive. “Dad” becomes Dad, no quotations. “Hey. It’s been awhile. I hope you’re okay.” Jamie who tries forgiveness. Jamie who visits his father in rehab. Jamie who’s still trying to be a Good Person and wondering if he’s finally doing it right—
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ok so there's murder time trio where theyre best buddies and get along and sometimes even having more than just platonic interactions. and then there's also the murder time trio where they genuinely just don't like each other and avoid each other and do NOT get along and to me there's just a VERY clear timeline of events that could connect these two group dynamics. like these 2 could coexist,,,,,,
nightmare's fresh outta his little corruption sequence and he needs his henchmen. goes out and gathers the obvious three killer horror and dust (does it really matter how he got them??? kidnapping or not the trio will warm up to him). its his first time having to deal with mentally unstable grown up mortal men and he really has no idea how to manage the team so he lets them have some slack. spoils em a bit yk yk stops fights allows them to hang out allows em to screw around the castle even COMFORTS them,,,, shocking i know (a slightly nice nightmare interpretation from triglycercule? UNFATHOMABLE!!!!)
this killer's fresh outta something new so he's still kinda curious and nosy. he hasnt seen the multiverse and especially not interacted with nightmare/horrordust so he's kinda more outgoing and friendly (ish. to get to know better everyone and satisfy the curiosity of seeing what reactions and feelings these fellas could give him.) bc killer's not that much of a prick and horror and dust would naturally SLIGHTLY get along (and if in the right environment be good buddies. which is nm's lenience and killer's not shittiness) the mtt actually get along pretty well and are good buds!! like the first group dynamic i mentioned where the bad sanses are just kinda like a friend group except they have some weird work relations
and then a fight breaks out and nightmare kills either dust or horror (what about??? anything!) likely dust first because he's more likely to be wary of nm (if kidnapped) and also because he's just kinda more actively righteous compared to horror (who likely wouldn't do much against nm) or killer (does not give a shit.) dust dies, horror likely dies defending dust and that just leaves the og killer and nightmare
nightmare is like "oh shit i just killed my workers". he'll take like a week to ponder what he did and then completely move on (because hes an ass like that.) nightmare gets another horror and dust to replace the ones he killed. and killer is just like wtf how do i deal with this. the guys i were kinda friends were are dead but their copies are right here. like he knew copies existed in the utmv but he didn't think nightmare was so willing to replace them so fast???
this killer's still adapting to the multiverse and stuff (it probably hasn't even been a year since he got snatched up!!!) and yeah hes aware that copies exist and he could get replaced by one but he didn't think that it would LITERALLY HAPPEN RIGHT BEFORE HIS EYES. so he decides to stick more around nm and avoid getting replaced like the og dust and horror because it really just hammers in the point that he's kinda useless if he speaks out like those 2. hes avoidant of the new replacements as well bc hes still new to this experience and is getting used to the whole implications of two guys that were once him and he was friends with died and got replaced by basically the same person
but they still have to work together for obvious reasons. and even if killer's avoiding horror and dust they probably aren't avoiding each other and probably are like wary friends/acquaintances. and naturally killer HAS to become okay worker buddy pals with them because hes stuck living with them. nightmare's a lot stricter and cold to avoid something like dust's rebellion against him happening again. mtt are wary of each other (mostly towards killer. horrordust are pals and killer's kinda growing more apathetic to the duo because he's already experienced a lot of the stuff before with the og two that died.) but theyre still "friends" you could say
and then perchance maybe horror and dust decide to let killer in on a lil secret theyve been cooking up. theyre planning to escape (kidnapped DUH. and nm isn't as nice as he was to og horrordust to warrent them to wanna stay) and even though they don't really trust killer theyre still letting him in on the plan and offer for him to come with them because they lowkey feel bad for him and he's really not all that bad under all the bullshit
but killer saw what happened to the og dust and horror so he says no. and the night that the duo are planning to escape he just has this overwhelming sense of dread. the next morning he wakes up to nightmare standing over his bed with a cold glare telling him of horror and dust's attempted escape and death and killer just kinda. sighs. his dread was right (he was lowkey hoping that they could escape so they didn't die like the original 2)
and then the cycle repeats. previous dust or horror or both die to nightmare or some random outside force or escape (because it has to happen eventually right??) and the pair keep getting replaced. killer keeps witnessing their deaths and replacements and at this point he's just so used to it that he doesn't even TRY to interact with the new horrors and dusts. theyre not even like real people that are getting killed and replaced like robots to him anymore they're just distant coworkers that get fired and then a new one comes to take up the position
each new dust or horror is icked out by nightmare and killer. nightmare is incredibly cold and intimidating and dictatorial and just sucks in general. and killer gives them this distant look. like he knows something they dont. he's already proven to them that he knows that they should obey nightmare and how to deal with the king and they know he's been here longer than them but even when he's not with nightmare or not talking about him they get the blank stare
sometimes when a nicer replacement of horror decides to do something nice for killer like make him a meal he just gives him that look and declines (there's already been countless different horrors that tried doing nice stuff for him. it's not new and nice in his eyes anymore.) maybe when a dust replacement gets irked by killer's apathy and decides to try and say something that'll bother him or snoop through his personal stuff killer will just walk away or kick him out of his room with that creepy ass blank stare again (it's not the first time a dust has tried to rile him up. it's not new or interesting and just predictable)
killer just doesn't CARE about the new horrors and dusts. they're all pretty much the same two guy except maybe a bit nicer or meaner or quieter or even taller or something?? all he really cares about is is serving nightmares atp, no other outside relationships. and ngl he doesn't even care that much about nightmare either. he's already figured out his thinking he's already figured out all of his likes and dislikes and what not to do to piss him off. the only reason he's still dealing with him is because he doesn't have anything else better to do and he doesn't wanna be useless to the one guy that he's served all this time
he's just kinda stuck in an empty boring limbo that killer's only maintaining due to a lack of motivation and any other priorities. and personally i just think this bad sans dynamic is lowkey tragic because like killer keeps witnessing all these guys that he used to be friends or enemies or rivals or whatever with and they just keep dying or leaving him behind. not one ever stays for THAT long (because no wayyyy a dust or horror would take being under a cruel nightmare well) and it's given him this idea that none of these people matter (aside from the important one which is nm) because they're just gonna leave me and the connections ill have formed with them will be for nothing so why even try being vulnerable and friendly and interacting with these cheap copies of the guys i USED to be friends with
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"Close Your Eyes, Dean."
The field he’d chosen was empty and wide open, with grass swaying lazily in a calm breeze, lit up brightly by the roundness of a large full moon. Almost too perfect – as all nights in Jack’s Heaven were.
But it was a great spot for what he wanted, Dean thought.
“C’mon man, I’m already dead, this body in heaven isn’t even real. What’s seeing your true form gonna do? Burn out my non-existent eyes?”
“It might,” Cas rumbled. A muscle twitched in his clenched jaw.
“You’re such a shitty liar, you know that right?”
Cas sighed and his broad shoulders slumped down into a slouch that made his trench coat look baggy and crumpled on him. His eyebrows downturned as he looked up at Dean from under his lashes and sad, sad hooded eyes. “I don’t…” he started, swallowed, and tried again, “I don’t want you to see me any differently. This is more me than anything else now.”
Dean scrubbed a hand over his mouth, guilt twisting in his gut – unable to resist the power of that expression. “Dammit Cas, I won’t pressure you, but you know nothin’ like that is gonna bother me. So what if you’ve got tentacles or a hundred eyes or whatever-”
“-I don’t have tentacles,” Cas interjected.
“-Point is, you’ll always be this dorky little guy to me no matter what you’ve got stuffed inside,” Dean said.
Cas squinted his eyes and straightened up. “That feels like a backhanded compliment.”
Dean laughed with enough force that his head threw backwards. He shook his head with amusement and felt himself mirroring the smile he’d finally coaxed out of Cas.
Dean reached over and patted his shoulder fondly. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll keep working on being sincere.”
Green eyes met blue, and Dean’s chest warmed with the intensity of his affection.
Cas was still looking at him with a sad tilt to his eyes, but the pain had gone out of his expression. Moonlight highlighted strands of his dark hair, ruffling slightly in the breeze, and picked out the blue colour of his tie against his white shirt. It was just Cas. No matter what.
Dean took a breath and looked up at Heaven’s stars, shining in a pattern that he wondered if Jack had designed himself. Probably. The kid loved stuff like that.
“I mean it though Cas. Nothing you show me’s gonna change how I feel,” Dean said. Exactly what those feelings were, he wasn’t exactly sure… but that was a train of thought for another day. One life changing event at a time. Dean brought his gaze back down, though he swore he could still see the stars reflected in the blue of Cas’ eyes. “You’ve seen me at some of my worst, man. You literally met me in Hell.”
Cas stared with such dedicated focus, like Dean was the only thing that was worth paying attention to in the whole world, and it made pleasant sparks skitter through his veins.
But Cas said nothing in reply, he simply waited for Dean to continue, as if he was always enraptured by anything he had to say.
It was an intensity that Dean had so much affection for. So much. So freaking much-
“You saw me as a Demon,” Dean said quickly, drowning out his thoughts before he could go to a place that he knew was coming but wasn’t quite ready for tonight. “And you still… You still saved me. You still stayed with me. You still said… Shit, what did I even look like as a Demon? Like, my ‘true face’ or whatever?” Dean tripped over his words as he struggled to push down his feelings. “Actually, y’know what, I don’t wanna know- doesn’t matter-”
“You were beautiful,” Cas said in a warm, quiet rumble, even though his gaze was still just as intense. “You’ve always been beautiful. Even then. You’re still just Dean Winchester, no matter what. The most beautiful soul I’ve ever encountered and ever will.”
“Cas…” Dean sucked in a deep breath through his teeth, while those skittering pleasant tingles across his skin increased. There was a warmth at the back of his neck and a heat blazing in his chest. He swallowed thickly, past the lump growing in his throat. “Then you know I feel about seeing Angel-You,” he eventually managed, keeping the eye contact.
Cas finally blinked and looked down at his feet. He shuffled them a little and it was such a nervous human gesture that it made Dean smile.
“Close your eyes,” Cas commanded, in a voice that reminded Dean of when they first met.
Dean’s eyebrows shot up in excitement. “Seriously? You’re doing it?” Cas gave him a flat look and Dean held up his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, okay, I just- I mean, this is gonna be awesome.”
“Close your eyes, Dean.”
The commanding tone coupled with Cas saying his name certainly did something to him, but again, not the time to examine that. Dean cleared his throat and closed his eyes. Everything went dark. “This the part where you tell me, ‘Be not afraid’?”
A bright blue light shined past his eyelids and Dean shielded them with his arm, while he became aware of a shrill noise that rose higher and higher until he had to abandon his eyes for pressing his hands flat over his ears. He scrunched his face tight at the assault to his senses.
Finally, the light faded and there was silence.
“Cas? You, uh- you okay there, buddy?” Dean asked, with his eyes still closed, guilt and concern churning in his gut.
-It is safe to open your eyes-
Dean winced again at the high-pitched whining that accompanied the voice, like bad feedback from a busted stereo.
-Apologies… It has been… a while since I’ve used this frequency-
The whining noise stopped mid-sentence and Dean could finally just hear the voice. Cas’ voice. His true voice. It sounded like a mixture of twinkling wind chimes and a single, long, resonant note plucked on the string of a harp.
Dean flung his eyes wide open and felt his whole body lock up at the sight. “Cas?” he croaked, almost unable to believe what he was looking at.
Gone was the man in the trench coat and tie, and in his place stood what looked like a giant crow – easily the size of a house. The huge crow was covered in gleaming black feathers, giving off a sparkle of blue that shimmered and glowed in the air around it, and Dean noticed that the feathers themselves, seemingly black at first, shined with an iridescent spectrum whenever they moved slightly and caught the moonlight. Its black, almost scaly legs ended in silver talons that looked like they were made from the same material as an Angel Blade, the same silver that its sharply curved beak seemed to be made of. It flashed wickedly as the crow leaned down to preen its chest feathers suddenly, like a nervous habit. When it straightened back up Dean’s attention shifted to the long, thin ring above its head – spinning slowly and blazing with a fiercely bright blue fire that cracked and popped blue embers into the night. They floated up and disappeared, past the faint outlines of many blue eyes that were suspended above the halo, blinking in and out of focus.
Finally, Dean looked at the crow’s face. Straight into two glowing blue eyes.
Not a crow.
Castiel.
Cas.
-Uh... Be not afraid?-
-------------
Continued in part 2 soon
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Okay so so terribly sorry for being an insufferable person but. if you comment one of my posts with “[Sigma is] innocent on the basis of the casino being exempt from international laws” I'm literally obliged to correct you, I'm sorry, I physically can't ignore it, it's literally the object of study of my life. Saying that no international laws apply here is just factually incorrect! Twice at that!
First: it's absurd to suppose the sky casino has its own state jurisdiction on the basis that in no word you can consider the sky casino a state. According to the Montevideo Convention of 1933, art. 1:
The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.
Sky casino fails to fulfill any of these criteria, and thus cannot be considered a state with its own jurisdiction. I don't think there's any need for me to elaborate on why the sky casino lacks a permanent population (its “population” consists of transitory customers), or a government (there's barely anything that can be considered legislature or executive and definitely no judiciary), or the capacity to enter into relations with the other states (we don't have any reason to assume it does). Finally, the sky casino platform cannot be considered a territory on the same basis that artificial islands aren't considered islands: for that we can refer to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, art. 60, par. 8:
Artificial islands, installations and structures do not possess the status of islands. They have no territorial sea of their own, and their presence does not affect the delimitation of the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone or the continental shelf.
Please also refer to the case of Sovereign Recognition of the Principality of Sealand, where the Principality's characteristic of being a World War Two anti-aircraft platform located within Britain's territorial waters makes it the perfect analogous case to compare to the sky casino; the platform's sovereignty isn't formally recognized by any country.
Concerning which jurisdiction the sky casino actually falls under, first of all we can refer to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, art. 1:
The contracting States recognize that every State has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory.
So the sky casino's jurisdiction is the one of the state underneath it (most likely Japan).
In case the sky casino lies above high seas (all the sea spaces out of any country's jurisdiction), by the shared analogy between legal regime of sea spaces and airspaces, we can again refer to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, art. 92, par. 1:
Ships shall sail under the flag of one State only and, [...] shall be subject to its exclusive jurisdiction on the high seas.
So it'd be the jurisdiction of the country the sky casino is associated to, for example the one it was built in.
Second: no person, no matter their country or lack or thereof, no matter the jurisdiction they were subject to at the moment of the crime, is extent from international laws. Individuals are considered by the international law doctrine having international legal personality (together with other personalities, such as nations and international organizations) on the exact basis that, besides benefiting from international rights, they also have obligations in front of the international law, and those duties are exactly the duty to not commit international crimes (International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg, 1946 Judgment: “International law imposes duties and liabilities upon individuals as well as upon States”; “Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provision of international law be enforced”).
Everyone is subject to international laws no matter the jurisdiction; it's just that no one realizes it because to actually commit international crimes means you have to screw up real bad (i.e. : commit crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes). Everyone being subject to international laws with no exceptions is. a huge thing. It means people will be held accountable even when their country decides not to process them. It permits‚ for example‚ the International Criminal Court to issue a warrant of arrest for the current president of Russia, despite we can take a guess that he'd never be processed by his country.
In conclusion: you can't say Sigma is extent from international laws, because no jurisdiction or person is extent from international laws. If anything, what you can do is argue he never committed any international crime, although that'd be hard on its own to sustain; the UN General Assembly condemned terrorism in its resolution 49/60, 1994:
Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them
not to mention he likely would have to answer for counterfeit coin too.
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