“It was not your fault that he betrayed you.
Even if there were signs, even if you think you should’ve ‘known better’, none of that gave him the right to hurt you as he did.
I don’t blame my great nephew for trusting Bill who he knew was an enemy… Nor my great niece who trusted Bill when he disguised himself as an old friend. So of course I can’t unfairly blame you.
You are not to blame for his choices. He chose to be cruel to you. It was not your fault.
It will get worse before it gets better but I promise you- you’ll come out the other side and be so much happier for it. In thirty years, I know you’ll be the happiest you’ve ever been in your whole life.
You trust no one, I know, but- trust me. Stick it out. It’s going to be okay in the end.”
Ford’s past self needs a hug and Ford needs to forgive himself for his past mistakes and move on. Little bit more hurt/comfort for Forduary!
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Normally, traitors aren’t frog-marched to the Emperors themselves, regardless of what rank of information they had. These aren’t normal circumstances, though, Techno bemoans to himself. For one, the man is refusing to speak anything but French and a tiny amount of broken Bayesh. For another, on being made, he immediately handed over about three folders of classified information then loudly waited for handcuffs to be put on him.
Phil is lounging in his throne; he’d never been one for propriety. This leaves Techno to be, uh, the actually serious one. The one adorned in uniform, sitting and glowering down. It’s lucky that the traitor isn’t a pigman, because Techno isn’t actually great at glowering, but humans are weird about pigman facial expressions so he should be fine?
The traitor stands before them and grins. In perfect Bayesh, he says: “Finally. It took way too long for you to catch me, bitch.”
Techno pauses. He stares. In Piglish, he barks to his guards: “Everyone out. It’s Leader business.”
They file out. They’ll be waiting outside. Phil straightens in his seat and reaches for his own sword.
Techno, laboriously, drags his hand across his face. He switches back to Bayesh. God, does he regret being fluent in multiple languages sometimes. “What are you doing here, Tommy.”
“Showing you your intelligence weak points, fucker. Do you know how easy it is to slip Bayesh spies in here? I was smooth. A smooth customer. I was hearing classified milkitary secrets—”
“You were caught within two hours,” Techno says.
“That’s—that’s just what you think, innit?” Tommy says. Phil laughs. He’s the real traitor here.
“Tommy. I don’t wanna have to cause an international incident, but I’ve had a really long day, so if you just tell me who hired you to run a spy op, and why you decided it was a good idea to run it yourself, instead of sending one of your experts…”
“No one,” Tommy says.
“Hey, don’t lie you little shit. Techno might not want to start an incident but I don’t care,” Phil says. He grins and holds up his sword. “You wanna wake up in a jail cell and reveal some secrets? We may all be Leaders but it won’t stop torture from hurting.”
“What the fuck, Phil,” Tommy says.
“No one’s torturing anyone. We’ll just bomb them later if we must,” Techno says.
“And I wasn’t lying. It’s—can I take the wig off by the way? It fucking itches.”
“I despise you.”
Tommy takes off the black wig, revealing his blonde hair. “Anyway, I don’t want to work with you guys either, so I figured I’d get your attention by like, acting like we’re enemies and stuff. Got hired for espionage enough back in the day to pick up that much.”
“Who the fuck wanted you as a spy?” Phil asks.
“Fuck you,” Tommy says and doesn’t elaborate.
“Please just tell us what you want,” Techno says. “Please. I can’t handle this much you at any given time.”
“This needs to be Leader to Leader,” Tommy says, and something heavy laces his words. The hairs on Techno’s arms stand up.
“You coulda asked,” he says, in one final desperate bid for normality.
“No, I couldn’t have,” Tommy says. “I think Chip’s dead.”
Techno doesn’t notice that he’s standing until he is.
“What?”
“Yeah,” Tommy says. “Yeah. And, uh, I fucking. Need your help to figure out what happened. Before we get blamed. And I know, politically, you’ve got no reason, but if we don’t figure out—”
Techno sits back down, heavy.
“I know you understand Piglish. Let me talk in my native language. Phil.”
“Yeah, mate?”
“Go get the stuff.”
Phil’s eyes darken. “Right. That. Well, I’ll be back.”
Tommy’s voice, for the first time since Techno met him as a newly-minted Leader, standing on a wooden bench and yelling about executions, is small.
“You believe me?” he says.
“Why else would you come here?” Techno asks. “Not like we like you.”
“Good, because I’m shit at infiltrations. Would have been embarrassing if you, like, didn’t know your enemy well enough to know that,” Tommy says. He’s saying something else underneath it. Techno is neither good enough at Bayesh or at Tommy to guess what.
“Let’s work out an excuse to make a treaty. And you tell me everything.”
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How did you figure out you're aromantic?
Oh, god, what a short question for such a long process, hahaha. First off, didn't figure it out until recently, age 27, but here was the approximate (and very truncated in the amount of internal conflict and introspection involved) step-by-step process:
Figured out I was queer in high school because I felt the same way about women as I did about men! Spent about 5 years thinking I was bisexual.
Figured out that I'm not actually attracted to men when I read a post describing the experience of compulsory heterosexuality and related with it intensely, which was a very freeing experience. Spent 6 years thinking I was a (nonbinary) lesbian!
Hooked up at parties a couple of times out of curiosity and then took up my best friend's offer to fuck and realized that I got the same amount of skin-crawling distaste about that as I did about sexual contact with men, thus realizing I was ace.
Let that domino tip over into the, "Actually, identifying as gay has for a long time given me the same anxiety as I used to feel when I thought I'd have to date a man, and also I'm 27 years old and have never, ever actually wanted to date another human being. When people ask me what my ideal partner is like, I start listing off ways in which they should not bother me or demand my time or be part of my life. Maybe I just don't want... anyone." domino, and the subsequent "I'M FREE!! (from trying to date women)" euphoria was identical to the "I'M FREE!! (from trying to date men)" euphoria, so.
That's where I'm at!
I'm a generally introspective person, but I'm also really great at gaslighting myself into ignoring my own discomfort, so largely it's been, haha, a diagnosis of exclusion. First I excluded men, then the discomfort with women grew large enough that I was able to exclude them as well. Reading about other people's experiences and realizing where they paralleled my own was immensely helpful! So was being close friends with a very poly person who slowly and fully unintentionally changed my perspective on how I view relationships in a very poly-and-relationship-anarchy-as-default way, which incidentally is extremely compatible with aroace queerplatonic ideals and definitely softened me up to be ready to accept that particular realization.
Also, please let this be a sign that just because you identify with one "thing" doesn't mean that you're committing to it forever! <3
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