#people being on their third or fourth resettlement

[saltcherry]

cannot for the life of me discover the point that Muir is trying to make with

a. the eugenicist policies of the Houses re: breeding for necromantic aptitude, maximizing genetic diversity, etc.

b. the innate physical weakness that necromantic aptitude causes.

c. the presumed/implied genetic incompatibility between the resurrected/their descendants/“thanergy” planet births and the conquered/independent peoples on “thalergy” planets.

d. the mutation of life-forms on “flipped” planets.

What is the relation between all these things, both lore-wise and thematically?? I cannot tell!!

[dragonnarrative-writes]

Forming The Pack - Part 3

Autumn Embers Master List

As long as John’s known him, Simon’s never been openly playful. He’s a cheeky son of a bitch - having Ghost and Gaz on comms is an exercise in keeping a straight face - but when he’s not behind closed doors he’s… quiet. Serene. Simon will swipe a bit of food off a plate that isn’t his when John or Kyle isn’t looking. But he’s more inclined to settle in next to John with a sci-fi novel and a cuppa than to wrestle Kyle when he manages to prank him.

All of that gets turned on its head when Johnny “Soap” McTavish shows up.

John hadn’t expected the man to last long. When word got to him that Soap had touched The Ghost on their first meeting, he prepared for the worst. But Simon didn’t mention anything during either of their pre- or post-mission check-ins. Three days later, there they were on the tarmac, whole and healthy and in sync.

Soap had drifted along perfectly in Ghost’s wake to the debrief. Got scruffed for almost sitting in Ghost’s seat, but he’d laughed it off without even a whiff of offense. Price thought his barely contained fidgeting would have set Ghost on edge, but even through scent blockers and armor, the lieutenant had been as relaxed as he ever was on duty.

Now, watching Simon pick Johnny up by his ankle and fling him across the mats with a huge grin on his scarred face, John wonders if Simon’s just needed the right person to play with. Certainly, Soap throws himself back at the lieutenant without any hesitation. He can’t seem to work up a proper snarl without laughing. Combined with Simon’s near silence, the fight is a little disconcerting to follow, but John can’t help but rumble his approval.

Waiting for his turn on the mats, Kyle smells excited when he says, “Don’t think I’ve seen Ghost have this much fun in a spar in a long time.”

“No,” John answers as Soap rolls, bounces to his feet, and tackles Ghost around his middle. The resulting grapple is more than a little sloppy. “Not really sure they’re sparring, to be perfectly honest. Ghost,” he calls. “Pin him.”

Like a switch being flipped, the spar turns viscous. Ghost is big, bigger than most alphas, but Soap is strong, creative, and relentless. John keeps expecting him to tire, but he gets a second wind, a third, a fourth. It won’t be enough - Ghost has his orders and a deep reserve of will that John’s never been able to break - but it’s damned impressive.

A full seven minutes later, Soap lies pinned under the other alpha’s bulk, sides heaving with exertion. He doesn’t smell angry, the way some people do the first time they realize they were never going to win. He tries to get up when John approaches with Gaz in tow, but Ghost holds him steady. After a moment, he relaxes against the mat, tension leaving his body like he knows he’s safe with three alphas over him.

“You’ve been toying with him,” John observes. Ghost grunts an acknowledgment. Soap’s breathing stays even. John watches him tense, then relax as Ghost’s body goes rigid over him again. “Let him up.”

Ghost grumbles but rolls to the side to lie on his back. His chest expands as he sucks a deep breath, then lets it go in a big gust. Still on his belly, Soap looks at him, then cranes his neck to look up at Price and Gaz.

“Ah’m free t’go, then?” he questions.

“’Course,” Price answers. “Unless you want to stay.”

“Might,” the sergeant answers, resettling so his face is pressed to the ground again. “Big bastard’s ‘bout worn me out. Got ‘im trained up, d’ ya?’

“Watch it,” Ghost rumbles, but his eyes are closed. Either he’s sweat through his scent blockers or he didn’t bother to wear any in the first place. He smells like Price and Gaz, like easy contentment. He smells just a bit like Soap now, too. The hand closest to the sergeant flops over to wrap around his bicep.

Gaz makes an inquiring noise that John barely keeps himself from echoing. Soap looks up at them with clear eyes and doesn’t move into or away from the contact. John huffs a quiet laugh and drops into a comfortable squat.

He expects it when Ghost cocks his head back to bare his neck, easy as anything with just the four of them in the gym. He doesn’t expect the way Soap rolls onto his own back, shoulder to shoulder with Ghost and temple close to the inside of John’s boot. His eyebrows jump when Soap tips his own chin up and takes an obvious huff of Price’s scent.

“Forward, aren’t you?” John wraps a gentle palm over Ghost’s throat, gives him the barest hint of pressure to feel his barely there purr. He hovers his other hand near Soap’s face, waits to see what he’ll do.

“Ma tells me my nose is going to get me into trouble,” Soap sighs, letting his chin touch the tips of Price’s fingers. “Ghost says you can keep me in line.”

“That so?” Price scratches gently at the hairs on his chin. He takes a moment to watch Kyle sit on Ghost’s other side, hand on the man’s belly as a greeting. A deep breath tells him that all three of his boys - and isn’t that interesting? - are content. John edges back the neck of Soap’s shirt and spots the familiar curve of Simon’s teeth marks. “Expanding the pack on my behalf then, Simon?”

“’E’s good for it, sir.” Under John’s hands, Simon looks half asleep. Johnny is equally relaxed, giving in to the exhaustion of a satisfying flight. His blue eyes sparkle up at John when Simon adds, “Gotta good mouth on ‘im. You’ll see.”

[kerfufflewatch]

Think I managed everything but the “too blind to see.” :D

--

On AO3 | Ko-fi

The first time they wake up together, McCree panics.

He wakes first that morning to a vague sense of unease buzzing in his skull. He’s fairly accustomed to getting up early, body attuned to a military schedule, but he knows before he opens his eyes that this is too early. He feels like he’s burning up, sweltering under the blanket with sweat sticky between his thighs. His shoulder protests angrily at hours of bearing his weight. He swears and tries to roll back, but hits the wall behind him.

Not a wall, he realizes when it makes an annoyed noise.

McCree snaps his eyes open. Hanzo, pressed up against his naked back, grumbles and briefly tightens the arm slung possessively over McCree’s waist before resettling. His face is shoved against the back of McCree’s neck, breath washing hot over his skin. McCree lays there for a while, taking stock of it all. He’s not quite used to being the little spoon. He’s not quite used to any of this. 

He slowly turns onto his stomach and props himself on his elbows so he can look at Hanzo. Hanzo slumbers on undisturbed, his arm still draped over McCree’s lower back. His hair is a mess, a spray of black threaded through with those few threads of silver that survived the undercut near the temples. His face is completely lax, absent of its normal severity. McCree can’t help but smile, warmth bursting in his chest. He’s never seen Hanzo like this before.

He wonders if it will be the only time.

The thought makes his heart pick up and rattle against his sternum. His next breath isn’t half as steady at the one before it. McCree flexes a fist a couple of times, but when that fails to resolve any of the building tension, he carefully extricates himself from Hanzo’s hold and tiptoes to the bathroom.

With the door between himself and Hanzo, McCree is free to let out the shaky gasp rattling around his lungs. He sucks in a slower breath and holds it as he grips the edge of the counter, head bowed over the sink. He doesn’t look in the mirror, avoiding his own shameful reflection. 

To say they’ve been taking this slow isn’t quite accurate; it would be more correct to say they’ve been taking it careful. Hanzo hasn’t had anything he called a relationship since his teenage years and McCree’s attempts at serious relationships have been half-assed at best, considering his career and general life expectancy. Dates are carefully planned and executed, never too spontaneous. Affection is doled out in measured doses. Sex always ends with a walk to the door and a kiss good-bye, never spilling over into the morning after. It’s not, strictly speaking, better, but it’s safe. Or it had been, at least, until last night, when Hanzo had started to climb out of bed and McCree had stopped him with “You don’t have to go, if you don’t want to.”

And Hanzo had seemed to wrestle with that, but he stayed all the same.

The problem now is that they’ve crossed a line, one they’d never really agreed on but which had existed all the same. Before, McCree could at least pretend that his investment was well-controlled, that he existed at a level where, when Hanzo inevitably left for one reason or another, it may not hurt so much. Hell, he half-expects to walk back out of the bathroom and find that Hanzo’s already gone, or when he wakes up for good in another hour or two. He has no reason to think that will happen, other than his long history of losing people. Now he knows what Hanzo looks like in the morning, knows how it feels to wake up wrapped up in him and he’s sure, like everything else, that it will end. 

McCree shudders and rubs his hands down his face. Stupid, he thinks. Jumping to conclusions already, having a breakdown in the bathroom when he should be in bed, taking advantage of this good thing while he has it.

It takes a few minutes before he feels calm enough to go back to bed, if not back to sleep. He splashes his face with cold water and half-heartedly brushes his teeth. When he comes back out, Hanzo is awake, too, his arm outstretched over the space McCree had occupied. 

“You were gone a while,” Hanzo observes in a whisper as McCree slides back under the covers. “Are you alright?”

His voice is rough with sleep, but his gaze is focused, bright with concern. McCree’s throat tightens with an emotion he doesn’t dare look at too closely. “Right as rain,” he replies.

“Alright.” As soon as McCree is settled, Hanzo worms his way back into McCree’s space. McCree has his arms around him and his chin resting on Hanzo’s head before he’s even aware of it.

Hanzo falls back asleep almost instantly. True to his suspicion, McCree’s awake for the rest of the morning, but it's hard to mind. 

—

The second time, McCree wakes later. Unconsciousness slowly unfurls and falls away, awareness creeping in to take its place. It takes a minute, but he soon realizes that what woke him was not routine or aches or a needy bladder, but the gentle caress of fingers through his hair.

“S’nice,” he rumbles, nuzzling into what he realizes only after is Hanzo’s thigh. The hand in his hair pauses for just a moment,then resumes as Hanzo chuckles somewhere above him. 

“Good morning,” Hanzo murmurs. McCree cracks one eye open to look up at him. Hanzo is sitting up with his tablet propped on one knee, although once he meets McCree’s eye, he sets it aside. A frown flickers across his face, some internal dilemma, before he shimmies down in bed to recline beside McCree. McCree immediately takes advantage of the change to drape himself over Hanzo The repositioning sadly necessitates the removal of his hand from McCree’s hair, but he is quick to replace it with his other before McCree has to protest. McCree returns the favor with fingertips stroking along the ridges of Hanzo’s ribs.

"You on the roster today?" McCree asks after a minute or so. He's careful to whisper, afraid of shattering the delicate spun-glass moment between them.

"No." Hanzo is equally quiet, his voice a low rumble. "It seems that we have not had many assignments recently."

"Nah. Seems like everyone's lyin' a bit low right now." McCree pauses, then nudges forward to press a kiss to the ridge of Hanzo’s collarbone. “Can’t say I mind getting a little time off.”

“Surely there is something we should be doing today.”

“Don’t think so. Least, not that anyone’s gonna get us in trouble for. Could probably stay in bed all day, if we wanted.”

Hanzo snorts. “Is that what is done on a day off, then? An entire day in bed?"

"Are you tellin' me you haven't ever spent a whole day in bed?"

The hand in McCree's hair slows, then stops. "No," Hanzo says softly. "I have not.”

Guilt drags down McCree’s good mood immediately. No, of course Hanzo hasn’t done something as simple as spending a day in bed with a lover. McCree may not have a great track record with relationships, but Hanzo barely has one at all. 

“Well,” he says with a lightness he no longer feels, “that’s a damn crime.”

Hanzo hums distantly. McCree worries the inside of his lip. “S’alright. Not like I’m much better, either,” he offers. 

“Mm.”

The quiet is no longer delicate; now it rests on them like the tense, humid air before a thunderstorm. 

“Can I tell you somethin’?” Hanzo hums again.  McCree swallows hard, suddenly very grateful to have his face hidden. “I, uh. I’m not so good with this, either. I mean, you know that already, but . . .  I keep thinkin’ I’m gonna wake up and find you gone one morning. Or that it’s gonna up and end one day.”

Hanzo’s fingers tighten in his hair. “You think I would just . . . leave?”

“It’s not that. It’s more like I’m waitin’ for the other shoe to drop.” McCree realizes his hand has stilled on Hanzo’s ribs and resumes the touch, focusing on the drag of his fingers along Hanzo’s skin instead of the tightness in his chest. “Not too used to keepin’ good things around, and, well, you’re probably the best thing I’ve had in a while. Hard not to feel like I’m on borrowed time.”

There is silence for a long time. As McCree is starting to fear that he’s overstepped, Hanzo takes a deep breath and says, “I understand. People like us do not have the luxury of commitment, to this or to anything else.”

Hanzo pushes McCree’s hair back from his face and gently nudges him to look up. “I--cannot promise everything,” he says, stilted. His jaw works before he forces the rest out. “But I want to keep this as well. And if something were to change, I would not leave you so thoughtlessly. That much I can be certain of.”

Relief bubbles through the guilt in his chest, though some of the anxiety lingers in his gut. McCree tips his head up for the kiss Hanzo offers, letting the slow presses of their lips soothe away the worst of his distress.

When they break, McCree takes a shivery breath. He gives Hanzo the most playful smile he can manage, though it feels shaky on his face. “So,” he says, “where’d we land on that ‘day in bed’ idea?”

Hanzo laughs, low and rumbling. “I have some ideas,” he responds. He pushes McCree onto his back, mouthing under the line of his jaw. McCree’s answering laugh turns into a sigh as he melts under the attention.

He’s still not sure about where they stand or what might come but for now, this is enough.

—

McCree doesn’t let himself think about it on the third morning, or the fourth, or any of the ones that follow. Those first couple of weeks turn into a solid four months. Eventually, they’re sharing a bed more nights than not, separated more by missions or schedules than they are choice. McCree soon forgets to think about it at all.

McCree wakes up early again. It varies who is up first nowadays. The best mornings are when they both sleep until their alarm, but Hanzo got back later than McCree did last night. He deserves a little more time, or at least to wake up to something other than his phone blaring. It takes some effort to extricate himself from the limpet-like grasp Hanzo has around his middle, but he has some practice in it now and manages to free himself. Hanzo immediately curls into the space McCree vacates, stealing the leftover warmth. McCree chuckles to himself and reaches for a shirt. 

Once he’s decent, he makes his way to the kitchen. It’s still early enough that the base hasn’t quite woken up. He doesn’t pass any other agents in the halls and even the kitchen is still empty when he arrives. He starts a cup of coffee for himself, debates the merits of coffee versus tea for Hanzo, and ultimately decides tea might let Hanzo sleep in longer if he chooses. Breakfast is considered, then discarded as well; he’ll wait until the rest of the team is more active. Maybe he’ll get lucky and someone will make something with leftovers. Or maybe he’ll feel generous enough to make pancakes. He’ll revisit the ideas in an hour. 

When he returns with coffee and tea in hand, Hanzo is still in bed, but he stirs at the sound of the door. He props himself up and turns blearily in McCree’s direction, squinting in the dim room. McCree’s mostly gotten used to the sight of a sleep-mussed Hanzo, but it’s still such a departure from his normal, carefully manicured look that he can’t help but chuckle.

“Morning, sunshine,” he says as he slips back into bed. Hanzo’s response is a tired grunt. He shakes out his hair from its disheveled ponytail and ties it back up. McCree watches with fond amusement, offering the tea when Hanzo is done. “What time was it when you got back? Didn’t quite see when you came in.”

“After midnight. Sadly not late enough for me to justify skipping this morning’s sims.”

“I’m sure you could get away with it. Angela’s got a mean lecture about sleep deprivation she can give Winston.”

Hanzo huffs, but shakes his head. “No, it is fine. I have done worse things.” He leans up against McCree, and McCree wraps an arm around his shoulder and tucks him close. “Is there breakfast?”

“Not yet. Still early. Was tryin’ to decide if I liked everyone enough this morning to do pancakes.”

Hanzo hums and tips his head sideways against McCree’s shoulder. “That sounds nice. You should do that.”

“In a bit, then.”

Hanzo hums again. McCree rests his head against his and drinks his coffee.

As they sit there for a few minutes, quietly basking in each other’s company as they wake up, it occurs to McCree that this must be true contentment. He could stand to do this every morning. 

Maybe he could have this every morning.

The thought doesn’t startle him the way thinking it has before, instead settling over him like a comforting blanket. He waits for the panic and doubts to barge in and ruin the sweetness of this moment but they never come. He could have this—maybe not forever, but not through any fault of Hanzo’s. And anything else he’ll fight like hell for the right to keep what he has right now. 

“What do you think of movin’ in with me?” McCree asks.

Hanzo makes a questioning noise. “We technically already live together.”

“You know what I mean.”

At this angle, it’s hard to read Hanzo’s expression, but he can see his brow furrow. “You want me to move into your dorm?”

“I mean. You’re halfway there already. Doesn’t have to be mine, either, if you like yours more. Not that there’s any real difference, I think.” McCree is surprised to realize he doesn’t feel nervous about this at all. “But I like this. Wakin’ up with you. And our lives are kind of a mess and I don’t see us gettin’ that house with the white picket fence anytime soon, so this seems like the next best thing.” 

Hanzo thinks on this for a long moment. Then he lets out a sigh and tucks in closer, settling more comfortably against McCree’s side. “Only if you make pancakes,” he says simply.

McCree laughs. He tries to kiss the top of Hanzo’s head, but mostly succeeds in pressing his grin against his hair. “Fair enough. I can do that.”

[elenathehun]

Shisui/Mei, 37. "Shall we dance?"

“I don’t like this,” Zabuza repeated, for the fourth time in the last hour.  Mei very firmly resisted the urge to sigh, before looking over at her… partner?  That was as good a word as any for their relationship.  Mist nin don’t have friends, but she and Zabuza were rather past the point of being colleagues.

“You don’t have to like it,” she told him firmly, pouring some more sake into her cup.  "You just have to follow the plan.  Why not play a game while we’re here?  You need to work on your bluffing, anyway.“

He just grunted in response before walking away towards the card game in the center of the room, which was less than satisfying.  Mei gave him another 10 minutes before he started up again.  Out of all the people in the Village, Mei really regretted that he was the only one she could sort of trust in this matter.

Well, him and Yagura.  But Yagura was off learning to control the three-tails, and even if he’d perfect his control of the beast, he wouldn’t have been able to come to this meeting.  After all, their faction’s candidate for the Fourth Mizukage absolutely could not be seen conspiring to assassinate his predecessor with the aid of foreign nin.

No, Yagura need to train, as far away from the Third as possible while still remaining in Mist’s territorial bounds.  Preferably semi-publicly.  And that left Mei and Zabuza sitting in a rundown gambling den on the western frontier, waiting for some kind of confirm from the fucking Leaf.

And right on cue, the door to the den slid open, and a man walked in.  Mei sized him up as he pulled off his waterproof cloak - pale skin, dark eyes, and dark, curly hair, complete with calloused hands criss-crossed with wire work scars.

"So does Leaf want to make it obvious they’re interfering with the politics of Mist, or is that just a nice side-effect of sending an Uchiha to do their dirty work?” Mei asked sweetly, gesturing for the man to approach her table.  The other nin didn’t even flinch.  A careless grin spread across his face as he loped over to her table, before stopping a little shy of the stool Zabuza had just departed.  Zabuza himself was doing his best to blend in to the background with the other card players - and actually not doing too bad a job, surprising as that was.  

“Ah, but where would the fun be in that?” The Leaf nin asked cheerfully, mirth visible in every line of his face.  "It’s hardly a challenge if my masters send me to a place where I blend in!  Of course, if I stand out so much… please, my lady, do tell me my name.“

Mei raised an eyebrow at the impudence, before accepting the point.  She didn’t know the man’s name, and without the appearance of a sharingan, there was no way to definitively ID someone as an Uchiha.  Mei wordless swept her arm out in a welcoming gesture, and the Uchiha chuckled and sat down in the stool opposite hers, pouring himself his own cup of sake.

"So I heard from a friend of a mutual acquaintance that you’d like to have a greater hand in steering the ship of state,” he murmured over his cup of sake, dark eyes intent on hers.  "I also heard that your figurehead is 500 leagues south, putting down a local insurrection almost singlehandedly.“

Mei inclined her head.  There was no use pretending that Yagura does not bear the Sanbi.  He’d been famous before the demon had been sealed inside him, and his skills had changed too much afterwards.  In truth, Leaf was the only village so secretive about their sacrifice.  They held the nine-tails, but prided themselves on the strength and skill of their ordinary nin in both war and peace.  If they had ever used their sacrifice in battle, no one had survived to tell the tale.

"Our leader cannot be tainted by any speculation regarding the manner of his predecessor’s passing,” Mei confirmed.  "So you will only deal with myself.“

"I’m not sure if I’d call that stupid or brave,” the Uchiha said, still smiling.  "I’m not sure I could be that sanguine about the possibility of exile.“

"Neither,” Mei replied curtly.  "I call it sensible; I have no desire to go into exile, but if that be the price of regime change…“

"Well said, but ultimately unnecessary,” the Uchiha murmured, his smile fading as he leans across the table.  "I am very good at my job - certainly better than you, Terumi Mei, and you are hardly a novice.“

He probably thought he was being menacing.  Mei grew up with a sword over her head, the hilt clutched between her own hands and that of her closest classmate.  This display didn’t even rise to the level of implied punishment her father had threatened her with when she was a small child.  Mei had deliberately cultivated her reputation since she’d graduated; her appearance and her powers are well-known. If the Uchiha didn’t know her name, she would have been insulted by the caliber of assistance the Leaf sent.

"Are you finished?” Mei asked sarcastically.  "Because if this is the extent of your skills, I may need to ask our mutual acquaintance to find me someone worthier of my time.“

"Oh, so it’s an exhibition you’d like?  I can provide that, if you’re not willing to take me at my word.”

And suddenly the gambling hall was twisting in her vision, as the Leaf nin pulled the genjutsu from her control into his, faster than she could pull it back.  When it resettled, it was a dance hall, the type favored on the border between Leaf and Lightning.  The petty criminals had all transformed to respectable townsfolk, out for a night on the town.  Zabuza looked quite out of place among the throng.

“Wanna dance?” the Uchiha said, as awfully forward and informal as all the other Leaf nin Mei had met, dominant hand outstretched.

Mei laughed; it sounded like a bell ringing.  She knew this because her mother had drilled her on it incessantly, until she could produce it on cue.  She placed her hand in his, lingered a little on the sensations of his callouses, so different from hers - and then ended the genjutsu.  The dripping woods of Mist came back into view, the mist ever-present as always.  

“Oh darling,” Mei purred.  "It would be my absolute pleasure to partner with you.“

[aethelar]

So, uh, a while back you wrote a thing for Magizoologist!Graves and Head of Magical Security!Newt. I found the Newt piece, but did you ever write the one for Graves?

Nonnie, I did not. Very remiss of me. We shall rectify; in part one, we had Newt Scamander, Head of Security at MACUSA - now let’s bring on part two and introduce Percival Graves the Magizoologist.

How, you might ask.

Percival Graves of the boss-man suits, the judging eyebrows that judge without shame, the complete lack of chill and the vocabulary that is primarily swear words - that’s the Graves we’re going with, and we’re asking him to abandon his promising career as an auror in favour of playing Mummy to a host of, of assorted highly illegal most likely viciously poisonous things.

Graves does not have the background that would suit a magizoologist. His entire resume can be summed up by: grew up with two dogs, once managed to redirect a sparrow outside after it had got stuck in the office.

So. How does he become a magizoologist?

By accident.

Newt joins MACUSA in the early days of 1919 and, although he doesn’t cross paths with Graves, his mere presence has an impact. Newt takes the spot on the Criminal Investigations team that Graves was angling for but that’s fine, that’s ok. At least two of the of the other teams are interested in the promising new recruit and have offered jobs to the latest heir of the Graves’ vaunted line.

Three teams, if you count the Traffic team, but Graves does not count the Traffic team, so. Two other teams. Special Ops try and tempt him with a frankly ridiculous wage packet to join their diplomatic missions, and let’s face it, Graves is tempted. International diplomacy is what makes and shapes the world, and America might be newer on the scene than some of the other magical nations but the Graves name will still carry some weight. He could do a lot of good. He could also royally fuck up and cause the next world war, because maybe his however-many generations back ancestor was good with words but Graves himself finds punching things a much better solution. With that in mind, he ends up in the Defence and Response Corps and, blunt and straightforward as DaRC are, he thrives.

Maybe in another world he’d learn how to talk the talk to back up his walking the walk and be part of the ICW, but in this world his job consists of identifying threat, taking threat down with extreme prejudice and/or explosions, and shielding the fuck out of whatever target he was sent in to protect. Nothing gets passed his shields. They’re multi-layered frequency-shifted beauties and they earn him the nickname Gravestone for how immovable he becomes once he plants himself, and in four years of working with DaRC he never once loses a target. Not once.

In his fifth year, his target is a short, scrappy woman beset by a pack of Black Dogs. The malevolent ghosts come out at night, baying their omens of death and plaguing the people of the town - three children have already vanished, stolen, most likely, by the evil creatures. The woman is running her magic dry trying to keep them away, and though she’s reluctant to call in DaRC she fears she has no choice if she wants to survive.

That’s how she puts it, at least. Graves turns up, and something sits wrong with him, but - well, he’s not with Criminal Investigations. He’s with Defence. He digs in, builds his shields, and waits for nightfall. The sun sinks, the temperature drops, and he turns his lumos down low to preserve his night vision. The thermos of coffee in his pack has a careful combination of warming charms and space-distortion, and it holds enough to keep him going for several nights in a row, but - if the dragon-fire flares do their job - he’ll only need it for one. He waits. Occasionally the woman peers suspiciously from her window or opens the door to check on him under the thin guise of offering him tea. Once she starts singing loudly, off-key, to a song she doesn’t know the words to. There’s a thump, a hissed shut up, one more line of the song and then silence.

Roughly twenty minutes after midnight, the Black Dogs arrive. The pack is a dozen strong, maybe more, and under the grey moonlight they look pallid and sickly. Their fur is tattered, their eyes glowing baleful red; one of them has bleeding stumps in place of its ears, another flickers between ghost and corporeal, a third has too much skin for its bones and the folds make it misshapen and grotesque. Graves raises his wand and lets one hand hover over his flares, but though they circle him, they don’t attack.

Inside the house, a soft whimper. A hissed reprimand. A slap, and a stifled gasp of pain.

The Black Dogs hover just out of reach, their crouched forms as tall as Graves at the shoulder, their pupil-less stares heavy and expectant. They’re all here. All within reach, and he isn’t going to get a better shot. If he were doing his job, he’d burn the pack now and be done with it.

“Miss Glover,” he says into the charmed pin on the collar of his coat. “Remind me again why the dogs are targeting you?”

Her voice crackles back, high and angry. “They’re evil! Dark creatures, foul children-snatchers - they don’t need a reason!”

He hums, considering. They still haven’t attacked. “Some people say they protect children,” he says lightly. “Watch over them in the night, warn them away from danger. Guide them home when they get lost.”

There is a pause. The dogs are so still they barely move. Graves keeps his grip light on his wand and doesn’t breathe.

The spell she fires at his back is not unexpected and he twists easily to dodge it. The child standing behind her, eyes blank as he holds a jagged knife to his own throat, that Graves’ hadn’t predicted. He curses himself and stops his own spell before he fires it.

“I’ll kill him,” Glover says. “You think - you even think of firing, and I’ll tell him to do it.”

“The Imperius curse is illegal,” Graves grits out. “Under section 7 part C - “

She spits a hex at him and he dodges again, not daring to risk using his wand to deflect. “Go fuck yourself,” she snarls. “The law doesn’t protect no-majs, does it? I’ve done nothing wrong.” Graves’ mind races because that, that really doesn’t sound right, but he doesn’t know for sure, in this universe he hasn’t studied the laws enough to know, and if she’s right - if she’s right then legally, there’s not a damn thing he can do to her. MACUSA protects magicals. If the children aren’t magical he can’t act to protect them. That sounds bullshit, but the law says is a solid block he’s coming up against, and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

She gestures impatiently at the silent, watchful dogs. “Well?” she prompts. “Don’t you have a job to do?”

Graves hesitates, but eventually lifts his wand slowly, hands outstretched to show her what he’s doing. “I need my spells,” he says cautiously, carefully not looking at the child-hostage in the doorway. Glover waves a negligent hand at him and he grits his teeth, thinks fuck it and resettles his wand in his grip, raises his magic in preparation for the spell -

and brings his shields crashing down.

The Black Dogs move as one. Graves dives for the kid, grabbing the blade and ripping it away. Behind him, Glover shrieks, firing one, two, three spells at the pack, but outside the protection of her house and wards she’s no match for them. She doesn’t fire a fourth spell.

When it’s done, the dogs paw at the doorstep, whining and plaintive until Graves goes in. He finds the other two children in the upstairs bathroom, huddled behind the shower curtain and armed with a half-empty bottle of shampoo. They cry when they see him, and cling to him, the girl in stoical silence, the boy asking again and again to go home. Graves carries them both downstairs to where the other boy is waiting, shell-shocked, on the front step, and when they won’t let go of him he carries them to their respective homes.

The dogs follow him every step. The no-majs don’t see them, of course, which is probably for the best - at least four of the dogs stayed with the kids, two with the first boy and one each with the children from the bathroom, circling the house like particularly ominous guard dogs. Graves doesn’t know what Glover wanted with the kids, what she used them for - he probably should have obliviated them just in case, but it’s unwise to obliviate wizards soon after traumatic experiences and he sees no reason why it would be different for no-majs.

When he gets back to the house he’s down to three dogs following him, and the witch - her corpse? - is gone. He pointedly doesn’t acknowledge his shadows, just checks the perimeter, shuts the front door, and apparates out.

He has the following morning off (he always does after working nights) and he uses it to pull the auror-issue law books from underneath the wonky table they’re propping up. By midday, he’s discovered that Glover was right; the law sees nothing wrong with kidnapping no-maj children and keeping them trapped in your upstairs bathroom. By two in the afternoon, he’s tracked down the precedence and the sub-clauses that make it legal to use the imperious curse on no-majs, so long as the statute of secrecy is upheld. By four, he’s several hours late for work, and is eighty percent certain that he could be prosecuted for murder and the use of dark creatures as a lethal weapon. DaRC will have to send out a second team, a full hit team to cleanse the area of the Black Dogs, Graves’ career is in ruins - if not his life, if Glover has enough family to push for his prosecution, and this whole being an auror to protect people schtick is sounding far more naive than it did this time yesterday.

By six, he’s packed what he wants from his cramped auror flat; by eight, he’s left his badge on the table and psyched himself up to walk out the door.

There are three dogs waiting for him when he steps out onto the street, each one as tall as he is with glowing, pupil-less eyes. The no-majs walk through them as though they aren’t even there.

“What, am I a kidnapped child now?” Graves jokes, but even to his own ears it falls flat. His entire life is  packed into a worn leather backpack and a standard-issue field belt with three night’s supply of hot coffee in one of the many enlarged pouches. He doesn’t know where he’s going, or what he’s doing, and he’s pretty sure he’s majorly fucked up. More than fucked up. He’s a murderer on the run in league with demonic ghost dogs. Fucked up doesn’t even begin to cover it.

The largest of the three dogs, thin and bony with a whip-like tail, turns to walk down the street. The other two follow, one on either side of Graves, their bodies surprisingly warm as they press him along. Graves only goes because he doesn’t have anywhere else to be. Because, right at that moment, he’s a little bit scared and a little bit disbelieving and a whole lot lost.

And, you know, Black Dogs are good at leading lost souls home.

(the first place they lead him is a construction site with a snallygaster chained behind the piles of steel girders, and Graves isn’t sure how the snallygaster ended up following him after he freed it but it did)

(the second place is a garden beset by knarls, and they move into one of the pouches on the utility belt which Graves really wishes they hadn’t done, but they’re there now and they don’t seem to be moving out)

(the third place is the sea, no creatures, no-one to save, just the empty beach and the open sea and Graves sits curled against the dog he’s called Sadie with the dog he’s called Spot sprawled over his feet while Snally the snallygaster plays with the waves and Knarls Ay Cee and Dee start digging in the sand. He lifts up Knarl Bee from where she’s curled, prickly side out, in his lap and it’s been a month, now, since the dogs led him away from New York.

“I,” he tells her, “am clearly insane.” She waves tiny clawed feet at him and wriggles her quills into all the sensitive parts of his palm. He nods in agreement. “That too, but mostly insane.”

Bee sneezes, and that settles it. If she’s staying, then the pouch is clearly an insufficient home for her - today a cold, who knows what she could catch tomorrow? Graves has spent most nights so far sleeping under his jacket with a shielding charm pulled over him, what kind of home life is this for a growing Knarl? He might not have Newt’s flare for fitting pocket dimensions into a suitcase but what he does have is a great deal of experience expanding his coffee thermos to unreasonable sizes and a handy field belt with a handily unspecified number of pouches on it. They’re meant for ammunition and flares and the odd potions vial, but they’ll do well enough. By the time the sun rises and his dogs fade into ghost-fog for the day he’s made enough space on his belt to carry half the population of Manhattan around with him, Snally has haughtily demanded trees in his pouch, and Bee has progressed to nesting in his hair and sticking quills in his ear whenever he moves his head too vigorously.

Graves might not know enough about magical creatures to know if this normal behaviour but it makes her happy, so why not.

He should probably learn about magical creatures though. Seeing as, you know, he appears to be collecting them.

Maybe.)

[fursasaida]

This is a horrific story. I am going to write a little something here about bare life, necroresistance, prisons, and camps, but I will try to offer some general context first. I haven’t included any graphic details here, but I will be discussing suicide, self-harm, hunger strikes, and force-feeding. The link describes this man’s burns in some detail.

The article doesn’t go into a lot of contextual detail, but Australia has held asylum-seekers on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea for the last several years. (There is a very good rundown here from @theauspolchronicles.) This is to make it easier to avoid admitting them to Australia or granting them any kind of access to legal protections and services (as is generally the aim of remote detention). The conditions there have been dire for a long time. Suicide attempts among prisoners are nothing new; there was a rash of them just after Australia’s last election. Behrouz Boochani, who wrote an award-winning book from within the camp (he could not, however, receive the award, since he would have had to be allowed to enter Australia), described it this way:

Boochani says some people in the camps report being physically abused by the guards, but that's not what he's referring to when he writes about the "systematic torture" he has witnessed and been subjected to.

"When I say torture ... mainly I mean, you know, the humiliation," he said.

"When a system [treats] you in a way to take your identity, take your humanity and reduce you to just a number and take your individuality, I think it is a big torture."

People in the camps don't know why they're being detained, how long they will be there, or even where they will end up if they ever leave, he said.

"They are treating you like a terrorist, like a criminal, while you are only a simple person like other people around the world," he said.

"One of the main questions that the people in Manus Island ask — and it is my question for years and years — that what is my crime? What is my crime?"

What is really striking about the criminal prosecution of this particular man (who has not been named) is how it so clearly shows the logic of bare life vs. necroresistance. Bare life is a term coined by Agamben to describe the state of being of people held in concentration camps (broadly defined); rather than being the kind of life that governments justify themselves as protecting, nourishing, and serving, they are held in a state of aliveness, life without value or meaning. (The point here isn’t that people in this circumstance lose the ability to make meaning of their lives in their own minds, but that they are classified in this way. The long tradition of prison and concentration camp writing--of which Bouchani is a recent example--shows this.) Bare life can be killed, but it can’t be sacrificed.

Prisoners in this kind of circumstance have material control over one thing only: their bodies. This is why hunger strikes, self-harm, and suicide are common forms of resistance in these situations. (Some of you may recall the rounds of hunger strikes and force feedings at Guantanamo Bay. The same is now reportedly happening under ICE in Texas.) Banu Bargu, in her book Starve and Immolate, calls this “necroresistance.” To put it very simply, she means by this that since bare life is reduced to aliveness, devalued or meaningless life, people can resist only by turning to the means of death; they cannot make appeals based on anything that serves the notion of “the good life,” i.e., the future of their children, morality, equality, flourishment, or any of the appeals generally made by activists under “normal” circumstances. All one can do in this situation is assert one’s control over one’s own status as alive or dead, and one’s own body. And the only way to do that in such tightly controlled circumstances is through self-harm of one sort or another. This is, in essence, an attempt to restore meaning and value to one’s physical life by producing one’s death as sacrifice rather than termination.

In this case, the man who attempted suicide had been seeking medical care (it’s not clear to me if this was mental or physical care, or both) and had been denied. After the fire, he was taken for treatment to the very clinic that had refused him. As his roommate said to the press,

“They said he’s under the treatment now so don’t allow [me] to come inside … I said, ‘Can you explain why you guys giving him treatment now, where were you before [when] he was asking you for treatment’.”

The reason he can get care now where he couldn’t before is, repellently, very simple. Bare life merits care only when it risks death. This is because such a death would successfully call into question the detaining authority’s absolute control over whether bare life lives or dies; the point is not necessarily to kill but to exercise authority over life and death. Thus bare life can also be understood as a state of “not allowed to die.” Similarly, the prisoners at Guantanamo and now in Texas were force fed because their hunger strikes were/are an attempt not only to call attention from the outside world but to assert control over their own bodies in defiance of the authority of detainment. Dying in this way is always an attempt at meaning, at asserting the ability to make meaning; this is one reason why, for example, some of the Turkish hunger strikers Bargu studied continued to fast until they died even after being released from prison.

That this man will now be criminally charged for his act is a kind of escalation of the confrontation between camp and prison systems and necroresistance. Suicide is a crime in Papua New Guinea (many countries have similar laws on the books, but these are not necessarily enforced). This man is not the first prisoner to face criminal charges for attempting suicide (though I’m not aware of similar criminalization of necroresistance in prisons/detention facilities elsewhere), but the fact that Australia’s remote prison is located in a place where suicide is actively prosecuted makes the prisoners’ status as bare life even starker. Not only are they locked up under miserable conditions that would make anyone contemplate suicide; not only are they disallowed to exercise control over the very last aspect of their beings, their bodily life; but on top of this, acts of necroresistance are not only punished within the prison through violent “care” (such as force feeding or carceral hospitalization), but criminalized from outside, by the state more generally. (There is a whole question to pursue here about jurisdiction and the state of exception, but I’ll leave it alone for now.) The absurdity is remarkable. Imagine being sentenced to a year in prison because you tried to kill yourself after six years of imprisonment with no end in sight. Imagine potentially being sentenced to seven more on top of that for arson. You didn’t expect to get out anyway, except maybe by dying; can you imagine receiving such a sentence?

The head of Manus police had two things to say that struck me:

Yapu said it was “frustrating” that this was the fourth deliberately lit fire at the accommodation blocks.

“Those buildings cost government a lot of money to build to accommodate the refugees and non-refugees and they should look after them until such time they leave PNG and resettle in the third country,” said Yapu.

This underlines the fact that bare life has no value. Its end is to be prevented only to preserve the authority and interests of the state (including avoiding negative international attention; avoiding the conversion of ongoing, ignored detention into a more visible event of death). The physical plant of the prison and its cost to the state is, of course, of greater concern than the well-being of detainees; if anything, the latter is a contradiction in terms (“well-being” is not something available to bare life).

Responding to an article about the mental health crisis, Yapu wrote on Facebook last month: “What more can our police officers do?”

“Attempts (sic) suicides, self-harm are beyond our control and part of system of depression related to long-term offshore detention, unknown future and families living away from them and result to severe mental illness.”

On one level, it’s true that the Manus police do not control the situation; they did not create it. It results from an agreement between the governments of Papua New Guinea and Australia. But it is really notable to me how suicide and self-harm are described here as simultaneously “out of our control” and the result of long-term detention. The system of detention is not a natural, unchangeable law. It can be done away with. In this sense, the problem is  within the control (or at least, the capacity to act and affect) of anyone involved in maintaining that system. What this simultaneous denial and assignment of causality suggests to me is that the statement really says this: the fact that detention causes self-harm is out of police control. Prevention is not possible. The problem cannot be managed or minimized, only responded to. This is precisely why Bargu terms such acts necro-resistance; they exceed detention’s logics of pacification, control, management, and “process.” (That the facilities on Manus are still referred to sometimes as places for “processing” is a sick joke about on par with the notion of sentencing someone who is already indefinitely imprisoned to a prison sentence.)

Because of all this, the framing of “depression” for this man or anyone like him is totally inappropriate. This is not to deny his emotions or the very obvious fact that indefinite detention makes people unhappy. It is to refuse these reactions’ production as medical conditions whose location is inside prisoners’ minds or hearts. “Depression” connotes medical pathology. It is discussed, generally, in terms of neurotransmitters, medication, and a mysteriousness of cause, even though this is, actually, rarely the case. My point here is that the way we talk about mental illness these days serves to pathologize individuals instead of their circumstances, and while I object to that in all cases, it is especially ridiculous and craven in reference to Manus, to Gitmo, to ICE facilities, to Gaza, to anywhere that can be classified as a camp. If this man has depression, it is not coming from inside his brain. It is coming from the walls he tried to burn along with himself. It is coming from Australia. To re-classify necroresistance as acts of mental illness is to join the authorities of detention in denying meaning and value to bare life.

We should also keep in mind that while necroresistance is much more common in formal prisons and concentration camps, it is not limited to those places. Agamben theorized the camp not simply in itself but as the unique product and structuring logic of modern society. Thus when Mohamed Bouazizi self-immolated in Tunisia, kicking off the Arab Spring, he was resisting the conditions that made it impossible for him to make a living--he could get no legal work and was criminalized and prosecuted for selling fruit illegally to survive. He was refusing a system that said he should be alive but disallowed any conditions for that life to be more than bare. We might ask ourselves what it was that Arnav Gupta and an unnamed wheelchair user were refusing when they attempted self-immolation outside the White House in May and April, respectively. We might refuse an explanation that deals in mental illness.

[fightevilandthengetblownup]

FIC: In The Afterglow

Everything that could go wrong this weekend, was going wrong it seemed.

---

When she had told him that she was expecting to be home researching rather than out hunting over the Valentine’s weekend that year, Jo saw the slight shift of his posture and biting of his lip that she took to mean he might plan something for once. Usually she was either away, or about to leave or having just gotten home and wanting to sleep the day away, so typically they’d spend the day apart or crashed out on the couch. She’d often suggest they wait a day or two and then go buy all the chocolate they could carry for half price, before gorging themselves over the next two weeks.

---

When Shada had begun popping over more frequently and finally convinced Jo between hunts to go out shopping with her, she started to suspect there was an ulterior motive from the number of short, tight, skimpy black dresses and practically non-existant bikinis the other woman tried to get her to try or buy. Thankfully the shadow seemed appeased when eventually she’d bought something, though the underbreath comments about ‘who even likes yellow anyways’ and ‘ugly ass one-pieces’ made her think perhaps she should have grabbed one of the other suggestions instead. Too little too late now.

---

When the weekend before she got a call from Bobby to organise “when did you two want me to dogsit Nana for” she absolutely knew something was going on. Laughing down the phone, Jo had handed it straight over to the other who went as red as she had ever seen him before he hurried out of the room, phone held to his ear and voice quiet. She hadn’t mentioned the call when he returned, simply flicking over to a rerun of Bridezillas as the Deadliest Catch went to commercial break. If he seemed tense when she’d curled into the nook of his arm, Jo didn’t mention it.

---

On the Thursday afternoon, Bobby showed up while Jo was in her study, Nana curled at her feet, working over a particularly hard bit of Hindu lore for a hunt - something to do with empty demon vessels appearing at an alarming rate in New Orleans, among dead humans as well. At the older hunter’s appearance, Jo dragged the four books she was using to translate between to beg for his help while Grey seemed to vanish into the kitchen while she waited for Bobby to read through what she’d done so far. What was supposed to be a quick pick up turned into three hours, where Grey sat next to her, arm tensely hovered as if to go around her shoulders as it usually would be refraining as he watched the three hunters talk over coffee, cake and the ancient texts. Jo had asked if they wanted to stay for dinner, but a quick shake of the head from Grey before the older hunter could agree let her know Bobby planned to make himself scarce before whatever surprise was due to be sprung.

It was as they sat down to watch a movie (his pick that night - Fury Road - which she found suspiciously her type enough) that Jo thought his attempts at subterfuge had been going on long enough.

“So, hun, where are we going?”

“Wha- why would you think we’re going anywhere?” Grey scratched at the back of his neck before resettling his arm around her as Jo cuddled into his lap. “Is there any reason we would be going anywhere?”

Jo laughed a little, tucking her feet against his legs and pinning him with a look. “Well, Bobby just took our baby away for the weekend, your sister has been asking me about outfits more than usual, you’ve been looking at me skittishly for the last three weeks, do I need to go on?”

Grey sighed at her grin, rubbing a hand over his face for a moment. “Can you go on?”

“Actually no, that’s all I’ve got.” Jo laughs again, reaching out for his hand. “So, where are we going?”

“I.. I thought you might want to get away for the weekend. Just us. Maybe some, uh, dinner somewhere nice.” Grey was staring purposefully at the TV screen, she could tell from the way his jaw muscle clenched and released and how his eyes occasionally started to drift towards her face, waiting for her reaction she was sure, before focussing right back on the screen. Max was holding Furiousa at gun point for, like, the third time. “Maybe catch some, uh, sun on the beach? Bit of shopping? Just...us time?”

“And where are you takin’ me for our us time?” Jo smirked a little, raising a brow at him before Grey finally looked over at her squeeze of his hand.

That seemed to be the right reaction if his responding smile, so uncertain but also bleeding happiness let her know this was going to be a fun weekend.

“It’s going to be a surprise. I have, um, already packed your bags.” There was a pause before he rushed to add, free hand tucking her hair behind her ear. “I mean, you can check them and add or take what you want out but-”

“I trust you, hun. And I’m sure your sister was involved in some way...”

“Yeah, uh, she may have had a bit of an influence.”

Jo nodded her head, leaning into his shoulder and stuffing a few of the chocolate buttons they were sharing into her mouth now that had been settled. “S’long as my yellow dress made the cut, I’ll be happy.” That got a huff of a laugh from the other as they relaxed back and settled in for the rest of the movie and the night.

---

“Okay, ready to go?” Jo almost bounced on her heels in excitement as they finalised the last few bits and bobs - phones and chargers, and European transformers(!!), tooth brushes and Jo’s favourite (only) perfume, as well as an old Polaroid camera and Grey’s current small sketchbook - were shoved into her purse while Grey got together their bags. She had woken up anxious and concerned, that had been wiped away with the warm good morning wake up she had gotten, but was now almost bursting with excitement from the moment she’d realised that whatever the other had planned was not in the United States. “Are we ready? Where are we going? When’s the plane leave? Do you even have a passport? How did you get on-”

Grey cut off her questions with a press of his lips, before pulling back and smiling at her as he grabbed a hold of the top of the somewhat large suitcase and wrapped an arm around her waist. Jo tilted her head as him as she threw the strap of her purse over her shoulder, and let out a sigh.

“So how-” Her words disappeared at the same time as them, her eyes blinking as the slightly dark but homely entry of their home disappeared and suddenly she was stood in the warm sunshine with nothing but bright, bright blue sea in front of her. Somewhere very far from the still slightly grey and cold weather at home, the recommendation to dress for warmer weather making much more sense now as the cool sea breeze tugged at her hair and shirt. “-are we getting anywhere...”

“Sorry, Jo, didn’t mean to surprise you.” The look on his face, somewhat smug and very very bemused, made her think that was a bold faced lie as Jo let out a laugh.

It was so gosh darn blue. It was her second favourite blue thing she decided in that moment, turning her face towards the warm sunlight and blinking at just how beautiful it was. God knows where they were though, and Jo found she didn’t really care, it was just for a few days she could be somewhere unknown.

“Wow..” She knew she sounded breathless, but god damn she was at home one second and the next in the most amazingly beautiful place she’d ever seen. “Just...wow.”

“Oh if you like this, I think you’ll like where we’re staying even more.” Grey practically purred the words in her ear as his arm tightened around her waist as they looked out again at the view across the old cobblestone wall from the cliffside they were on. He span her about after a long moment, hand sliding from her waist and into her hand as Jo continued to look about in amazement.

There was some open air market or something behind them, and the streets were so old. The houses were old too, and the various bright cheerful colours either faded from age or bright and bold from being recently replaced. And the sky was so, so blue and clear, with only the odd fluffy white cloud about the placce. It was perfect.

---

Supposedly the plan was for a romantic walk up to the villa. That had been what he’d said.

After the first five minutes trekking up a 45-degree slope on uneven cobblestones, that romance had died with her snarling out curses as she barely avoided rolling her ankle for the third time. He wasn’t in any better shape about it, sweating under the hot sun as much as Jo was and lugging the suitcase as well.

Even though they’d stopped and he’d decided to transport them to the white front door of the villa instead, it didn’t help that their hair was sticking to their necks, the starting tingle of a sunburn was kissing at her cheeks, and her feet were aching from adjusting to the need to walk differently on the paths here. Grey was muttering under his breath equally frustrated as he knocked again on the door, hands clenching and unclenching beside him while Jo leant on the suitcase for support.

“Where the fuck are these people...”

“Hun, I’m sure they’ll answer in a second.”

“They better, or I’m just smoking in.”

Jo rolled her eyes at that. It seemed this was the first of his ideas and that it hadn’t gotten off to the best start seemed to be getting to him.

Just as he raised his hand a fourth time to knock, the door opened to an equally frazzled looking woman blinking at them. “Oh no, sei già qui! Parli italiano?” The older woman looked between the two of them uncertainly, brushing at what looked like a lot of dust on her hair.

“Uh, non solo inglese?” Grey fumbled over the words, tugging at his t-shirt collar awkwardly as he sent Jo a look. “Um, we’re... we’ve booked the villa for the weekend? Si..amo... qui?”

“Yes, yes, weekend stay. Couple under Grigio, si?”

“Yes, Grey. Is.. are we early?”

The woman shook her head several times, more white dust falling from her dark wiry hair, and Jo couldn’t help but cringe realising that maybe something else other than a stupid choice about trying to walk up a freaking mountain was about to happen.

“Non non, all time correct. Simply problema with the house. Grande problema.” The older woman appeared to be distraught, rubbing her hands together and holding them out apologetically at the other, tears almost starting in her eyes. “Problema di tubi allagati - the pipes, there is a problem of water everywhere. All over floor, all through roof, fallen ceiling in master room. Not good, not good at all!”

“What?” Grey practically yelped the word out, staring at the woman in abject horror before he sent a concerned look over his shoulder at Jo. “When...when did this happen?”

“Proprio adesso - as we speak. Much flooding all through honeymoon suite-”

“Honeymoon suite?” Jo piped up from her seat atop the suitcase, raising a brow as the bright red colour appeared all over the other’s cheeks and down the back of his neck from what she could see. He shot her a look which made her want to laugh as the older woman began nodding again like a mad woman.

“Si, si si, suite is ruined. Quindi molto molto dispiaciuto, molto molto sorry!” She appeared to brush her hands finally clear of what Jo was starting to suspect was plaster dust as Grey ran a hand over his hair anxiously.

“Do you... have another room?” Jo took over after a long pause between the other two at the woman’s apologies, shifting off of the suitcase and raising an eyebrow at the woman.

Her look appeared to clear, clapping her hands together and a bright smile formd on her face. “Si, si si, another room! We place you elsewhere. Molto molto sorry, but we have another, si.”

“Let’s just go with that then.” Jo smiled kindly at the woman, sliding her hand into Grey’s free one as he appeared to still be struggling handling the news that something had gone dreadfully wrong with his planned choice. Hopefully it wouldn’t be a precursor to the rest of the weekend.

---

“At least we still have access to the pool?”

Grey practically growled for a moment before he cut it off, turning to look at her as Jo sat, one leg crossed over the other, at the end of the small double bed. The quilts felt nice and good quality under her hands, but the bed was distinctly smaller than even the one in the guest bedroom back at home.

Regardless, the view out the window was amazing, and Jo was right about the pool. She had seen it as they’d been shown through the gardens and out to the private pool house studio. Grey had grumbled as they entered that it was not what he had planned, but Jo had merely shook her head and run to the window overlooking the ocean without a care to the size of the space, the bed or anything but looking out at the vista again. She was only here for three days, and she was going to stare at that scene until her eyes bled if she had her way.

“Yeah, but we were supposed to be up on the third floor. We were supposed to have a California king, we were supposed to have the biggest bath you’ve ever seen!”

“Well no wonder the whole place flooded.” She replied offhandedly, eyes still fixed out the window as Grey bustled frustratedly around the room. She felt the dip as the suitcase was thrown a little hastily onto the bed behind her. “And honestly, we aren’t goin’ to be spendin’ much time in our room are we?”

“It was big enough to share Jo.” Grey paused where he was undoing the zipper of the suitcase, giving her a look that made her suddenly wish that room was available still just to see all that he had planned for the weekend. But still, they had that view.

Shifting around Jo reached into the open suitcase once he’d flipped the lid open, fishing out the swimmear she had bought at Shada’s encouragement to get something ‘beachy’ while Grey started moving their toiletries into the much smaller than his planning bathroom. Shrugging her shirt and shimmying out of her skirt, Jo quickly changed into the blue and white stripped top and red bottomed retro-styled one piece without a care at all as to what Grey was up to. He was in a funk about some room, when they still had access to that beautiful pool, and they were still in the most beautiful place she had ever been. Jo wasn’t going to waste either of those.

“Hunny, I’m goin’ to run out to the pool for a second okay?” Jo called out, pulling her hair up into a bun and grabbing her sunglasses out of her handbag. “Or did you want me to help unpack first?”

“Go on, Jo. You go enjoy yourself, I’ll... I’ll be out in a bit.” His voice sounded slightly rough and a little too soft from behind the closed door, but Jo didn’t want to push it if he was feeling some sort of way. This was going to be a good weekend, and she was going to enjoy herself.

---

It was a full half an hour before he appeared outside to the private infinity pool.

Jo had already swam a few laps, her hair wet and matted in the bun atop her head, and was now floating lazily on her back in the water, legs dangling and sunglasses covering her eyes as she let the sun and the slight breeze lull her into an almost waking sleep.

It was to hands on her waist that Jo realised she’d finally been joined by the other, dropping her feet to just graze the bottom of the pool with her toes even though they were in the shallowest part of the pool. Lifting the glasses from her eyes onto the top of her head, she smiled widely at the slightly tense quirk of his lips in response.

“Took ya long enough.” She teased, shifting around and then pushing off the bottom of the pool with one foot to wrap both legs around his hips as Grey wrapped her up in his own arms. “Done sulkin’ and ready to have an amazing weekend away?”

“Yes, I’m done sulking, pretty one.” He replied, hands moving to hold her up under her thighs and a self-depricating smile on his lips as they floated in the cool blue water. “Just had to get the case unpacked, and everything put away-”

“And stop sulking about things not always going to plan.”

“That too.” Grey laughed, finally smiling back and brilliantly as when they’d first arrived in the small Italian city. Jo had worked out they were in Italy from the language the villa owner used, but other than that, she was still at a loss but happy to keep floating across the water towards the edge of the infinity pool overlooking that view.

“So, now we’re here.. What else are we goin’ to be doin’?” Jo asked, nuzzling in at his neck as she wrapped her arms around his own and smiling back at him. , His own smile flickered slightly, the dark edge she was used to seeing when he was playing and teasing her coming in before Jo answered her on question in unison with him.

“It’s a surprise.”

---

That night they went to a small restaurant down near the pier on recommendation by the villa owner of a Napoli ‘pesce favoloso’ restaurant. It was so quaint, and clearly a place frequented by locals more than tourists from the lack of English and the crowds of happy, loud Italians calling about the place between customer and workers alike.

The atmosphere was amazing, and Jo almost squealled seeing the old Chianti bottles with the red wax candles melting all down the side and the worn wooden tables. There were no spaces for two people only, but that just added to the ambience as they were sat in the middle of a long bench table between a group of older men playing hands of cards around their share plates of octopus, squid and different white fish dishes, and what was clearly a multi-generational family enjoying a Friday night dinner together with fried arancini piled high between the seafood dishes.

The nice older man next to Jo noticed their plight as both Jo and Grey pulled out their phones to begin translating the menu, and within twenty minutes a bottle of white wine and an entire meals worth of food had been ordered on their behalf without input by the group of men, who began serving the pair of them from their own share dishes as well while they waited for their meal. It was one of the most honest, genuine and special moments Jo had ever experienced, and she’d had to blink her eyes rapidly when she caught the look that Grey had sent her over the table as the man next to her poured her a glass of their drink with a lot of jovial Italian and hand movements that she couldn’t follow at all.

That had been a perfect moment for the weekend, and one she knew the second it was happening that she’d store away to be remembered forever.

---

The Saturday morning started early as the sun streamed in through the flowing white curtains. Jo had thought those were just a feature of movies or those fancy Instagram photos from models and superstars, but as she stretched in the tight fitting bed to blink at the bright white of the morning, she let out a laugh. Grey was tucked against her back, face forced between her shoulder blades and one leg hanging off the edge of the smaller than normal bed for them, and Jo let out a quiet breath as she shifted gently to get up out of the bed.

She got changed into her swimsuit again, dry after hanging up in the bathroom overnight, and found herself swimming laps of the cold pool as the sun came up over the horizon. Leaning on the edge overlooking the beach and ocean beyong it, Jo grinned like an idiot as the orange bled into blue and the whole town sounded like it was beginning to wake up. A few more laps, and she finally snuck back into the pool house as the other rolled over off his back to wake up as well.

It was another hour before they’d finished the morning routine they were slipping into - kissing, sharing a shower and making jokes as they dressed for the day - and heard the sound of a sharp knock on the pool house door.

“Si, buongiorno signore e signora Grigio, break of fast is ready on il balcone. Please please follow.” The older woman smiled so brightly for such an early hour, but Jo was already in the best mood she thought she’d ever been in for eight in the morning and couldn’t wipe the corresponding smile off of her own face. Grey’s hand slipped into hers as they walked along behind the other woman, her keeping up a rattling one sided conversation in the not-all-English way she seemed to do.

The breakfast spread was not what Jo or Grey were used to, but Jo almost cried as she sat down next to the other at the sight on the table. Doughnuts, so many doughnuts, were piled high upon a platter plate, with fresh fruit sliced and arrayed around it. As they sat, the woman reappeared with two steaming mugs of espresso with dollops of milk froth in the centre of them, placing one in front of each of them before bustling away to where she had come from.

“Hun... Can we move to Italy?” Jo stared at the platter of swirled zeppoles and the round doughnut balls infront of her like she’d stared at him not even an hour ago, licking her lips and trying not to salivate as she started to pile a few onto the small plate in front of her.

Grey laughed, plucking up a slice of rockmelon for himself, watching her as she started on the first doughnut ball. “Jo, you can have doughnuts for breakfast at home.” He paused for a moment as she bit into the Nutella filled ball with a moan of pleasure like earlier that morning, before adding quickly, “But not all the time. You shouldn’t have doughnuts all the time for breakfast. Only on special occasions.”

“Oh you mean like today?” Jo waggled an eyebrow at him, quickly polishing off the first dough ball with a happy sound before reaching over for a strawberry that had been tucked in amongst the pastries. “Happy Valentine’s by the way, hunny. That, uh, was a very good start to the day this mornin’, just so you know.”

“Happy Valentine’s, Jo,” he mumbled back, and Jo had to bite down the grin at the flush on his cheeks and neck as Grey picked up a zeppole for his next choice and tore a piece of the pastry apart and dipped it into his coffee like he was a local to the place. Jo smiled at the way his eyes matched the skys when he looked back across at her. “Well, we’ll just have to continue the day on the right path, huh?”

“Speakin’ of, what did you have planned for today?” Jo smiled back, sipping her own coffee before adding quickly as he tried to quickly swallow his food to answer. “Lemme guess, it’s a surprise?”

He tapped his nose with one sugar coated finger, and Jo leaned over to wipe it off with a laugh as they continued tucking into the small feats - Nutella and jam and custard filled doughnuts as well as the ricotta zeppoles and fruit disappearing as they finished another two espressos each and watched the town coming to life below them from their perch on the balcony.

---

“We’re so sorry but Pompeii is closed to tourists today.” The guard stood before the access point had his arms crossed and seemed tired of repeating the same words over and over, and it was only ten in the morning. “We are sorry for any inconvenience caused.”

Grey practically snarled at the man as he repeated the exact same words for the fifth time, not even bothering to look at the pair of them any more as he rattled off the same message over and over. Jo felt his grip tighten a little harder than usual around her hand before he growled out in a quiet Whisper, “Why is it closed?”

So far that was the one thing the guard had not specified, and Jo felt her brow rise up hearing the method being used by the other but thought better than to chastise him in the middle of yet another thing going wrong on this weekend.

Getting to the site had been a nightmare as it was. Grey had wanted to ensure they fit in as much as possible with the tourist set, and they’d found themselves squished onto a tony bus with far too many fellow tourists with screaming annoying children and the stench of backpackers. Jo had half wished he’d changed his mind at that point and disappeared them both away to the end location as it was.

“The walls collapsed again. So tourists are being limited.” The guard spoke quickly, not even seeming to realise what had happened before he repeated off the speil about inconvenience caused as another person approached him.

Jo tugged on Grey’s hand, pulling him away from the rest of the crowd and wrapped her arms around his neck as he seemed to still be glaring hatefully towards the crowd of irrate tourists and the unwavering guard. Stroking a hand down his cheek, she pushed herself up to catch his lips with hers before retracting back when he finally responded.

“Hun, it’s not a big deal-”

“It so is! This is a huge place, and I know you wanted to see it after than documentary you talked about last year-”

“Yes, but it’s not-”

“And today is supposed to be perfect-”

“It already has been-”

“But the room is wrong, and the bus was dreadful and now we can’t even go see Pompeii!”

Jo rolled her eyes as she let him rant this time, rather than cutting him off, before stroking his cheek again with a cheeky smile. “Ah, but you see, I had an amazing swim this mornin’, and then an amazin’ lay, and the doughnuts for breakfast. And now? Now we can go onto Herculanioum instead if you are up to takin’ us.” She continued to stroke his cheek as she spoke, tweaking his nose when his gaze started to drift back to the guard with a dark look to it. “And I’ve heard those ruins are far better. And then we can avoid that bus trip back, hmm?”

There was a long pause, as Grey seemed to glare across at the crowd as if trying to work out how much trouble they would be in for accessing the site regardless, before he finally let out a shaky breath and pushed his forehead against hers.

“Fine... We’ll got to Herculanioum instead, just for you, Jo.”

“And for you.”

---

By the time they got back to the villa, it was almost three in the afternoon, and Jo’s cheeks definitely were feeling the bite from the sun but she didn’t care. She could worry on Monday about the sunburn after she had soaked up as much as possible this weekend.

Changing back into the swimsuit and convincing Grey to come out and recline on one of the deck chairs with his sketchpad while she swam laps, or floated on her back, or sank to the bottom of the pool and sat to see how long she could stay down there, the rest of the afternoon passed with splashing and jokes and the beautiful fruit, cheese and cured meat platter brought out at one point by the villa owner alongside a bottle of red wine that Jo practically drank all of and flopped a little more languidly in the pool after that.

As the sun began to sink over the other side of it’s morning rise, Grey finally declared they had to get ready for dinner and fished her out of the pool himself when Jo jokingly refused to leave the water. She couldn’t help the smile on her face at all, it had been a permanent feature of the afternoon, and she found it softening as he wrapped her up in the fluffy beachtowel with a kiss to the forehead.

From there, she sequestered herself practically into the bathroom once he’d had his own shower. Usually she spent less than ten minutes bathing, doing her hair and make up back home. Even for hunts where she needed a more professional look, it barely took more than fifteen minutes to do everything. So it was exhausting in a sense but also gorgeously pampering in another for her to spend over half an hour rubbing different lotions all over her skin, and applying make up more carefully than she ever had, and blow drying her hair out into gentle waves before pulling it into a full but sleek pony tail complete with a bright gold fastener that Shada had talked her into. Sticking her head out the bathroom door, Jo hissed at the other to turn around and stare out the window until she was finished getting ready, smiling as he covered his eyes and moved away from the bed to give her a semblance of privacy to slip into the bright yellow, somewhat plain dress. At least it matched the weather here more than back home, and pulling on some matching yellow shoes, Jo bit back a smile at the woman looking back at her in the mirror. Even her bites disappeared with the bright colour and her necklace obscuring the rest.

She bounded across the room, skirts swishing around her legs making her feel even more feminine, to tap on Grey’s shoulder before smiling widely at the gape of his mouth when he turned back to her. Her own lips would have been gaping like a fish if she hadn’t already noticed how nicely the cut of the tigher-fit navy suit pants and slimline navy jacket had looked from behind while he’d had his back turned. Sliding her hands up over the matching tie, Jo ran her hands up and down it a few times before tugging it loose and sliding it from his neck as Grey watched her quietly. Undoing the top two buttons and leaning forward, Jo pressed her nose in against the open skin and sighed quietly for a moment, before stepping back.

“No tie?” Grey swallowed thickly as Jo retreated, his own hands skimming over her waist, pulled in tighter than usual by the bodice of the dress. His thumbs brushed just against the underside of her breasts before sliding around her back, a smile on his face in response to her own.

“No tie.”

---

Dinner had been going well, which she supposed just meant it had to go wrong very very shortly; and that came true soon enough. They had been sat on one of the tables set up near the windows overlooking the setting sun across the glimmering ocean. Her breath had caught and it had been another of those forever-memories, scorched into her mind as the waiter approached and Grey fumbled through ordering the drinks for the both of them in a mix of English, stunted Italian and gesturing and pointing at the wine list. Glancing out the corner of her eye, Jo felt herself blushing at the look she was getting across the candlelit table that made her think potentially the exact same forever-memory storage was occurring on the other side of the table. She tucked a stray piece of hair back behind her ear as she shifted and turned her attention back to Grey rather than out the window.

Conversation flowed easily, talking about the shocking, beautiful and poignant ruins they had walked around that morning. Jo had been stunned and even slightly shocked to see the ash covered bodies clustered together, while Grey had marvelled at the architecture that had survived the destruction and so many years. She had taken quite a few Polaroid snaps of the both of them, and thought it funny how Grey never quite made eye contact with the camera for one reason or another. The funniest had been when the stray dog had run past and almost hit a wall trying to dodge around him. Sipping the wine delivered as they talked, bread and butter arriving at one point, followed by oysters with some kind of tomato top that Jo had raised an eyebrow at the other about. It was going to be one of those nights but she had already Google’d the place under the table and realised just how much thought and how special this evening was intended to be by the other. A Michelin starred restaurant, and their number one recommendation for the most romantic restaurant for Valentines day, and Grey had managed it with less than a months notice. Her heart thudded a little louder in her chest when she’d thought on that.

It wasn’t until the third plate of nine had been brought that the wrong showed up.

Jo had the seat facing out towards the rest of the restaurant with the smallest portion behind her, so she could see the moment that the man entered the restaurant. The man it was absolutely, impossible to be here of all places that walked through the space, eyes darting about the place as if searching for something.

She wasn’t sure exactly when it was that her own man had noticed - be it from the weird attunement to the other, or Jo’s own reaction and distraction, she wasn’t sure - but it seemed to be almost the exact same moment that the new comer spotted her.

“Oh thank fuck.” The expression was loud in the somewhat quiet  and subdued restaurant, as Gray quickly stalked along the walking space between the rows of tables towards them. “There you are.”

“Hun, hun please...” Jo barely acknowledged the newcomer, reaching a hand across the table to grab Grey’s hand with hers quickly. “Please let me handle this.”

Grey’s jaw was clenched, the muscles twitching as he turned his hand under her own to squeeze hers back, lips pressed into a thin line as the other shadow finally reached them.

Gray grabbed a chair from the table nearest them, not even looking at the two women and man sitting at the table together, clearly from the glassware the chair was already in use by one of the women’s dates but he was just vacant at the moment. Spinning the chair about and sinking into it backwards, he didn’t even glance over at the other shadow as he focussed on Jo instead.

He let out a little bit of a whistle, the noise reverberating through the restaurant as Jo noticed abstractly people were starting to look around from their private dinner bubbles to watch him, biting back a snort of her own at the idea. “First and foremost, damn sweetie. Just damn.” Gray ran an eye a little too long and a little too appreciatively over what was visible of her in her dress from where she was sitting.

Jo could feel the hand in her’s tighten harshly for a second, before his thumb began rubbing carefully or caressingly on her knuckles in apology, as she felt the color rising in her cheeks at the comment. Shaking her head, Jo raised an eyebrow at Gray. “Secondly?”

“Yes! Secondly, sorry was just a bit distracted cause fuck sweetie, why do you never dress like this for me, you better appreciate what you’re getting Runt,” There was a tense moment as Gray finally turned an eye towards the other shadow with a smirk as he gestured towards her. Next moment he turned away and then back again towards his brother with a slight frown, before smirking even wider. “I’m going to scrap my original secondly, cause secondly, little brother, so good to see you finally acknowledging my superiority. Your fashion sense really required some work, so I’m glad to see you finally embracing what sweetie really likes on a guy.”

“Now listen here-”

“Grey...” Jo hissed the words out, tugging on his hand in the hope of distracting him from attempting to do...something. She thought perhaps stab the other in the neck from the way Grey’s eyes darted between his brother’s neck and the dangerous looking serated blade for the meat course later.

“I’m going to kill him eventually, Jo.” Grey replied, free hand twitching as if to reach for his knife before diverting to reach across the table ignoring the intruder to tuck her hair back behind her ear. Gritting his teeth, he looked out the corner of his eye at his brother before resting back in his chair, other hand still squeezing Jo’s hand lighter and then tighter on and off. “Eventually.”

“Thank you.” Jo smiled brighly across the table at him, index finger sneaking further up to touch his wrist under the shirt cuff before she turned back to the sneering shadow. “Now, back to you. What are you doin’ here of all places? And what do you need me for now?”

Gray let out a huff of a laugh before nodding his head towards his brother. “Both of them are due to the runt actually. I’m here cause he blabbed his big romantic gesture plans to our sister, so that’s how I knew where you were. And I’m here because now Shada is stalking me trying to pressure me into...something cause its,” He appeared to pause for a moment, a flash on his face as if tasting something foul before finishing his sentence. “fucking Valentine’s day.”

“Huh. Interesting.” Jo simply stated in response. tilting her head thoughtfully to the side. She saw over the other’s shoulders, while Grey was focussed on glaring daggers at his brother and Gray was busy trying to get the taste of the words out of his mouth by seemingly drinking her wine - that was going to need retribution soon enough - that the man from the other table had appeared to return and a cluster of staff members whispering and fluttering about trying to work out a dignified resolution rather than potentially upsetting two tables. Another waiter came out from behind the group with two plates aiming directly for their table.

As the waiter reached the table, Jo sent Grey a look, another tight squeeze and then pulled her hand back to her side of the table as the waiter sat the two plates down, with a confused glance at Gray as he looked in distaste at the arrival of the food. “Oh god, really runt, you’re going to eat that?”

“Some of us aren’t children like you, dickhead.” Grey snaled the words out, lifting his own wine glass to his lips before adding sharply, “Would have thought you’d have gotten used to eating way-back-when.”

“I’ll make you eat-”

“Gray!” This time she snapped at the intruding one of them, eyes focussed sharply on him with a scowl as she didn’t move to pick up her knife and fork just yet. Jo refused to let whatever delicious course it was going to be be ruined by the other’s arrival or commentary. When he finally turned his attention back to her, Jo raised a brow at him and made a ‘continue’ gesture with her hand. “You said somethin’ about Shada and Valentine’s day?”

“Fuck, yes, the crazy moron has it in her head we have to do something romantic together. Just because the runt’s just gone and done all of this for you.” Gray growled the words out, one fingers skimming around the lip of her wine glass as he looked at her with a scowl. “Even though clearly there is nothing going on between myself and her, especially not to this kind of insanity.”

“Please don’t call it insanity.”

“Fine, sweetie, not in this kind of way. Is that better?”

“Much.” Jo bit back a bit of a smile at his words and his exasperation with the female shadow. She had heard her whining for the last week on and off about not having any plans for ‘the most romantic day of the year’ before Jo had been whisked away, and she couldn’t help but feel bad for the girl. She deserved much more than obsessing over the dickish shadow next to her. Sighing, Jo ran her hand over the loose tendril to the side of her face as she thought over the easiest way to get Gray to leave without causing a bigger fight or problem. Chewing on her lip, she tugged her wine glass out from under his hand and took a sip before replacing it, shrugging at the sharp disapproving noise she heard from across the table. Some way to get rid of Gray and help with Shada without causing another problem, some way, some way.

“Oh!” Jo let out a gasp as her eyes widened, coming upon an idea. Both men’s eyes went directly to her rather than glaring at one another while she had been quiet. Clapping her hands, she grinned widely towards Gray with another nod. “Easy done. Tell her you want to take her to Australia right now. And then when you get there, just... hang out, go to the beach or something. And don’t forget to remind her their ahead of the US timezone wise so it’s not Valentine’s any more.”

There was a long, stretched out silence around the table for a moment, before Gray thumped the table top a little too harshly with a fist, grinning at her widely. “Mother, sweetie, you are a genius.” Jerking upright out of the borrowed chair and sliding it back behind him roughly, not caring at all about the room’s attention being back on him and them by extension from the loud scraping noise it had made, his face transformed into a wide smirk before leaning down, one hand grabbing her chin as he pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Thank you, sweetie, I’ll remember this for next time you annoy me, aye? Now, enjoy your dinner with lowrent me.”

Jo blinked repeatedly as she tried to reconcile what had just happened as Gray jauntily stalked back out of the restaurant, seemingly considerate enough of her being on a date not to just disappear from the middle of the space; but barely had a moment before the sound of another chair scraping scratched through the air as her man jerked upright out of his chair, intent on following the other out of the space. Lightening quick, she reached across the table, rising a little out of her chair to do so, and tugged on Grey’s hand.

It felt for a second like Grey was about to shake her grip off, and she half expected it after such a performance from the other. But as he surveyed the room, a lot of eyes focussed on him and her alike, he clenched and uncleched his fists a few times before he turned to look down at her blinking owlishly up at him. Letting out a ragged breath, Grey sank back down into his chair across from her with a growled comment that, “I’m going to fucking get him for that.”

Jo let out a tight laugh in response as she ran her hand down his wrist to hold his hand in the middle of the table for a moment as she picked up her fork to prod at the beautifully plated roasted beetroots and goast cheese course in front of her. Biting her lip, she laughed again a little at the grouchy look still on Grey’s face before saying quietly. “Hey, if we leave before midday tomorrow, he should be back and you could beat him up as my gift to you for Valentine’s?”

[thedistantstorm]

A Steelponcho Dawning - Part 10

A Dawning romance featuring the Commander and the Clan Steward, their feelings for each other coming to a head during the first Dawning celebration following the Red War, featuring Lord Saladin, city food, eventual smut, and a whole lot of pining. Continues from: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9.

He makes it a point to keep himself occupied while she showers and dresses. It's far easier than to listen to her quiet sobs echo over the sound of the shower running (or it would be, if he weren't aware that it was happening).

When she leaves the washroom, dressed in clothes he'd silently swapped out for her dirty ones, her hair hangs down as if she doesn't have the energy to tie it back or braid it like usual. Perhaps she doesn't. Her eyes are dull, a stormy shade of brown that looks like murky water. He sets aside his tablet as she sits beside him on the couch in the pajamas he’d set out for her. He’s already changed into something a bit more relaxed himself: loose cotton pants and a plain shirt, pale white and dark blue to her black and grey.

She drops her head to his lap, curling up tightly in the empty space on the couch, and exhales hotly against his thigh. Her face doesn't look red, but he can see the bruising against her temple, and the puffiness that indicates spilt tears. He would never point it out, but it hurts to see on her.

“You should go to bed,” He says, voice low and soothing.

“I know,” She tells him. “I just-” Her voice cracks, “I'd rather be here right now.” With him. Not alone. She doesn't need to say it. He understands.

His fingers tangle in her hair, combing carefully through thick, damp strands. “As you wish.”

“Thanks,” The whisper comes in reply. Her left hand - he winces at the burns on her knuckles, they look painful - comes to rest on his knee with a gentle squeeze.

He can hear her breaths, raspy and wet, the only sound in the room. “Can I do anything?”

She shakes her head into his leg, curling up and into herself tighter. He feels her lip trembling through the fabric of his sleep pants. It's heartbreaking. He's upset about the loss, too. What happened was devastating. Horrific. Unnecessary. The Fallen would pay. But he's suffered worse - not that it's a numbers game - and has the experience in handling his grief, living with decisions that don't pan out. Not even during the darkest days of the war did the Farm suffer such a catastrophic loss. So, right now, it's about Suraya processing her feelings, learning from this experience and soldiering on. He knows it will cripple her if she does not. He's been there.

“When was the last time you ate?”

Hawthorne shrugs, though it appears more like a little scrunch of the shoulder not wedged between his thigh and the couch cushion.

He brings his palm down over her crown and smooths her hair. “Hungry?”

“No.” She wretched for a while in the shower before he got back, the smell of ichar caked into her skin bothering her, but he doesn't need to know that.

“Up,” Zavala tells her. She props herself up and looks at him, red-rimmed eyes sad. “Come here, he instructs, opening his arms for her to come close.

“Zavala,” She warns, lip curling as her vision hours with tears she's fighting away. His eyes are understanding, sympathetic but not in a way that indicates pity. She knows looking at him will be her undoing. “I don't want to-”

“But you need to,” He says seriously. “You don't have to hold it in.  Let me take care of you.” When she opens her mouth to argue, he reaches for her and hauls her up and against him like she's weightless, twisting her so that she's sitting in his lap. It's so easy for her to forget his immense strength, sometimes. “I want to.”

Dark eyes widen as he presses pale lips to her forehead, and his arms encircle her, tight but gentle. Her fingers have found purchase in his shirt, she realizes belatedly. It's soft, contrasting with firm muscle underneath. She exhales shakily.

He's trying to tell her she's safe, that it's okay to cry, without telling her it's going to be alright. She doesn't want to hear that it's going to be alright. People are dead. Innocent people. People who were wounded fighting for the City, the sick, the elderly. Children, even. None of them deserved it. Nothing will make that alright.

The first sob escapes her without notice, the second, third, fourth bubbling up in shallow, harsh breaths immediately thereafter. Her throat is so sore from smoke and ash, her aching body littered with small abrasions and burns from the necessity of trekking through raging fires to try and save anyone she possibly could.

“It is important to remember these feelings,” He rumbles into her scalp when her trembling, gasping sobs subside into tired tears. “You are an emissary of your people. You reflect them in all that you do. Their pain, their suffering, their joy… you are a testament to their triumphs and their failures. They draw strength from you.”

“Look at me,” She flails at her tear-streaked face with one hand. “I'm not strong at all.”

Zavala hums. “Shall I tell you what I think?”

She turns her head into his chest, shaking her head. He presses his lips against her hair again, unable to help himself. Like all others, he takes his duty to console her seriously.

“You are strong,” The Commander begins quietly, uncaring of her refusal. She'll listen, he knows she will. “Unapologetic, impossibly brave, stubbornly reckless-”  She snorts at that, despite herself, and the edges of his eyes crinkle in a half-smile. “You care. You may not think people see it, but they do, Suraya. You are beautiful. Inside and out.”

His calloused fingers slip under her chin and tilt her head up ever so slightly. “These,” He continues, wiping fresh tears out from under her wide eyes, “Do not indicate that you are weak. You are a leader. You make difficult decisions. You carry the weight of your losses, you learn from each and every one of your failures. You are strong because each and every time, you do not say you can’t do it again. You keep moving forward. You are, without question, one of the strongest people I have ever had the pleasure to know.”

She pushes her head into the crook of his neck and her arms come around him in a hug that's almost a force of nature. “Thanks,” She whispers against his skin, tears cool by comparison to her breath on his neck.

He runs a hand up and down her back in response, nursing her through the rest of her body's emotional response in silence, feeling the gradual give of her body as exhaustion rushes in to fill the gaps where tension leaves her body. She is tired. So very, very tired.

“Time for you to go to bed,” He whispers after a time. It could be minutes or hours later. She doesn't know.

“Just leave me here,” The reply comes, in a drowsy mumble. “'ll sleep on the couch.”

There's a chuckle. “Absolutely not.” He certainly didn't usher her to his abode just to leave her on the couch. She can sleep here, in a quieter place than her own that faced the boisterous Bazaar. Suraya's flat, while not horrible by any means, was a bit messy - she'd left in quite a hurry - and he would be more productive if they stayed here and duty called during the night.

They would be having an emergency Consensus meeting tomorrow afternoon. Necessity dictated it. He'd already prepared another change of clothes for Suraya and left a window open for Louis to come and go from her place when he pleased. Honestly, he really needed to get a stand for the bird for his own space. Had needed to for a bit. He'd caught the raptor perched outside his window many a time.

A firm shake of his head recentered his thoughts. “Suraya, you are going to sleep in a bed. You need the rest.”

“What 'bout you?”

Leave it to her to be concerned about him. He stroked the top of her head and she nearly purred as she stretched and resettled against him. Zavala thought it cute - she was rather cute all the time - but something told him she wouldn't appreciate the sentiment.

“I will sleep on the couch.”

“No. This's your place,” She slurs. “I'm okay on the couch.”

“Nonsense.” She blinks open her eyes and looks up at him as he tells her, “You need a good night's rest.”

“...’m good here. Slept in far worse places.” He rises with her in his arms, and she flinches at the sensation of being lifted into the air. “Hey! What are you-”

“Taking you to bed,” He murmurs to her, voice taking on that no-nonsense tone that's low, authoritarian, and mostly a rumble, “So you don't attempt to argue with me all night.”

It isn’t much of an argument, in hindsight. And to be honest, it’s incredibly flattering when he deposits her on the bed and her first inhale comes with the quiet gasp of, “it smells like you,” followed by an immediate calm that settles over her like a blanket. He barely gets a chance to pull the covers over her before she’s asleep, and he doubts she feels the brush of knuckles against her scalp or the selfish kiss he presses to her forehead before he leaves her to rest.

Far easier is it to blame his doting on her fragile emotional state and what she needs, than to blame it on his emotions. He’s been doing a great deal of thinking. About what Saladin said, about how he feels. About what it all means - how much it means. About duty and about honor.

To weigh the duty to his heart - to himself - against that of his duty to the Traveler seems… incomparable. Far too selfish to consider. And yet, those duties align. She is good for the people, the Guardians, even the Traveler. Could it truly be that simple? Certainly Saladin seemed to believe it was. In his heart, in its most selfish recesses, Zavala too wanted to believe he could have her and still carry out his duties uninhibited.

-/

A short while later, the Commander wakes, startled by a sound in the kitchen. Recovering from his initial panic (and mentally reassuring his ghost that all was well), Zavala rose quietly from the couch and peered around the corner at his guest who had her back to the sink and was tipping a tall, slender glass of water against parted lips. She looked sleep mussed, long hair askew, shirt twisted and riding up while her pants hung down, exposing the dark caramel toned skin of her midriff.

“Sorry,” She whispers when he takes a tentative step into the kitchen. He forgets his eyes are like a beacon in the night, even when half lidded. She must have noticed him right away. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s fine.” He drops into one of the chairs at the small table they never eat at. “How long have you been up?”

“Maybe an hour now?” Suraya shrugs, idly twisting a loose strand of hair. He's never seen her play with her hair before. Must be an anxious tick, easy to cover since her hair is hidden most of the time. “Woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep.”

He frowns.

“Hey,” She tells him, shaking her head with a wry smile. “Not your fault. Even a little shut eye is better than nothing. If I had gone home alone,” She rambles, setting the glass behind her in the sink, “I wouldn't have fallen asleep at all. So thanks. I owe you one.”

His frown deepens. He presses index finger and thumb against his chin, thinking. After a moment, it seems he’s made up his mind. Wordlessly, he stands and grabs her by the wrist. His eyes find hers easily in the dark.

“Would it be fair to reason you might sleep better if I am with you?”

She blushes prettily and looks away, but dips her head in the affirmative. Still too tired to argue, he notes. He almost missed it.

He tugs on her wrist. She complies easily, not fussing as they cross the threshold into the living room. Her head cocks in confusion when he passes the couch entirely.

“What difference does it make if we fall asleep on the couch or in bed?” In a rare show of uncertainty, he pauses, releases her wrist. He's clearly just realized how forward that sounds. “Unless you - I did not mean to make you uncomfortable.”

Suraya puts one hand on the side of his face, effectively silencing him. “I'm okay with it, if you are,” she tells him. They're both adults, capable of making their own decisions. She craves whatever comfort he is willing to give, and he has a point. “I just might keep you awake if I get restless.” She'd woke thrashing around not long ago.

“I'm not concerned,” He replies, and he isn't. Satisfied with his response, she removes her hand from his face and steps around him, heading down the hall toward his bedroom.

It's strange to settle into bed with another person beside him. He can't remember the last time he'd even considered something like this instead of just falling into it. She curls against him, her back flush against his chest, knees pulled up just slightly enough that his notch comfortably into the shape her body makes. He slips his arm over her belly - concerned that he might be too forward (but what would that make all of this) - and her hand slips over his, the tips of her fingers curling over his and holding tight, affirming his choice.

“Okay?” He asks, when she shuffles a little and huffs a soft breath into the pillow under her head.

Suraya hums. “Very okay.” She tips her head back over her shoulder and kisses him chastely on the lips, a little off her mark in her sleepy haze. “Goodnight, Zavala,” She whispers slowly, fading quickly. “Thanks.”

It takes him a moment to recover, heart beating wildly in his chest as she settles and her head returns to a more natural position. “You're welcome, Suraya,” He says, doing his best not to betray his emotions. It feels like the floor has been stolen from underneath him and he's been propelled into space simultaneously. That kiss was barely a touch of lips, he's not even sure if she meant to kiss him there, and yet his insides feel like they're doing a barrel roll. She's tired, he reminds himself. Practically delirious. Don't read into it, he tries to convince himself, and yet, he just doesn't want to. He wants to savor this, even if it's brought out by tragedy. Wants to believe they just might deserve each other, that maybe they can have this. “Anything for you,” He tells her, speaking so quietly into her hair that it’s barely a whisper. It's the truth.

[thepriceofburning]

Year 335 of the Era of Unity

John Estep stood high on a balcony that ran the entire length of the entrance courtyard to the Towers. From here he could see his men in their positions upon the defensive walls, and the people who shuffled through the massive gates into the giant paved area called the First Yard, below. A small dark starkling cried the hour from its roost upon one of the guard towers and a dozen echoing calls replied.

As Delta Commander of the Wolf Knights, The Towers were his responsibility. One might assume that a place so packed with mages, witches, wizards, sorceresses, and shadow beings, might not need protection from an outside source. What most didn't realize was that such people frequently needed protection from themselves. This wasn't simply a military post, but a political one, with the factions often clashing. As an “unenlightened”, as those without magic were commonly and rudely called, his job was more often than not mediation.

He was quite sure many of the inhabitants of the Towers had illnesses of the mind, ranging from racing thoughts, to mood swings, to the egomaniacal tendencies most commonly shown in wizards lording over lowly witches. Grand Wizard of the Third Reach, Istarn - by far the most self-inflated wizard in residence - was a constant and particular thorn in his side. What with the Third Reach being particularly concerned with matters of warfare, he was a thorn best dealt with tactfully.

Each of the five towers that gave the enormous structure its name was a designated Reach, and each Reach dealt with a different area of study. The First Reach, which was the first tower a person entered when they visited The Towers, was dedicated to Personal Enlightenment, Philosophy, and Expression Through Art. To his simple understanding this meant a lot of praying, meditating, thinking, and decorating every available surface.

The Second Reach was dedicated to Healing and the Prevention of Diseases, though he would swear that sometimes the fumes in there were more dangerous to a person's health than not. They did have quite a nice distillery, though.

The Third Reach, being the School of Warfare and Mechanics was by far the most dangerous place in the towers to go wandering about in. Those “enlightened” that lived and worked there were the shadiest, sly, and most untrusting people one could find. The Wolf Knights were garrisoned on the first two floors of the Third and tried to stay out from under toe as much as possible. Even so, the occasional bang could be heard echoing down the halls followed by loud and inventive cursing.

The Fourth Reach held its specialty in Botany and Environmental Studies, and to his opinion drew the best kind of people. Generally calm, quiet, and intelligent, and yet always going somewhere, John sometimes thought of them as the human equivalent of squirrels. They were always borrowing bits of research from other Reaches and bringing it back to their own studies to apply it to their work.

The Fourth was also where most of the resident shadow beings made their beds. The starklings, being no more sentient than birds of prey, were kept in the large aviary in the Fourth Yard, but the imps, sprites, and other beings of inhuman nature could be found all through the tower. Sometimes in odd and unexpected places.

The Fifth Reach was by far his favorite of the towers. Its dedication being Astrology, Astronomy, and Weather, the Fifth was never boring, though he had expected it to be so when he had first taken his position here. Since then he had witnessed a flash flood, a whirlwind, and a perpetual lightning storm all within the confines of that tower. The rooftop observatory had seen quite a bit of his time too. Aside from the almost constant static feeling in there, he quite enjoyed wandering its halls and chatting with its occupants. Even those who tried to tell him what his year had in store based on his time and place of birth.

All in all The Towers were a place of great power, and unfortunately for him, it also made it a stop for many politicians. One could hardly be considered for any position of knowledge or power if they hadn't visited the largest center of enlightened learning in North Sappheo.

Today he was expecting another politician, though unlike most, this visitor was coming from below the divide. He would be the first visitor from the South the Towers had seen since before Sappheo had split. However, just like all the others, he would welcome them, assign them guards for their stay, and send them off with whichever member of the First had drawn the short straw to be liaison. Or whoever volunteered for the task.

They would wander The Towers, looking haughty and nodding their heads while they pretended to have a clue. Then as always, they would sit down to dinner with him, apprise him of a few problems only they could solve, or criticize his management of the place. Within the next day or two, they'd be on their way, never to be seen or heard from again.

He braced his arms on the stone wall and looked over the First Yard with shrewd brown eyes. Enlightened and townspeople milled around stalls, browsing each other's wares in the small market set against the wall west of the gates. It ended in a building called The Healer's Hut, where people came to buy medicines and cures and have their ailments examined. Some would be sent to the recovery section of the First for the setting of bones or the stitching of wounds, fewer would be sent to the Second for further examination.

On the east side were the stables and the large paddock, which served the Wolf Knights’ couriers and scouts, and visiting dignitaries. Just beyond the fenced in area and encompassing the entire east corner was the Prayer Garden. Here there were lovely stone benches and walled flower beds, which surrounded a large tree. The leaves of this unique flora turned from green to purple as they aged, and fell in the colors of sunsets. An altar was positioned beneath the tree and people came to leave small offerings to their Gods of choice. Many came to simply sit beneath the outstretched limbs of the tree and pray or contemplate as sunset leaves fell around them, or sit and chat to one of the members of the First who offered an unbiased ear and friendly countenance.

The sound of giggling children could be heard where he stood on the wall, and he knew that it was most likely due to one of the helpful little sprites being playful, or an imp starting an impromptu game of tag. Sometimes even one of the big, lumbering, stony faced, Batu could be found in the garden looking terribly somber while children climbed its long limbs and stout body.

Tucked in the crook created at the join of the First and Fifth Reach was the goods store, and the administration building. At the store a person could pick up anything from jewelry, to herbs, to books. John would have bet money that the most popular items in the store were the small sticks that produced candle like flame when held correctly. But, with each Reach needing to provide a certain amount of sellable goods per quarter, the wares often varied greatly, and many people came just to see what was available.

The administration building served to answer inquiries regarding gaining entrance as a student, and to match people who needed particular services with those enlightened that could provide them. The flow of messages into and out of the building and the constant frazzled state of its workers had earned it the title of “the cuckoos nest”.

The wind kicked up a little, bringing the cold of autumn along his skin, and for a small inexplicable moment, he felt a warning in the chill. Instinct had his muscles tensing before he forcibly relaxed, and ran his hand over long, dirty blonde hair, a few strands already trying to work loose from the ponytail. These meetings always made him tense. He had plenty of patience, but if anything pushed it, it was pompous politicians who wanted to tell him how to do his job.

A soft pair of footsteps approached him from the doors that opened onto the balcony where he now stood, and he was relieved that he recognized the sound of them. Sending a smile over his shoulder as she approached, he very sincerely hoped that the redheaded witch was going to be his liaison for this dignitary.

She returned his smile with a sunny one of her own, the freckles over her nose seeming to make it all the more cheerful. “Good morning, Commander.” The wind danced through long tendrils of dense red hair and carried the faint scent of lavender and lilies along with it. “Ready for our guests?”

The tumble and roll of her thick rural accent was like a balm to his soul. “Mery, if you pulled the liaison straw today I will be considerably more ready.” He said with barely disguised hope.

Her light laugh danced out as she resettled the lace shawl that lay around her shoulders. “Then I suppose it's a good thing I volunteered.” She grinned up at him from under her lashes. “I couldn't sit back and watch you suffer so. Besides, this might be the only time in my whole life I ever get to meet a Duke.”

He gave her a smile of gratitude and affection and they settled into a comfortable silence as they waited for the Duke and his escort to arrive. Frankly, he wasn’t surprised that Mery had volunteered for today's tour. Since the divide such titles and birthrights had been abolished in the North. Lordly titles no longer existed in their part of the world, and even though it had been possible to pass between the divide for near two centuries, great pains had been taken to keep their politics separate. Until recently.

He was amused at Mery’s enthusiasm though. Mery was shy, and quiet, and sweet, and more than a little unsure of herself. Having grown up on a small farm with her grandmother he thought that sometimes she was overwhelmed by life in The Towers. She spent most of her days intensely focused on earning her credentials in aura reading and spiritual healing, but he knew that deep down inside she wished for a life of excitement and adventure, and a visiting Duke was too good to pass up.

Her red hair, twisted and tied at the base of her head to fall loose and full, danced over the shoulder of her blue dress. It was one of her best, fit snugly to the waist and flared into ankle length skirts that were embroidered around the edges with little green flowers.

Her hazel eyes seemed to soak in the light of the morning sun, and the smattering of freckles across her face clustered together across her nose. John thought, not for the first time, that she was a woman made for sunlit days and warm laughter, and he absolutely adored her.

Not many people knew the things Mery had suffered in her early years, or that underneath her kind eyes and caring smile there were wounds. When he thought about them he wished there was a way to undo them, to ensure that only peace and happiness remained, but he knew it wasn’t possible. Instead he did his best to keep her safe and happy, and in return she offered him friendship and support that he truly valued.

The glint of sunlight caught his thoughts and his watchful brown eyes turned in that direction. Standing in the center of the Yard, watching the people milling around was a woman with long black hair, pinned up at the sides, that seemed to shine in the sun.

She wore a fitted brown bodice over a deep red blouse that he guessed to be made of silk. Her skirts were a deep chocolate brown, like the bodice, with little to no decoration. Around her neck she wore a pendant of some sort which had caused the reflection, though at this distance he couldn’t tell what it was.

There was nothing about the woman that should have kept his attention as she began to wander about, yet he found himself watching her. He found himself wondering who she was, where she had come from, and why she was there.

As if she sensed his eyes on her she lifted her head and her gaze found his immediately. He couldn’t have said what color those eyes were, but her hair had fallen loose from the pins and curled around her face, framing her features. She had a strong jaw and her cheekbones were high under large eyes, just slightly turned up at the end. Her nose was long and straight, and led his gaze to  a long firm mouth. Her eyebrows reminded him of bird’s wings, thick towards the center and thinning to a fine line along the curve and swoop of her brow. It was the kind of face that spoke of strength, probably quite often drawn to seriousness. But there was a softness there too, some kind of secret gentleness begging to be found. He found her captivating.

They stayed, eyes locked for a moment, before her features relaxed into a smile, and then a grin. His own mouth turned upwards as the strong face took on features of mischief. She tilted her head slightly and lifted an eyebrow, almost as if in silent challenge.

Mery’s hand on his arm caught his attention. “I think they’re here.”

He looked toward the gate and saw the crowd beginning to step away from the area by the gate - a sure sign of a large party approaching. He flicked his eyes back down to the raven-haired woman again, but to his dismay she was gone. Perhaps he would see her again, but for now he had work to do.

He straightened as the guard positioned on the gate blew the signal that meant “official visitor” and with a hand on the small of Mery’s back, motioned her to go before him. With her in the lead they hurried down the steps and only slightly out of breath, arrived at the door to the Great Hall, just as the party came to a halt.

In the lead were four guards, armed to the teeth and mounted on imposing warhorses, which had been brushed to a shine. Behind came the noble collection. The Duke rode proud and relaxed, leading three women who also rode with the confidence of those who had spent many hours in the saddle.

John could tell by their clothes and bearing that these were not just maids. Judging by what he knew, these were the Duke's wives. It was a concept that most Northerners found outlandish if not atrocious, but it wasn’t his place to judge.

Behind the wives came the ladies in waiting. Four women in similar dresses, who smiled and whispered quietly amongst themselves. Behind that came two more mounted guards, and a small wagon carrying provisions driven by two more. Four more men made up the rear guard.

All in all that made a contingent of 20, though he was sure that the paperwork he had received from the Sovereign Minister had stated that 21 could be expected. He wondered briefly what had happened to the last man.

The guards dismounted first, followed by the Duke and his wives, and the ladies in waiting who were offered helping hands by the guards. When all had found their feet the Duke stepped forward and John took his cue. He didn’t need to check to know that his own Tower Guard has taken up ceremonial position on the walls or flanking the stairs. His most trusted man, Galen, would have seen to it.

Knowing the protocol, John bowed his head deeply with a hand over his heart, and delivered his welcoming speech. With a voice loud enough to reach the crowd of townsfolk watching the exchange and with an accent that spoke of the rough side of the Capital he began. “I am Delta Commander John Estep, of the Order of the Wolf Knights. It is with our Sovereign Minister’s blessing that I have the honor of welcoming His Lordship, Duke Darien Deyrndraig, of the Southern province of Gyrissa.”

Murmurs of excitement and a quiet applause ran through the crowd.

With a reciprocating bow, and an equally loud voice the Duke gave the expected response. “We are honored to receive the hospitality of North Sappheo and of The Towers, Delta Commander. It is our greatest wish that this visit will harbor greater understanding between our lands.”

This time the round of applause was much louder and for a moment John felt that he should give a stage bow for the crowd, but he kept his back straight and his face still until the murmurs died down. John descended the steps as the Duke approached for a quieter exchange.

John offered a hand in friendly greeting, and it was readily accepted. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Your Lordship.”

“Likewise, Commander,” came the easy reply. The Duke stepped back and motioned the three women forward. “May I introduce my wives?”

The first was a petite blonde, with sparkling blue eyes, sun tanned skin, and long curling hair that seemed too wild to be tamed in any severe manner. Her nose was what he would describe as cute, and her rosebud lips were turned into a shy smile. The soft blue of her velvet dress was clasped about the waist with a silver chain. It was cut simply and elegantly, but the voluminous sleeves and skirts brought to mind images of children turning circles in the sunlight. She carried the distinct impression of mischief about her, and he resisted the urge to smile as the Duke introduced her. “Lady Alexa Jordin.”

After a brief curtsey and bow delivered with a dazzling smile, she stepped back, and the second wife took her place.

This one was of average height, with creamy skin and straight brown hair cut at the shoulders. Her eyes were a soft grey, and her nose was thin and just little long, but seemed made to fit her angular face. Her thin lips were set in a polite smile but something about her seemed more inclined to a thoughtful frown. Her dress, in the current fashion of corsets and folds upon folds of skirts, was a stormy grey satin fringed in white lace and complimented her straight, thin frame. His first impression was of a woman he could have long intelligent discussions with.

“Lady Danaeal Ynari.” The Duke announced, and they exchanged the expected curtsey and bow.

She stepped back and the next wife stepped forward. Slightly taller than the previous woman, she was nothing short of an exotic beauty. Her skin was the color of rich dark coffee and her long dark hair was twisted into hundreds of tiny ropes, accented by unique beads here and there. Her eyes were a brown so dark they were almost black, and were angled in an almost catlike manner. Her dress was of a thick woven material in a pattern of forest green and gold that flowed loosely and left one arm exposed. She approached him with a smile that was somehow reminiscent of a doting grandmother. She had the presence of a nurturer, a carer, someone who people told their troubles to on instinct.

“Lady Chanta Abarro.” The Duke introduced, but instead of the expected curtsey, the Lady kissed her fingers, then touched her forehead and her chest, and inclined her head. John gave the formal bow, but found himself curious about her homeland and customs.

John opened his mouth to announce his honor at meeting them all when the Duke raised a finger. “A moment, please,” he said long-suffering impatience. “We seem to be missing somebody.”

The twenty first guest, John surmised as the Duke leaned over to say a word in a guard's ear. He sincerely hoped there wasn’t going to be a problem this early in the visit, but he would handle whatever got thrown his way.

The guard nodded and turned to attend his task, but stopped before he hit three strides, and stood aside for the woman approaching them. To John’s combined pleasure and dismay it was the woman he had seen from the balcony.

“I’m sorry,” she said, laying a hand on the Duke's arm, “I got distracted.” Her eyes settled on John and a small grin appeared in her lips. “Hello.”

Up close he could see that her eyes were a brilliant shade of green, and her ears did not only have the regular piercing women seemed to favor, but there was also a bar that joined two piercings high up the fold of her right ear, and the tiniest stud in the little bump that preceded her left ear. He could also see, sneaking above her collar on her left, what looked like a burn scar marring her light olive complexion.

Before John could answer her greeting, the Duke spoke up. “Allow me to present my most troublesome wife, Lady Tayanara DeVandall.”

Again breaking protocol she offered her hand, and he was pleasantly surprised by her strong grip and slightly worried by its feverish temperature. “It’s a pleasure my Lady. I’m Delta Commander John Estep. I’m afraid you missed my welcome speech.”

A shock seemed to ripple through the surrounding people at his teasing tone, and he reigned himself in. Joking with one of the four wives of the Duke of Gyrissa was not a good way to start the visit.

Stepping back he motioned forward his saving grace, and she stepped forward with a graceful curtsy. “This is Meryarna Marek, witch of the First, and she will be acting as your liaison during your stay.” He then motioned to a presence close behind him, who stepped forward and bowed deeply. “And this is my second in command, Warrior-in-Lead Galen Glenn.”

Mery mercifully stepped forward and took control of the situation. “Please call me Mery. It is an honor to serve as your liaison.”

She exchanged polite greetings with all of them, and instructed the Duke to have his head guard make the appropriate arrangements with Galen concerning guard duty. After asking if the ladies in waiting would like to set up the chambers, she instructed them to stay with Galen also, who would see them to where they needed to be.

John stepped aside as she invited the noble quintuplet, and the guards that would remain with them, to begin their tour. When they were past, he closed his eyes and let out a deep breath, then ran a hand over his hair. He knew better than to step outside of the accepted pleasantries.

“Excuse me, Commander?” came a velvety voice. He swore silently as he realized one of the wives had stayed behind. “Or should I call you Delta Commander?” Lady Tayanara asked.

He gave her a polite smile. “Commander is fine, Lady Tayanara.”

Her smile was more than a little flirtatious. “Then you’ll call me Taya.” When he gave a nod her smile faded into something more serious. “I was hoping I might have a moment of your time before you are off to your other duties.”

He turned his gaze to the small group of people entering the Towers and lingered as Duke Deyrndraig stopped, noticing the troublesome wife had once again left the pack. He turned then, and saw her standing next to him. The Duke’s brown eyes pinned him, and he felt it like the point of a knife against his skin. His skin prickled, not in fear, but as it did in the moment before the first blow was struck - in anticipation of the fight.

His own eyes turned hard and cold, but knowing this was not the fight for him, he gave a nod of acquiescence that seemed to placate the Duke’s nerves. Deyrndraig looked at Taya with something like an admonishment and turned to join the group again.

Forcing himself back to level heading after the exchange, John turned back to Taya and caught her raised eyebrow before she collected herself. She gave him an impish smile and a shrug. “I’ll catch up.”

It was only with great effort that he didn’t sigh as he motioned her to a bench that sat along the rise of the stone steps. This woman was going to be trouble.

“What can I do for you?” he asked once she was seated.

She seemed to take a moment to choose her words, and she regarded him seriously. “Truth be told, I didn’t get distracted.” Her eyes lifted to the guards on the wall. “I wanted to check your security.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, he raised his eyebrows curiously. “Why is that?”

She breathed a sigh and dropped her eyes to the hands in her lap. “Where we come from there is a political battle raging at the moment. Darien’s title is one others would happily claim upon his demise.” She looked at him again, and he read the concern there, and felt it palpably. “Living in the South has become dangerous for us, so he’s brought us here in an attempt to remove us from the situation.”

John considered for a moment then took a seat on the bench beside her. “I’m going to guess that getting to him was too hard, and they started to come after his wives?”

Taya nodded. “Exactly. Which is why I fought against Darien’s idea of bringing us here the whole way.” Seeing John’s confusion she raised a hand in the direction her husband had gone. “He is in far more danger here than he ever was back at home. Back there we knew every face, every name, every secret entrance and secluded corridor. Here, we know nothing.” She studied his face for a moment before continuing. “I wanted to be sure your guard detail would be enough to keep my family safe.”

He simply looked at her for a moment, feeling the roll of emotions that seemed to come off her in waves, trying to put all the pieces of her into one complete image. Regal in bearing, but not in demeanor. Mischievous and maybe even callous when it came to rules and protocol, but the way she talked about protecting her family made it obvious to him that she was more lioness than kitten.

His eyes caught on the pendant hanging around her neck, and he realized that it was what had reflected the sun to him up on the balcony. The golden sun hung on a braided cord of fine leather, and he found it a little odd to find leather on a Lady, but thinking back he could swear all the other wives had worn the same thing around their necks.

As an afterthought he realized that Taya was wearing quite a lot of leather. Her bodice, her boots, her decorative bracelets, and the thin belt and pouches she wore were all of high quality leather. More pieces of the puzzle that was the woman before him.

On a thought he asked, “Is your husband aware that you’re checking on his security?”

A silent laugh bubbled up from her. “Crows, no. And if he finds out he’ll probably be mad at me, though he shouldn’t really be surprised. This is the kind of thing that happens when you marry a street kid,” she said with a lopsided smile.

He smiled with surprise. “You were a street kid?”

This time she let out a chuckle. “Yes I was. An orphan even. I can pass for a Lady most of the time but,” she shrugged, “once in awhile the streets come out in me.”

She said it not with shame, but with pride. As a badge of merit. I survived, the statement seemed to say, and I will keep surviving. He realized that there were a lot of things he wanted to know about this woman.

“I guess that brings us back to our original question,” he said, unfolding his arms and bracing them on his knees. “What can I do for you?”

She dropped her eyes a little, as though embarrassed to ask. “I was hoping you could show me around and tell me what you have in place. I’m sure that between your men and ours it will be fine, but for my own peace of mind, I’d appreciate it.” She touched a hand to his arm. “I know you’re probably too busy right now, but if you could fit me in tomorrow?”

He could feel the warmth of her hand through his clothes and he suddenly realized that the emotions he was receiving were disingenuous. There was concern yes, but not for her family, and certainly not fear. There was something subtle underneath it. Something coercive. Manipulative.

He searched her eyes for a moment, but saw no falters there. She was going to be a hard nut to crack. With a nod he stood, helping her to her feet with a hand. “Tomorrow I’ll take you around and show you what we have in place. Until then I assure you that every precaution will be taken to ensure the safety of your family.”

His sudden stiffness seemed to drive her to compensate. With a sweet smile she leaned up to place a kiss on his cheek. Two thoughts immediately crossed his mind. The first was that the press of her lips was so warm it was almost scalding. The second was that she had perfected sweet and innocent to the point that it screamed of falsity.

When she pulled back his eyes bored into hers, so that for a moment they both seemed stuck there, trying to gauge each other's thoughts. Something in him seemed to be reaching inside her and neither seemed willing or able to stop it.

Realizing her hand was still in his, she pulled it gently from his grasp. “Thank you, Commander,” she said with an unsure smile.

Something about that one move made his stomach clench and heart pick up pace. He’d unseated her. But it wasn’t that he’d caught her in a falsehood that caused that feeling inside him, it was the sensation of almost seeing her. The real her.

A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Why do I get the feeling you’re going to be trouble for me?”

She reached up and rubbed at her left shoulder in what he sensed was an unconscious movement. With just a hint of a grin she stepped away. “They’ll be waiting for me,” she said, and with one last look, she turned and walked away.

He folded his arms again as he watched her go. Lady Tayanara was far more than she seemed, and he intended to find out exactly what she was up to.

Tag list (let me know if you want to be added)- @stuffylana @atheona-darkclaw

[clinicalnursing]

Irispublishers- Iris Journal of Nursing & Care (IJNC)

The Causes of Elderly Residence in Nursing Home from the Viewpoint of Elders

Authored by  Vahab Karamivand*

Abstract

Background: As the population grows, the demand for long-term care services is expected. since the most important place affecting the elderly, entering into the nursing home, recognizing causes and motivations for staying in the nursing home is important for the establishment of plans to delay or prevent entry elderly to the nursing home. The purpose of this study was to identify the causes of elderly residence in nursing home from the viewpoint of elderly.

Methods: In this study, the phenomenology method has been used. Samples were selected among elderly residents of the Kermanshah state government nursing homes. sampling in this study was purposive method and finally 10 samples were selected. All samples were male and were ranged from 68 to 88 years. the researcher used the interview to collect data. A colaizzis method was used to analyze the data.

Results: In general, the two main concepts derived from the data: 1 Optional Entry 2 Mandatory Entry. Sub-concepts of optional entry include entry with prior approval, entry for financial and family problems, and compulsory entry; entry by deception, unconscious mood, entry by police and social workers, each of which has sub-concepts.

Conclusions: Some elderly people were voluntary resettled because of poverty, lack of shelter and family problems, although some of them were healthy and active, and some were compulsory by family caregivers, police and social workers. By identifying the causes of seniors’ residency, recognizing their root needs and problems will be facilitated. And it can also help caregivers in proper planning.

Keywords: Nursing home; Elderly; Residence

Introduction

The number of elderly people in all societies around the world is increasing. Each year, 1.7 percent is added to the world population. While this increase for the population of 65 years and above is 2.5% [1]. The country’s elderly population is predicted to reach 10 million by 2020 [2]. Given that elderly patients are at high risk for physical deterioration during recovery after Hospitals and are more likely to have long-term care facilities than other age groups. Providing long-term care services after discharge from the hospital is important for the elderly in promoting health and quality of life. Recently, the rate of hospitalization for the elderly 65 years or older is three times as high as for those under 65, and the cost of hospitalization for people aged 65 and older is about 33% of all hospitalization costs [3]. According to Dorman, it is expected that at least 40 percent of the population over 75 will need extensive health care services at the end of their lives [4]. the problem of the maintenance and welfare of elderly in the society of every day finds new and broader dimensions and statistics show that elderly population in physical, psychological, social, and cultural aspects are constantly required to care for full attention [5].

The term nursing home is used to define institutions that serve people with chronic disabilities and physical defects the focus is on people who do not need hospitalization but are unable to take care of themselves [6]. In other words, people who are unable to stay home due to physical health problems, mental health problems or functional disabilities [7]. On the other hand, the transition to such centers in the study is described as one of the hardest experiences that the elderly encounter [8]. And admission to the nursing home have the mental implications of such as rejection, mental stress, depression, shakiness, loss of home, and the chance of contact with family and friends, so that, among various places, the transfer to the nursing home, in texts, is known to be the most influential place in the elderly [9]. entrance to the elderly has the greatest effect on the elderly and fear on the elderly [10]. Institutions by depriving older persons of many of the personal allegiances, which constitute part of his apparent identity, have destroyed his sense of unease [11]. On the other hand, the economic burden on the family and society and the workforce that can be used in simple and non-violent activity is wasted. Moreover, the transition to the residential care house affects both elderly residents and their families. Studies have shown that moving to these centers occurs at times of crisis, for example, after an acute illness or a period of hospitalization. In this situation, the elderly will need to adapt to the new conditions, and this mental stress may be more than that of the elderly [8]. Nowadays, gerontologist do not pay attention to the increased mortality of the elderly, which is an inevitable consequence of being displaced [12]. Thus, countries with a high population of elderly people have developed long-term care policies for the elderly.

The United States and Australia have developed long-term care measures for the elderly with maximum independence [1]. with all of these cases, there is an increasing trend for the elderly to be transferred to nursing home in Iran [13]. Because, as the population ages, more demand for long-term care is expected. Nursing home have traditionally been the most commonly used form of longterm care. Planners are looking for alternatives that are a less expensive form of care for the elderly. Understanding the causes and motivations of staying in the nursing home is important for designing programs to delay or prevent the entry of elderly people into the elderly [14]. Therefore, identifying factors that affect the use of these long-term care services is an important concern. The research question is that what the causes of elderly residence in nursing home from the viewpoint of older persons?

Methods

In this study, the phenomenological method was used. For data collection, deep and unstructured interviews were conducted over a 4-month period. Samples were selected by purposive sampling method. The researcher selected samples that had sufficient information. 10 samples were selected for this study. all of the samples were male and in the range age of 68 to 88 years. The length of stay varied from 2 months to 15 years. sampling was doing in two governmental nursing home in Kermanshah (Iran), which only accepted the elderly man. Information about the causes of the study was given to the elderly, and all participants received informed consent forms. After the consent of the elderly, places to interview were determined to meet their comfort. Confidentiality of their information and voice was assured. The duration of each interview was set at 20 minutes and finally 30 minutes, as the elderly get tired early [15]. If there were no clear information after the codes were extracted, another interview was conducted for clarification. Finally, 12 interviews were conducted with 10 participants. Some interview questions include” why did you come to the nursing home?” A colaizzis method was used to analyze the data. In the first stage, Recorded sounds were heard several times. And then their statements were word by word written on paper. Then the notes were studied several times to understand their feelings and experiences. In the second step, after studying the extracted materials, the meaningful information related to the title was extracted. For example, the first participant says” I was building and working for a company.

One day I went down the stairs building and got to the hospital. I was 2 months in a coma. When I was fine, they took me home, but my memory was low. My son said I should go back to the doctor, but they had taken me to the notary’s office and called my house in his name. And then they took me out of the house. And I came to visit here. I do not know why they did it to me” In the third step, we tried to extract from each statement a concept that expresses its main meaning. During this stage, we constantly tried to ensure the relevance of the meaning of the original sentences and the relationship between them. For example, from the phrases stated, the two concepts of “entry by deception” and “forced entry” were deduced. After extracting the codes of each interview, the next interview was conducted.

The result of this phase of the research consists of 15 codes that are the same concepts as the developed ones. In the fourth stage, the researcher carefully studied the concepts and, based on their similarity, categorized them into thematic categories or main concepts. in the fifth step, for a comprehensive description of the phenomenon under study, the researcher, groups Different subjects with the same meanings were placed in larger subject categories to reach the main concepts. In this way, the structural components of experience, which included two general concepts, were gradually developed. In Diagram No.1, the general concepts of the findings and how they are categorized are presented. In the sixth step, we tried to provide a comprehensive description of the phenomenon under study without ambiguity. The final step was to validate by referring to each sample and asking about the findings [16].

In this research, two criteria of dependability and credibility were used to strengthen the research. In order to confirm the acceptance of the findings, the researcher referred the extracted code to the participants, and with their confirmation, the findings became valid. Furthermore, the researcher referred the findings and the extracted codes to the expert on qualitative research, and in several instances, from the beginning of the analysis, the codes of code formation were examined to reach the main concepts and the validity of the research findings were confirmed. In addition, the researcher explained the research process and how to achieve the results to be sure of the finding, so that other researchers can understand how to achieve the results [17].

Optional entry

Entry with prior approval: Some research samples have stated that they have come here with their desire and choice” When some of them were asked how you came to nursing home?” They responded to the researcher. I came to my own will. I lived alone at home. Someone has not forced me. I’m friends now that I am here and I’m happy. But the participant # 3 in the answer says that after my legs broke and I was discharged from the hospital. I did not take care of my children at home, and I heard that these centers take care of the elderly. Now that our body is fine. My family does not get me home.

Entry due to financial and family problems: Some elderly people mentioned the reason for entering the old age as family problems, for example, one of them says that I have two boys who married and live in front of me, my wife died, my boys and brides spend my salary and something It does not stay for me. Sometimes I realize that my brides are grumbling about me and saying your father should go to this house. Or participant No.2 in the answer says I was sleeping on the street before I came to this place, and I begged for days. I’m not married, I have no children. One day I was looking for a place to take care of me and I could sleep comfortably and give me water and food. And I got it from here (Figure 1).

Mandatory entry

Entry with deception: Participant No.4 says that my son said we should take you to the doctor. So, to see the fracture of the leg was good or not, we were on the way for three hours and night. I gave a place and said I was going to take your medicines, but it did not return.

Entry in unconscious mood: One of the elderly states that I was not very well off when I was discharged from the hospital. One of my sons took me to the office and took a fingerprint from me. And a few days later I was taken out of the house.

Entry by government agencies: Participant No. 7 says I had rented a room and I was busy begging for days. My house was full of rubbish and I could not clean it. The neighbors complained to me and called the police. And they delivered me to the social agency. I loved my house and I want to go back (Figure 2).

In this study, some elderly people were settled in nursing homes due to family problems and financial inability. Findings from the study by Sao and Hallis showed that family pressure, feeling of security, using formal and informal services, and a feeling of health degradation lead the elderly to stay in the nursing home, and is consistent with the results of the researcher’s study [18,19]. Also, many older people have not the ability to pay home expenses such as house maintenance, or older might want to move somewhere else. But they do not have the necessary capital to move, and they inevitably prefer to stay in the nursing home [20]. on the other hand, elderly people who live alone are more likely to seek accommodations for social contact with others. therefore, for older adults living alone before acceptance, positive outcomes were expected [9]. In the present study, some elderly people said they had been forced into the nursing home. For example: stay without notice, or stay deceived, stay in a state of illness and stay for taking care. While studies show that elderly people prefer to recover the disease in their place of residence instead of the elderly. When the mental and physical abilities of the elder are getting worse, and family resources or society is not available for a long time, admission to the elderly is required [18].

Findings of the study by Shiva et al. Showed that in addition to previous hospitalization, caregivers’ willingness to stay in the nursing home is a determinative factor in the use of nursing homes after hospital discharge [3]. In this study, one of the ways of entering the elderly into nursing home is entering in state of Unconscious following cognitive impairment, which is consistent with the findings of the study by Wang et al [22]. Another reason for the elderly’s stay in this study is the lack of proper care after discharge from the hospital. For example, one of the participants stated: “When my pelvis broke down and I was in hospital for about one month, they said that to go home for home care, “at home there was no one to pay attention to my daily needs. There was not even anyone to give me a glass of water and I decided to go to the nursing home to continue to care. “ In analyzing these statements, it can be stated that elderly people, given their high needs, especially when they are recovering from illness, should be given more attention so that the recovery process does not go back. These results are consistent with the findings of the Abbasid study and Colleagues [23].

Conclusion

From the findings of this study, it is concluded that factors such as cognitive impairment, physical illness, financial problems, family disputes, sense of humiliation, lack of care, and lack of shelter lead to elderly people staying in nursing home. Some elderly people, despite being active and healthy, had to stay at the nursing homes due to financial problems. And they complained about not having any activity at the nursing home. It seems that if social support is appropriately done, then these elderly people can live in their homes. A number of elderly people were involved in financial abuse. While they have had the necessary capital for a good life, there seems to be no comprehensive organization that supports the elderly in such cases. Coherent social support, government agencies, self-care education and the preservation of autonomy in the elderly, and the training of family caregivers and their support may reduce the entry of elderly into old age. Unwillingness to cooperate, illiteracy, early exhaustion, fear of reviewing past bitter memories were the limitations of this study.

To read more about this article: https://irispublishers.com/ijnc/fulltext/the-causes-of-elderly-residence-in-nursing-home-from-the-viewpoint-of-elders.ID.000533.php

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[starticker]

(Dream)

Summary:  The night before the paladins are meant to face Zarkon, Shiro has a dream.

A/N:  Written for the Sheith Flower Exchange for @QueTostada! The flower they chose was milkvetch (your presence softens my pains), and here it is; I hope you enjoy!

***

Everything was wrong from the start, and Shiro knew that even if he couldn't seem to stop it. From the instant they arrived at Zarkon's castle they were outnumbered, much more than they'd ever been, and in a flash of light the lions were down. The Galra ships swarmed them while they sat helpless, chasing and tumbling them across the open space like they were nothing but playthings. In the distance, Shiro could barely make out the remains of the Castle, and in a blink its insides and passengers were lost to the void of space. No matter how many times he tried to contact them, he couldn't reach anyone—not Allura or Coran, not Keith, not the others, and the Black Lion wouldn't respond under his touch. It was like the first time they had faced Zarkon all over again, and his lion was cold, unfeeling, alien…and it didn't want him.

Then Shiro was in space, spat out like he was nothing but a kernel that had been stuck between the Black Lion's teeth. Somehow his armor was gone too, but although space was freezing him to his bones and there was no air around him, he didn't die. Instead, he drifted, watching the lions move further and further away while he reached out for them helplessly. He was alone and couldn't breathe, and he watched the colors disappear, losing sight of first the Black Lion, and then the others one after another. The Red Lion was last, the only one that seemed able to resist the pull of Zarkon's castle, and Shiro whimpered, reaching, reaching. If he could save just one—

A loud sound filled his head, and Shiro woke as if he was stumbling out of a fog. He wasn't sure where he was at first, but he was lying on his side, curled and tense as if huddling to keep himself warm in space. It took him a moment to realize how silly that was and recognize his surroundings as his room in the Castle, but it didn't erase his unease. That hadn't felt like a nightmare. If anything, it had felt realer than anything he felt now.

The sound that must have woke him came again, coming from everywhere and nowhere, and Shiro sat up stiffly. He barely dared to breath in case it covered the sound, and a second later he heard it again: the quietest of knocks at his door, nothing more than a soft tap of knuckles against metal, but so much louder to his distressed mind.

Shiro rolled to his feet and called out for lights while he took quick steps towards the door. He wasn't surprised to open it and see Keith mid-turn, about to walk back down the dimly lit hallway.

"This is a long way to walk just to check that I'm sleeping," Shiro said, trying not to sound too relieved to see him. With his soft-looking pajamas and ridiculous bedhead, Keith looked about as far from a disastrous battle as someone could get, but the images still lingered behind Shiro's eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Shiro," Keith said. He looked guilty to be there, but beyond that, his back was tense and his hands were clenched. Shiro couldn't tell if it was from anger or nerves. "It's nothing. It can wait."

"You're already here," Shiro pointed out. Shiro doubted Keith would get any more sleep if he left now, on edge as he was, and Shiro didn't think he'd fare any better. "And I wasn't really sleeping anyway. Come in."

As guilty as Keith might've felt about disturbing Shiro's rest, he didn't hesitate to accept the invite. He stepped inside on soft, bare feet, and Shiro focused on that rather than the brief, warm press of Keith's body against his as he brushed by him or the sheen of sweat on Keith's pale skin. Had Keith run here to check on him? Had he been that worried?

The door closed, and Shiro turned, only to have Keith's arms wrap awkwardly around him in a hug he wasn't expecting.

"Sorry," Keith said. When Shiro lifted his arms to return the embrace, his grip resettled into something more natural, but still with an edge of desperation that Shiro didn't understand. "I don't know what I was thinking. Space is getting to me, maybe."

"Bad dreams?" Shiro guessed, and he felt the brush of Keith's hair against his cheek as he nodded.

"Yeah. Being here helps." Keith took a deep breath. "Being around you helps. It always does." He shifted, pressing impossibly closer. They'd never been this close before, with nothing between them but thin pajamas. "Sometimes I think there's nowhere else I'd rather be."

Shiro's heart gave an embarrassing lurch at that, even if he understood perfectly that Keith didn't mean it the way it sounded. He was just tired; they both were.

"I know exactly what you mean," Shiro said, and he let himself keep hugging Keith for a few seconds more. When he pulled back, it was with visible reluctance on both sides, and Shiro gave up. Even if it hurt later, he wouldn't be able to let Keith go tonight. "We'll be useless tomorrow if we don't get to sleep." He picked up the blankets he'd kicked off earlier and handed one to Keith. "Here, you can stay with me. That way, if there are any more bad dreams…well, we'll both be here."

"Thanks Shiro," Keith said quietly, and when Shiro slid into the bed, Keith followed. It was a tight fit; the beds were barely big enough to fit one of them and they had to share his one pillow, but Shiro didn't mind. Even though the suggestion had been made mostly for Keith's benefit, Shiro admitted that it was nice to be close like this, their knees knocking together companionably until they managed to sort it out. They might wake up with a crick in their necks or with their bodies sprawled in odd positions, but neither of them would fall out of the bed.

It seemed like a perfect solution, right up until Shiro turned to ask Keith a question and realized how close his face was.

"—yours about?"

"Huh?" Shiro asked, having missed the question in his distraction. His confusion was rewarded with one of Keith's small, rare smiles, and that only made the situation worse.

"Your bad dream. What happened?"

Shiro winced.

"I don't think we should talk about it. Bad for…morale."

Keith rolled his eyes, and as close as they were, Shiro could clearly see the faintest hint of red in the whites. It was a reminder; Keith probably needed to talk about his, if he was going to get any sleep at all.

"You disappeared in mine. Disintegrated." Keith sighed heavily, and Shiro felt the burst of minty air against his cheek. "It was back when we were getting the Red Lion. I left you and Pidge while I went to go get it, and when I came back, you were…disappearing."

Keith shuddered, clearly disturbed, and Shiro used a hand on his blanket-covered hip to pull him just a bit closer. They were almost embracing again, but this time, it was in the warm cocoon of Shiro's bed; he wasn't sure if that was an improvement or not.

"From a Galra weapon, or from something like a wormhole?" Shiro asked, more to distract Keith with theories than anything, and he wasn't surprised when he received a huff.

"Is that important?"

"Sure it is. People don't just disappear, Keith." Shiro realized what he said a second later and winced. He hurriedly corrected himself. "Or at least I don't plan to."

Nobody planned to, Keith didn't say. Keith didn't say anything at all for long moments, in fact, and Shiro nearly jumped out of his skin when Keith's hand moved and came to rest tentatively against his chest. For someone as strong as Keith (the strongest person Shiro had ever met), his hand was almost delicate in comparison, and warm. As warm as his hidden heart.

"Well. You're here now."

Keith smiled up at him again, looking at him with trust and fondness from inches away.

It was the closest to peace that Shiro had known since coming to space, and it was without thought that he leaned forward. He wasn't sure what he'd meant to do, but with Keith's face so close, erasing those last inches was instinctual. He tilted his head enough to press a soft, dry kiss to Keith's lips, barely even a kiss at all.

When he pulled back, Keith's eyes were wide with shock, and what had seemed like a small risk a moment ago grew exponentially in Shiro's mind.

"Sorry," he said, regret twisting his insides. "I know you don't—"

Keith surged forward, his own kiss catching Shiro mid-word with bruising force. It matched the way Keith's hands suddenly dug into his shoulders to hold him close, and Shiro closed his eyes to savor it. It might've just been Keith reaching desperately for a connection, any connection, but it was more than that to Shiro.

The kiss ended quickly, like Shiro had expected, but where he'd also expected regret, he got instead another kiss, this one ghosting over his cheek and the pink scar across his nose. The third kiss landed on his forehead, the fourth on hairline, the fifth on his ear. When the sixth kiss finally landed once more on his lips, it was much gentler than he'd expected, almost…almost like love.

When Keith pulled back, it was with a sigh, the air hot against Shiro's mouth. He didn't go far, curling up as much as he could against Shiro's chest. Keith felt right in his arms, but also like an unbelievable dream.

Shiro could've still been dreaming; he chose to believe he wasn't.

"Six kisses," Keith said. "One for every year I've wanted to do that." He breathed, deeply enough that Shiro felt his chest expand. "We can have more later." His arms tightened around Shiro. "Just don't go anywhere. Don't disappear."

There was only one thing Shiro could say to that as he held him back, his eyes slowly drifting closed as Keith's breath evened out in sleep.

"Don't worry. I won't."

[rightsinexile]

Understanding the importance of a national legislation for refugee protection in India

This article was contributed by Sreya Sen, a Doctoral Fellow at the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Calcutta, India.

Abstract

India is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees or it’s Protocol of 1967. There is also no uniform national legislation that caters to the well being of refugees in India. Policies adopted for refugee welfare in India are usually ad-hoc in nature, their implementation depending entirely on the whims and fancies of the political parties in power. Yet India has been home to refugees for nearly seven decades, with asylum seekers arriving in large numbers from as far and wide as the African nations of Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia as well as from neighboring South and Southeast Asian countries like Myanmar, Nepal, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and from East Asian countries such as China.

This paper looks to assess the importance of domestic legislation for refugee protection in India through: 1) a discussion of India’s international humanitarian obligations, with particular reference to its reluctance to accede to the 1951 Refugee Convention; 2) an examination of the prevailing legal conditions for refugees in India; and 3) a scholarly analysis of the various ways in which national legislation can benefit the refugee population in India. In conclusion, this paper argues that the establishment of a domestic protection regime for refugees is of utmost necessity, as it is only such a regime that can successfully respond to the interests, concerns and requirements of refugee and asylum seeking groups residing in India.

 India and the 1951 Convention on Refugees[1]

The mandate of the 1951 Refugee Convention extends to every person who, “as a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951 and owing to a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who,  not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.” (UN Refugee Convention: 1951) However, it must be noted that none of the South Asian countries have ratified the 1951 Convention on Refugees and its 1967 protocol.  The reasons for this are related primarily to security. The borders in South Asia are highly porous and states lack adequate infrastructure and resources necessary to deal with the mixed and massive flows of people. There is also considerable skepticism on the part of Indian authorities in particular, regarding the political role of UNHCR, owing to its non humanitarian stance during the 1971 War for the Liberation of Bangladesh (Weiner: 1993). 

It ought to be remembered as well, that South Asian nations are traditionally opposed to international involvement in domestic affairs, even involvement of a humanitarian nature, and thus prefer adopting a bilateral approach to resolving refugee issues. That the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) chose to exclude population movements from its purview in apprehension that these would disrupt the functioning of the organization, is evidence enough of such a stance. Also, since India has been a willing host as far as refugees are concerned and has provided UNHCR with its very own office in New Delhi, the need to ratify the 1951 Convention is often deemed as unnecessary (Chimni: 2008). Indian government officials have pointed out over the years, that the definition of a refugee as contained in the 1951 Convention, is Euro-centric in nature and consequently unsuitable for catering to  the needs of refugees staying in India. It was stated by the Indian representative at the fifty-fourth meeting of the EXCOM of UNHCR that the definition fails to recognize ‘the fundamental factors that give rise to refugee movements...” He went on to elaborate that “[...] most refugee movements ‘are directly related to widespread abject poverty and deprivation around the globe […] particularly in the developing world such as most of South Asia”.[2] Legal scholars in India similarly argue that the Convention definition ignores the economic, cultural and social rights of refugees while concerning itself solely with the violation of their political and civil rights and cannot therefore be regarded as an adequate tool for addressing refugee issues in the Indian subcontinent (Chimni: 2008).

Refugee protection in India: A legal analysis

Refugees in India are re-settled on an ad-hoc basis. The status of the vast majority of refugees living in India is largely ambiguous, with only certain groups of asylum seekers being granted uniform privileges and rights, namely the Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka and refugees from Tibet. Refugees in India are accorded protection under three main categories (Sengupta: 2014).  The first category comprises refugees who receive full assistance from the government of India. The Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in India may be said to fall under this category. The second category includes asylum seekers to whom UNHCR grants refugee status. Examples include the Burmese and Afghan refugees. The third category of refugees consists of those who are not recognized by UNHCR or by the Indian government and have been integrated into local communities. A fine example in this regard would be that of the Burmese Chins currently residing in the Indian state of Mizoram (SAHRDC: 1997).

The lack of specific legislation for refugees in India has led to refugees being governed under alternate laws, namely the Passports Act of 1920, the Passports Act of 1967, the Registration of Foreigners Act of 1939, the Foreigners Act of 1946, as well as the Extradition Act of 1962. Such domestic provisions fail to distinguish between asylum seekers and other foreigners (Sen: 2003).  The mandate of UNHCR in India is limited to Afghan refugees and refugees from outside the region of South Asia. Section 3 of the Foreigners Act of 1946 allows the Ministry of Home Affairs to issue residence permits to all foreigners, on the basis of which several refugee groups recognized by UNHCR have secured stay facilities. UNHCR enjoys a considerable degree of autonomy when implementing programmes for the wellbeing of refugees. It has intervened with the Indian government on their behalf whenever necessary and is allowed to partner with local NGO’s. Refugee certificates issued by UNHCR and informally recognized by the government of India have extended the stay of mandate refugees such as the Burmese and Afghans by giving them the status of temporary residents (Sen: 2008).

While India like other South Asian nations has refrained from signing the 1951 Convention, it is party to numerous International treaties and agreements that strengthen its global humanitarian commitments. For instance, India has ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) of 1979 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989. It is also signatory to the two 1966 Conventions on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well as the Convention on Torture of 1984, the latter compelling India to consider the principle of non-refoulement or no forcible repatriation when formulating policies for refugee resettlement and rehabilitation.[3] Yet, it is a fact well established that Courts in India can enforce customary international law only if this is not in conflict with the statutes (Rao: 1993). The doctrine of incorporation is accepted and applied by Indian courts, according to which, rules of customary international law can be regarded and implemented as internal law only if these are consistent with Acts of Parliament (Brownlie: 1990). It was observed by the Supreme Court in Gramophone Co. Of India v. Birendra Bahadur Pandey, that,

“The Comity of Nations requires that Rules of International Law may be accommodated in the Municipal Law even without expressive legislative sanction provided they do not run into conflict with Acts of Parliament. But when they do run into such conflict, the sovereignty and integrity of the Republic and the supremacy of the constituted legislatures in making the laws may not be subjected to external rules except to the extent legitimately accepted by the constituted legislatures themselves. The doctrine of incorporation also recognizes the position that the rules of international law are incorporated into national law and considered to be part of the national law, unless they are in conflict with an Act of Parliament. Comity of Nations or no, Municipal Law must prevail in case of conflict. “[4]

How can national legislation benefit refugees living in India?

Some efforts towards develop a regional protection regime for refugees in South Asia were undertaken in the second half of the 1990s (Abrar: 2001). UNHCR established an Eminent Persons Group for South Asia in November 1994 and in its very first meeting, it was decided by the group that it would conduct annual regional consultations for the promotion of public awareness, as well as for identifying strategies and mechanisms to formulate a regional instrument, by adapting the 1951 Convention to the requirements of forced migrants in the region of South Asia. The 1995 Colombo Consultation emphasized the importance of a legal regime for refugees in South Asia along with a common declaration that reconfirmed the relevance and validity of definitions in several international legal instruments pertaining to refugees, including the 1984 Cartagena Declaration and the 1969 OAU Convention. At the consultation in New Delhi in 1996, a strategic shift was witnessed, that was entirely in favor of developing a model law for refugee protection. It was stated during the New Delhi Consultation that national legislations would enable a better understanding of the commonalities in policies, practices and principles and would eventually allow for a regional framework to be drawn up for assisting and rehabilitating refugees. In November 1997, when the EPG consulted in Dhaka, a model national law for refugees was approved. This model legislation constitutes the first step in developing a regional consensus for solving, managing and preventing refugee problems in a humane and comprehensive manner. The model law contains a comprehensive definition that suits the interests of refugees in the South Asian region, by incorporating the notion of ‘ethnic identity’ when categorizing people eligible for being granted refugee status, and adds that ‘membership of a particular social group’ shall also apply for persecution based on gender (Abrar: 2001).

A few of the reasons behind India’s specific decision to refrain from establishing a national law for refugees are outlined by B.S. Chimni, a leading legal scholar in India. Firstly, since the Indian government has hosted refugees of its own volition, it does not find it necessary to create a domestic framework for their protection. For asylum seekers in India who come from outside the region of South Asia, the government respects the status of refugee as granted by UNHCR. The government also has apprehensions in passing any national legislation on the subject of refugees as it is unsure of what the consequences might be upon doing so. India’s porous borders, it feels, may just be used by criminal elements and terrorists to stay in India legally. Thirdly, drawing up legislations for refugees is not considered a priority for the government, given the range of other crucial issues that have to be addressed by Parliament. Fourthly, any national legislation for refugees shall enable courts to regularly intervene in the protection and rehabilitation of refugees, thus preventing the State from using them as a tool in foreign policy matters. There is also a dearth of knowledge regarding the legal aspects involved in the passage of national legislation for refugee welfare. Finally, there is considerable worry about the expenses that may have to be incurred by the government when hosting refugees, in addition to the feeling that State authority may be undermined when dealing with them (Chimni: 2008).

While courts in India have been quite helpful when dealing with problems faced by refugee groups and individual refugees (Chimni: 1994), for Justice J.S. Verma, a former chief justice of the Supreme Court of India, this does not negate the necessity of establishing a domestic legal framework for the repatriation, rehabilitation and protection of refugees living in India and other countries in Southern Asia (Verma: 1997). In the view of Justice Verma, “the attempt to fill the void by judicial creativity can only be a temporary phase. Legislation alone will provide permanent solution” (Verma: 1997). According to some scholars, national legislation for refugees is of vital necessity as such legislation would enable the Indian government to maintain its large population with greater order and accountability while allowing refugees to enjoy uniform privileges and rights A regional treaty might benefit India’s relationship with its neighbours, but it is a national refugee law that shall prove to be a better bargain owing to the various communities hosted here and the precarious relations shared by India with many countries in South Asia (Nair: 2007). A domestic law for refugee protection can also help the Indian government in adopting adequate procedures for exercising its sovereignty and determining groups of foreigners that are most in need of International assistance. Indian administrative authorities would therefore be well positioned to address national security issues by monitoring asylum seekers and determining their antecedents and activities in their countries of origin before seeking refuge. Domestic refugee legislation could thus establish a balance between the sovereignty and security concerns of India and introduce a systematic protection regime for refugees (Sen: 2008). Finally, it must be remembered that national legislation for refugees can facilitate a distinction between forced and illegal migrants, avoid diplomatic issues, prevent refoulement and other arbitrary actions taken against refugees such as unlawful detention, allow for uniform treatment of refugee groups, address the specific problems faced by women and children among the refugee population and provide for the cessation of the status of refugee. It would also establish duties for refugees, enable India to strengthen its position within the Executive Committee of UNHCR and finally, make stronger its claims for securing a permanent membership within the UN Security Council (Chimni: 2008).

Conclusion

India’s decision to refrain from acceding to the 1951 Convention and its reluctance to adopt a domestic framework for refugee care has resulted in the discriminatory and arbitrary treatment of refugee groups in its territory. Despite being home to an asylum seeking population of substantive size, government policies towards refugees in India continue to be ad-hoc and ambiguous. A limited mandate and the imposition of several restrictions by the Indian State have prevented UNHCR from successfully improving the plight of the vast majority of refugees living in this country. This article therefore concludes that only by incorporating the UN Convention on refugees into its legal framework and by establishing a national law for refugees can India hope to adequately respond to the needs of its asylum seekers. National legislation for refugee protection will lead to the uniform and humane treatment of refugee and asylum seeking groups, thereby enabling India to uphold its International humanitarian commitments and successfully address its internal security concerns at the same time.

---

Notes 

[1] For a detailed discussion of India’s non accession to the 1951 Convention, see Sen Sreya, ‘Understanding India’s Refusal to Accede to the 1951 Refugee Convention: Context and Critique’ in Refugee Review: Re-conceptualizing Refugees and Forced Migration in the 21st Century, June 2015 e journal, available at https://refugeereview2.wordpress.com/2015/05/28/understanding-indias-refusal-toaccede-to-the-1951-refugee-convention-context-and-critique/.

[2] Indian Representative to the Executive Committee of UNHCR, Fifty-fourth Session of the Executive Committee meeting of UNHCR (2003)

[3] Article 3  of the CAT states that:

1. No State Party shall expel, return (refouler) or extradite a person to another state where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

[4] A.I.R.SC. 667, p 671, 1984.

References

Abrar C.R. ‘Legal Protection of Refugees in South Asia’, in Forced Migration Review: No. 10, pp 23, 2001.

Brownlie Ian, Principles of Public International Law, 5, Clarendon Press: Oxford 1990, 4th ed.

Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 28th July 1951

Chandrasekhar Rao P. The Indian Constitution and International Law, 179, Taxman: Delhi, 1993.

Chimni, B.S. "The Legal Condition of Refugees in India." in Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 7, No. 4, 378 – 381, 1994.

Chimni B.S. "Status of Refugees in India: Strategic Ambiguity." In Samaddar Ranabir, Ed. Refugees and the State: Practices of Asylum and Care in India, 1947-2000: 443 - 466. 2nd ed. Sage Publications, 2008.

Chimni, B.S. "Legal Condition of Refugees in India." In Chimni B.S, Ed., International Refugee Law: A Reader, 7th ed., Sage Publications, 2008: 529.

Verma J.S., Inaugural Address delivered at the Conference on Refugees in SAARC Region: Building a Legal Framework, 3 – 9, New Delhi, 2 May 1997.

Nair Arjun, “National Refugee Law for India: Benefits and Roadblocks” IPCS Research Papers, December  2007.

Sen, Sarbani. “Paradoxes of the International Regime of Care: Role of the UNHCR in India.” In Samaddar Ranabir Ed. Refugees and the State: Practices of Asylum and Care in India, 1947-2000,  401 - 405.  2nd ed. Sage Publications, 2008.

Sengupta Ipshita, “UNHCR’s Role in Refugee Protection in India” Infochange Agenda, October 2014, http://infochangeindia.org/agenda/migration-a-displacement/unhcrs-role-in-refugee-protection-in-india.html, last accessed on 12.7.2016.

SAHRDC, 'Refugee Protection in India', October 1997, at http://www.hrdc.net/sahrdc/resources/refugee_protection.htm, last accessed on 12.7.2016.

Weiner, Myron. "Rejected Peoples and Unwanted Migrants in South Asia." In Economic

and Political Weekly, pp 1743, 34th ed. Vol. 28. 1993.

[spicynbachili1]

Arab refugees in Bangkok long for home amid immigration crackdown | Refugees

Bangkok – Six years in the past, a number of days after taking his highschool exams, Ibrahim and his household fled Syria to Lebanon the place they boarded a flight to Bangkok.

Arriving within the Thai capital on vacationer visas, they skilled freedom away from the horrors of battle in Syria. 

However since their visas expired, they’ve been dwelling as undocumented migrants.

“We considered Thailand as a transit level,” Ibrahim advised Al Jazeera, “and that we might keep one or two years. But after six years, our lives are caught in limbo.”

In Thailand, Ibrahim’s household utilized for resettlement within the US solely to attend for 2 years with no progress.

They then requested resettlement in Canada, restarting your complete course of.

In Bangkok, it takes a mean of three to 4 years to finish the resettlement course of, leaving many refugees weak and pissed off. 

“We might like to reside right here, it is just like the Center East. Persons are pleasant and can speak to you, in contrast to folks in Europe who will not say hiya,” stated Ibrahim. “We not dream of peace, solely of a passport.”

Thailand just isn’t a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Conference and the Thai Immigration Act of 1979 views anybody overstaying their visa as an unlawful immigrant, together with asylum seekers and refugees.

Refugees and asylum seekers are caught up in a police raid and transported to an immigration detention centre [Al Jazeera]

The UNHCR advised Al Jazeera that Thailand is residence to 103,000 refugees with an estimated 6,000 city refugees from nations together with Pakistan, Somalia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, and Syria.

Thailand was among the many final nations to keep up a consulate in Damascus, making it an obtainable visa at a time when doorways have been shutting to these fleeing Syria.

Mirvat got here to Thailand in 2012 quickly after graduating from Damascus College. 

Six years later, she stays in Bangkok the place she has had 4 youngsters however has not been capable of pursue her profession. 

“Probably the most troublesome factor is that our children cannot attend faculty and don’t have anything to do,” she advised Al Jazeera. 

The best concern going through Bangkok’s city refugees is arrest and in consequence, many keep inside their houses for lengthy stretches of time.

“I can not go to the market and am scared to go to the hospital. We really feel scared by every little thing,” stated Mivrat.

Syrian-Palestinian refugees promote conventional meals each Friday on the Islamic Middle in Bangko [Panithan Kitsakul]

Refugees’ fears have lately been heightened by a significant police operation that started in October with the appointment of Surachet Hakparn, the brand new immigration bureau commissioner of the Royal Thai Police. 

“Operation X-Ray Outlaw Foreigner” goals to spherical up and detain undocumented migrants, with asylum seekers and refugees caught up within the clampdown.

Police raids have led to lots of of refugees and asylum seekers being held at immigration detention centres.

Final month, the immigration bureau additionally revoked bail for undocumented migrants who might have beforehand been launched on 50,000 baht ($1,500).

An estimated 200 refugees from Syria have been amongst these summoned again into detention.

The recurrent fable that refugees are a safety menace and a drain on society is just not true. Palestinians and Syrians are extremely productive and resourceful.

Evan Jones, Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Community

Refugees beforehand granted bail are actually topic to elevated harassment and arrest, stated migrants and rights teams.

“The immigration detention centre just isn’t designed for long-term keep, however lots of of detainees keep for multiple yr,” Puttanee Kangkun of Fortify Rights advised Al Jazeera.

Most are overcrowded with greater than 300 detainees held in a cell designed for 70 inmates. 

In violation of kids’s rights beneath worldwide legislation, youngsters are separated from mother and father and siblings whereas unaccompanied boys beneath the age of 12 are held alongside grownup males.

Formally, Thai authorities declare that some refugees have pretend UNHCR playing cards and that the operation will verify their paperwork, and re-release real asylum seekers on bail.

Nonetheless, native refugee rights teams advised Al Jazeera on situation of anonymity that they have been sceptical, noting that the Thai authorities works intently with UNHCR and might simply verify its database. 

“Beside the UNHCR card, which has virtually no that means beneath home authorized provisions, [refugees] don’t have any different authorized safety,” stated Puttanee Kangkun.

‘We don’t ask for cash, solely to be resettled’

The hostile surroundings has made a nasty scenario worse for refugees. Over the previous yr, Thai immigration police have focused African immigrants in Bangkok in what has been criticised as racial profiling. 

In comparison with Somali, Nigerian and different African nationalities, Arabs have had moments the place they have been capable of evade authorities extra simply and luxuriate in a point of higher freedom.

Ibrahim and his mom used to complement their remittances by promoting Arab road meals together with shawarma, hummus, and bread at neighborhood occasions and close to native mosques. However the latest clampdown on immigration has put a cease to this.

Basil, a 20-year outdated Palestinian refugee from Syria, defined: “For a very long time, I might exit, eat, get together and have a life right here. However that has all modified now.”

“Soi Arab”, the Center Japanese quarter within the coronary heart of Bangkok’s vacationer district of Nana, is residence to eating places the place younger Syrian and Palestinian refugees work with out documentation. 

“I used to be paid 250 baht ($7.50) a day for a 12-hour shift washing dishes and the proprietor gave leftover meals for me and my household,” stated Basil. 

But lately, fearing police raids, house owners are asking refugee staff to remain residence. 

“No person is working now,” stated Basil.

Regardless of the latest immigration raids, refugees Al Jazeera spoke to weren’t vital of the Thai authorities. 

“We really feel deserted by the United Nations,” stated Mivrat. “We don’t ask for cash, solely to be resettled.”

‘Soi Arab’ in Nana district is fashionable with Center Japanese vacationers and a few refugees have discovered work there [Kittipot Promprakai/Al Jazeera]

Sources advised Al Jazeera that round 20 % of the refugees from Syria in Thailand have been resettled, which is excessive in comparison with the lower than 1 % international common for third nation resettlement. 

The bulk have been Syrian passport holders, with solely round 50 people left in Thailand.

These caught in Bangkok are primarily Palestinian refugees whose choices are extra restricted. 

No Palestinian refugees have been resettled in 2018, whereas resettlement to the US has floor to a halt for the reason that election of President Trump. 

“For a lot of Syrian and Palestinian refugees, the unhappy actuality is that they could by no means be thought-about for resettlement in a 3rd nation,” Evan Jones of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Community advised Al Jazeera.

“With international resettlement numbers dropping, these people could also be caught on the fringes of Thai society for years and even a long time forward, unable to entry a few of their most simple human rights.”

If given a alternative, many Palestinian refugees from Syria would settle in Thailand. The bulk interviewed for this story have college levels and had established careers earlier than fleeing the battle.

However inside some sections of Thai society, Arab refugees are perceived as posing a safety menace.

“The Thai authorities ought to settle for the fact that not each refugee might resettle in third nations, so the idea of native integration must be considered in steadiness with nationwide safety considerations for a sustainable resolution,” stated Puttanee Kangkun of Fortify Rights.

Jones added: “The recurrent fable that refugees are a safety menace and a drain on society is just not true. Palestinians and Syrians are extremely productive and resourceful and produce a variety of expertise and information that would assist profit Thai society.”

Even when the Syrian battle ends, Palestinian refugees who travelled to Thailand on now-expired emergency paperwork have misplaced the best to return to Palestine. Renewing their journey paperwork has additionally change into rather more troublesome for the reason that Syrian consulate in Bangkok closed in 2017. 

Refugees that Al Jazeera spoke with estimate that there are 400 Palestinian refugees from Syria remaining in Bangkok, with one other 201 from Iraq and 15 from Gaza. 

For a few of them, resettlement shall be to a fourth fairly than a 3rd nation. 

Asma was born in Haifa in 1940 and as a younger lady fled Palestine for Iraq. She was displaced once more by Iraq’s descent into violence after 2003, dwelling for 3 years in a refugee camp in Cyprus earlier than arriving in Thailand. 

“I requested the UN to ship me residence to Haifa,” she stated. “I simply wish to be in my nation.”

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from SpicyNBAChili.com http://spicymoviechili.spicynbachili.com/arab-refugees-in-bangkok-long-for-home-amid-immigration-crackdown-refugees/

[aethelar]

See, the first time that Newt got lost in Asclepius’ hospital and ended up in Graves’ highly warded highly secret room, he could chalk it up to a strange set of coincidences. An accident, maybe. He took a few wrong turns, a couple of wrong staircases, somehow got an overly pushy snidget soft toy foisted on him by an insistent gift shop, and ended up explaining his theory of flight magic to a comatose director for... a while? He kind of lost track of the time. The charmed window had rolled over to a balmy sunset by the time the door reappeared and the snidget chivvied him out of the room, but Newt hadn’t thought it was that long.

But that’s beside the point. The first time it happened, Newt thought it was an accident. A one off at the very least - he was hardly in the habit of visiting the hospital and wandering off by himself. He wasn’t, in fact, anywhere near the hospital, and Graves wasn’t on his mind, and the door leading out of the gents on MACUSA’s third floor was not supposed to lead to a familiar room with a familiar occupant in the single bed.

The snidget - Steve, it was a stuffed toy but it was a remarkably animated stuffed toy and it deserved a name - wormed its way out of his pocket and chirrupped hopefully at him. He looked over his shoulder but without much optimism; the door he had just walked through was, indeed, gone.

“My apologies, Mr Graves,” Newt said to the sleeping figure. “I won’t be a moment, sorry for disturbing you.” He ushered the snidget away to the furthest corner and lowered his voice.

“Now, listen,” he told it as sternly as he could manage. “You can’t make a habit of kidnapping people like this. I can’t make a habit of being kidnapped like this. I got in enough trouble last time, thank you, so take me back.”

Peep?

“Back, Steve. I’m not leaving my case in the Auror department by itself.”

Steve gave a low, despondent whistle and landed back on his shoulder, but at least the door rematerialised. How, exactly, it managed to drop him off halfway across the city at the Woolworth’s building Newt didn’t know, but it seemed petty to question it at this point.

He quashed the feelings of guilt about leaving Graves behind. The man had the best care MACUSA could give him, and really, Newt was a complete stranger. He shouldn’t be interfering. What he should be doing is reporting the hole in the wards to Tina or at the very least working out exactly what magic was powering Steve and how it was connected to the hospital. Somehow Newt was never very good at doing what he should, and somehow it was strangely difficult to put Graves out of his mind and focus on the various forms and legislation Tina needed him to run through.

Somehow he wasn’t surprised that walking out the door an hour later with his coat on and his case in hand did not, in fact, lead him to the apparition point.

“Hello again, Mr Graves,” he greeted with a feeling of cautious relief. He’d hoped to be able to come back, but it never did to count on such things. “I’m sorry for leaving so suddenly earlier, but I’m free for the evening if you don’t mind me staying.” He slipped his coat off and hung it on the hook that materialised from the wall and walked over to his chair by the bed without needing prompting. Steve, whizzing in lazy circles around his head, looked insufferably proud.

“I brought my notes this time,” Newt said conversationally as he opened his case. “I won’t be a moment.”

It was... nice, would be the best way to describe it. Newt had his notes, had Steve trying to make a nest out of his hair (and Newt really needed to check on Steve’s animation charms, this was getting ridiculous), Pickett sat on his shoulder and fussily untangling Steve’s work, and Graves’ sleeping form as his patient audience. He was mostly in the editing stage by this point, condensing entire notebooks of research down into a short entry for each creature he’d come across - 

“ - but I was thinking, maybe, of leaving this one as a sort of quick reference encyclopedia book and writing more in depth books on each species, what do you think? Or maybe not each species but maybe the groups of them, each continent perhaps - no those books would be too big. Maybe I should just make the entries longer and stick to one book. One giant book. I could put expandable charms on each section so you could tap your wand to the creature’s name and get a whole chapter dedicated to them, how amazing would that be? A mite impractical, but maybe for special editions... “

It was nice to talk it over with Graves. It helped Newt organise his thoughts, and let’s face it, he liked talking about his creatures. He just very rarely found someone who would listen, and maybe it was a bit unfair to be taking advantage of Graves like this but... Well. It was nice.

So the first time was an accident, the second time lasted all of a minute, and the third time went long into the night before the sleepy snidget started tugging Newt towards the door. He left reluctantly, still juggling papers on lethifolds and wondering whether to include the eyewitness account he’d been given or stick to his own research.

“Oh stop fussing, I’m going, I’m going - I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr Graves, have a good night - good grief Steve calm down - “

The door closed behind him with hurried but silent force and Newt blinked owlishly at the deserted alley he found himself in. It seemed to be one of the back exits to the MACUSA building; the sunken cellar door behind him was layered with enough muggle repellents to give him a headache just standing there. He peered suspiciously at Steve. “How, exactly, are you managing this?” he asked the stuffed toy. If it even was a stuffed toy. Steve tucked himself into Newt’s pocket with Pickett and refused to answer.

He didn’t answer the fourth time, when Newt stumbled through a door in his flat and arrived in Graves’ room half dressed with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, or the fifth time when Newt carried a steaming mug of tea and a sandwich through to what should have been his living room. By the sixth time, Newt had started keeping his notes shrunk in his pocket rather than his case; times seven and eight he’d added an expansion charm, a thermos of tea and a portable cooking stove and regaled Graves with stories of misadventures in local cuisine as he put together a basic stew. Chili, that’s all Newt was saying. Entirely unreasonable quantities of hot chili. 

“You know,” he remarked, somewhere around time ten - eleven? - that he’d set up camp in the corner of Graves’ room, “I think I spend more time here than in my actual flat. Between here and the case, I do wonder why I’m paying the rent on it.” He lent forward, chin resting on his knees and wrists loosely crossed over his ankles. Graves was - as ever - still and silent, but Newt had managed to add a few bits and pieces. Weightless charms, to reduce the risk of bedsores. Tweaks to the lighting charms on the ceiling, to better mimic the sun and the rhythm of the day. A bit of a breeze. Smells, outdoor smells - people tended to overlook smell, but it was one of the most important senses. If Graves was even a little aware of his surroundings, Newt thought he should have some better smells around than sterile hospital linen.

He could do more, if he wasn’t worried about tripping the monitoring wards. Turning artificial spaces into natural habitats was what Newt did, what he was good at, and Asclepius’ hospital was all but overflowing with ambient magic that existed to heal - Newt could have turned the cramped room into open Savannah plains if he could convince the hospital it would help Graves. He itched to, occasionally; maybe not plains, but maybe New York? Maybe Graves would prefer the feel of his city, the sounds of busy streets and the rumbling grind of daily life. Newt would like to ask him.

Steve perked up suddenly, interrupting Newt’s thoughts as he took wing and hovered by the door that melted out of the wall. And there, ultimately, was the only thing stopping Newt from moving in: the irregular check ups from Graves’ doctors and guards. Technically, Newt wasn’t supposed to be there. Even if he was eighty seven percent sure that it was the hospital itself that kept dragging him back, Newt doubted that the aurors would take kindly to his intrusion.

“I’ve got to go,” he told Graves regretfully as he moved over to the anchor stones he’d placed around the bed. A wave of his wand collected them and cancelled the atmosphere charms he’d been running, and he felt the walls sigh as Asclepius’ resettled the usual window illusions and wards into place. “We need to talk about your sentient buildings when you wake up though, because I’m starting to lean towards your hospital being possessed. In a good way - did I tell you about the Lares spirits I met? You’d like those, I think.”

He stopped for a moment, staring at Graves and wondering if Graves would, in fact, like them. Newt knew nothing about Graves. He could infer a lot from the auror’s near devotion to him - from Tina’s devotion - and from the harsh persona Grindelwald had pulled on to impersonate him, but.

But.

Graves was pale, in a way that said he was usually tanned but had been kept away from the sun for too long. His hair was dark brown, not black, and it fanned around his head on the pillow. There were furrows etched into his forehead and the beginnings of crows feet at the edge of his eyes, and Newt pushed a stray strand of hair back and wondered if they were from anger or stress. If you worry you suffer twice, but even Newt can’t help but worry when his creatures are in danger and if what Tina said was true - well, maybe Graves worried for his aurors the same as Newt did for his creatures?

“If you’d only wake up,” he whispered, allowing his fingers to rest in Graves’ surprisingly soft hair, “I could ask.”

Steve flittered urgently at the door. Newt couldn’t hear the footsteps on the other side of the wall, but he knew better than to push his luck. He picked up his case and slipped through the door and into an innocuous back street just as the wards peeled back to allow the aurors into the room.

[rachelcarsoncenter]

by Stefan Bitsch

Linz —> Hütting —> Grein —> Melk —> Krems

Dangers of the Danube: Floods and Rapids throughout History

On the fourth day of our excursion, the group had the opportunity to learn from Christian Rohr (University of Bern) and Severin Hohensinner (University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna), who shared their expertise with us during the various stops along the way.

Hütting and the Machland Dam

The first series of stops were concentrated around the small town of Hütting, part of the longest connected dam-building program in Central Europe, which cost around €180 million and was completed in 2012. Forty-five kilometers of dams and flood retention areas now follow the course of the Danube in this region. The area has a long history of flooding, and the town has learned how to deal with these events over time.

Hütting was a market town in the Middle Ages—one of nine in Upper Austria. Despite severe floods occurring roughly every 10 years, people have, until recently, adapted and remained there. The area had been economically profitable due to its nutrient-rich, fertile soils, with great employment opportunities from prospering river trade. The Danube was a very important trade route, particularly during the period of Habsburg rule. The enormous growth in population caused people to settle near the river despite the well-known problems it caused. During periods when the Danube ran calm, they grew crops and farmed cattle; during periods of high water, the people and their livestock would move to the upper floors of their houses and wait for the water to drain. If the situation was really severe, they would use traditional boats known as Zilles and Plätten to transport themselves and their livestock to safety. The houses had to be adapted, too; because they were made of wood, “floating away” was a huge problem—not only for the wooden floors but also provisions stored in barrels. Vertical pillars helped to secure the lower parts of the houses against floating and disintegrating, using the ceiling as a counterweight.

As a further safety measure, a dam structure was built in 1954 to secure the town against high waters. These dams, however, were situated directly at the river and provided no space for the water to overflow and spread. Flood plains, or retention areas, can act as storage, soaking up some of the water and unburdening areas further downstream. Today, engineers are aware of this and modern dams are built further away from rivers. What has happens to the villages and settlements of Machland, and how has their strong historical relationship with the river been affected by the new dam?

Discussing Hütting’s history and evolution. Photos: Laura Kuen.

Hütting had approximately 240 inhabitants in 1970. A resettlement program preceded the start of the dam construction, with the aim of moving the entire town of Hütting three kilometers further from the Danube, out of the water retention area and behind the new dam. The state purportedly covered 80 percent of the value of the residents’ belongings, and a new town, Neu Hütting, was founded. The locals still use the flood lands for farming purposes, but living there is nearly impossible. The most recent one-hundred-year flood in 2002 showed why; almost all the houses on the flood lands were flooded completely and people had to be rescued by public services. Most of these houses have now been demolished. Even then, several people, especially the elderly, refused to move; they believed that, having coped with such situations all their lives, they know the river and can recognize danger when it arises. Today, two inhabitants still live in front of the dam and authorities are unable to remove them to permanent safety. They will still need help when the river swells.

“But,” one of our guides explained, “even this problem will resolve itself sooner or later, and the dam will be a guarding rampart for everybody in town. Safety for everybody, with the great river at the doorstep.”

Backwater Effect

Nearby Labing, a town adjacent to the river Naarn (one of the Danube’s tributaries), is surrounded on one side with concrete walls three and a half meters high. In times of flooding, the “backwater effect” means that water from the flooding Danube invades the tributary and turns the tiny, calm stream into a swollen lake. The flood barriers are especially strong to withstand the force of not just the floodwaters, but also a barrage of vast amounts of driftwood carried downstream on the Naarn from the Bohemian forest. It struck our group as very intimidating to live so close to a river that is so prone to flooding. The flood marks on the concrete wall show that, in 2002, the wall was only just high enough to prevent the whole town from being flooded. It seems that living with floods often means counting every remaining centimeter…

Part of the flood defences around Labing. Photo: David Stäblein

The Danube Itself as a Lively but Deadly System

In Grein, inside Austria’s oldest intact theater (formerly a granary), we listened to a lecture about the River Danube.

The old theater in Grein. Photos: Laura Kuen

The Danube was, prior to modern interventions, an anatomizing river, meaning that it frequently changed its course, creating new islands and eroding others in the process. This had a huge impact on river trade because the navigable channels changed frequently. Captains had to predict whether old routes were still intact or if new ways must be found through the web of channels. This created a lot of potential for danger, and on top of its unpredictable nature, the river hosted many dangerous spots. The Strudengau, where the Danube splits into two channels that later rejoin each other, is historically one of the most hazardous parts of the Danube. The right channel was sandy and only navigable in high waters; the left ran fast and perilous rocks littered the riverbed. A large, unavoidable eddy followed this stretch and many sailors lost their lives there and were washed ashore on the so-called Friedhof-Lacke, or “graveyard bay.”

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The shifting riverbed frequently caused conflicts between landowners on both sides of the Danube, as property boundaries were often determined by natural landmarks like the river. Changes in its course, therefore, shifted these boundaries and spurred complicated redistribution issues. To manage this, in 1812, Austria began a survey and regulation program for the Danube. By 1925, the river’s channel had been straightened and secured with concrete walls. Several artificial channels were created, and the most dangerous stretches were destroyed or made navigable. Now, the Strudengau is no longer dangerous; the infamously large rock causing the eddy was destroyed during the Third Reich. To make sure that the destruction of the rock was successful, a vast amount of dynamite was used. Pieces of shattered stone reached and destroyed houses within a hundred meters of the explosion site.

In the whole of Austria today, only two sections of the Danube remain unregulated.

Wachau and the Monastery of Melk

In the afternoon, we visited the monastery and town of Melk. Up on a hill, the monastery has remained safe from flooding, but the regular damage done to the surrounding villages means they kept many records of local flood events. The old town houses were built to be flood-proof, constructed mainly from stone. But the land and people around Melk, part of the Wachau region which is famous for its wine and fruit, suffered most under the destruction of crops and livestock from flood events. Such damages cannot be dealt with in a single year; vineyards need years to regrow. Severe floods were therefore often followed by years of toil and famine.

The inhabitants of Melk blame an increase in water channeled to them during floods on the lack of flood retention areas next to the flood barriers upstream. This type of dispute can be seen on less localized scales: for example, in 2013, Austria accused Bavaria of causing extensive flooding in its regions by not utilizing its own water retention areas appropriately during a period of severe flooding.

Rolling landscape and vineyards of the Wachau region. Photo: Stefan Bitsch.

The Monastery in Melk. Photo: Stefan Bitsch.

  During a boat ride from Melk to Krems, we admired the Wachau region and took time to relax and contemplate the landscape on our own. We came to understand why the Wachau deserves the title of “quality vineyard of Austria.” The interplay of limestone and acidic granite rock combined with the warm, humid climate, allows the grapes to flourish. The famous Grüner Veltiner comes from this region. The Wachau is also of great historic importance, boasting many fortified churches—one of which is Dürnstein, where Richard of Lionheart was held captive for two years after his return from the Third Crusade.

When we arrived in Krems, the eastern gate to the vineyard of Austria, the day ended with a fantastic dinner and some very interesting discussions about the places we visited and the stunning impressions we collected on the way.

  Day 4. Danube Excursion: Linz—Krems by Stefan Bitsch Linz —> Hütting —> Grein —> Melk —> Krems Dangers of the Danube: Floods and Rapids throughout History…

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‘Don’t come back, they’ll kill you for being gay’

For years Mohamed’s family tried to originate him more relish other boys – more challenging, more “masculine”. They even sent him to enjoy a female spirit pushed out with hallucinogenic medication. At closing, writes Layla Mahmood, they determined to rupture him.

The warmth enveloped 20-one year-veteran Mohamed, as he zig-zagged by the alleyways of Hargeisa. It turned into once round noon, all by the summer season of 2019. The metropolis turned into once asleep for the day-to-day siesta – retailers, restaurants and workplaces had been all closed – so it turned into once a super time for somebody who wished to traipse round under the radar. Mohamed turned into once secretly visiting his boyfriend, Ahmed, an act punishable by imprisonment and most often death in Somaliland.

Hargeisa is the capital of the self-declared articulate of Somaliland, which broke a ways off from Somalia virtually 30 years previously. The courts enforce Islamic law, Sharia, which deems homosexuality illegal, so LGBT Somalis must veil their sexuality. They are living in trouble of being uncovered. For Mohamed, who says he’s rather feminine, it turned into yet again tough to traipse as straight than for some others.

Mohamed and Ahmed began their traditional romantic stumble upon in the back of closed doorways, when, to their shock, Ahmed’s sister entered the room. She began yelling, waking up the total dwelling. Within minutes Mohamed turned into once out of the door and hiding at a buddy’s home, the put he bought a chilling cell phone call from a successfully-wisher: “Don’t blueprint back home, they are on the purpose of rupture you.”

“The foremost time I realised there turned into once something advanced about my sexuality, the desire, the genders that I relish and don’t relish turned into once after I turned into once four or five years veteran,” Mohamed says.

When he turned into once young he shared a room with his older brothers and male cousins. They would discuss ladies at night time all by pillow talk, and then pointedly quiz him, “So what’s your current piece of a girl’s physique?”

“It turned into once then that I knew I turned into once diverse,” he says.

Mohamed gravitated in direction of make-up and beauty, preferring to exhaust time with his sisters in preference to his brothers. He would routinely strive on their attire, and after being caught for the third time, his mother felt that she had to manufacture something.

His oldest brother turned into once urged to educate him sure passages of the Koran and its partner scripture, made up of sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, the Hadith. Every night time Mohamed will most certainly be compelled to recite: “God punishes males who originate themselves belief relish ladies folk. And also ladies folk who originate themselves belief relish males.”

“He told me that I’m making God infected. He’s cursing you. He’s planning so that you just can traipse to hell in the afterlife,” Mohamed says.

“I turned into once 10 years veteran, I couldn’t make a selection it. I primitive to wake up in the heart of the night time in a sweat screaming: ‘Oh help me! Again me from God, he’s burning me in hell!'”

For some time Mohamed tried to meet his family’s make a choice to behave more relish other boys.

“However on the pause of the day, I’m in a position to’t pause something that I relish,” Mohamed says. “And I turned into once young. When of us are young they fail to take into accout issues hasty.”

Eventually, when Mohamed turned into once 12, his mother sent him to a “rehabilitation centre”.

Institutions designed to reform childhood, kids and young adults who are judged to enjoy strayed from Somali values are scattered at some point soon of Hargeisa, and the the relaxation of Somaliland and Somalia. Other folks are in general held in them against their will in harsh and abusive prerequisites. Per Mohamed, in a lot of conditions they are bustle by scammers,who distort Islamic scripture for monetary occupy.

Mohamed’s family believed that his effeminate behaviour turned into once a results of being possessed by a female jinn, or inappropriate spirit, so the workers claimed they would possibly pressure it out. They called themselves “existence savers”, arguing that they had been saving their patients from hell.

“I feel or now not it’s the worst residing that ever existed,” Mohamed says.

Mohamed turned into once schooled daily on behave relish a outmoded man. They taught him streak and talk, and compelled him to play football with the synthetic patients – something he would repeatedly preserve a ways off from if he would possibly well moreover.

This turned into once accompanied by day-to-day readings of Islamic texts.

On the fourth day, the “existence savers” started sexually abusing Mohamed.

“They primitive to rape me at nighttime time, and most often came in groups,” Mohamed remembers.

Rape turned into once celebrated in the centre, and turned into once committed both by patients and by workers, he says.

All people turned into once stuffed together in a sizable hall with sound asleep bags, with ages ranging from 10 to 30. There turned into once no safety. The staff preached one thing all by the day and did the total opposite at night time.

“They are doing these issues on legend of they know that we would possibly well moreover now not ever mumble someone,” he says.

To pressure out the jinn, patients had been most often given a herbal drug called harmala. Corresponding to ayahuasca, it induces hallucinations and vomiting with the promise of non secular enlightenment and cleansing. However it completely has been reported that the portions given in rehabilitation centres in general a ways exceed safe doses, making them lethal – in particular for childhood.

“The correct thing that I take into accout is that I turned into once flying in some residing that is stuffed with stars… I manufacture now not know what took place all by those days. I manufacture now not know if I got raped. I merely don’t know anything else,” Mohamed says.

The closing time he turned into once given harmala, he came round in sanatorium. He says he has had stomach grief ever since.

After being launched from the centre, Mohamed learned to veil his sexual orientation for most of his teenage years. However that changed when he met Ahmed on a secret on-line chat neighborhood for homosexual Somalis. They realized solace with every other in the back of closed doorways.

After Mohamed fled from Ahmed’s dwelling and learned that his family turned into once on the purpose of rupture him, he made urgent plans to fly.

Most worldwide locations is now not going to grant Somalis visas unless they fulfil a residing of nearly now not attainable standards, as an illustration having tens of hundreds of bucks in a checking legend. For individuals who are living in Somaliland it’s miles even more tough, as absolute most realistic Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and South Africa recognise it as an honest articulate.

There is dinky probability but to exhaust hundreds of bucks on the unlit market procuring for fraudulent passports, faux yellow fever vaccination certificates and in general visas too.

This turned into once how Mohamed escaped. A helper bought the wanted paperwork within a pair of days, giving him instructions to meet a fixer in front of Hargeisa airport. He composed them on the day of departure – three days after Ahmed’s sister had burst in and raised the fright – and then he turned into once off. It turned into once his first time flying in a plane. “It turned into once surreal. I couldn’t pause taking a search out the window,” he remembers.

His destination turned into once Malaysia, on legend of vacationer visas are free on arrival.

However existence as a Somali asylum seeker in Malaysia is difficult – and there too homosexuality is against the law.

Whereas most asylum seekers are living in limbo for years before being recognised as a refugee, Mohamed’s case turned into once quickly-tracked and he has been permitted for resettlement. It would possibly well moreover be some other one year before this happens, though. In the length in-between, Mohamed’s monetary downside is frightened; as Malaysia is now not a signatory of the Geneva Convention he does now not enjoy the absolute most realistic to beef up himself by working.

There’ll most certainly be the fright that his family would possibly presumably procure him, pressure him to return to Hargeisa, and extinguish him. He can’t fully belief other Somali refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia, in case they provide him away.

“There is a hope in me that at some point soon I’m in a position to traipse someplace else – presumably Europe, presumably The US,” Mohamed says.

“Till then, I strive and retain a low profile, and pray my family does now not procure me.”

What took place to Ahmed, he does now not know. All his attempts to originate contact enjoy failed.

All names had been changed

Illustrations by Sarah Elsa Pinon

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Angel fled Zimbabwe in trouble of her existence after police realized her in bed with some other girl five years previously. It’s taken as a rule since then for her to convince the Dwelling Web online page of job that she is homosexual and will be persecuted if she returns. However how manufacture you present something you spent your existence making an try to veil?

‘How manufacture I convince the Dwelling Web online page of job I’m a lesbian?’

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