#that guard who was tormenting him was terrible. and yet he DOES murder him in cold blood and try to frame a different mass murderer for it

[criticalrolo]

folks i have put in the legwork to try to understand the jgy apologist side of the fandom since that seems to be So Many People... I thought that maybe the tv show elevated his crimes to make it a more black and white villain situation but then I read what he does in the novels and it is WAY WORSE... i literally feel like it's 2012 and people are writing loki-style apologism for "his childhood was very sad (extremely true it was horrible) and that's why the crimes are okay (the crimes are so so many murders and SA because his feelings and desires are more important than People's Lives)"

[arctic-comet]

Osblaineweek2021, Day 2: Prose

I love book quotes. Looking at quotes is one of my favorite ways to to inspire myself to write more fic.

Here’s a small collection of book quotes (and recs!) of where I’ve “found” June and Nick.

This post contains spoilers for the following books/series:

- Lover Mine by JR Ward

- The Wrath and The Dawn duology by Renée Ahdieh

- A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas

Lover Mine by J.R. Ward

Summary:

John Matthew has come a long way since he was found living among humans, his vampire nature unknown to himself and to those around him. After he was taken in by the Brotherhood, no one could guess what his true history was- or his true identity. Indeed, the fallen Brother Darius has returned, but with a different face and a very different destiny. As a vicious personal vendetta takes John into the heart of the war, he will need to call up on both who he is now and who he once was in order to face off against evil incarnate. Xhex, a symphath assassin, has long steeled herself against the attraction between her and John Matthew. Having already lost one lover to madness, she will not allow the male of worth to fall prey to the darkness of her twisted life. When fate intervenes, however, the two discover that love, like destiny, is inevitable between soul mates.

It's basically a paranormal love story between two warriors. He's really young (although he's actually a reincarnation of a very old vampire warrior, but he doesn't know that), and she's like 300 years older than him. In this book, she's been raped and abused by a guy who also used to bully him. She escapes, but he saves her life. She's hungry for revenge and wants to die after achieving that goal, but of course eventually changes her mind. In the end he actually serves her rapist to her on a silver platter so that she can kill him (sound like anyone we know?). He literally holds the guy down while she kills him.

They're my ultimate favorite ship in this series, and IMO their relationship eventually develops into one of the strongest ones. This series is a bit of a hit-or-miss for most people, because the language and the writing style are pretty ridiculous in all seriousness. If you decide to read this, I recommend starting the series from the beginning because John and Xhex meet for the first time several books before this one, LOL.

Here are some of the quotes that make me think of Nick and June:

“Besides, the story of the two of them was written in the language of collision; they were ever crashing into each other and ricocheting away—only to find themselves pulled back into another impact.” ― J.R. Ward, Lover Mine

“As his ears rang and his heart broke for her, he stayed strong against the gale force she let loose. After all, there was a reason why here and hear were seperated by so little and sounded one like the other. Bearing witness to her, he heard her and was there for her because that was all you could do during a fall apart. But God, it pained him to see how she suffered.” ― J.R. Ward, Lover Mine

“...the only thing that had tethered her to the earth had been him and it was strange, but she felt welded to him on some core level now. He had seen her at her absolute worst, at her weakest and most insane, and he hadn't looked away. He hadn't judged and he hadn't been burned. It was as if in the heat of her meltdown they had melted together. This was more than emotion. It was a matter of soul.” ― J.R. Ward, Lover Mine

The Wrath and the Dawn duology by Renée Ahdieh

Summary:

One Life to One Dawn. In a land ruled by a murderous boy-king, each dawn brings heartache to a new family. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, is a monster. Each night he takes a new bride only to have a silk cord wrapped around her throat come morning. When sixteen-year-old Shahrzad's dearest friend falls victim to Khalid, Shahrzad vows vengeance and volunteers to be his next bride. Shahrzad is determined not only to stay alive, but to end the caliph's reign of terror once and for all. Night after night, Shahrzad beguiles Khalid, weaving stories that enchant, ensuring her survival, though she knows each dawn could be her last. But something she never expected begins to happen: Khalid is nothing like what she'd imagined him to be. This monster is a boy with a tormented heart. Incredibly, Shahrzad finds herself falling in love. How is this possible? It's an unforgivable betrayal. Still, Shahrzad has come to understand all is not as it seems in this palace of marble and stone. She resolves to uncover whatever secrets lurk and, despite her love, be ready to take Khalid's life as retribution for the many lives he's stolen. Can their love survive this world of stories and secrets?

This is a young adult fantasy romance, and basically, Khalid is a lot like Nick. He’s made mistakes that he needs to own, but at the same time he’s forced to commit atrocities he doesn’t want to do. He hates himself and doesn’t believe himself to be worthy of love, and yet he falls in love with Shazi. He's viewed as the villain of the story by everyone aside from Shazi and a few other characters until almost the end of the 2nd book.

“I love you, a thousand times over. And I will never apologize for it.”

―Renee Ahdieh, The Wrath and the Dawn

“It’s a fitting punishment for a monster. to want something so much—to hold it in your arms — and know beyond a doubt you will never deserve it.”

― Renee Ahdieh, The Wrath and the Dawn

“When I was a boy, my mother would tell me that one of the best things in life is the knowledge that our story isn't over yet. Our story may have come to a close, but your story is still yet to be told.

Make it a story worthy of you”

― Renee Ahdieh, The Wrath and the Dawn

“In that moment of perfect balance, she understood. This peace? These worries silenced without effort? It was because they were two parts of a whole. He did not belong to her. And she did not belong to him. It was never about belonging to someone. It was about belonging together.”

― Renee Ahdieh, The Rose & the Dagger

“A boy who'd thrived in the shadows.

Now he had to live in the light.

To live . . . fiercely.

To fight for every breath.”

― Renee Ahdieh, The Rose & the Dagger

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Summaries:

Book 1

Feyre's survival rests upon her ability to hunt and kill – the forest where she lives is a cold, bleak place in the long winter months. So when she spots a deer in the forest being pursued by a wolf, she cannot resist fighting it for the flesh. But to do so, she must kill the predator and killing something so precious comes at a price ... Dragged to a magical kingdom for the murder of a faerie, Feyre discovers that her captor, his face obscured by a jewelled mask, is hiding far more than his piercing green eyes would suggest. Feyre's presence at the court is closely guarded, and as she begins to learn why, her feelings for him turn from hostility to passion and the faerie lands become an even more dangerous place. Feyre must fight to break an ancient curse, or she will lose him forever.

Book 2

Feyre survived Amarantha's clutches to return to the Spring Court—but at a steep cost. Though she now has the powers of the High Fae, her heart remains human, and it can't forget the terrible deeds she performed to save Tamlin's people. Nor has Feyre forgotten her bargain with Rhysand, High Lord of the feared Night Court. As Feyre navigates its dark web of politics, passion, and dazzling power, a greater evil looms—and she might be key to stopping it. But only if she can harness her harrowing gifts, heal her fractured soul, and decide how she wishes to shape her future—and the future of a world cleaved in two. With more than a million copies sold of her beloved Throne of Glass series, Sarah J. Maas's masterful storytelling brings this second book in her seductive and action-packed series to new heights.

Fantasy romance with explicit sex scenes, and book 2 is a lot better than book 1. Our main character Feyre falls for a really boring fae guy, but also meets the hottest guy she’s ever known. The first guy of course isn't the real love interest (this is a twist this author loves to do). They all end up as prisoners, and the 2nd guy saves her life when the 1st one is totally useless. He also makes her hate him as he does it because he has to. After getting out, she tries to make her old relationship work, but it doesn’t, and guess who swoops in?

I do see some Nick in Rhysand (in addition to his role in the love triangle). They’re both traumatized and prefer to keep a lot of their feelings to themselves. I also see some of the same selflessness in both of them. Rhysand wants Feyre to choose him because she loves him, but he’s willing to accept that she may not, and doesn’t tell her that they’re pretty much destined to be together (it’s a supernatural thing, and he will suffer a lot if she decides she doesn’t want him).

“Everything I love has always had a tendency to be taken from me.”

―Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“It took me a long while to realize that Rhysand, whether he knew it or not, had effectively kept me from shattering completely.”

― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“Regardless of his motives or his methods, Rhysand was keeping me alive. And had done so even before I set foot Under the Mountain.”

― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“Because," he went on, his eyes locked with mine, "I didn't want you to fight alone. Or die alone."

― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“He thinks he'll be remembered as the villain in the story. But I forgot to tell him that the villain is usually the person who locks up the maiden and throws away the key. He was the one who let me out.”

― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“And I wondered if love was too weak a word for what he felt, what he’d done for me. For what I felt for him.”

― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“I was his and he was mine, and we were the beginning and middle and end. We were a song that had been sung from the very first ember of light in the world.”

― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

[rinneganwritings]

Never Far Away; Chapter One: Sleep Drifter

In the years since the Uchiha massacre and Itachi leaving the village, Tamako finds herself feeling alone and wanting to seek him out. While her sister, who is also her sensei, is desperately trying to keep her little family together with her parents long deceased during the Nine-Tail Fox attack several years ago. Young Tamako must decide if she wants to continue living a lie or pursue the love of her life...

Word count: 3,120

Summary: Tamako awakens from the same dream she's been having for years and realizes she can't live this life anymore.

Warnings: None.

Chapter Two

Tamako awakens with tears in her eyes and sweat dripping from her brow. She frantically searches the bed, calling out for Itachi. Once again, he isn’t there with her. He’ll never be here with her, not in this bed. Throwing the blankets from her body, she gets up on shaky legs. It’s difficult to recover from these dreams, but she knows this is the last time it’s going to happen. She can no longer let this go on anymore. It’s not feasible to live a life plagued by dreams of a lover that is so far away.

She turns on the bedroom light, finding the bag she always uses for missions that require her to be away from home for an extended period of time. She starts to pack articles of clothing inside of it, along with a few valuable pieces of jewelry she’s collected over the years and some sentimental momentos. Without thinking twice, she rolls up her beat up sleeping bag and ties it to the top of her bag.

Tamako strips herself of her pajamas and heads for the bathroom. She knows it’s going to be a very long time before she’ll be able to shower comfortably in peace. She’s leaving home, and she’s known about this for too long. It’s been weighing so heavily on her heart, but she can’t continue to live this lie for much longer. Tonight was the night, and she had finally confirmed it with herself.

For years, she barely could contain herself. Tamako has always tried her best to keep her thoughts and feelings to herself, lest her Static Release becomes a real problem. For years, her heart ached for someone who was never returning. It was always that same dull ache, but it had become a little familiar by this point. He had left when they were both thirteen, and even then, she knew she loved him. It was one of the worst pains she had ever had, outside of losing her parents at age five. This was different; it was raw, visceral, and gut-wrenching. Losing her parents was terrible, and it made her lost in a completely different way.

Her dreams were always plagued with his face. Gentle, sweet Itachi. It hurt her to always see it, night after night. When she woke up, she would always search her bed with tears in her eyes, as if by some miracle he’d be lying there with her. Tamako kept up a strong appearance for most people, but it was starting to wear her down. Bit by bit, she was slowly being chipped away.

She turns off the water, stepping out and toweling herself off. The house is quiet, and she knows it’s going to be like this for Yumiko from now on. As for her older sister, Tamako knows it’s going to really hurt Yumiko when she finds out that Tamako has left. But honestly, Yumiko should have clued in so long ago…

Once Tamako is dressed in her gear and has everything she needs to get going, she takes one final look at her bedroom. Never again will she see this room in the same way as she does now. It will no longer give her comfort like it used to.

The night air is warm, but there is a cool breeze. Tamako makes sure that none of her neighbors are out watching. It’s going to be difficult sneaking out of the village, but she knows it’s something that can be manageable if you are skilled enough. It’s quiet out here as well, except for the occasional cicada or cricket. The stars are shining bright.

Tamako makes the appropriate hand signs, and within a split second, a few copies of her are next to her. She whispers to them quietly, and most of them nod and head off to certain parts of the village. This is her decoy, and she knows exactly how to work every angle.

Her first shadow clone will go to the ramen shop. The old man who owns it knows that Tamako often frequents his business late at night when she isn’t feeling right. This clone will make him think she is here with him.

The second clone will go visit the guards at the front gates. They are used to seeing Tamako walk around the village this late night as well. She often likes to go visit them to make sure they are doing alright...but she’s also been planning this for a long time. She needed to know how good of guards they are before she could execute her plan.

The other two shadow clones are for surveillance. If anything goes outside of the plan, they will alert her and she will rush back home, only for her to try again tomorrow night. She can no longer live in this village. This is the village that has failed so many people over the years. Konoha isn’t what it’s shaped up to be, and the way its citizens have treated her clan, along with so many other clans...it’s no surprise that so many people from Hidden Leaf join up with Akatsuki.

Within a few short minutes, Tamako is leaping up and over rooftops. She can finally see the edge of the gates, and she’s just near freedom when she hears something underneath her. She watches as the two guards are basically sleeping and her shadow clone below gives her a thumbs up. Finally, she’s over the gates and on the ground.

She takes off running, tears brimming her eyes. It’s not easy for her to leave either, but she can’t live a lie anymore. She needs to find Itachi and she needs her freedom. Yumiko is too overbearing and Tamako no longer has a future in the village now that Itachi is gone. He was truly the only person who could understand her.

And yet, she worried about Sasuke. Sasuke had been her best friend for years, and they even continued to bond after Itachi left. It was tough for Sasuke to have to deal with the death of his parents and his clan, but with Tamako, things were a little less hard on the poor boy. He still had her to look up to, but he was tormented with the ideas of vengeance and murdering Itachi.

Tamako knows it’s going to fuel the young boy. It’s going to drive him crazy with vengeance once he realizes why Tamako has left. He thought she was the only person who he could trust, but he’s going to want to go after her as well once he knows why Tamako has left.

With a heavy heart, she decides to keep running and never look back. It hurts too much to even think about what’s going to happen tomorrow when Yumiko returns to the village or when Sasuke comes around to ask her to come train with him. Her heart aches at the thought of his defeated face when he realizes she isn’t home...somehow, as the years had gone by, she had come to see him as less of a little brother and more of a best friend.

The night air is hitting her skin so harshly as she runs from her home village. Tears are spilling from her eyes as she tries her best to steady her breathing. Without warning, she falls from the trees and collapses on the forest floor. Everything is crashing down on her, and she can’t help but feel so sad. Tamako has been planning this escape for years, but here she is, crying her eyes out in the forest. It hurts...everything hurts.

The sun is shining so brightly as Tamako fastens the obi to her kimono. She’s just come out of the shower and she is ready to head out to the part of town where the Uchihas reside.

Yumiko is somewhere in their backyard, no doubt giving Akina some sort of personalized lesson. Tamako tries not to get jealous when her sister gives Akina special training, but she can’t help but feel a little left out. Yumiko has stated before that Tamako is a little more advanced than her teammates, so she needs to spend time with them to help them get in touch with their real potential as a shinobi.

Before Tamako leaves the residence, she peeks outside the backdoor to find Yumiko doing some of her own training. She’s trying to master some shuriken throwing, and it’s going very well. Tamako is a little in awe at her sister’s talent. Of course, Yumiko is quite a bit older than Tamako, so there’s some age gap as well as experience gap.

“Are you headed out again?” Yumiko asks, not turning around to face Tamako.

“Oh,” Tamako says, a little startled. “I’m going to see Sasuke and Itachi…” there’s a dusting of blush on her cheeks as she mentions Itachi.

Yumiko finally faces her younger sister, her hands on her hips. There’s a coy smirk playing on her lips as she understands what’s going on. Tamako has had a crush on Itachi since they were children, and Yumiko is almost 100% certain that Itachi shares those feelings as well. They’re always stuck to each other, even if Itachi has been a little more withdrawn these days.

“Well, please don’t be late. I’m going to be making dinner by six o’clock, so I’d like you home by then.” Yumiko explains, but Tamako is already heading back into the house.

“Byyyyee! See you!” Tamako shouts behind her, giggling to herself.

She can’t wait to see Itachi. Lately, he’s been a little sullen and closed off, but he still will do his best to make time for Tamako. The ANBU has him quite busy, and Tamako knows that Itachi has to deal with all kinds of craziness and difficult missions, but he is still the same Itachi deep down inside. There’s just a little something different about him these days…

It doesn’t take long for her to reach the part of town where Itachi lives. She’s never understood why the Uchihas have to live in this little compound, but she doesn’t care about it. She knows what it’s like to have a town shun her clan...much more than that, she knows what it’s like to have her clan despise her. It’s not a wonderful feeling knowing your relatives don’t want anything to do with you, but it’s something that hardens a person.

Rushing over to Itachi and Sasuke’s house, she tries her best to not just run inside and track mud all over the place. Carefully, she opens the door and calls out to whoever will greet her. It’s usually Mikoto that will greet her with a snack while they both wait for Sasuke and Itachi to return home. Sometimes, it’s Fugaku and that can be a little awkward at times. Fugaku is someone who is stern and very interested in his work and the way his sons succeed in life.

Instead, Tamako is surprised to come face to face with Sasuke and Itachi. They look like they are ready to head out training, but Sasuke looks like he is pouting a little. It’s unmistakable on his face, he always seems like he is puffing out his cheeks when he pouts. It’s honestly adorable.

“Tamako! How are you doing today?” Itachi asks, smiling at her sweetly.

Sasuke stops pouting for a moment, smiling sweetly at Tamako as well. Sasuke and Itachi look so much alike, there’s no way anyone couldn’t tell they are brothers. Tamako giggles softly as she scratches the back of her head nervously.

“I’m good. Are you going to train, Itachi?” Tamako questions, and Itachi nods.

“I am. Would you like to join me?” That’s when Sasuke interjects.

“No fair! You said I couldn’t come, so why is Tamako allowed to go with you?” Sasuke argues, but Itachi only leans forward to tap Sasuke gently on the forehead.

“Next time, little brother. I promise.” With that, Itachi takes Tamako’s hand and he leads her out of the house.

As they walk towards the forest, Tamako starts to feel a little guilty about leaving Sasuke at home, but she does enjoy the thought of spending the afternoon alone with Itachi. It’s been ages since they were able to have some alone time, and Tamako thinks about maybe confessing to Itachi today.

Once they are in the forest, Itachi begins training in silence. He hardly says anything to Tamako for a little bit, before he finally stops his shuriken training and faces her. There’s a worried look painted on his face, and he’s not even sure how he’s going to be able to tell her everything he’s been hiding from her for so long.

“Tamako, you know I’d never hurt you on purpose, right?” Itachi asks. Tamako nods, smiling awkwardly.

“Of course! What is this about?”

Itachi walks over to her, taking her hands into his. His eyes are red, and he’s activated the Sharingan. Something looks a little different about it, but Tamako doesn’t know that much about the Sharingan to really understand. She feels a little intimidated right now, and there’s a few sparks that crackle in the air. Itachi rubs her hands a little to soothe her, and the static in the air starts to dissipate.

“I love you,” Itachi whispers, leaning his forehead on hers. Tamako’s heart begins pounding, unsure if she’s actually heard him correctly.

“Itachi…” she mutters, staring into his eyes. They are back to the regular onyx black, and she finds herself calming down.

“I can’t believe I’ve been hiding stuff from you, but just know that I cannot get you implicated in this matter. There’s some high tension between my clan and Hidden Leaf village, and it’s going to get messy.” Itachi explains as he wraps his arms around Tamako. Instantly, she hugs him and breathes in his scent.

His lips barely brush against hers, and they are holding each other close. Tamako mutters that she loves him too, and then they hear Sasuke’s voice calling out for them. He’s decided to follow them into the forest, and Tamako is cursing the fact that Sasuke can be so stubborn.

“Please, don’t hate me when this is all over…”

When Tamako comes to, she realizes she’s been passed out on the forest floor for a few hours. The sky is still dark and she’s barely left Hidden Leaf. Without thinking another thought, she jumps up onto the tree branches and makes her way further from the village. She needs to find a place to stay for tonight, but she cannot be seen by anyone that knows her.

Once she makes more distance between Konoha and herself, she decides to set up camp. In a small clearing, she builds a small fire and lays down her sleeping bag. It’s not cold, but she wants to warm up a little from the bittersweet memories that keep playing over and over in her head. She hopes that very soon, she’ll find Itachi. She hopes it’ll be a sweet reunion, and not something that wasn’t worth leaving the village for.

The sun begins to rise slowly as Tamako drifts off to sleep. She’s often awoken by the sounds of the forest and her own anxiety. Finally, when it’s mid morning, she packs up her stuff and continues her journey.

Eventually, she finds a small village nearby. There’s something about this place that makes her want to continue on, but she’s not really sure what it is. Tamako starts to think that maybe she shouldn’t have stopped to sleep the second time.

In the village, she barely makes contact with anyone. Most everyone knows that she isn’t from there, so they all stare at her a bit. It makes her a little uncomfortable, but she does her best to shrug it off.

Finally, she reaches a small little cafe. It reminds her of the ones that Itachi used to love going to. Tamako decides to take a break and order some food. She doesn’t have much money, but she knows she needs to eat before leaving once again.

The waitress is sweet and takes her time to make Tamako’s order. Tamako takes out a small notebook, and she begins writing a few notes. This is the notebook that holds mostly everything she knows about the Akatsuki. If she’s not mistaken, they were last seen in one of the fishing villages nearby for a reason or another. Tamako also knows that the Akatsuki generally work in teams of two.

“Here you go, sweetheart.” The waitress says as she places the dish in front of Tamako.

Tamako smiles up at her and the waitress goes to leave, but Tamako figures that the waitress might be a good person to ask about some information right now. She doesn’t really trust herself to ask too many people in this village. They all seem very tight-knit here.

“Miss, have you any information on...the Akatsuki?” Tamako asks, basically whispering the last words.

The waitress nearly drops the menus in her hands. She takes a moment to compose herself before she leans towards Tamako.

“Why do you want to know? Are you a part of their group?”

Tamako shakes her head. She’s concocted the perfect lie for this. She knew it’d be the only way she’d get away with asking about the Akatsuki without rousing too much suspicion.

“No, I’m on my way to hunt them down myself. Any information would help me.”

The waitress barely knows anything, but the little information she did have seems to be helpful. Tamako scribbles it all down in her notebook, and then she dismisses the other young woman. Tamako figures she’s going to be outed as a person of interest now, so she eats quickly before paying her tab and taking off.

People whisper as Tamako leaves the cafe. It feels weird to have all eyes on her, but she can understand how this situation has just gotten weirder. Everyone must think that she’s a spy or even a rogue ninja…

Which, now she most definitely is a rogue ninja. She wonders if anyone has come to check up on her in Konoha. Her heart aches once again when she thinks of Sasuke. She wished she could have left him a note or something, but she didn’t want anyone to follow her. Leaving notes could just make someone find her quicker…

She could just picture Yumiko tracking her down, and then dragging her home. That’s the last thing Tamako wants. She wants to find Itachi and she’ll die trying. Tamako doesn’t care if it’ll cost her her life, it’s worth it.

Itachi is worth it.

[whump-tr0pes]

HB4-32/Whumptober day 12

Honor Bound 4 - 32 (I Should Have Been Better) - @badthingshappenbingo​

Requested for Ellis by anon

~

This is a series. Start here, continued from here. 

This is a sequel to Honor Bound, Honor Bound 2, Honor Bound 3, and Vera.

AO3

Masterlist

~

Content warning: Welp, blowing through another boundary of mine today. Wheeeee. Read the fucking warning: gun violence, Ellis’s dead family, murder as revenge, suicidal ideations and gestures, death thoughts, human trafficking, dehumanization, the syndicates really are just awful people ok, noncon mention, DEATH OF A MINOR (who also happens to be a terrible person), blood, gendered slurs, thievery, starvation mention, income inequality, poverty, government takeover, emesis

Note: I do not show Ellis’s family’s deaths

~

Years ago

In the concealment of the near-darkness behind a dumpster, Ellis stood perfectly still. A light mist fell from the sky, dampening the hood over their head, casting their face in shadow.

Their hand wrapped tightly around the gun shoved deep into the pocket of their jacket. They rubbed their thumb gently against the edge of the trigger guard, the cold metal comforting them. Back, forth. Back, forth. The gun was what brought them peace, brought them justice. Every time they used it.

They tipped their head back and shivered at the cold mist of water on their face. They were soaked to the bone, now, having been standing in the shadow of that alley for hours. Waiting. Just waiting.

They weren’t sure why they still wore a hood. Maybe it made them feel safer, feel more anonymous. Maybe it made them braver, during the muggings.

It didn’t really matter, in the end. No one survived their muggings anyway. Just a simple crime gone wrong, everyone would think. ‘Who could do this? What kind of monster?’ they all probably thought.

I’m the monster you made when you murdered my family.

Eight months. For eight months, they’d been alone, walking through the world feeling their family’s blood smeared on their skin, the smell as strong as if the blood really did cling to their clothes. For eight months they’d been tormented by their own mind when it supplied how much their family must have screamed and suffered. And now… Christopher was gone, Chloe and Galen were… were gone, but every day their deaths stung like a new wound. Stabbed in the heart, over and over and over. They murdered Ellis that day, too. They just weren’t dead yet.

The muggings were the only thing that made them sane. They were the only thing that brought them back from that edge, when they’d find the gun in their hand and pointed at their own head. Doing this was the only thing that kept the voice in their head quiet enough to be ignored, the voice that urged them to drink enough that they wouldn’t wake up, to step out into traffic, to pull the trigger on themself. The muggings were what kept them alive.

And yet… they couldn’t make themself think of them as executions. If anything, they were retribution, tilting the scales of the world a little more balanced. Ellis couldn’t find justice for their family, so they’d settle by bringing justice to the people who murdered them.

They’d been standing in the alley for hours. They couldn’t risk doing this in a well-travelled location. The point was dread. The point was fear, the syndicate fuckers finding their people’s bodies in alleys and empty parking lots. If Ellis could make them feel just a sliver of the fear that the syndicates themselves created in the world, then it might be enough. If they killed enough syndicate people, it might eventually be enough.

Not yet, though. Nothing was enough yet.

Footsteps echoed down the alley. Two sets.

Two dead motherfuckers. They’d never tried to take two before. The gun in their hand had taken three lives, each one a lone syndicate member, confident in their ownership of the world. Never watching their backs.

These two would be the same. Walking down an alleyway in the north end of town, without their bodyguards. They probably thought they owned the fucking place.

Fuck, they kinda do.

Ellis slowly, carefully pulled the gun out of their pocket. They crouched so the dumpster would conceal them for just a moment longer, waiting for the two fuckers to walk past it, so Ellis could—

They froze as they heard one of them speak.

“I don’t understand why we had to go this way, mom. The clinic is just—”

“Yes, darling, the clinic is that way. But your father told you specifically not to use the belt on her again. If the clinic can get her healthy again before your father returns from his trip, then it’ll be a lovely little secret between us both. But if your father’s security sees you in and out of the clinic into which his plaything disappeared…” A sigh. “Really, Aaron. I would have thought we both taught you how to handle a whipping better than this.”

That’s right. They’re taking people off the streets now, people who piss the syndicates off, or just look too damn pretty or maybe bleed too damn well, whatever the fuck that means… Ellis bit their lip and let the rage stir inside them, rise to the surface, and it never had far to go. Rumors of disappearances had been slowly becoming fact, just a part of life now that everyone knew but did nothing about. Everyone had at least one story of someone they knew, or someone who knew someone they knew, disappearing one day, poof, gone. Only to wind up in some fucking dumpster or the bottom of the river, with marks of abuse and torture that made Ellis’s stomach turn. They couldn’t go a week without hearing another report of someone who’d gone missing months or years ago turning up dead, covered in scars, and branded.

Poor fucks. It’s slavery, it’s fucking torture and these lunatics call it playing.

The man – it sounded like a young man, and the woman spoke to him with a long-suffering air – drew closer to Ellis’s hiding spot. Their shoes clicked on the wet cement, his a low, resounding sound and hers a high, delicate one. Ellis could hear the soft hiss of rain is it fell on his coat. Their hand tightened around the gun and they blew a slow, silent breath out through their open mouth.

“Maybe I wouldn’t have whipped the fucking thing if you gave me one of my own. Everyone my age—”

“You can have one when you’ve proven you can properly maintain one, darling. If you continue to break your father’s toys—”

Vile, bitter rage swept through Ellis. They stepped out of the shadows.

The woman gasped and jumped back, looking down her nose at Ellis like they were… trash. Scum. Looking like Ellis like they were the type of thing she could take, use up, and dispose of and think nothing of it.

The young man, on the other hand, looked at Ellis with a burning hunger in his eyes. He looked eighteen, maybe twenty. A shock of pale blond hair was dampened and flat against his head, the exact same shade as his mother’s. Each of them wore a long coat with the collar pulled up against the cold wind and rain, each costing more than Ellis had had to eat in the past month.

“Step aside,” the woman said primly, but Ellis could hear her voice was trembling. Ellis raised the gun and her eyes went wide, fixed on the barrel. Her son fell back a step and then froze, and the terror on his face was…

Ellis swallowed dryly. If they could stare at the terror in his eyes for the rest of their life, it still wouldn’t be long enough.

“Wh-what…” The woman shuddered and her eyes flicked up to Ellis’s face. For a moment a chill of fear drew a cold finger down their back.

She’s never going to tell anyone what I look like.

The boy finally moved and Ellis slowly moved the gun to point at him. He shifted forward a half step, drawing closer to his mother… and then stepping in front of her.

“Aaron, no,” she whimpered, but she was frozen with fear. Ellis may as well have been pinning her down.

“M-mom,” he said, his hands shaking, before he drew himself upright, glaring Ellis down. They could see the mantle of power he was trying to draw around him, could see him struggling to be in control.

That’s who the syndicates were. Constantly in control.

“B-back off,” the boy said, and Ellis laughed in his face.

“You one of those fucks who plays with people?” they sneered, their hand tightening around the gun. “You one of those sick fucks that tortures people? You kill people, kid? Rape people?”

All at once, the fear dropped away, and malicious, arrogant self-satisfaction rushed up to replace it. The boy’s face became a mask of contempt. “They’re not people by the time I’m done with them, you fucking—”

BANG.

The bullet punched through the boy’s chest and flung him back against his mother. She screamed as blood spattered her face and they both slumped to the wet pavement.

“AARON!” she shrieked as he fell on top of her, pinning her under his weight. He choked for a moment, his eyes rolling sightlessly in his head before he convulsed, once, and died on top of his mother.

The woman wailed in horror as Ellis took a step closer, her fingers digging into the thick wool of his coat. “Aaron, NO!” She sobbed raggedly and looked up to Ellis. Ellis took another step forward until they were standing just beside the mother. Hate blazed in her eyes, and grief, and everything else that had made a home inside Ellis since their children were taken from them.

How does it feel, syndicate fucker?

“You killed him!” she sobbed. “You… you fucking bitch, you fucking… creature! I will tear you apart!”

Her pain filled them up, fed them. Their skin was on fire with it.

The woman screamed helplessly, and even through the rain, Ellis could smell the puddle of blood that was rapidly spilling out over the ground. Her face twisted in her agony and her voice echoed off the walls of the alley. “I will kill you! I WILL KILL YOU!”

“Naw, don’t think so,” Ellis said, and held the gun to the woman’s head. They watched her eyes as they pulled the trigger.

The bullet tore through the woman’s head and her skull slammed against the rain-slicked pavement. Blood colored the water.

Ellis’s bones ached with vicious retribution. Their hands shook as they tucked the gun back into their jacket. They couldn’t tear their eyes away from the woman lying splayed on the ground, pinned underneath her son. Her son, who not thirty seconds earlier had been talking about whipping some poor woman somewhere half to death just because he wanted his own “toy”.

There’s no hell deep enough for you people.

Ellis knelt down to complete the last part of their ritual. They slid a hand inside the boy’s coat and pulled out a cell phone and his wallet – and took the gold watch from his wrist as well. Then they heaved the boy off his mother like he was so much dead weight. Ellis pocketed the woman’s wallet, too. They stood and looked over the two dead syndicate members, their stomach starting to heave with the smell of blood, the sight of the dead, soulless eyes. It always came, after. The sickness. They refused to think of it as guilt. They turned and ran.

Rain pattered on the top of their hood, spraying their face, clearing their mind. Slowly, the bloodlust faded from their body. Slowly, they became human again, not the monster the syndicates had made. They ran across intersections, barely looking to see if the cars had stopped. They passed street signs, lights, restaurants that sold steaks covered in fucking gold while people starved just outside. The embargoes the syndicates had put on the cities were more like a siege. Only food, fuel, and medical supplies destined for syndicate homes, syndicate people, were allowed in. Everything else – you better fucking pray you have a good connection in the black market. Six weeks, it had been like this, and would be until the mayor decided to step down and give in to the syndicates’ demands.

They ran until their legs ached and their lungs burned. They ran until they didn’t know where they were anymore.

They slowed to a stop, leaning hard against the gray, featureless wall of an industrial building. They couldn’t hear the rush of traffic anymore. They heard only the dim hum of electricity, and the distant clanking of heavy machinery. The slid down the wall and sat with their back against it, rain soaking through the seat of their pants. They pulled out the wallets and looked through them.

The woman – Sherise Lawton, according to her ID – had three different credit cards tucked into the folds of her wallet. A picture was tucked into one pocket, one of her, her son, and a man Ellis assumed was her husband. It was an old picture. The kid looked barely ten years old. Ellis swallowed hard against a sudden wave of nausea and moved on.

A membership card to an exclusive gym downtown. A business card for an interior decorator. A receipt that had been handled so many times Ellis couldn’t make out what it was for. Six thousand units of… something, in cash. Ellis didn’t recognize the money. Ice clutched their chest, just another piece of evidence that the syndicates were taking everything: the government, the money, the schools, their fucking safety.

Safety doesn’t matter anymore. Everything I ever wanted to keep safe is gone.

Ellis pocketed the money and tossed the rest of it down the sidewalk. They opened the boy’s wallet.

They never looked past the first pocket. They pulled out the boy’s ID, his picture smiling, proud, excited.

Galen and Chloe could have had this. They could have had their first driver’s license, too. They shivered and pressed their hand to their mouth. Their eyes suddenly burned.

Their eyes flicked to the boy’s birth date. May 24, 2006.

It felt like a fist twisted in Ellis’s gut. Frantically, they tried to think of what day it was… but they could barely think of the year. Their heart pounded in their chest and their hands shook as they clutched the ID card.

2022. It’s 2022.

This boy was sixteen years old.

The ID fell from Ellis’s grip as they crumpled back against the wall, their chest heaving with sobs. He was sixteen. He was sixteen and I killed him. I murdered a sixteen-year-old. Ellis smashed their fist against their mouth, trying to muffle the strangled sobs that came from deep inside them.

Across town, a few miles away, there was a sixteen-year old kid lying dead in an alley with his blood staining his mother’s clothes. With a bullet from Ellis’s gun buried in his chest. Ellis lurched forward and vomited up everything they’d eaten that day, and kept heaving, choking as nothing came up but sour bile. They slumped onto their knees and covered their head with their arms, shaking violently, as the world lurched sickeningly around them. The rain fell harder, soaking their clothes.

Continued here

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[clean-bands-dirty-stories]

The Best Things ~ J.V. (Part 7)

A/n: We're... so close... I'm so excited.

Word Count: 5000+

Playlist

Masterlist

Life really only got worse from there, really for everybody. Most of all for Y/n, believe it or not considering what people like Bruce Wayne were dealing with these days.

Unfortunately it was truth.

Jerome and Y/n were separated. When having different cells didn't deter the two boys from being affectionate during down time or meals, Y/n was put into isolation where the only people he saw were officers that hated him or Dr. Quinzel, who had to pretend she wanted to "cure" Y/n of his "problem of the heart" or whatever. It was terrible for both of them, but if anyone else did it it wouldn't be two friends sitting down and talking through things. Shock therapy had been thrown around as an idea a few times. It was far worse ideas that Y/n hadn't heard about that had gotten Harleen to give in, if the taunts he'd been receiving held any weight.

Finally Y/n was allowed visitors. He didn't expect any, and he still wasn't allowed around the other inmates, so he was resigned to his life of solitude and misery.

Then Alfred Pennyworth paid him another visit.

"Alfred," Y/n croaked. His voice was rough from disuse.

The older butler took in Y/n's state and seemed to be taking it hard. Y/n was pale, his skin so sickly it was practically see through. It only made the bags under his eyes from lack of sleep as well as the bruises from the occasional beatings look even worse. He had started to gather scars- those hadn't been from other people though. In a world that only gave him pain, he found some solace in having some of it be at his own hand. It made him feel just a little more under control. Alfred seemed to be able to tell which wounds were from who, and he looked ready to kill someone- whether it be Y/n or the guards, it wasn't clear yet.

"Y/n... what have they done to you?"

Y/n smiled, trying not to cry. "They punished me for my sins Alfred. For murdering, which I did a bit of in my time I won't lie about that. For having feelings for Jerome Valeska, a mad man." Y/n's smile faltered. He was too tired to smile. He couldn't hold them for long anymore. Ever since being away from Jerome, it had been hard to find anything amusing. It was even worse when he wasn't allowed to be himself at all. When he was punished nonstop for being himself. When he couldn't talk or do anything he liked to do or see anyone he wanted to be around or go anywhere other than an empty cell far away from everywhere else. His life was completely out of his control and the people in charge were using their leverage over him to twist and bend him into the shape they wanted him to be. Except it wasn't working. Y/n was still a dreamer. He still did art and thought of other places and people and times. He still smiled when he saw Harleen. He still dreamed of Jerome. He still missed home and cared for people who had probably long stopped even thinking about him. He was still gay. And he was still dangerously, murderously angry. He had far too much free time and he spent probably too much of it daydreaming of ways to put the most painful ends on each of his tormenters.

Now he was calm though. Alfred was family. He was safe. He was part of home. Someone Y/n missed dearly from a time that was lost to him. A time he wished he could get back. Dinners with his parents and his brother. Hiking trips and tea times and bedtime stories. When things were easy and had a rhythm and made perfect sense. So what if he hadn't really been himself? So what if he was a little crazy? Attracted to adventure? At least he hadn't killed anyone, compared to nowadays where he was apparently completely insane and so addicted to danger that it just might actually kill him. So what if he hadn't been allowed to talk about being gay and have a boyfriend? All he'd gotten for that was isolation and violence.

That didn't matter. He didn't want to think about anything but Alfred and good times.

"For having feelings for Jerome Valeska, a man?" Alfred offered softly. Y/n shrugged and Alfred's face grew dark. It got quiet until the butler sighed, his shoulders sagging. Alfred had always had the same magic Y/n and Bruce's dad did. He seemed frozen in time, untouchable by death. Both men had seemed unbreakable. Now Alfred seemed worn down and just as old as he actually was. He probably wasn't very old, but only now was it dawning on Y/n that he was... old. Or at least he wasn't young. He was aged. He was getting on in years. He should have been married, with kids, living a peaceful life and watching those kids go to college and move out, alone with his wife to live out the rest of his days in some cottage somewhere in the most beautiful parts of England. He should be reading books and drinking tea and worrying about how tired he felt when it was only 9pm, even though he used to stay up until 3am in his youth. Instead he had no wife but two sons that had been thrust into his hands- both of whom were losing their minds and burdened by so much trauma and darkness that he most likely stayed awake at night and run over probability after probability of how he might go about helping even just one of them, realizing that he would fail them both because no one can truly save someone from themself if the person refuses to allow it.

"I'm sorry, Alfred," Y/n mumbled. His eyes watered as he looked at the man that had become a lot like a father to him, right when he needed one the most. Maybe things had been easier when Thomas was alive, but their perfect family wouldn't have survived through the teenage years in a place like Gotham. It would have been messed up eventually. Y/n knew that. "You're trying your best, and you make a lot of the right decisions. I know I'm not the easiest person to care about."

Alfred smiled. "Y/n, of the people I care about you are currently the easiest one to do so for. Maybe I'm not happy with your decisions and where it's... gotten you-" he wavered, looking round the room. Y/n actually managed a weak, broken laugh. A normal laugh. It wasn't manic or wild. It was small and short and wet and weak and broken, but it was also a very normal laugh. The sound everyday people make in situations that were somehow funny when they shouldn't be. It was a nice sound. It lifted the mood even more. "But you're still by boy, and I stand by you." He paused for a while, getting serious. "I don't know what I would do if I was in your situation, Y/n. Finding happiness with a man like Jerome. Finding misery in people you should be able to trust. I just-" He bit his lip for a second before continuing. "Be honest with me: was I ever one of the people that betrayed your trust?"

Y/n's eyes went wide. "No Alfred, oh god. I think you're the last good person left in Gotham. You make me happy and safe. You're the only one that does that anymore."

That seemed to bring some kind of peace to the old man. He looked around the room again and almost mimicked the laugh Y/n had made earlier. "This is crazy. Us finding solace in each other. How did we end up here, hm, Master Y/n?"

Y/n grinned despite himself. "I don't know." He wiped his eyes- he had begun crying. "I don't know Alfred." He sniffed. "You deserve better."

"Damn right I do," Alfred agreed. "And so do you." The men exchanged soft smiles. Alfred's expression changed after a second as he pursed his lips, tilting his head. "Are you and Jerome still...?"

Y/n's smile fell. "I haven't been allowed to see him. I don't know what he thinks happened to me. I kind of just disappeared. I left with you that day and then when I was brought back I was immediately put into isolation so-" Y/n shrugged.

Alfred sighed through his nose. "Do you... love him?" He seemed disoriented by the mere thought of someone loving Jerome Valeska. Of someone he knew - someone he helped raised, who he was close to and cared a lot about and had a lot of faith in - being in love with Jerome Valeska. "I mean, you don't seem..." He motioned with his hands, not sure how to form his feelings into words.

"Crazy?" Y/n offered. It was Alfred's turn to shrug. Y/n scoffed, amused. "I don't think I am. He's just... everything I ever wanted, you know? I can be myself around him and it never disappoints him. He likes me, as a person. I think he likes being with me. And he's funny and knows how to have a good time-" Y/n flinched. “He also knows how to not have a good time, though that's not really a thing to him. He's got a lot going on. I think he's broken a lot more than I am. I just- I don't know I-" He looked at the ceiling, trying to make sense of his feelings without sounding as insane as he was for feeling this way for someone who murdered for fun.

When Y/n looked back, Alfred seemed so uncomfortable. "But do you love him?"

Y/n looked at his hands. "I like the way he smells." His face scrunched up. "And how he holds my hand. His hair, and his smile. How he says my name and laughs at my jokes." Y/n looked back. "Am I crazy Alfred?"

Alfred seemed to think about that. "I think you're lonely and looking for someone like you, and I can understand that."

Y/n relaxed a little. "I think I'm crazy." He shook his head. Neither man smiled. "How do I get help for my condition?"

"If you're talking about getting help for liking men, I want you to take that back right now." Y/n looked at him in surprise. "There's nothing wrong with you, Master Y/n. Do you understand me?" Y/n paused but then nodded, and he felt a weight lift off of his chest. "You have a weird taste in men, but otherwise you're fine." Now they did both laugh, just a little. "You hang in there, okay? I'll try and see what I can do to get you out of here. Then we'll figure this out together, yeah?"

That sounded nice. "Yeah. I would like that." Alfred nodded.

Just then a guard came up. "It's time to go." Alfred sighed but they exchanged goodbyes and Y/n tried to keep a smile as his only hope of light left him alone in the darkness once again. Then he turned to the guard that was with him now: Peters. Y/n was beginning to learn names. Peters was a little softer since Y/n was young, but he still was one of the guards that hated Y/n for being gay, so there was only so much Y/n could say when it came to how much he did or didn't like the man. As they walked back, Peters once again disappointed Y/n. "You know I have to tell them about what you said in there." Y/n stopped moving. He hadn't thought about that. He'd been talking to Alfred. He always told Alfred everything, and he always told him such with complete honesty. Things had gotten easier because Y/n had been able to prove that the "therapy" was doing some good. He'd just admitted out loud that it hadn't made a dent in how attracted he was to men, or how he felt about Jerome. "He won't go as hard on you as in the beginning," Peters assured. He was talking about the first guard that had started tormenting Y/n. They didn't speak his name. Both of them, at the very least, hated his methods even if Peters agreed it was necessary. "You admit you need help. You'll get it. Your butler was wrong and you know that and that's what matters."

Y/n's eyes watered as he began walking again.

Was he really getting to a place again where he believed that something so basic about him really was wrong? He'd just barely, FINALLY accepted it and now he was being conditioned to bury it away again?

Fuck.

-

It was a nice break to get visitors. Alfred was nice to talk to, and despite the oddity of it, the two men got along well and cheered each other up nicely. Y/n was looking forward to seeing the older man's face when he was told he had a visitor. Unfortunately, Alfred was not the one waiting to greet Y/n that day.

"Bruce?" Y/n was far passed surprised to see his younger brother of all people on the other side of the glass, visiting him. Alfred hadn't said much but from the little he'd divulged about Bruce breaking out of the mind control and then killing some dude that had to do with the weird creepy tunnel Bruce had dragged him to and the dudes in it that had almost killed him. Y.n didn't see what was wrong with that - the dude was obviously bad - but it seemed to be ripping a new one with Bruce. He'd turned into a bit of a dick, putting it nicely. Left me alone in the tunnel then refused to visit me in the asylum. Firing Alfred. Partying and messing around with a bunch of people. It seemed the Wayne brothers dealt with their mental breakdowns very differently. Bruce partied and became an asshole- Y/n killed people and fell in love with psychopaths. One thing can be said: the Waynes sure know how to go out with a bang.

"Y/n," Bruce greeted weakly. He was obviously burdened by nervousness and guilt. As not to push it, Y/n sat down. Perhaps he didn't walk to talk to his tool of a brother, but it was better than isolation so he'd tolerate it. Y/n stayed quiet and allowed himself the luxury of being in the presence of another human being- one who didn't mean him harm or hate him for not being able to control who he was. Bruce spoke again first; Y/n was lost in the peacefulness of the quiet. "I'm sorry I left you in the tunnel." Y/n didn't say anything, so Bruce continued. "I was sort of commanded to kill Alfred when I was under mind control. I, uh, stabbed him. I could only carry one of you so I grabbed him and took him to the hospital. Ended up staying all night because I was terrified he was dead."

"And then you proceeded to treat him like shit all the way up until you did him a favor and fired him."

Bruce flinched. "I got emancipated too."

"Jesus, Bruce," Y/n cursed.

"I know," Bruce moaned. "I'm not handling any of the things well." He rubbed his face. "I wish you'd come home. I miss you." Bruce looked at his older brother, trying to find a remnant of the old Y/n underneath the bruises and coldness in the older boy's gaze. Both boys had come to gain something dark about them. Y/n's was more brightly colored, tickling in every dent and curve of his body and expression. Bruce's was sharper- paving paths of stones along corners and edges. Even now, Y/n was still the softer brother. Perhaps not so much had changed after all. "We've been through a lot, hm?" Y/n nodded, looking at his hands. "I-" Bruce cleared his throat, seeming to get emotional. "I don't know you are anymore. Please, tell me. I feel like you’re a stranger."

Y/n looked at him very seriously. "Probably because I am." Bruce frowned. "But we can change that." Bruce's lips immediately found a soft upward curve and Y/n took a second to appreciate it. It seemed he could bring some sort of smile or another out of even the angstiest of teens.

They spent the next bit talking. Bruce told Y/n everything, summarizing in chunks. Y/n did the same, breezing through his time with Oswald and then being in and out of Arkham and Jerome. That's where Bruce seemed to get caught up. "You really love him?" Bruce was making a face like he'd swallowed something both bitter and sour.

Y/n sighed, lowering his voice and moving his mouth closer to the receiver so only Bruce would hear him. "I don't know about love. But..." He shrugged. "I care for him. He matters to me." Bruce exhaled then nodded. "I don't have many other options," Y/n joked. Then he sobered, unnervingly quickly. "But even if I did, I don't know Bruce." He rubbed his face.

"Let's not talk about it. When we get you out of here-"

"We?" Y/n interrupted.

Bruce's expression became strained. "I called Alfred. I don't know if he'll come back but maybe... well, I know he'll definitely help me get you out. Maybe we can really be a family, you know? Make this town home again. You can talk all bout your art and have as much time as you want to make it."

Y/n felt odd. "You want to go back to how it was."

Shrugging, Bruce seemed to suddenly be distracted by everything, his eyes never finding Y/n's face, almost like the younger Wayne was avoiding his gaze on purpose. "So what if I do?" Bruce finally looked at his brother. "Don't you, Y/n? Don't you want to finally be done with this? Maybe we could go somewhere else entirely for a while. A long while. Bond again. Heal. It could be good for us."

Suddenly, Y/n was angry. "You know, I've been wishing for weeks that I could go back in time. I wanted it all to fix and right itself. But you know what? It won't. Even if the universe suddenly decided to let us be happy and a family or whatever, I wouldn't let it happen." Bruce leaned away, as if Y/n had slapped him. "I've killed people, Bruce. I'm not innocent and nieve and full of dreams or whatever the fuck anymore. It's been so long since I painted something I really liked or cared about- even before mom and dad died. Do you remember when I was first getting good and I started to draw boys? It was freeing and exhilarating and gave me an outlet of some kind- and an excuse to stare at cute boys my age. Mom found out and told me to hide it. She didn't want the wrong person to find it and use it against me." He scoffed. "Do you want to know why I'm into Jerome?" Y/n was being too loud, he knew. But he didn't care. "Because he likes me just as I am. A little crazy, a lot fucked up. He likes that things don't really bother me. He likes my twisted sense of humor. He likes that I'm willing to kill someone if they piss me off or get in my way. He acknowledges that I'm tainted and kind of stupid and I've completely lost my mind. I heard somewhere that it only takes one bad day for someone to lose it- well, Bruce, I've had a whole fucking string of them. And I'm tired of you and Alfred coming in here and pretending I’m still the me you both want me to be and that everything is fine and that we're gonna go back to normal and perfect and happy as if I'm not a murderer. As if I'm not GAY!" Y/n chucked the phone, causing Bruce to jump. "THAT'S RIGHT!" Y/n screeched as he whirled around the face the guard. "I! AM! GAY! You can beat me, torture me, isolate me, fill my head with a bunch of nonsense, but you won’t break me because I'm DONE being ashamed of who I am."

The guard looked disgusted. It was a different man this time- not Peters. "You're going to go to hell for your sins."

"For being gay?" Y/n actually laughed. "How dare you!" This was playful, light. Y/n had finally snapped. "You're sitting here saying that I'm going to go to hell because I'm gay? Sweetheart, you're missing all the far more valid reasons I'm going to hell." The end of the statement lowered to notes that left his voice gravely and threatening, all humor gone. As he’d spoken, he’d taken step after step closer to the guard until they were practically chest to chest. "Remember that I know how to kill you so no one will ever know it was me next time you even THINK of laying a single finger on me, do you understand?" The guard, calm before, now looked very nervous. "You people won't touch Jerome, and I hid behind that for too long. Touch me. I dare you." Y/n leaned close, his voice low as he whispered, "You never know... maybe you just might like it."

The guard made a noise halfway between a groan and a grunt and opened the door, pushing Y/n through and further into the Asylum, and away from him. Y/n winked at him and the guard closed the door, putting it between them like it was going to block them. Y/n laughed. There was power in fear. Power in accepting yourself despite everyone trying to tear you down; in staying together despite everyone trying to tear you apart. It was like when that idiot cut off Jerome's face. Jerome didn't pitch a fit. He adapted. That's why he was so terrifying. So powerful. Things rolled off his shoulders and left him unfazed. He just adapted, never letting pain even waver his smile.

It's time for Y/n to start taking a page out of Jerome's book. He was over being another brooding Wayne boy.

After that, things began to look up again. The guards quickly stopped beating Y/n up- all it did was make him laugh, or make him stronger as he began to fight back. Therapy stopped mattering- he spent all his talks with Harleen cracking jokes and being gay as fuck. Guards sneered at him and spit at him, but there were some good eggs in here and even more that Jerome had wrapped around his finger. All Y/n had to do was place himself at the right guard or flirt with the wrong one and suddenly he had plenty of room to move as idiotic, childish men kept their distance and jeered- as if words alone could do anything other than make Y/n laugh harder. He simply let it all stop affecting him, and so it did. Maybe it was a little crazy, to hear such terrible words or go to bed in pain, and find some kind of twisted pleasure in it. But I mean come on. These morons called themselves men of God then beat up on a teenage boy who was slowly learning how to take them down singlehandedly. They were like children on a playground: pushing girls they liked; calling people stupid names then ducking when they got in trouble; pulling ponytails and tripping kids and sticking their tongues out and pretending they were big boys as they squashed roaches only to run off squealing like babies when the bug didn't die the first time. They were pathetic. It was hilarious.

Word started to get around about Y/n's change.

Jerome hadn't known he was back. Last he'd heard, Y/n had dipped out with Alfred Pennyworth. He'd run home to Bruce Wayne and his old life with his tail between his legs, once again forcing himself to be someone he wasn't in a life he could be content in, but never happy. Jerome had been planning his escape for a while and had considered paying Y/n a visit to see if he could knock the Wayne boy into his senses... but he had other things to do and he had to keep his head down while doing them. When he got the real story, it was far more exhilarating. It also sounded much, MUCH more like his Y/n.

Jerome was going to get Y/n out too, and they were going to burn this stupid city to the ground together, side by side. And no one was going to stop them. Not sense or sanity or decency or embarrassment. Y/n had even shoved off his brother- the boy had nothing holding him back anymore. They were going to have so much fun...

Then Y/n returned to the public eye of Arkham Asylum.

After his therapy stopped working, the guards either got fired or gave up. Words passed like fire about what they were doing to Y/n, and the real reason they were doing it. Guards were supposed to be guarding. Some turned a blind eye when other inmates pulled shit, but it was absolutely not allowed to bring harm to the inmates yourself. Now free, Y/n waltzed around the Day Room cockily, like a peacock showing off his feathers.

"...Y/n?"

The boy looked over casually, expecting something else. The person was too timid and quiet to be Jerome, but he most definitely hadn't expected- "Oswald?" His showiness melted in favor of pure joy. "Oh my god!" He ran to scoop up the little man in a hug. Both of them laughed, leaning apart with matching grins. "I've been looking everywhere for you. I was looking for you when-" He swallowed, his smile struggling. "I hope you're not mad at me. I meant to come find you, but things got... complicated."

Oswald shook his head. "I know what it's like to fall in love, especially when said person makes you want to kill someone." He put a hand on Y/n's shoulder. "I thought you were dead. I heard whispers about you with Jerome and then suddenly you went missing and I thought-"

Y/n's eyes went wide as Oswald grew quiet. "Are you kidding me? You're not getting rid of me that easy."

That seemed to lift Oswald's mood. The Penguin pulled Y/n aside, lowering his voice. "I'm getting out of here soon, Y/n. Please come with me. We'll figure out a way to do it- I can figure out some way to-"

"No," Y/n said immediately, stepping away. Oswald looked like he'd been slapped. "I'm your ally Oswald, always, but..." He shook his head. "Jerome is here." He swallowed. "I have another friend here too. She's like me, but only for, um, girls." Oswald nodded slowly, understanding but still a little sad. "You are important to me. Whoever's breaking you out- they'll take care of you, right?"

Oswald hesitated. "If he doesn't, I'll figure it out."

"Exactly," Y/n continued. "Jerome should be fine, but my other friend... she doesn't really have anyone else." Y/n struggled to find words. "Have you ever had someone innocent depend on you for real friendship? Someone who only you get, who you have to make sure is happy and safe? Someone you would do anything for?"

Suddenly Oswald seemed to understand perfectly. "Yes." Y/n frowned. What had he missed? Oswald was... different. "I understand, Y/n." He pat his friend's shoulder again and then stepped away. "I'll see you around."

Y/n smiled coyly. "Aw, are you going to come and visit me when you're out?"

Oswald rolled his eyes. They'd always been like this. Playful and easygoing. It was always easier to do in private, or when things were looking good. Now they had both, with Oswald getting out soon and their respective reclusiveness from everyone else in their little corner. Y/n seemed to be able to bring out a smile from Oswald, just like he always could from people. It was his pride- he could get a smile from Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth- even Oswald Cobblepott. Damn right.

They had a few days to catch up, and then Oswald got out. Y/n was happy for him. He hadn't seen much of Jerome yet, though, which had him a little worried. He would have heard if Jerome had gotten out- where was he? Surely not getting the treatment he had before- that would work even less on Jerome, and would have far more a consequence. Finally Y/n got a guard to fess up about it.

"Jerome's been holed up. He's usually in isolation, especially since he antagonized Oswald Cobblepoptt a little bit. But it seems to be more his choice of recent to be putting himself away. He seems to have a lot on his mind."

That didn't settle well with Y/n. Whatever he was up to, Y/n had the distinct notion that the little peace he'd finally managed to grasp was about to get ripped from him yet again. This time, he was willing to fight for it though. It was obvious that Jerome was avoiding Y/n on some level. Either that or he didn't care about Y/n at all. He hadn't been here when Y/n was finally let out, and he didn't seem to have done anything to try and get to Y/n while he was locked up either. Whatever he was up to, it either didn't include Y/n, or it was a move against him. It wasn't yet clear why Jerome would be mad at him... though the Wayne boy had some suspicions. If it came to that, then fine. Y/n would fight Jerome if he had to. It wasn't just about him now. He had Harleen to worry about. It would all be resolved in the end, and whatever the outcome, Y/n was determined to end up on top.

[jasontoddiefor]

Title: Same Heart, Same Blood Summary: You do not have a name. You were supposed to be Lord Vader’s son, the copy of the child that had died on the desert planet, but the man that never was your father rejected you. You grow up hating him (you just want to belong).The Emperor made a clone of Luke Skywalker, who died as a mere five-year-old. The rest, as they say, was the Will of the Force. AN: Take this mess that has stolen my calm away these past days

[Read on AO3]

You do not have a name, not yet, but the old man with the golden eyes has promised that you will soon. He calls himself the Emperor, your Emperor as if it is a fundamental truth you better not question.

(It is one, you’re going to learn later, wheezing for breath as you kill the children you grew up with. It also a lie, you realize two decades in the future, crying in a princess’s embrace.)

But right now you don’t think to question it. Your thoughts and memories are much too confusing and your muscles still jerk from phantom pains. The environment, the wealth of the palace around you, confuses you and you aren’t sure how to handle it. You are dressed in fine black clothes by two servants and the fabric is much softer than the one you are used to wearing.

(These too are memories you don’t recall.)

“You are the son of my Lord Vader,” your Emperor tells you. “You will bring glory to the Empire.”

You nod because that is obviously what your Emperor expects. He smiles, strangely, kind and loathing at the same time, and orders you to walk with him.

You meet Lord Vader in the throne room. He is a monster dressed in blood and torment, but you think you might learn to adore your father. He is strong, that much you can tell already, but he is also in great pain. You think that if you might ease his suffering, you could be happy for the rest of your life.

“I have discovered a great plot,” the Emperor tells your father. “After you killed you dear wife, the Jedi took her body not just to bury it on Naboo, but to steal your child as well. He brought your son to Tatooine, to be raised as a farmer. I felt a great disturbance in the Force, my apprentice, and it was there that I found your child, a son. Unfortunately, it was too late already. Your son had been slain like your mother before him.”

Darkness pours from your Father, so thick and terrible, you feel like you’re choking, as if your breath was stolen away. But you stay silent because your Emperor told you so.

“Embrace the anger, Lord Vader. You may swallow that planet whole if it pleases you, but first I want to introduce you to someone.”

You are young still, so small and frail and caught off-guard, but even now you understand what the Emperor is asking. You step forward, hoping to make a good impression on your father.

“I have tried to remedy that cruelty,” the Emperor says. He puts a hand on your shoulder, keeping you close and away from your father. You’re not sure why he’s doing it. Aren’t you supposed to go to him?

“Child, introduce yourself,” the Emperor orders.

You frown as you aren’t sure what to say. You haven’t been given a name yet, but you want to make him proud. After all, you’ve been told your purpose and your role already. Son of Lord Vader, glory to the Empire.

“Hello, Father,” you say, trying to look as brave as possible. “I am here to please you.”

“A perfect clone of the boy,” the Emperor explains your existence. “A gift.”

(You don’t know what a clone is, not yet. Later, during your lessons, you will read about the Republic and the Clone Wars, understand that you are a pale copy made to be used as a common tool without any rights or a name. You will beat your opponents into the ground until you and they are bleeding. You’re snarling in anger and remembering that this, at least, is yours.)

Your father doesn’t answer at first, he just breathes as the hatred and pain continue to surround him.

“Is the clone to be a replacement for my son, then?” He finally asks.

“If you wish. The Force is strong in him,” the Emperor replies.

You get the impression that your father stares at you, mustering how you measure up to his expectations. You stand as straight as you can and smile a little shyly perhaps. You want him to love you, but you only need him to like you.

“Give him to the Inquisitors,” your father replies. “I have no use for him.”

You watch as your father leaves, standing still at the Emperors side. You don’t understand what happens until the Grand Inquisitor comes, pulls you harshly by your arm and drags you away to the training facility.

They call you boy and child and soldier and brother and you aren’t given a name. You don’t dare to ask for one, so sure that your father will still come.

The hope leaves you the first time they break your bones and you scream and beg, try to reach out to the darkness you experienced only once. He’s far away, that much you know.

He’s not coming to save you.

Glory to the Empire.

You’re nobody’s son.

X

Half the time the Force is screaming at you, the other half is spent being shouted at by the other Inquisitors. They teach you discipline, loyalty to the Empire and all the skills needed to ensure the Emperor will always sit on his throne. You’re not sure whether you’re actually loyal to the Empire. It’s all you have ever known and you suppose you should be thankful to it for creating you, but you aren’t.

You hate it, you resent your own existence to the core. You weren’t born, you were made to bleed and die for the Empire. And, being forced through its punishing training, you catch yourself thinking that death might be kinder. The numbers of the Inquisitors always stay roughly the same, but only because they steal children as quickly as they kill them.

You refuse to be murdered by them; you won’t give them the satisfaction. You will live and you will serve and you will bring glory to the Empire.

(You will fight and keep fighting until you’re standing in front of Lord Vader and force him to acknowledge you. You will be great and he will realize all he lost when he threw you away.)

The thoughts of running away or defecting to the rebels never cross your mind, but the idea of compassion does. It is forbidden to you, to all Inquisitors. You are taught how to forget it in the death matches they force you to compete in. The weakest get the chance to prove themselves one last time, while the oldest are made to kill the companions they share a room and a table with.

The lesson never sticks.

It is compassion that saves you again and again.

Your shields are made of durasteel. Nobody can get through them, no matter how hard your teachers try, but invading their minds is so much easier. You suggest they stop kicking you when you are already down and they do.

Your talents don’t go unnoticed, they never do in a place like this. You are taught infiltration, how to smile and make your blue eyes light up in childish wonder. When you are ten, you meet a girl two years younger than you with the same skill set.

Her hair is bright red and stands out as much as your own blonde crown. She doesn’t have a name either, at least not until the two of you are stuck in a dorm together. Nightmares are a frequent occurrence here and she screams.

You’re tired, you want to sleep, you slip into her dreams.

(There is a woman standing in the desert, screaming at you. She’s crying and you think you are as well. The girl is hiding in a basement and watches her mother die shouting her daughter’s name. The scene is familiar. You don’t know that the first part of the dreamscape isn’t Mara’s but yours until it’s nearly too late.)

You call her Mara when you’re alone and she hurls whatever nickname she can think of at you. You still don’t have a name, only a rank.

It’s Third Brother right now.

(By the end of the year it will be Second Brother and when you’re fourteen, you will be the First Brother. They will begin to whisper about Siths and Apprentices you will stare at your face in the mirror every morning, wondering why your eyes are still blue.)

Mara likes to stick to words associated with the sky.

“It’s because you always volunteer for missions, just to pilot, Skyspawn,” Mara says with an eye roll.

You enjoy flying. It makes you feel like you are free, even when you’re stuck in a durasteel container. If you had been given a choice as a child, you’d be a pilot instead of an Emperor’s Hand.

The title is given to you on your creation day. The Emperor smiles, tells you he is proud of you. You’re thankful for your shields because you honestly couldn't care less about what he thinks.

(It’s not him you want to impress.)

All you know is that your training is finally complete and that your life might not be your own, but even just the taste of more room to be whoever you want to be leaves you dreaming. Then, after half a year of doing missions handed to you by the Emperor himself, he gives you your first long-term assignment.

He puts you on the crew of Lord Vader’s flagship.

You are to assist Lord Vader in all matters. You are given an appropriate uniform and a new name for all the other personnel to use when addressing you.

Commander Forbes.

Forn Besh.

First Brother.

Even Mara’s worst nicknames, and she has come up with some truly awful ones, aren’t as uncreative as this. You miss her like one would miss their right hand, but Mara is still training and you are not.

(Vader never calls you anything but Inquisitor.)

X

You think you might hate Vader, but you know he doesn't hate you, not really. He hates the idea of you, all that you represent. You are the son he never got to meet or raise, the Emperor’s total control over him, all his flaws.

Vader only really lashes out at you once. He chokes you with the Force, squeezes until you can see the stars surrounding you, and then he drops you.

(You don’t know that for all that you are Anakin Skywalker’s copy, you resemble Padmé Amidala even more. It is only this that saves you.)

For one terrible moment you wish he would have gone through with it. He could have snapped your neck so very easily.

(You know because that’s how you killed the First Brother.)

Vader introduces you as the Emperor’s asset. For all that you’re supposed to be undercover, Vader’s troops obviously know that it means you’re a spy. You are surprised at first because you didn’t expect them to be this loyal to Vader. The Stormtroopers treat you like an outsider because they are Vader’s men. The other military officers just treat you strangely because you’re incredibly short for your age.

You should report this to the Emperor.

You don’t.

The Stormtroopers start inviting you to the mess hall. It is only then that you see why they might be so loyal to Vader, hundreds of identical faces talking to each other at the same time.

Nobody told you that most of Vader’s fleet consists of Clone Troopers, but you suppose that it does explain why their missions have a much higher success rate. They have been made for war, just like you, and don’t know how to be anything but a smarter blaster.

(You’re not sure you know either.)

CC-2224 is your favorite. You’re not supposed to have favorites, but you’re not supposed to be compassionate either and that has only aided you so far. The other clones seem to pick up on your new acquaintance with him and now draw you in too. You gather that CC-2224 used to be a Commander, a position now reserved for fourteen-year-old Emperor’s Hands, and some of the other Troopers still defer to that.

Vader puts CC-2224 in charge often enough despite it all, so you begin to report to him too, report to him first. You gain the clones’ favor and you fight at the front with them.

At Vader’s behest, you raze through battlefields with twin red ‘sabers in your hands. You cut through droids and rebels and smugglers, execute on his orders.

You give him everything you have.

(He doesn’t return in kind.)

The clones start to slip up around you. They call you Commander usually, but when it’s just you and them between blaster fire, a verd'ika slips out often enough.

They do not actually mean you, you realize quickly. Most men of Vader’s Fist wear a little extra color between their regular uniforms. They’re not supposed to do so, but you catch flashes of blue and orange. The battalions of the Republic are not as dead as they should be.

You ought to tell the Emperor.

(But that would mean betraying Vader and losing this little space you carved out for yourself. You’ve collected trinkets of the worlds you visited and you get to keep them. The clones give you sweets and CC-2224 mutters about reverse grips when he sees you hold your ‘sabers for the first time.)

You don’t.

(You quietly look up the old Republic battalions. 501st blue and 212th orange. General Kenobi and Skywalker, blue lightsabers. Commander Tano with twins. You wonder if it’s her CC-2224 is thinking of when he sees you.)

You’re just like the clones, you think. A vod to a dead child. But you don’t dare to actually voice your thoughts. You think CC-2224 might know anyway.

(This is why Vader hates you. The clones, for all that they are supposed to be identical, have slightly different skills and tastes. You’re not a perfect copy. You never were.)

But you‘re still the Emperor‘s Hand. You‘re called back to Coruscant regularly to report and train with the other Inquisitors. You‘ve only become stronger since you left, even if you haven’t become much taller. You see Mara only for moments during the daytime, but she doesn’t fail to tease you about your height when you‘re stuck in your room, turning your sheets red because of badly treated injuries.

“You’re getting popular here,” Mara tells you. “They call you Vader’s attack dog.”

Vader’s replacement, is what she actually means. It makes a terrible amount of sense. Your presence throws Vader off, the Emperor thinks you’re only his own and you were made for this.

The Force is strong in you.

Vader has ambitions, mourns a child and a wife and perhaps - this thought occurs to you for the first time then - he blames the Emperor. If he is so strong, was stronger than Vader, he should have been able to stop it all from happening.

But he hadn’t.

You exist and you’re not a gift, you’re a punishment and you will be the instrument of the Emperor’s downfall.

(You’re tired. You don’t want to be anyone’s anything. You just want to belong somewhere and be left in peace.)

You crawl out of your bed, allow yourself to wince because of your bruised ribs and make yourself comfortable in Mara’s bunk.

“Aren’t we too old for this?” She asks, but makes space for you anyway.

It’s an old song and dance, except you’re not ten-and-eight, you’re seventeen-and-fifteen nowadays. You’re exhausted from all your nightmares. You have become used to them, but they’re still painful.

(You dream about the battlefields, the smell of burned flesh. Children half your age you can’t afford to care for and sentients twice your age who do. You’re not a torturer, you’re a soldier, but it doesn’t make a difference when you are ordered to slaughter them like cattle.)

“No,” you tell her. The clones still share bunks after particularly gruesome campaigns and they are much older than the two of you.

Mara’s breath evens out before yours. You want to take her with you on board of the Devastator. She’s one of the most skilled Inquisitors, your teamwork is great and Vader hasn’t tried to outright kill you in three years. Mara would be safe and away from the Imperial Center.

Vader might always send you into the worst parts of the battles, but you return victorious.

(It’s spite, you tell yourself, but that’s a lie. You still only want to make him proud, have him acknowledge you. Just once you want him to look at you like he did before.)

You will just have to keep fighting.

X

The clones don’t celebrate birthdays, they don’t have any, and the Inquisitors never do either. You know you were created on Empire Day, so sometimes it feels like you’re celebrating having made it through another year. This campaign though leaves much to be desired. Vader is always called back to Coruscant for Empire Day, but this year his troops have been left behind, turning another rebel cell to dust. You’re dirty and haven’t eaten in a week and want to go back to the ship.

“I hate marching through caves,” CT-4545 complains. “It’s dark and wet and urgh.”

“We’re halfway through already,” CC-2224 says. He’s walking right behind you and from experience you know he will tackle you to the ground first, should any complications arise.

(It’s comforting in a way you can’t quite understand.)

“At least we’ve got somebody to light up our way, don’t we?”

The clone means you and you can’t help smiling. You’re glad you’re walking in front of the, so that they can’t see it. All of you engineered war machines have a role to play still after all.

“You sense any danger, nau'ul?” CT-4545 asks.

Candlelight.

CC-2224 had come up with the moniker after seeing you train in the dark, only the red of your ‘sabers illuminating the training hall. A week later, every Clone Trooper had been using it in the appropriate moments.

The mission absolutely sucks, but you’re in good company at least. Using your lightsabers as flashlights is ridiculous, but you don’t mind at all.

“No danger,” you reply and hope the campaign will be over soon, but you already know it's useless.

The battles get worse. There are civilians here and you are told to ignore them and keep fighting. You’re not allowed to hesitate, but there’s a little girl with red hair and you look away, just for a second.

(It’s enough.)

You get thrown to the ground, your head smacks against the dry earth and dust gets into your eyes. Somebody is lying on top of you and you push them off.

Their armor is white because everyone’s is, but you’ve always been able to tell them apart in the Force.

“CC-2224!”

He took the shot meant for you, and this one wasn’t just a blaster shot. The people of this planet use sharper weapons, reply on bleeding you dry in the most violent ways because they can’t afford blasters.

He’s bleeding.

You take off his helmet and try to get him out of his armor. He needs to get medical treatment, but you’re on the frontlines and there are no medics here.

(They don’t get wasted on troopers and you’re expected to be able to protect yourself. CC-2224 has taken to checking up on you after fights because you spent the first nine years you can remember hiding away all weaknesses to survive.)

“Kriff,” you hiss.

CC-2224 is getting paler by the second, but his face isn’t crunched in pain. He doesn’t look like he’s feeling anything at all.

“You safe, verd'ika?” CC-2224 slurs.

Somebody is shouting for a medic. It might be you.

“No, no, no,” you stutter. You press your hands on CC-2224’s wound, but the blood just keeps welling up. “You can’t die here!”

“It’s my time,” CC-2224 rattles. He pulls at his hands, taking off an orange bracelet. “Keep it, nau'ul. Tell him- tell him I’m sorry.”

You get flashes of a man you know is Kenobi, then various vode, none of whom you recognize. Clones have funeral rites, you know this much, but they rarely get to practice them. The Empire doesn’t care about its dead, but you do and you can’t do it.

“Don’t- don’t leave me here, please,” you beg. “Please, Cody, please, you have to make it. You can’t leave me here, I don’t have anyone else. Cody- Cody, please, I don’t know how to-“

Cody doesn’t answer so you scream in his stead.

The next hours are a blur. You know you win the battle because you return to the Devastator covered in red. You’re not sure how many people you’ve killed. You stopped counting years before you were sent to spy on Vader. There’s an orange bracelet wrapped around your wrist, untouched by the bloodshed.

Vader spares you a second glance.

(It is more than he ever did before.)

X

The next months don’t get better. The rebels become more desperate and daring, and yet the Emperor calls you back to Coruscant. He tears through your mind and you let him see everything but the memories tainted in orange and blue. Whatever he finds, he’s content.

“You have done well, Inquisitor,” the Emperor says. “Your talent may excel Lord Vader’s yet.”

“Thank you, my Emperor,” you reply, carefully keeping the pain out of your voice.

You keep your hands behind your back, you tug at the orange band, just to reassure yourself that it’s still there.

The Emperor is driven by ambition, but not the kind that forces you to throw yourself at enemies again and again, hoping it’ll make him look at you.

He wants total control, you’d be content with your own autonomy.

“Return to Lord Vader’s side,” the Emperor orders. “He shall instruct you.”

You have been learning from Vader since you can remember. The Inquisitors’ training is based on Vader’s ruthlessness and you’ve had the chance to observe him on the battlefield. You’re already copying a lot of his fighting style because, buried beneath brute strength, Vader is a rather cunning fighter. He wastes no energy and uses his opponents’ attacks against them.

You’re under no illusion that Vader hasn’t picked up on the fact that you’re learning from him. Being stuck in the worst areas of the battles often also means being near Vader, it gives you a chance to observe him closely.

If Vader were to instruct you directly, you’re not sure you’d actually keep learning from him. He might actually kill you and call it an accident.

“Thank you, my Emperor.”

You wait for him to release you, but instead he just observes you.

“You may call me Master, my young apprentice. Lord Vader is hunting down rebels near Scarif, I suggest you haste.”

“Yes, my Master,” you reply and choke down the bile.

Your leave the Emperor’s hall as fast as you can, you don’t stop to see if Mara’s at the base and you run.

(You do not want to surpass Vader. The higher you reach, the more terrible the fall. The Emperor’s anger is barely endurable when you’re otherwise having a good day. You don’t want to be his, you never did.)

The hanger is pretty empty and nobody looks at you twice as you leave in your ship. You’ve been modifying it over the years as a side-project to keep busy when you’re not fighting or staying at Vader’s side. The ship is fast, but it’s not fast enough to catch up. Your comms pick up chatter and-

The Death Star is gone.

Hesitantly, you reach out to the darkness that never left you and retreat again when you find it unchanged.

Lord Vader is still alive then.

You should ask Command for coordinates, follow through with the Emperor’s assignment, but-

You were supposed to have been on the Death Star already. You’re supposed to be dead.

Your shields have always been excellent.

You run.

(Away or towards freedom, you’re not quite sure. You’ve never experienced either and if not for the echoes of Jedha, Scarif and Alderaan, you might even laugh as freely as you did when Cody picked you up because you were too short to reach the control panels of your ship.)

X

Your ship is not Imperial, you don’t have to ditch it. Besides, you doubt the Emperor would search for you on his own homeworld. Naboo is a beautiful planet, rich in colors and nature. You’ve spent most of your life in underground training complexes, on battlefields or on ships. Never before have you had the time to just look around and see the world for what it is.

(Of course that’s not actually what you do. You check how often the security guards pass, see the pickpockets run over the market place, the arms deal going down in a cantina. You’ve been trained to check for danger first, so that’s what you do.)

You keep nothing but your ship, the mementos on it and your lightsabers. You get rid of your boots, which never were all that comfortable in the first place, and every piece of clothing you own. You never want to wear the color black again.

Instead, you buy sturdy beige boots and pants of a dark brown color. You put on a white shirt whose hems are a bright orange color and wear a brown belt with some extra pouches. The vest you throw over it all is gray, has a lot of pockets and orange buttons.

It all matches the bracelet circling your wrist.

You look like a spacer and not at all like an Inquisitor. You’ve been taught how to disguise yourself for undercover work, but this doesn’t feel like a disguise, more like a homecoming.

Your Coruscant accent has to go as well and you pick up something that sounds vaguely Outer Rim, but feels familiar on your tongue.

“Name?” One of the many underpaid workers at the spaceport asks.

You could just slip into their mind and avoid leaving any trace at all, but you’re so caught up in your emotional high, you don’t even think of it.

“Nau’ul,” you reply because it's the first name that comes to your mind. You want to smack yourself a second later because dropping Mando’a with an Outer Rim accent on a Core World is a stupid mistake.

The worker doesn’t even care. “Last name or first name?”

“First name,” you say and then, because you’re committed and might as well go through with it you add, “My last name is Kad.”

You start hopping from planet to planet. You begin stocking up on blasters because your lightsabers are a dead giveaway who you are. Not once have you caught even a glimpse of any Inquisitor the Emperor might have sent after you, so you just keep moving. You dream of the desert and the sky and Cody’s last words.

(You owe it to him.)

Truth is, you have no idea what to do with your newfound freedom. You don’t want to spend the next decades of your life in hiding, hoping Vader kills the Emperor and can overlook your existence.

And then the wanted posters come out.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi, rebel, dead or alive.

Leia Organa, Jedi, rebel, dead or alive.

The bounties on their heads are unbelievably high, but what shocks you more is that Kenobi doesn’t look at all like the man Cody remembered. You knew he wasn’t dead, the Inquisitors have a more or less accurate list of all Jedi that should still be around somewhere, but you didn’t expect him to have aged so much.

Organa’s training must have happened in secret or started only recently. He catches a few holos of her with a blue lightsaber and she is good, but her movements don’t speak for a particularly long and in-depth tutorship yet.

They might profit from some support and you’re not too far from Nar Shaddaa. The crime-ridden planet has been calm still by its standards, the Empire hadn’t interfered much there and Grakkus’ obsession with Jedi artifacts was well known.

You will buy yourself your way into the Rebellion, to Kenobi and Organa.

X

Breaking into Grakkus’ vaults is ridiculously easy. You’re not sure what to reach for because there’s so much, but you figure the holocrons are a good start. You stuff your backpack full with them and are glad you brought a second. Grakkus has a whole line of lightsabers, hidden away behind glass panels. Deactivating the security is a child’s play for somebody raised to tear down every defense.

You’re out again and have left Nar Shaddaa before Grakkus even notices that he’s been stolen from. You travel from planet to planet, trying to find hints of the Rebellion. The work makes you a little uncomfortable, it is so very similar to what you used to do for the Empire, you expect every planetary drop to end with your blood red lightsabers cutting someone in half.

You haven’t taken them out of your backpack since you put them there, hiding them away from the world and, perhaps, yourself as well. The last weeks you’ve spent listening to the Holocrons, watch the Jedi Masters of old explain their philosophies.

You don’t understand them.

(They were made for Jedi, raised safely amongst their kin. You are not a Jedi, not yet.)

But the lightsabers are a whole other matter. You do not mean to touch them, to take them apart, but their crystals hum beneath your fingertips in a way yours never did. You pick up the lightsaber pieces as the Force sings around you.

When you are finished, you are looking at a new blade, a staff this time. You chose twin sabers when you were young because it allows you greater offensive capabilities, even if it’s more difficult. You’re hesitant to ignite the staff when you realize what you’ve done. This is not a choice, your teachers staring down at you as you pick up your defeated opponent’s blade to throw yourself in the ring again.

You forged this lightsaber.

(The crystals aren’t red, and yet you fear.)

The color of sunrise and sunset greets you.

For one impossible moment you feel unstoppable, like you never had any limits in the first place. Then you take a step back and an old scar that never healed properly complains, reminding you sharply of the day you got it.

Exhausted, you turn off the ‘saber and drop into the pilot chair. You have a group of rebels to find and you don’t intend to give up now.

You put all your tracking skills to use, follow the rumors and the bloodshed, the angry civilians and the slaughter. Lady luck is on your side because eight months after the Death Star, you do find a rebel cell.

Unfortunately, you show up lightsaber swinging, decapitating the bounty hunter who was trying to take them in. You can’t pretend to be a simple spacer now and, even though your blade isn’t red anymore, they recognize your face.

(They don’t say it out loud, but your age shocks them. You’ve been Vader’s tool for six years now and, without the uniform and proper posturing, you actually look like twenty.)

They’re unsure what to do with you and all your attempts at reassuring them that you’ve defected from the Empire are met with a snarl.

Of course they don’t believe you. You killed their families on Vader’s orders. They throw you in a makeshift cell and handcuff you. Their security is so lax that breaking out of it wouldn’t even take much effort, but you’re fairly sure that course of action wouldn’t end with you having gained their favor. So, instead you hand them one holocron and activate it. They understand about as much as you do of the Jedi philosophies but it’s enough to convince them to call Kenobi and Organa at least.

Organa looks at you with barely disguised anger. She snarls Inquisitor and you think you might gag. Her inflection reminds you of Vader in ways you can’t quite comprehend, so you decide you’d rather focus on Kenobi.

You think of rough hands and ships models and banish the thoughts as soon as they arise.

He stares at you with dead eyes, as if he might be seeing a ghost. It makes you frown and he flinches. Before you can do more harm and ask, you recall the list you’ve been forced to memorize since you could read.

(Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Jocasta Nu, …)

You’ve never seen Vader’s face, but you were made in the image of his child. For the first time in your life, you wonder whether you look like him. Vader’s anger at Kenobi was well known, it wouldn’t surprise you if Kenobi actually knew what Vader looked like beneath his mask.

(If you were more than one person’s mirror image.)

“We caught him,” the rebels tell the two Jedi and you can’t stop yourself from snorting.

“You didn’t catch me, I’m here out of my own free will.”

One of the rebels, a male Twi’lek, hisses. Not every Twi’lek is from Ryloth, but you think this one might have been once upon a time.

“You can’t do kriff-”

You interrupt him by dropping out of your handcuffs and bending the metal bars of your cell so you could slip out easily, if you wish. Organa reaches for her ‘saber immediately, but you remain seated.

“Master Kenobi,” you address the Jedi instead. “I come in peace. I’ve brought a bag full of holocrons and lightsabers for you and your Padawan. I wish to…”

(You do not want to join the rebellion. Your life has been dictated by other people’s causes. The Republic was weak because it allowed the Empire to rise and the Empire is cruel and doesn’t honor its dead. You’re here because of a dead man who cared for you when nobody else did.)

“I don’t want to be the Empire’s anymore,” you finish your sentence. “I am a person.”

(And you have a name that’s almost yours.)

“What is your name?” Kenobi asks.

“I was the First Brother.”

Confusion and disappointment alike flicker across Kenobi’s face, but he doesn’t elaborate why. He and Organa ask for directions to your ship and in a show of trust, you give it to them. They return a day later, Kenobi somehow appearing to have aged another decade over night while Organa obviously still doesn’t trust you. You think about Cody’s last words, but you can’t bring yourself to say them out loud.

You stay silent.

They take you to the rebel base.

X

The Rebel High Command takes offense at being called rebels. It is Imperial propaganda as it undermines their intention to bring peace to the galaxy and rebuilt the Republic. They are an Alliance of Independent Systems with elected leaders.

You think it’s bantha crap, but you roll with it.

They question you about your decision to switch sides, about the way their military is organized, any codes you might know that are still usable, the Inquisitors and Vader.

And they ask about you.

You refuse to tell them your name, which is just random bits of Mando’a, stacked together in a rather uncreative manner and you can’t tell them where you’re from. You don’t remember, but you assume it was some cloning facility, but you don’t tell them about that either. They realize rather quickly that as far as personal life or details go, you actually don’t have much to share because there is nothing.

So they ask about missions instead. Giving mission reports is easy. You regurgitate your significant operations like important assassinations, Jedi hunts, battles won and battles lost and it reminds you all very much of the reports you had to do back in the Inquisitor Headquarters.

“Without the beatings,” you add, attempting to joke. “We’d always get those, but if you did well, you got bacta after.”

Nobody laughs.

It’s a work in progress.

They assign you Kenobi and Organa as guards, who keep your lightsaber. You’re not allowed to go anywhere without them. It’s a step up from being thrown into a cell you have to pretend is actually secure. You tell Organa that you could take her on the first day, honesty seems like a good approach, and she punches you in the face.

(You could have avoided that, but the Jedi talked about releasing their feelings into the Force. Letting her punch you seems like an appropriate way of dealing with that.)

The rebels continue to be wary of you, so you try not to cause any troubles. On some days, even if you wanted to, you wouldn’t have the energy for it. Your nightmares, constant childhood companions, are back at full force. You can’t shake them off, no matter how many droids and ships you repair and update. Sometimes, you see Vader choking you, more often than that you’re killing Stormtroopers. The worst nights are those in which you dream of blood red sand.

You try not to let them get to you, but they get so bad even your Jedi companions notice. Your presence essentially keeps them tied down to the base. You’ve offered to accompany them on missions so the two of them can go, but that suggestion was denied. Organa goes off with that Corellian smuggler with the tempting bounty on his head, Kenobi stays behind with you.

You keep training, of course. You might not have a ‘saber, but you can still go through the katas. Inquisitors were trained to take down Jedi fast and without any mercy. You’re used to forms Kenobi refers to as Makashi and Djem So with some bastardized Shien. Somehow, telling him that you’ve learned the later by watching Vader doesn’t go so well. Vader never really deflected blaster fire with his saber, except as a warm up, he just stops them mid air and passes through. It requires a greater control of the Force apparently, but you’ve never really had a problem with that. The greater trouble is adjusting for the fact that you’re down one ‘saber. You still do the katas like you’re doing them with your twin reds instead of your staff.

At least this way you can pass the time while waiting for the other shoe to drop. Most rebels on the base know you already and no matter how secure they are, they ought to have a leak sooner or later. You’re still running from the Empire, even if you’re stuck at one place. It can’t be long before your past catches up to you.

And when it does, you’re not prepared.

Another rebel cell drops off and it’s only chance that you actually get to see them. You’re in the hanger, repairing ships while Organa’s astromech bothers you, until he doesn’t.

He begins beeping in excitement and rushes off. Kenobi is still busy talking to a Commander, but you’re under no illusion that he doesn't know where you’re heading.

“Artoo!” You shout and catch up to the droid when he’s made it to the new ship. A group of people are getting out of it and Artoo drives circles around one of them.

He has no scar, but a beard instead, his eyes aren’t as empty, but they’re the same color and you know him.

“Rex.” The name falls from your lips before you can stop yourself. Being with the rebels has really shot your control to hell. You used to be able to get through torture disguised as training without screaming, now you can’t even keep your mouth shut.

The clone’s eyes snap to you and narrow. “Who are you?”

“Captain,” Kenobi acknowledges next to you. “It’s good to have you back. This is-”

“Nau’ul Kad,” you say. Next to you, Kenobi tenses. You had thought about telling him so often, but you never found the right moment, but Rex is here and he look just like-

“CC-2224 named me,” you explain and you wouldn’t need to be Force-sensitive to tell they’re shocked. “He caught be training with the ‘sabers in the dark so often and I didn’t- They didn’t give me a real name because for us only ranks mattered.”

You should stop. You’re better than this.

(You can’t, you won’t, you fail.)

There are still people running around, shouting and cursing but you can’t hear any of it.

“He- Cody figured I’m just like you. I was supposed to be Vader’s. I was made for him but he didn’t want me and Cody knew and he did.”

You tug at the orange bracelet, pull it off your arm and try to give it to Rex because that’s what Cody wanted, right? To rest amongst his brothers.

“He died for me. He looked after me for five years and he died because I was too reckless, because I still want Vader to look at me and see more than his dead child.”

They continue to look at you and you don’t know how you’re supposed to make up for Cody’s death. It should be him standing here.

“I- he said to tell you he’s sorry.”

X

They question you again, this time you tell the full truth. You admit that fifteen, almost sixteen, years ago the Emperor brought you to Vader and told you that he is your father.

Except he wasn’t because you are an imperfect clone and he had no use for you.

You talk about how your assignment to Vader’s ship was meant as a punishment for the Sith Lord, that a lot of the troopers from the 501st are clones still, hiding their colors and that they are more loyal to Vader than the Emperor.

They ask you about yourself again.

You tell them that orange is your favorite color, that the troopers bought small trinkets for you and sometimes even managed to talk about their jetii without freezing up. You begin to list the names of the clones who made sure you got your wounds looked at and the dozens of more you can remember.

“They taught me Mando’a,” you end your statement. “And when nobody else could hear it, they called me verd'ika.”

The looks you get after your confession are different. Not worse, not better, just different. Rex has to leave again and no matter how much you want you, you can’t go with him. He seems to have picked up on your mood though because he hands you his comm number and makes you promise to call.

Halfway through the next month, your appearance has apparently become so pitiful that Organa picks up on it and drags you to the training halls. She musters you for a moment, then she throws you your lightsaber.

“Don’t make me regret this,” she tells you and you grin.

“Wouldn’t think of it, Organa.”

She parries your strike with her blue lightsaber. It is not the same she was using before your arrival, but it looks similar. You’d bet that she used parts of her old one to make this one.

“Leia,” she says suddenly. “If we’re sparring, you might as well call me Leia.”

Between missions and reviewing intel, your sparring sessions turn into lessons with Kenobi guiding you. Leia picks up lightsaber combat at a frightening speed. You think for a split second that she would have made a frightening Inquisitor and are thankful she never was. In the beginning, you still have to hand in your lightsaber every time you’re done and then, one day, they forget to collect it.

(Or perhaps they don’t forget, but they’ve learned to trust you.)

Your dreams get worse still. They’re all similar nowadays. You’re staring at your own dead body, a woman screaming, a dead man, Stormtroopers, the Emperor’s laughter.

(Your own blue eyes, innocent still and full of love, saying something you can’t quite hear.)

You know they’re not visions because visions leave you exhausted in a different way. You mention them to Leia only once and for the next week, Kenobi stares at you like he’s trying to figure you out. You want to be mad at Leia for telling him, but you can’t because she was right to do so, especially because your night terrors start interfering with your daily life.

“I nearly took off your head!” Leia shouts.

You smile apologetically. “But you didn’t.”

“It was much too close still,” Kenobi speaks up. “You are tired.”

It’s not a question and you’re glad he’s not giving you the opportunity to argue. You’re not sure how understandable your defense would have been.

“I am dreaming,” you reply.

“Of what?”

Of memories you shouldn’t have. You notice only belated that you must have said it out loud, because Leia looks at you in worry, while Kenobi’s body language speaks of resignation.

“What do you see in your dreams?”

You shouldn’t answer.

You do.

“I’m in a desert. A woman is calling me, then she’s screaming.” Red lightsabers are flashing and you try to reach her, but they keep pulling you back. “I want to help her, but the Emperor keeps pulling at my mind-”

Recognition flashes in Kenobi’s eyes and you rise up to your full height. You’re shorter than him, but you know from experience that you’re no less intimidating.

“You know what’s wrong with me,” you accuse him. “Tell me and fix it!”

X

(Here’s the ugly truth you’re told:)

Kenobi lost his entire life in just one day, but the thought of ending his life to join them never crossed his mind because he had a child to protect. A son, a boy, he brought to his family on his father’s home world. The child grew up happy and loved, but the one moment Kenobi did look away, the Empire found him and took him.

He spent nine years mourning the child he failed to protect, then you showed up at Vader’s side.

(Here’s the ugly truth you remember:)

There was a blonde boy sitting next to you, your exact mirror image. People came and went, took him and then you to test your abilities and skills and a thousand different things you do not want to recall because they left you in tatters. The Emperor wanted a means to control Vader, so here the two of you were.

You were all each other had, so you shared dreams and memories, strength and pain, hope and stories. One of you was older, but by the end of the first month, it didn’t matter because you were of the same blood.

Your bond wasn’t made out of orange cords, but it served the same purpose. There is a reason highly Force-sensitive people shouldn’t be cloned and, above that, should never form a bond with their mirror image.

You remember dying. You remember mourning your brother.

(You blocked it all out to protect yourself.)

X

“But- but I’m the clone!” You shout, but your defense sounds weak even to your own ears. “I’m the clone of Vader’s dead child and he never wanted me.”

You do not want any of the memories to be real, but you remember bright blue eyes and think the reason you never wanted to be a Sith, is the brother made from your own flesh whom you curled up to at night.

“You’re nobody’s dead child or clone,” Kenobi, Old Ben,  says softly. “You can’t fake Force signatures and I know yours, Luke.”

You flinch when you hear him say that name. You used to share it, whisper it so silently, you think you never actually said it out loud.

You have a name, you always had, and the Emperor stole it from you.

X

There are constants to every universe. The Sith will always return. Alderaan will always be the witness of terrible slaughter.

Darth Vader will always fight his child on Bespin.

The parameters of all these events are what vary from universe to universe. In this one, Vader is the one attacking while you are trying to stay defensive. You ought to kill him, it would bring the Rebellion one step closer to the Emperor, but you’ve seen what fighting for a cause instead of yourself does to people.

(You’re fairly sure Vader hasn’t fought for himself in years.)

Vader corners you. For all that you have grown stronger, he has thirty years of experience compared to your mere fifteen. This is never a fight you can win, in any universe.

But you aren’t trying to win. You just need him to lose.

“You are beaten. It is useless to resist,” Vader rasps as his lightsaber bears down on yours.

(You know you can’t keep this up much longer.)

“The Emperor never told you what happened to your son,” you say.

Mentioning the dead child, the vod you lost, shocks Vader long enough for you to jump away and put some distance between the two of you.

“He died, you filthy copy!” Vader shouts.

You want to laugh or cry perhaps because for the first time in all these years, Vader acknowledges you.

“Yes.” You shake your head. “But I am your son.”

“No! That’s impossible! How dare you lie to me-”

“Search your feelings, Father, you know it to be true. My name is Luke Skywalker and the Emperor lied to you.”

Your confession doesn’t stop Vader from lashing out. You still lose your hand and Han is still captured and you still fall and it is still Leia who guides Lando back to you.

But other things change.

You’re on Tatooine, standing at the graves of people you hardly recalled, the family who died for your survival when he approaches you. He’s still wearing his black suit, but he doesn’t feel like he’s going to slowly take your other limbs apart.

“Who is the boy I buried on Naboo?”

You are genetically identical, there is no way to say who was the clone and who the boy stolen from the desert. It should not matter, it does not matter, because his death was a tragedy regardless.

“My brother. Your son.”

(You.)

“Then the Emperor will pay.”

(He does.)

[pamphletstoinspire]

Septuagesima Sunday - January 31, 2021

Septuagesima  and Lent are both times of penance, Septuagesima being a time of voluntary fasting in preparation for the obligatory Great Fast of Lent. The theme is the Babylonian exile, the “mortal coil” we must endure as we await the Heavenly Jerusalem. Sobriety and somberness reign liturgically; the Alleluia and Gloria are banished

The Sundays of Septugesima are named for their distance away from Easter:

The first Sunday of Septuagesima gives its name to the entire season as it is known as “Septuagesima.” “Septuagesima” means “seventy,” and Septuagesima Sunday comes roughly seventy days before Easter. This seventy represents the seventy years of the Babylonian Captivity. It is on this Sunday that the alleluia is “put away,” not to be said again until the Vigil of Easter.

The second Sunday of Septuagesima is known as “Sexagesima, which means “sixty”. Sexagesima Sunday comes roughly sixty days before Easter.

The third Sunday of Septuagesima is known as “Quinquagesima,” which means “fifty” and which comes roughly fifty days before Easter. Quadragesima means “forty,” and this is the name of the first Sunday of Lent and the Latin name for the entire season of Lent.

Throughout this short Season and that of Lent (next Season) you will notice a deepening sense of penance and somberness, culminating in Passiontide (the last two weeks of Lent), that will suddenly and joyously end at the Vigil of Easter on Holy Saturday when the alleluia returns and Christ’s Body is restored and glorified. 

INSTRUCTION FOR SEPTUAGESIMA SUNDAY by Leonard Goffine, 1871

Why is this Sunday called “Septuagesima”?

Because in accordance with the words of the First Council of Orleans, some pious Christian congregations in the earliest ages of the Church, especially the clergy; began to fast seventy days before Easter, on this Sunday, which was there fore called “Septuagesima”–the seventieth day. The same is the case with the Sundays following, which are called Sexagesima, Quinquagesima, Quadragesima, because some Christians commenced to fast sixty days, others fifty, others forty days before Easter, until finally, to make it properly uniform, Popes Gregory and Gelasius arranged that all Christians should fast forty days before Easter, commencing with Ash-Wednesday.

Why, from this day until Easier, does the Church omit from her service all joyful canticles, allelujas, and the Gloria In excelsis, &c.?

To gradually prepare the minds of the faithful for the serious time of penance and sorrow, for sins committed, and for the actual fast. So the priest appears on the altar in violet, the color of penance, and half of the altar is covered with a violet curtain. To arouse our sorrow for our sins, and the need of repentance, the Church at the Introit cries, in the name of all mankind, with David: “The sorrows of death surrounded me, the sorrows of hell encompassed me. In my affliction I called upon the Lord, and He heard my voice from his holy temple.” (Ps. xvii. 5 – 9.) I will love thee, O Lord, my strength; the Lord is my firmament, my refuge, my deliverer. (Ps. xvii. 2 – 3.) Glory be to the Father, &c. 

by Fr. Francis Xavier Weninger, 1876

Jesus asks the discontented laborers: “Is thy eye evil, because I am good?” Why do they murmur? Have they been obliged to exceed the stipulated amount of labor? No! Have they worked longer than the time specified? No! Has not the master promptly paid them? Yes! Did he give them less than he promised? No! What then is the cause of their discontent? It is envy, because those who were sent later into the vineyard to work, received the same wages.

Envy is a most dangerous, execrable yet concealed vice; a vice of which, many are guilty, but whose real wickedness few recognise. Let us employ this hour in considering its dangers.

Mary, mother of love, pray for us, that the pestilential breath of this sin may never pollute our soul! I speak in the most holy name of Jesus, to the greater glory of God! We can better recognize the turpitude and wickedness of envy, by considering the beauty, merit and amiable qualities of the opposite virtue–true, heroic brotherly love.

The love of our neighbor for the love of God is a virtue which inspires us to love others as ourselves, to wish them all the good we wish ourselves, and to do for them all that we would do for our own interests. Of this commandment Christ says: “It is like unto the other,” namely: to the commandment of loving God, and our salvation depends on our observance of it. Thus teach Christ and His Apostles, especially St. Paul and St. John, both of whom emphatically and frequently insist upon it.

Envy is the vice directly opposed to this commandment. This will become clear to us if we consider the teachings of St. Paul in regard to the qualities of true, active, brotherly love. “Charity,” says he, “is patient, is kind; charity envieth not, is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth: beareth all things, believeth all things” (i Cor. 13. 4).

Let us reverse these qualities, and we have the most perfect picture of envy. Envy is not kind; on the contrary, it is cruel, selfish, and without compassion for the needs and sufferings of others.

Envy provokes to anger, and leaves nothing untried to prevent the well-being of others. Envy seeks only its own good, and is arrogant. It thinks and does evil.

Who can count all the vices whose source is envy? Jealousy, mistrust, calumny, deceit, enmity! Envy is easily roused to anger, and brooks little contradiction. It rejoices not at the good fortune of others, but is pleased, rather, at the contrary. Oh, how terrible a vice! it tears up by the very roots, the beautiful flower of brotherly love!

I say, secondly, what a foolish vice! For it deserves also this stigma. Every sin bears the mark of insanity, and therefore it is that Holy Writ calls the sinner a fool. It were easy to point out the characteristics of insanity in the misdeeds of sinners, especially in the envious.

Envy deprives man of the use of his reason, robs him of strength of mind, and exerts an evil influence on his other faculties. The possessions of his neighbor seem better than his own, for no other reason than that another and not he is the owner!

Besides, he who is guilty of other sins has at least some satisfaction: the proud when he is honored; the miser when he counts his money and fills his coffers; the intemperate while he eats and drinks, and so of others. The envious have only the satisfaction of their anger.

Foolish vice! It harms itself while yielding to its own indulgence What a foolish, but at the same time, what a dangerous vice! It was envy that brought sin among the angels. Lucifer and his adherents, as the Fathers of the Church teach us, envied the glory of Christ, Who in His human nature stood below them, but Whom they were commanded to glorify and worship on account of the hypostatic union with the person of the Son of God.

As regards man, Holy Writ teaches us that it was through the envy of Satan that sin entered paradise. The envy of the serpent would deprive the human race not only of paradise but also of heaven. It has cast upon us innumerable woes, and has exposed us to countless dangers in working out the salvation of our soul. Satan envied mankind who were destined to take the place of the fallen angels in heaven.

Woe to us if we ever hearken to the voice of envy! Satan will then find it easy to assail us with temptations of all kinds! The first born of men became a murderer on account of envy. It was envy that induced Cain to kill Abel. It was envy that nailed the Redeemer of mankind to the cross.

It is true that pride introduced heresy into the world, and thus corrupted countless souls and wrought their eternal ruin; but envy is the twin-brother of pride, the second poisonous fang of the serpent of hell. Not seldom has its influence been felt since the origin and dissemination of heresy, especially since the last and most pernicious of all, namely, Protestantism.

Pride mated with envy has given birth in our own day to the heresy whose followers style themselves the Old Catholics. Yet more lamentable is the fact that envy, even among the good, has succeeded in preventing much that otherwise would have been done for the salvation of souls and the welfare of the Church, thus effecting incalculable mischief in every age of the Christian era.

It is envy that lights the torch of war among nations, and destroys the peace and happiness of congregations and home circles. Yere there no envy among mortals earth would become a paradise. Envy were capable of changing even heaven into a place of torment, and for this reason it is, as Gregory the Great says, “The mark of the damned.”

The condition of the envious is the more dangerous, because the poison of envy is concealed. How few think themselves guilty of this sin! how few accuse themselves of it, and endeavor to uproot it from their hearts with the determination of St. Francis of Sales, who says: “Did I know that a fibre of envy were beating in my heart, I would tear it out!”

Follow his example, cost what it may, and instead of that detestable parasite, guard deep within your heart the holy virtue of heroic brotherly love! Amen!

“Why stand you here all the day idle?”–Matt. 20.

The reproach which Christ in today’s Gospel addresses to those who remained idle until the eleventh hour, is unfortunately one which might he addressed to the greater portion of mankind, yes even to many of the children of the Church.

We usually live careless of eternity, seemingly forgetful why we are here upon earth, and that this life was not given us to seek the honors, joys and treasures of this world, but to gather merit for eternity. How many men, how many children even of the Church are idle in this regard!

Let us earnestly take to heart this reproach, at once so true so important, so salutary for time and eternity, and endeavor to purchase back the hours we lost in idleness, and to employ with the zeal of the saints the days still left to us.

Mary, thou faithful handmaid of the Lord, pray for us that, following thy example, we may employ our entire life in gaining our salvation through Jesus Christ our Redeemer! I speak in the most holy name of Jesus, to the greater glory of God!

“Why stand you here all the day idle?” What an astonishing, incomprehensible, and yet only too true fact! This becomes clear to us if we consider the character of our life upon earth, and the relation in which it stands to eternity. Our life here below is the time which God gives us to prepare ourselves for the world to come.

If we reflect how precious time is, how short and how uncertain are the days of our life, we certainly would expect man to think of nothing else, than how to employ the days of his life in securely reaching that end for which life was given.

A crown, a high degree of glory, is the recompense for every moment well employed. St. Chrysostom was right when he exclaimed: “Time, thou art worth as much as God!” But time is so short; for what is the longest life compared to eternity? In addition to this, not one moment of this short time is certain. How often death surprises man, and then his precious time is gone, never to return. Man knows this, the Christian believes it; therefore how incomprehensible their neglect to employ their time after the zealous earnestness of the saints! This becomes still more incomprehensible, when we consider how provident man is of his time in regard to temporal affairs and the acquisition of earthly goods. They hesitate not to cross the ocean in the often disappointed hope of securing employment and gaining money, while, if they only seize the opportunity, they will never lack profitable labor in the grand affair of their salvation.

And yet how many lose and kill time! I wish to call your attention to the following classes of idlers:

The first are those who lose their time from sheer indolence. They are those drones, who do their duty neither as citizens nor as Christians. They dream away their time, and awake when it is too late, to the grand reality of life. They want self-abnegation. These . especially deserve the reproach: “Why stand you here idle?”

The second class are those who idle away their time by excessive labor, not for the salvation of their soul but through an inordinate care for the things of this world. I call them industrious idlers. Apparently they are occupied, but in reality they do nothing, since they are busy only for this fleeting world and not for eternity. They think themselves, however, much wiser than those who fail to accumulate an equal amount of temporal wealth. But all their labor, all their success is of no value towards their eternal welfare; indeed, as far as this is concerned they might better, perhaps, have remained as idle as the former. For, in their eagerness to gain temporal goods, they may have yielded to temptation and then, being in the state of sin, gained nothing even when they seemed to be laboring for heaven. These are the industrious idlers who, in the words of Holy Writ, exclaim when it is too late: “We wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity” and of temporal care.

There are others who, though they live in the state of grace, may yet be said to lose the time which has been granted to them to work out their salvation. To this third class of idlers belong those who lose their time in vain conversations and idle gossiping. Oh, how many apparently pious souls belong to this class of idlers! They talk ten, nay a hundred times too much. Even in necessary business how many useless words are spoken, how many moments wasted in idleness! Instead of leaving after having obtained the desired information, we remain and continue conversing about the same affair, though we previously stated all that was necessary; and in this manner we lose the time we should give to work.

But how shall we designate the many idlers who lose their time by too frequent visits and by prolonging this useless and sometimes dangerous pastime, till late in the night? Instead of regulating our visits by the just demands of friendship or of Christian neighborly love, we seek only to enjoy the society and conversation of others, forgetting that we could employ our time much better in sanctifying ourselves and others by works of charity.

Lastly, what shall we say of the idleness of pleasure-seekers, of those who pass day and night in gambling, dancing and other worldly amusements? How much time is lost for eternity in this manner! How much in visiting watering places, frequenting theatres and balls! There is also a certain class of people who lose their time in travelling for the sake of pleasure. I call these travelling idlers.

To all these we must needs add the large number of drunkards who, in their revels, heed not quickly passing time, and employ it neither for their temporal nor spiritual welfare who squander their money, impoverish their families and not unfrequently end their days in the almshouse. What a despicable class of idlers!

In conclusion, let me mention those who are idlers on account of negligence in renewing their good intention. The good we do, must be done with the right intention, that is, for God’s sake and for His sake only. Of course this does not mean that a Christian may not transact business or perform this or that work for the sake of gain, friendship or neighborly love, as our circumstances in life make necessary; only let these good and praiseworthy intentions be secondary to the one just mentioned.

Christian, lay your hand upon your heart and tell me, if you do not belong to one of these classes of idlers, or perhaps to all of them? Make now the firm resolution of profiting well by the time yet left to you that, one day in the kingdom of eternal life, God may assign to you your reward! Amen! 

[fuckingfinwions]

AU: In Noldorin culture, starting at his majority at age 50, an elf sexually serves his father. After all, so much was putting into raising the child, it’s only fair that he gets to see what came of it. It would be abhorrent for a father to physically force or to sexually torment his son, but the son is expected to come to his father’s bed whenever requested, until the son reaches his second majority (age 100), or marries and starts a family of his own.

This fulfills the “leather/rubber” square of my season of kink card.

Gil-Galad and Maedhros sat across from each other. They had met at an abandoned village halfway between the two camps so that Elrond and Elros could go to the large, safer force. The main negotiations had been completed by letter, but now the two commanders were finally seeing each other face to face. Both had left their swords outside to demonstrate truce, though there were guards close enough to make betrayal costly.

Gil-Galad said, “Thank you for releasing the boys. What did you want to speak with me about?”

“That’s all the warmth you have to welcome your father?” Maedhros replied.

“As you are a murderer who hasn’t spoken to me since I was twelve, yes.”

“I sent you away for your safety after the war seemed hopeless. Do you really wish you had fought alongside me these past fifty years?”

“No!”

“Anyway, that touches on what I wanted to speak with you about. I have missed you, though even without me you have grown into a strong king.”

“Thank you for the compliment.”

“I have also missed the chance to see how you’ve grown as a man, as the reflection of my lover and myself. I would have that tonight.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Why not? You are my son, and I have the right to you. I’m not even considering repayment for the decades you stayed away from me.”

“It is a perverted tradition, and you are worthy of nothing.”

“This has nothing to do with your opinions of my actions. It is a part of Noldorin tradition as much as the crown; you can’t claim one without the other.”

“What would my other father say of this if he were here? Would Fingon be as willing to bend me over the nearest scrap of furniture?”

“You’ve truly been among Sindar too long! The homage of a son to his father is perfectly reasonable and honorable, not merely the refuge of immoral creatures such as you consider me. Fingon and I discussed that we would raise you to understand Noldorin customs and responsibility, and he would be grieved that you turn your back on them.”

“If being among Sindar allowed me to see clearly what is unnatural and marred about having sex with someone you raised from a child, I am glad of it.”

“Unnatural! What could be more natural than to wish how to see the person you find most beautiful in the world combines with yourself? And if you object to sex with someone who raised you, that should make me more appealing rather than less.”

A terrible thought occurred to GIl-Galad. “If you think this way, I assume your brother does as well, and he raised Elwing’s sons. Were they forced to pay for their care the same way?”

“You are phrasing it in the worst possible way, but no. Though the twins call Maglor 'father’, he does not claim any rights over them. And besides, as Peredhel it is hard to know when they are of age.”

Gil-Galad let out a sigh of relief.

“You, though, are my son, and I am growing frustrated that you will acknowledge that but not your duties.”

“Why should I? What benefit will I get out of pretending you deserve anything from me?!”

“Benefit! Fine, then, if you want to cheapen yourself by bartering your body I can hardly stop you. First off, I won’t have my men shoot you tomorrow as you ride away, even though it would help me a lot for the Beleriand Noldor to have no king. Second, I will not tell your followers who curse my name whose son you are, nor will I tell Arafinwe either that you’re mine or that you have less respect for tradition and law than Feanor himself, even though it’s true.”

“So you put me in your bed through threats and blackmail.”

“It could have been out of your own desire and respect, but you decided that was not enough. I you need to be bribed with a treat though, I will tell you in the morning all the tactics that Morgoth has employed in the past five hundred years, so you can better defend against them.”

“You paying only after me? Hardly fair.”

“I am already paying for what is mine by right. I think you have heard quite well what happens to those who try to extort me.”

“Fine. For tonight, I will obey you, Father.”

“Good. Start by taking off your armor, I can hardly see the shape of you.”

Gil-Galad did so, setting each piece off to the side and wondering if this was all an attempt to get him vulnerable enough for an assassination. He struggled with the buckles on the back of his thighs, usually having a squire to help with them.

Maedhros approached, and Gil-Galad tensed. Maedhros undid the buckles that Gil-Galad had been having trouble with, then moved upwards. Maedhros kissed the back of Gil-Galad’s neck as he undid the buckles on his shoulders.

When Gil-Galad was down to his tunic and hose, Maedhros said “very good. Help me with mine now; as I’m not wearing full plate it should be faster.”

Gil-Galad pulled the mail tunic over Maedhros’s head, and wondered aloud, “Even with each other’s help, are we going to be able to put all this back on?”

Maedhros gave an uncaring shrug once he was down to his leather riding pants and jerkin. “Probably not.”

“But people will know!”

“Maglor will guess, but no one else knows you’re my son. You can say that we were working late into the night and sleeping in armor is uncomfortable. Or you can say that the vile kinslayer threatened you into sex, I don’t particularly care. Just know that if anyone tries to avenge your honor their death will be on your conscience.”

“Are you-” Gil-Galad bit off the comment he was going to make. “Don’t joke about that tonight; not if you want me to stay polite.”

“If you inherited the family temper, you ought to practice controlling it more, especially as a king,” Maedhros chided. “But very well.”

Maedhros stepped back and looked at  Gil-Galad; he made a pretty picture. His clothes had been disheveled by the armor’s removal and Gil-Galad had not bothered to put them back in place.

“You look pretty, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy what’s under the clothes even more. Undress for me, slowly.”

Gil-Galad began to unlace his shirt. He looked Maedhros in the eye for a moment, then hastily glanced away. Once the shirt was unlaced at the neck he lifted it a few inches, paused to glance at Maedhros without making eye contact, lifted it an inch more and paused again. Maedhros was about to yell in frustration when Gil-Galad yanked the shirt up until was all bunched between his nipples and chin and wiggled his shoulders, perhaps to show of their breadth.

Gil-Galad was so obviously nervous that he nearly got his arms stuck in the shirt, but Maedhros was far too distracted to help. Maedhros had been right about how much he would enjoy seeing his son’s body. The breadth in the shoulders was all Fingon, but light skin dotted with freckles was barely a shade darker than Maedhros’s own. Gil-Galad’s height came from him as well, and that lovely chest several inches closer to Maedhros’s gaze than when he was with Fingon.

Their similar heights also made Gil-Galad’s lack of eye contact extremely obvious. He wasn’t looking up from his lashes and playing the ingenue, but rather staring at a fixed point a few inches past Maedhros’s left ear. It couldn’t be the ear itself, as that had been gone for centuries, and most people didn’t find it’s lack interesting after a moment or two of shock.

“There’s no need to be nervous. Even if I’m not your first choice of lover, I assure you that I will not cause you pain and have every intention of bringing you pleasure alongside my own.”

Gil-Galad blushed and mumbled for a moment.

“What was that?”

“Not my first choice, but my first all the same.”

“Really? You’re a virgin?”

“Yes. It hasn’t seemed worth the headache pursuing anyone.”

“Are there none who pursue you?” Maedhros asked as he walked closer.

Gil-Galad shook his head.

“You mean that a beautiful, brave, noble young man such as yourself has not yet been recognized as the treasure you are?” Maedhros was now standing with his clothed chest less than an inch from Gil-Galad’s bare one, still refraining from touching. He leaned close and whispered in his son’s ear, “That is a travesty I will thoroughly make up for tonight.”

Gil-Galad shivered and turned his head to look Maedhros in the eye. Maedhros held his gaze for only a moment before leaning in still further, capturing his lips and pressing against his front.

Gil-Galad had remained soft until now, but the leather laces rubbing against his chest began to stir him. He reached for them to try and get the two of them back on equal footing, but Maedhros caught his hand.

“Lately, I am more beautiful while clothed. You are magnificent though, and I expect I’ll like what’s under your trousers even more. Take them of; I want to see all of you,” Maedhros said, backing up a few inches so Gil-Galad could have room.

Gil-Galad did. The tent was chilly, and he leaned back towards Maedhros as soon as possible. His cock brushed against Maedhros’s thigh, the leather sticking and releasing.

“You certainly get the length from me, but that curve is all Fingon. I wonder if liking your balls played with is a family trait as well.” Maedhros reached down with his right arm, the left being occupied tracing patterns on Gil-Galad’s back. Maedhros wore an odd sort of glove on the handless wrist, but he had a lot of practice and was very skillful with it. He caressed Gil-Galad’s sack, letting the leather glove drag along the sensitive skin while never pressing too hard.

Gil-Galad moaned.

“It seems so,” Maedhros said, drifting his fingers lower as his right arm maintained its place.

Gil-Galad started forward when his father’s fingers found their goal. Even one finger was more than he had ever had inside him, and he was scared of how large a cock would feel.

Maedhros said, “Deep breaths, relax and just focus on what you’re feeling right now.”

Gil-Galad let his head rest on Maedhros’s shoulder and did so, inhaling the musky scent of the leather overlaid with the oil worked in to keep it clean. It was heady.

Maedhros was starting to sweat, but he had no intention of undressing beyond what was necessary, and not until the time it was necessary. He let the sweat run down his face and into his collar as he trailed kisses across his son’s face.

Gil-Galad was practically overwhelmed with sensation. The finger inside him had found a spot that made him see stars. Every time he tried to move away his cock rubbed against the firm leather of Maedhros’s pants, or against the sleeve where Maedhro’s arm was still toying with his balls. The kisses were a light contrast, until Maedhros began kissing his lips as well.

Gil-Glad came the moment is father’s tongue parted his lips. He threw back his head and moaned. Maedhros looked sweaty but still fully dressed as if he had come in from the training yard - with the exception of a very obvious white stain on one thigh and halfway up his belly. Gil-Galad thought he could have come again from the sight alone.

“I’d say this night is off to a very good start,” Maedhros remarked, making no move to wipe away the mess.

[teccams-socks]

Laurian and the Chandrian

“Since you asked so sweetly, Cinder is the one you want. Remember him? White hair? Dark eyes? Did things to your mother, you know. Terrible. She held up well though. Laurian was always a trouper, if you’ll pardon the expression. Much better than your father, with all his begging and blubbering.”

My mind flashed pictures of things I had tried to forget for years. My mother, her hair wet with blood, her arms unnaturally twisted, broken at the wrist, the elbow. My father, his belly cut open, had left a trail of blood for twenty feet. He’d crawled to be closer to her. - The Wise Man’s Fear, Chapter 104: The Cthaeh, pg 757

____________

       Kvothe’s graphic description of his parents’ murders, finally given to us in Book 2 thanks to the Cthaeh’s taunting. Sorry for bringing it up again.

It’s obvious here that though both were killed horribly, Laurian was tortured prior to her death, and Arliden was not. He was given one fatal gut wound, and though he died slowly, like Alleg later in the same book, he was dead as soon as he was wounded, “he just hadn’t stopped moving yet” (WMF, Chapter 132: The Broken Circle, pg 961).

Maybe Cinder tortured Laurian just because some people like torturing women more. That’s what I assumed when I first read it. But Haliax went with them on that escapade. Haliax stopped Cinder from tormenting young Kvothe, saying, “This one has done nothing. Send him to the soft and painless blanket of his sleep.... You are too fond of your little cruelties. All of you. I am glad I decided to accompany you today. You are straying, indulging in whimsy. Some of you seem to have forgotten what it is we seek, what we wish to achieve” (NotW, Chapter 16: Hope, pgs 128-129).

Haliax was there enforcing their goals, which means torturing Laurian had a purpose other than cruelty.

Kvothe tells us his parents were writing the song about Lanre together. Everything Arliden knew about them, Laurian knew as well. So she was not tortured for information about their sources, or anything to do with the song. (Unless the Chandrian assumed she would be more likely to talk than Arliden, which is unlikely, because with seven of them there, they could easily have tortured both of them at the same time.)

So Laurian knew something that Arliden didn’t know (or the Chandrian thought she did).

It’s pretty widely accepted that Laurian used to be Natalia Lackless, the missing Lackless sister (there are a million posts about it on reddit, and it’s even in her Wiki page).

So the Chandrian found a Lackless heir unprotected, in a place where no one would ever know she was dead, and seized their chance.

The most likely thing they wanted information on: the Lackless Box.

Whatever theories you subscribe to about what the Box is, what’s in it, and how to open it, there’s no doubt that it is Important. A secret as old as the Lackless family, that they guard closer than anything else.

If the Chandrian were trying to get information about it from Laurian, then it’s a secret that has been kept even from them.

The Cthaeh says she “held up well.” Does that mean she told them nothing before she died? That she told them lies? That she held out for a while, but then gave in? We can’t know yet.

But, it means the Chandrian are coming for the Lacklesses. Finding out more about the Box serves their purpose. Which means the people who know about the box: Meluan, Alveron, Aculeus (possibly), and Kvothe, are all in their crosshairs.

Maybe they can’t go after the prestigious Lacklesses because they are protected. Maybe they’ll try, and there will be some upheaval in Temerant. Maybe that’s why Cinder was trying to destabilize the Maer. I could talk maybes all day, but there’s one thing we know.

Kvothe has none of the protections of money and power that Alveron and Meluan have. And now he knows about the Box. True, the Chandrian don’t know yet that he knows, but it’s only a matter of time. After all, he was in the company of Meluan Lackless, and shortly thereafter started researching Yllish story knots. Why would he do that? Not even Yllish people know Yllish anymore.

TL;DR

The Chandrian are after the secrets of the Lackless Box. Now that Kvothe knows about it, they will come for him. And it’s likely he will find out that his mother was a Lackless.

[thepapergirlandthespiegelman]

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR STONE OCEAN UNDER THE CUT

My thoughts on Stone Ocean Volume 1.

I spoiled myself pretty badly for Stone Ocean. Most people don’t seem to like it or take it seriously, so things tend to come up casually in conversation or online. So I knew going into this that I was going to have a hard time in the sense that a lot of really, really bad things happen to Jolyne.

Despite being prepared for the worst, I was still kind of stunned by how terrible things are in just the first few chapters. Terrible thing after terrible thing happens to Jolyne, many of which are some of my worst fears:

Her parents are divorced and her father, Jotaro, is completely absent and uncaring.

Her first love, presumably the only man who’s ever claimed to love her, who she’s blissfully, naively affectionate with, Romeo, is a complete and total scumbag. He drinks and drives, steals cars, and is probably involved in other illegal activities. While it’s not totally clear what their relationship is like, he’s probably taking advantage of her in some way.

Jolyne distracts Romeo from driving in a romantic moment, leading to him hitting and fatally injuring someone.

Romeo convinces Jolyne not to call an ambulance and to help him hide the evidence by stuffing the body into the trunk of his car.

Jolyne is arrested in her home.

In jail, a guard catches Jolyne masturbating, leaving her feeling humiliated.

Jolyne refuses to rat out Romeo, leading to her being prosecuted for both his and her crimes.

Not knowing what the Stand arrow is, Jolyne carelessly throws away the amulet from Jotaro.

Romeo pays Jolyne’s lawyer, who is working with a crooked judge, to prevent Jolyne from seeing her mother and to convince her to take a bad plea bargain.

This results in Jolyne confessing to crimes that she didn’t commit; being convicted of murder, abandonment of a body, and grand theft auto; and receiving a 15 year prison sentence.

The cruel prison staff put Jolyne in a straight jacket in a hot room intentionally to make her pass out.

They also force her to strip naked and display her body to them, along with poking her in the eyes and forcing her to sign a contract saying that their abusive and unsound medical examination was accurate.

Jolyne’s cellmate, Guess, acquires a Stand after coming into possession of the amulet and uses it to torment Jolyne.

It’s just painful to read. Jolyne starts out weak and emotionally crippled, and terrible things just keep happening to her. It seems like almost every other panel is her about to cry or wanting to give up or kill herself. There’s nothing wrong with writing about terrible things or people in tremendous pain, and people can work through their trauma and become stronger...but it just feels depressing and hopeless. Jolyne is so weak, has such little resolve, such poor moral character that she couldn’t even assert herself to her boyfriend when someone’s life was in question. It’s no wonder that Stone Free is so weak that the limit of its strength is crushing a coin (embarrassingly underpowered compared to most JoJos’ Stands). It’s surprising that Jolyne is able to have a Stand at all—does she really have any fighting spirit? How can a person like this hope to overcome all of the struggles that keep piling up on her, much less fight a universe-threatening evil?

I say this with nothing but love and affection for Jolyne. I don’t blame her for being weak. It’s very obviously not her fault. But she is weak, and I say that not out of criticism but out of concern. I can’t see how she can bear such great responsibility right now. She needs time and love and support so that she can grow stronger.

I won’t pass judgment on Araki for writing her this way either, because I do believe that stories about pain and trauma and imperfect, troubled people are important and powerful. Jolyne Cujoh, with her troubled morality and intense expressions of emotion, has the potential to say a lot about coping with trauma, in a way that greatly contrasts with a character like Giorno Giovanna, son of evil incarnate, with two other highly abusive and neglectful parents, yet who somehow never expresses his trauma in a toxic way, has resolve in abundance, and maintains an idealistic protectiveness of others. Jolyne certainly makes more sense to me than Giorno does (although there may be explanations for why Giorno is the way he is).

But if Araki does all this to Jolyne only to crush her spirit even further, kill her off, and have her team lose their battle...I just don’t know if I would see much value in that. Redemption and recovery are one thing. Writing a character to be broken from the beginning and then spending the rest of the story kicking them over and over again while they’re down until they die is...I don’t even know. I don’t know why someone would write a story like that, and I especially don’t understand it when it’s JoJo, a series that I thought was about the beauty of humanity and the strength of the human spirit.

I think part of my surprise at Stone Ocean tracks back to the fact that even knowing a lot of what happens, I still expected Jolyne to kinda be your average JoJo protagonist, masculine and strong and dominant and resolute and good. Actually, at one point, I was kind of afraid that she would just be a female Jotaro clone (she is his daughter, after all).

But she is...not. Those things. And again there’s a part of me that’s like, this could be really good. It’s really bold to have a protagonist who’s so different from the others in the series, so troubled, so flawed. And also so feminine and so affectionate; I really don’t like that all of the female JoJo characters are either pure/soft/kind and powerless or powerful but bitchy, so it’d be nice to see a female character who is openly, shamelessly loving and affectionate, but also very powerful (like Sailor Moon!).

It’s okay to have a different kind of protagonist, but if that different person ends up being the only JoJo who dies and loses...what exactly does that say? She is also the only JoJo to sort of/potentially kill a completely innocent civilian. I don’t want to be, like, “that feminist” or anything but...really...she is the only female JoJo. If she’s also objectively the worst JoJo, that sends a pretty terrible message. And I just don’t see why it should have to be this way.

Even if Jolyne does grow stronger, I won’t feel good about her as a character until/unless she comes to terms with the fact that she may have killed someone. What happened to her is absolutely awful and I feel terrible for her, but it still stands that she had some responsibility and some choice. She shouldn’t have been distracting Romeo while he was driving, and she should have called an ambulance once she saw that someone was hit. While Romeo undoubtedly bears most of the responsibility as the one driving and the one who first suggested that they hide the evidence and then pressured Jolyne into complying, I can’t pretend that Jolyne had no influence or free will at all.

It makes me feel terrible to think about Jolyne trying to cope with what she did. I can just imagine her crushed by the guilt, wanting to kill herself, unable to continue.

But it makes me feel even worse to think about her refusing to acknowledge her responsibility. She keeps saying that she was “framed,” which is technically true; she was framed for crimes that she did not commit. But at least in English (and I’m not sure if this is a quirk in translation), “framed” generally has the connotation of complete innocence; if someone was framed, they didn’t actually do anything. But even if Romeo hadn’t framed Jolyne for his crimes, Jolyne would still be guilty. If the person hit was still alive, she assisted in committing a murder by helping to put him into the trunk of the car. If he was already dead, it’s still desecration of a corpse and tampering with evidence. The latter is obviously infinitely less serious than the former, but we’ll never really know which one it is, since neither Romeo nor Jolyne even checked to see if the man was still alive, much less called a paramedic who could confirm death.

Jolyne Cujoh makes me feel really conflicted. I don’t know what to expect from here on out. I really want things to work out for her...but I already kinda know that they ultimately don’t. I want her to come to terms with what she did...but I fear that she sees herself as completely innocent and will never acknowledge that she did anything wrong.

I’ll keep reading, for now. But I can’t promise I’ll actually be able to finish this.

[kelvinerazo7]

10 Interesting Novels

Lord of the Flies (William Golding) At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate; this far from civilization the boys can do anything they want. Anything. They attempt to forge their own society, failing, however, in the face of terror, sin and evil. And as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far from reality as the hope of being rescued. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies is perhaps our most memorable novel about “the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart.”  (goodreads.com)

1984 (George Orwell) Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of modern life—the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language—and his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written.  (goodreads.com)

Animal Farm (George Orwell) A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned –a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible. When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.  (goodreads.com)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)) Harry Potter's life is miserable. His parents are dead and he's stuck with his heartless relatives, who force him to live in a tiny closet under the stairs. But his fortune changes when he receives a letter that tells him the truth about himself: he's a wizard. A mysterious visitor rescues him from his relatives and takes him to his new home, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. After a lifetime of bottling up his magical powers, Harry finally feels like a normal kid. But even within the Wizarding community, he is special. He is the boy who lived: the only person to have ever survived a killing curse inflicted by the evil Lord Voldemort, who launched a brutal takeover of the Wizarding world, only to vanish after failing to kill Harry. Though Harry's first year at Hogwarts is the best of his life, not everything is perfect. There is a dangerous secret object hidden within the castle walls, and Harry believes it's his responsibility to prevent it from falling into evil hands. But doing so will bring him into contact with forces more terrifying than he ever could have imagined. Full of sympathetic characters, wildly imaginative situations, and countless exciting details, the first installment in the series assembles an unforgettable magical world and sets the stage for many high-stakes adventures to come.  (goodreads.com)

A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens, Joe L. Wheeler (Contributor)) 'If I had my way, every idiot who goes around with Merry Christmas on his lips, would be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. Merry Christmas? Bah humbug!' Introduction and Afterword by Joe Wheeler To bitter, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, Christmas is just another day. But all that changes when the ghost of his long-dead business partner appears, warning Scrooge to change his ways before it's too late. Part of the Focus on the Family Great Stories collection, this edition features an in-depth introduction and discussion questions by Joe Wheeler to provide greater understanding for today's reader. "A Christmas Carol" captures the heart of the holidays like no other novel.  (goodreads.com)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)) The Dursleys were so mean and hideous that summer that all Harry Potter wanted was to get back to the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. But just as he's packing his bags, Harry receives a warning from a strange, impish creature named Dobby who says that if Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts, disaster will strike And strike it does. For in Harry's second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor, Gilderoy Lockhart, a spirit named Moaning Myrtle who haunts the girls' bathroom, and the unwanted attentions of Ron Weasley's younger sister, Ginny. But each of these seem minor annoyances when the real trouble begins, and someone -- or something -- starts turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects . . . Harry Potter himself?  (goodreads.com)

Fatherland (Robert Harris) It is twenty years after Nazi Germany's triumphant victory in World War II and the entire country is preparing for the grand celebration of the Führer's seventy-fifth birthday, as well as the imminent peacemaking visit from President Kennedy. Meanwhile, Berlin Detective Xavier March -- a disillusioned but talented investigation of a corpse washed up on the shore of a lake. When a dead man turns out to be a high-ranking Nazi commander, the Gestapo orders March off the case immediately. Suddenly other unrelated deaths are anything but routine. Now obsessed by the case, March teams up with a beautiful, young American journalist and starts asking questions...dangerous questions. What they uncover is a terrifying and long-concealed conspiracy of such astonding and mind-numbing terror that is it certain to spell the end of the Third Reich -- if they can live long enough to tell the world about it.  (goodreads.com)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)) Harry Potter's third year at Hogwarts is full of new dangers. A convicted murderer, Sirius Black, has broken out of Azkaban prison, and it seems he's after Harry. Now Hogwarts is being patrolled by the dementors, the Azkaban guards who are hunting Sirius. But Harry can't imagine that Sirius or, for that matter, the evil Lord Voldemort could be more frightening than the dementors themselves, who have the terrible power to fill anyone they come across with aching loneliness and despair. Meanwhile, life continues as usual at Hogwarts. A top-of-the-line broom takes Harry's success at Quidditch, the sport of the Wizarding world, to new heights. A cute fourth-year student catches his eye. And he becomes close with the new Defense of the Dark Arts teacher, who was a childhood friend of his father. Yet despite the relative safety of life at Hogwarts and the best efforts of the dementors, the threat of Sirius Black grows ever closer. But if Harry has learned anything from his education in wizardry, it is that things are often not what they seem. Tragic revelations, heartwarming surprises, and high-stakes magical adventures await the boy wizard in this funny and poignant third installment of the beloved series.  (goodreads.com)

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)) Harry Potter is midway through his training as a wizard and his coming of age. Harry wants to get away from the pernicious Dursleys and go to the International Quidditch Cup. He wants to find out about the mysterious event that's supposed to take place at Hogwarts this year, an event involving two other rival schools of magic, and a competition that hasn't happened for a hundred years. He wants to be a normal, fourteen-year-old wizard. But unfortunately for Harry Potter, he's not normal - even by wizarding standards. And in his case, different can be deadly.  (goodreads.com)

The Hobbit or There and Back Again (J.R.R. Tolkien) Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent. The text in this 372-page paperback edition is based on that first published in Great Britain by Collins Modern Classics (1998), and includes a note on the text by Douglas A. Anderson (2001). Unforgettable!  (goodreads.com)

[ajax-b1ue]

Suspension of Disbelief: Ch 5

2018 Big Bang Fic Challenge Submission Amazing Artist, Big Bang Partner, and Header Creator: @ahoardofsides​ TW: Villainous Deceit, angst, manipulation, gaslighting, self-deprecation, self-harm, anxiety attack, violence, blood, attempted murder Pairings: Platonic LAMP WC: 2397

( Master | AO3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Chapter 5: Measure for Measure | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 )

Thomas sat alone in his living room, gasping for breath.

He had been doing nothing more stressful than watching television, when without warning, he found himself plunged into an anxiety attack. It was made all the more terrifying by the fact that he had no idea what even started it— all he knew was, he couldn’t seem to stop it.

When it finally started to ease, Thomas found himself sitting on the floor— back pressed against his couch, legs curled up to his chest, uncertain of how long he’d been there. He was shaking, sweating, and crying; he ducked his head between his knees, just struggling to breathe.

It took several long minutes before Thomas even thought of his sides, and several more before he could manage enough focus to try summoning them.

Back in the mindscape, Virgil was still passed out, but Logan and Patton both felt the pull as they tended to the anxious side— and at first, resisted it.

Logan glanced up from where he was kneeling next to the couch, meeting Patton’s anxious gaze. “Thomas likely wants an explanation for what just happened,” he suggested. His gaze drifted back to Virgil, wondering how on Earth one could actually explain… this.

Well…

After a moment, Logan began to push himself to his feet. If there was any explanation to be had, he supposed it only made sense that he be the one—

A hand on his arm halted that line of thought. Logan turned to Patton, blinking, but before he could ask, the moral side said, “You stay with Virgil.”

Again, the logical side was caught off guard. Then Logan tried to protest, but Patton cut him off.

“I think it’s better if I go.” His tone brooked no room for argument.

Thomas still sat on the floor of his living room, utterly confused and upset. When none of his sides showed up, though, his worry only grew. 

Did something happen to them? He swallowed, his throat tight. What if something had? Could he even do anything about it? Thomas took a few more shuddering breaths, doing his best to stay calm and not work himself back up into another attack. Then, he tried one more time.

At first he thought he had failed again, until he heard Patton’s very somber voice.

“Hey there, Thomas.” 

Thomas’s head snapped up, and his stomach gave an odd sort of leap. He couldn’t help but remember what happened with Deceit just a few weeks earlier, but tried to shove that fear back down. “Patton? …Where is everyone? What’s going on?”

Patton’s uncharacteristic reluctance to answer only made Thomas that much more worried. “It’s… complicated, kiddo.” 

Thomas was taken aback, trying to find words. “Complicated… what does that… Is… is everyone okay?” It took a few seconds, but Thomas connected the dots between the other sides’ absence and his anxiety attack— “Is Virgil okay?”

Patton pressed his lips together, unhappy. At last, he admitted quietly, “He will be.”

Thomas reeled. He opened his mouth to ask more, but Patton unexpectedly held up a hand and the words died on Thomas’s lips.

“We’re… still trying to get it all sorted out, right now,” Patton told him softly. “I’ll be glad to tell you more when I know it, but, in the meantime…”

Thomas had at least a hundred questions, but just nodded mutely. His gaze fell to the floor. 

“Are you okay, kiddo?” Thomas glanced back up. The worry in Patton’s expression made his stomach flip again. Then he felt stupid for feeling ashamed— of course his sides would know he had a panic attack, they had to go through it— but he couldn’t quite help it.

“Yeah… yeah,” Thomas said at last. He ran a hand through his hair, which was damp with sweat. “I think so, now.”

Patton nodded, letting out a soft breath. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he said. “…You should know, it wasn’t Virgil’s fault,” he added, quieter, making Thomas look up again. “It wasn’t on purpose.”

Thomas inhaled, then exhaled hard. “…From the sound of things, you should probably be getting back, huh?”

“I’ll stay as long as you need me to,” was Patton’s immediate response, and Thomas couldn’t help a small smile, even if it was an anxious one. “They’ve got things under control without me,” Patton insisted.

“No, it’s okay,” Thomas said. “Just… when you know more. Let me know?”

Patton nodded earnestly once more. “You betcha. And if you need us—”

“I’ll call,” Thomas promised. He then gave a small wave; Patton returned it with one of his own as he sank out, leaving Thomas alone in his living room once more.

Roman sat alone on the floor of his room, back pressed against one of the legs of his bed, numb.

He didn’t know how long it’d been, or how long since Deceit disappeared; the tear stains on his face had long since dried. He was still caught between trying to process what happened, and trying not to.

He had felt Thomas’s call. He had steadfastly refused to be summoned, though, despite the discomfort of ignoring it. How could he possibly face Thomas— face the others? After what he did?

He buried his face in his hands.

Roman still couldn’t escape the mental image of Virgil bleeding. As terrified as he was of returning to the common area and facing the others, not knowing Virgil’s condition ate at him even worse. Eventually, it became too much to bear, and he managed to rouse himself enough to try to go check on the other sides.

Roman made it as far as the hallway into the living room.

He was brought up short by the sight of Virgil sleeping on the couch— left arm bandaged and in a sling. His hoodie was nowhere to be seen, but he had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. More than that, the anxious side was even paler than usual, his face drawn as though still in pain. Roman was overtaken by nausea, gripping at the wall for anything to support himself on.

Virgil was not as asleep as Roman thought, though, and— perhaps sensing Roman’s presence— he opened his eyes. They immediately widened in alarm, and his whole body stiffened.

Roman faltered, almost wilting where he stood. But he was also desperate to go to his fellow side, to make this right, though he didn’t see how he possibly could. “Virgil,” he started, taking a halting step forward. “I—”

Virgil’s reaction was immediate and visceral: ‘“Stay away from me!” And not just what he said, but his voice— hoarse, with an edge of distortion. Roman flinched hard, jerking back.

Logan and Patton came running, having heard Virgil’s cry. In an instant, Logan’s expression turned livid, and he looked ready to tear into Roman.

Before he could, Patton stepped in. “Logan— don’t,” he said, forcefully cutting Logan off, and put himself between the logical side and Roman. But he also glanced over his shoulder at the creative side, his voice growing quiet. “You should go. For now, at least.”

Roman rocked back on his heels, mouth hanging open, unable to form words. The rejection—  from all three of them— pierced Roman straight to the heart.

He backpedaled, stumbling a few steps. Then, Roman turned and ran.

He ran, and ran, tripping over his own feet, desperate to go anywhere, so long as it was far, far away from the other sides and their fear and anger and betrayal. If Roman had been able to think clearly, he might have been able to acknowledge that wasn’t something he could outrun.

As it was, Roman found himself retreating not to his room this time, but back to Thomas’s imagination— now a dark and twisted forest, barren of life.

This time, it was Roman who felt like he couldn’t breathe. As he tripped yet again, boot catching on a gnarled root, he didn’t bother to try to keep his feet, instead falling hard to his hands and knees. He wrapped his arms around his middle, ducking his head, and folded in on himself.

I don’t know what to do…

“Roman, Roman… why are you crying?” 

Roman gasped for breath, trying not to do just that, as Deceit’s voice drifted out to him. 

“Don’t worry,” Deceit assured him softly. “They’ll take you back… They love you.”

“They hate me,” Roman whispered, his voice raw.

Then, as though summoned by his self-loathing, another voice joined in:

“Of course we hate you.”

Roman snapped his head up so fast his neck popped. “L-Logan?”

There, emerging from the trees— the logical side bore down on him, his eyes cold and infuriated. “After what you did? How could you think we wouldn’t hate you?”

“I-I—”

“How could you do something so awful?” Roman’s words choked off in his throat as Patton joined Logan, tears streaming down his face. “How could you be so horrible?!” They advanced on him together, faces twisted in hatred and disgust.

For a brief second in which his heart stopped, Roman believed it actually was the other sides. He couldn’t stand, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but stare with wide eyes, withering under their verbal assault.

“We trusted you!” “You never think.” “You’re supposed to be a hero!” “How stupid can you be?”

“You’re pathetic.”

Roman’s breath caught in his throat— a third voice had joined them.

Standing between Patton and Logan, a little further back, was Virgil… a Virgil who was wearing his hoodie. Who was still conscious. Who had no bandage on his arm.

And then Roman understood with a start— they weren’t real. They were figments of the imagination.

…No, he realized a moment later, looking up. Wait.

Roman could see Deceit standing back in the tree line, watching him with an unblinking stare. It was Deceit creating them— though he shouldn’t have been able to.

“Why are you doing this??” Roman demanded, agonized. “Why are you tormenting me with these… illusions,” Roman breathed, struck with sudden clarity.

“The truth is a terrible, hurtful thing,” Deceit answered, moving from his place in the shadows. “Fiction is so much kinder… I just want to help you see that.”

Roman staggered to his feet, pulling himself up on the trunk of a tree, mind racing. Deceit glided towards him, hands outstretched as though to help Roman up, or perhaps even to embrace him again. 

“It was you,” Roman murmured. The images that made him believe Virgil was a villain and led to him attacking the other side were illusions. Deceptions.

He shoved himself away from Deceit’s reaching arms, backpedaling several steps. “You made me attack Virgil! Why?!”

Deceit scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Oh yes, Roman, I made you do it. I made you assume the worst of your ‘friend’. I made you decide to fight him. And I certainly made you bring that sword down on his arm—”

“Shut up,” Roman growled.

“Just how hard did you swing?” Deceit asked, head tilting with curiosity. “There was quite a lot of blood… I wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t thrown his arm up?” Deceit pondered aloud. “But don’t worry, I’m sure Virgil will get over it and forgive you.” 

“Shut up!’ Roman shouted. “I don’t know what your game is,” he snapped, unsheathing his sword and advancing on the other side, “but if you think I’m going to stand by and let you harm them, or Thomas—”

Deceit stared, unimpressed— and as Roman raised his sword threateningly he simply gestured with one hand. 

Every muscle in Roman’s body froze.

The creative side was unable to move or speak; he tried to demand, “How?!”, but couldn’t coax more than the slightest noise from his throat. The only thing that seemed to not be paralyzed was Roman’s heart; it pounded faster and faster in his chest as he silently panicked.

Deceit huffed, then circled Roman slowly. “You genuinely believe I’d hurt Thomas… Oh Roman. You always make me say such terrible, truthful things.” Leaning in from behind him, Deceit rested his chin on Roman’s shoulder. “It’s my job to protect Thomas— and reality? Is cruel.” He pulled away, completing his circle to wind up back in front of Roman. “Far better to be happy in a fantasy…” He paused, then turned to look back at the princely side. “You appreciate that.” Deceit tilted his head as though considering Roman, who was still frozen, then smiled. “Don’t worry. I’d never hurt Creativity either; I need you. Anxiety, though…”

Deceit’s smile faded. 

“Anxiety is supposed to protect Thomas too.” Deceit’s lip curled into a sneer. “And doesn’t he do such a good job? Thomas just loves panic attacks and constantly being miserable.” He rolled his eyes, and his voice dropped to a mutter. “Virgil exposes all the parts of Thomas that he doesn’t want to see, like a raw nerve…” He locked gazes with Roman, eyes intense and unblinking. “I’ll do better.”

Then, as if a switch was flipped, he continued on, almost lightly. “Now, Morality… that just gets in the way,” he lamented, gesturing in a, ‘what can you do?’ fashion. “We’ll have to get rid of him too.”

Roman would have thrown up if he could— Deceit was talking oh-so-casually about murdering two of his friends! Then it occurred to him… Deceit wasn’t talking in the singular. He had said, ‘we’.

Roman fought as hard as he could against Deceit’s hold, all of his muscles straining, blood pounding in his head. “Logic,” Deceit continued, unaware. “…Logan we can probably keep around, actually,” he mused. “I’ll just have to work with him a little first—”

His musings were abruptly interrupted by Roman choking out, “Nn… nnh… nnnNO!”

“Hush,” Deceit ordered, and Roman’s throat closed again.

The serpentine side smiled. “You’re adorable when you’re playing the hero.” He patted Roman’s cheek; the touch burned Roman to his very core, if only because he couldn’t tear himself away from it. “Don’t worry, it won’t always be like this,” Deceit assured him smoothly. “But right now, I do require your assistance— we’re going to go save the handsome Prince Thomas from himself.” He gently gripped the lapels of Roman’s jacket, fixing his collar for him, then looked back up into Roman’s eyes, smiling widely.

“Isn’t it nice to be needed, Roman?”

[drthetasigma14]

Lovecraft Fic/RP Prompts

The Commonplace Book of H.P. Lovecraft

This book consists of ideas, images, & quotations hastily jotted down for possible future use in weird fiction. Very few are actually developed plots—for the most part they are merely suggestions or random impressions designed to set the memory or imagination working. Their sources are various—dreams, things read, casual incidents, idle conceptions, & so on.—H. P. Lovecraft

Presented to R. H. Barlow, Esq., on May 7, 1934—in exchange for an admirably neat typed copy from his skilled hand.

1. Demophon shivered when the sun shone upon him. (Lover of darkness = ignorance.)

2. Inhabitants of Zinge, over whom the star Canopus rises every night, are always gay and without sorrow.

3. The shores of Attica respond in song to the waves of the Aegean.

4. Horror Story. Man dreams of falling—found on floor mangled as tho’ from falling from a vast height.

5. Narrator walks along unfamiliar country road,—comes to strange region of the unreal. 

6. In Ld Dunsany’s “Idle Days on the Yann.” The inhabitants of the antient Astahan, on the Yann, do all things according to antient ceremony. Nothing new is found. “Here we have fetter’d and manacled Time, who wou’d otherwise slay the Gods.”

7. Horror Story. The sculptured hand—or other artificial hand—which strangles its creator.

8. Hor. Sto. Man makes appt. with old enemy. Dies—body keeps appt.

9. Dr. Eben Spencer plot.

10. Dream of flying over city.

11. Odd nocturnal ritual. Beasts dance and march to musick.

12. Happenings in interval between preliminary sound and striking of clock—ending— “it was the tones of the clock striking three”.

13. House and garden—old—associations. Scene takes on strange aspect.

14. Hideous sound in the dark.

15. Bridge and slimy black waters.

16. The walking dead—seemingly alive, but—.

17. Doors found mysteriously open and shut etc.—excite terror.

18. Calamander-wood—a very valuable cabinet wood of Ceylon and S. India, resembling rosewood.

19. Revise 1907 tale—painting of ultimate horror.

20. Man journeys into the past—or imaginative realm—leaving bodily shell behind.

21. A very ancient colossus in a very ancient desert. Face gone—no man hath seen it. 

22. Mermaid Legend—Encyc. Britt. XVI—40.

23. The man who would not sleep—dares not sleep—takes drugs to keep himself awake. Finally falls asleep—and something happens. Motto from Baudelaire p. 214.

24. Dunsany—Go-By Street. Man stumbles on dream world—returns to earth—seeks to go back—succeeds, but finds dream world ancient and decayed as though by thousands of years. 

1919

25. Man visits museum of antiquities—asks that it accept a bas-relief he has just made—old and learned curator laughs and says he cannot accept anything so modern. Man says that ‘dreams are older than brooding Egypt or the contemplative Sphinx or garden-girdled Babylonia’ and that he had fashioned the sculpture in his dreams. Curator bids him shew his product, and when he does so curator shews horror. Asks who the man may be. He tells modern name. “No—before that” says curator. Man does not remember except in dreams. Then curator offers high price, but man fears he means to destroy sculpture. Asks fabulous price—curator will consult directors. Add good development and describe nature of bas-relief.

26. Dream of ancient castle stairs—sleeping guards—narrow window—battle on plain between men of England and men of yellow tabards with red dragons. Leader of English challenges leader of foe to single combat. They fight. Foe unhelmeted, but there is no head revealed. Whole army of foe fades into mist, and watcher finds himself to be the English knight on the plain, mounted. Looks at castle, and sees a peculiar concentration of fantastic clouds over the highest battlements.

27. Life and Death. Death—its desolation and horror—bleak spaces—sea-bottom—dead cities. But Life—the greater horror! Vast unheard-of reptiles and leviathans—hideous beasts of prehistoric jungle—rank slimy vegetation—evil instincts of primal man—Life is more horrible than death.

28. The Cats of Ulthar. The cat is the soul of antique Ægyptus and bearer of tales from forgotten cities of Meroë and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle’s lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language; but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten.

29. Dream of Seekonk—ebbing tide—bolt from sky—exodus from Providence—fall of Congregational dome. 

30. Strange visit to a place at night—moonlight—castle of great magnificence etc. Daylight shews either abandonment or unrecognisable ruins—perhaps of vast antiquity.

31. Prehistoric man preserved in Siberian ice. (See Winchell—Walks and Talks in the Geological field—p. 156 et seq.)

32. As dinosaurs were once surpassed by mammals, so will man-mammal be surpassed by insect or bird—fall of man before the new race.

33. Determinism and prophecy.

34. Moving away from earth more swiftly than light—past gradually unfolded—horrible revelation.

35. Special beings with special senses from remote universes. Advent of an external universe to view.

36. Disintegration of all matter to electrons and finally empty space assured, just as devolution of energy to radiant heat is known. Case of acceleration—man passes into space. 

37. Peculiar odour of a book of childhood induces repetition of childhood fancy.

38. Drowning sensations—undersea—cities—ships—souls of the dead. Drowning is a horrible death.

39. Sounds—possibly musical—heard in the night from other worlds or realms of being.

40. Warning that certain ground is sacred or accursed; that a house or city must not be built upon it—or must be abandoned or destroyed if built, under penalty of catastrophe. 

41. The Italians call Fear La figlia della Morte—the daughter of Death.

42. Fear of mirrors—memory of dream in which scene is altered and climax is hideous surprise at seeing oneself in the water or a mirror. (Identity?)

43. Monsters born living—burrow underground and multiply, forming race of unsuspected daemons.

44. Castle by pool or river—reflection fixed thro’ centuries—castle destroyed, reflection lives to avenge destroyers weirdly.

45. Race of immortal Pharaohs dwelling beneath pyramids in vast subterranean halls down black staircases. 

46 . Hawthorne—unwritten plot. Visitor from tomb—stranger at some publick concourse followed at midnight to graveyard where he descends into the earth.

47. From Arabia Encyc. Britan. II—255. Prehistoric fabulous tribes of Ad in the south, Thamood in the north, and Tasm and Jadis in the centre of the peninsula. “Very gorgeous are the descriptions given of Irem, the City of Pillars (as the Koran styles it) supposed to have been erected by Shedad, the latest despot of Ad, in the regions of Hadramaut, and which yet, after the annihilation of its tenants, remains entire, so Arabs say, invisible to ordinary eyes, but occasionally and at rare intervals, revealed to some heaven-favoured traveller.” // Rock excavations in N.W. Hejaz ascribed to Thamood tribe.

48. Cities wiped out by supernatural wrath.

49. AZATHOTH—hideous name.

50. Phleg′-e-thon: a river of liquid fire in Hades.

51. Enchanted garden where moon casts shadow of object or ghost invisible to the human eye.

52. Calling on the dead—voice or familiar sound in adjacent room.

53. Hand of dead man writes.

54. Transposition of identity.

55. Man followed by invisible thing.

56. Book or MS. too horrible to read—warned against reading it—someone reads and is found dead. Haverhill incident.

57. Sailing or rowing on lake in moonlight—sailing into invisibility.

58. A queer village—in a valley, reached by a long road and visible from the crest of the hill from which that road descends—or close to a dense and antique forest.

59. Man in strange subterranean chamber—seeks to force door of bronze—overwhelmed by influx of waters.

60. Fisherman casts his net into the sea by moonlight—what he finds.

61. A terrible pilgrimage to seek the nighted throne of the far daemon-sultan Azathoth.

62. Live man buried in bridge masonry according to superstition—or black cat.

63. Sinister names—Nasht—Kaman-Thah.

64. Identity—reconstruction of personality—man makes duplicate of himself.

65. Riley’s fear of undertakers—door locked on inside after death.

66. Catacombs discovered beneath a city (in America?).

67. An impression—city in peril—dead city—equestrian statue—men in closed room—clattering of hooves heard from outside—marvel disclosed on looking out—doubtful ending. 

68. Murder discovered—body located—by psychological detective who pretends he has made walls of room transparent. Works on fear of murderer.

69. Man with unnatural face—oddity of speaking—found to be a mask—Revelation.

70. Tone of extreme phantasy. Man transformed to island or mountain.

71. Man has sold his soul to devil—returns to family from trip—life afterward—fear—culminating horror—novel length. 

72. Hallowe’en incident—mirror in cellar—face seen therein—death (claw-mark?).

73. Rats multiply and exterminate first a single city and then all mankind. Increased size and intelligence.

74. Italian revenge—killing self in cell with enemy—under castle.

75. Black Mass under antique church.

76. Ancient cathedral—hideous gargoyle—man seeks to rob—found dead—gargoyle’s jaw bloody.

77. Unspeakable dance of the gargoyles—in morning several gargoyles on old cathedral found transposed.

78. Wandering thro’ labyrinth of narrow slum streets—come on distant light—unheard-of rites of swarming beggars—like Court of Miracles in Notre Dame de Paris.

79. Horrible secret in crypt of ancient castle—discovered by dweller.

80. Shapeless living thing forming nucleus of ancient building.

81. Marblehead—dream—burying hill—evening—unreality.

82. Power of wizard to influence dreams of others.

1920

83. Quotation “. . . a defunct nightmare, which had perished in the midst of its wickedness, and left its flabby corpse on the breast of the tormented one, to be gotten rid of as it might.”—Hawthorne

84. Hideous cracked discords of bass musick from (ruin’d) organ in (abandon’d) abbey or cathedral.

85. “For has not Nature, too, her grotesques—the rent rock, the distorting lights of evening on lonely roads, the unveiled structure of man in the embryo, or the skeleton?” Pater—Renaissance (da Vinci).

86. To find something horrible in a (perhaps familiar) book, and not to be able to find it again.

87. Borellus says, “that the Essential Salts of animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious man may have the whole ark of Noah in his own Study, and raise the fine shape of an animal out of its ashes at his pleasure; and that by the like method from the Essential Salts of humane dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal necromancy, call up the shape of any dead ancestor from the dust whereinto his body has been incinerated.”

88. Lonely philosopher fond of cat. Hypnotises it—as it were—by repeatedly talking to it and looking at it. After his death the cat evinces signs of possessing his personality. N.B. He has trained cat, and leaves it to a friend, with instructions as to fitting a pen to its right fore paw by means of a harness. Later writes with deceased’s own handwriting.

89. Lone lagoons and swamps of Louisiana—death daemon—ancient house and gardens—moss-grown trees—festoons of Spanish moss.

1922

90. Anencephalous or brainless monster who survives and attains prodigious size.

91. Lost winter day—slept over—20 yrs. later. Sleep in chair on summer night—false dawn—old scenery and sensations—cold—old persons now dead—horror—frozen?

92. Man’s body dies—but corpse retains life. Stalks about—tries to conceal odour of decay—detained somewhere—hideous climax.

93. A place one has been—a beautiful view of a village or farm-dotted valley in the sunset—which one cannot find again or locate in memory.

94. Change comes over the sun—shews objects in strange form, perhaps restoring landscape of the past.

95. Horrible Colonial farmhouse and overgrown garden on city hillside—overtaken by growth. Verse “The House” as basis of story.

96. Unknown fires seen across the hills at night.

97. Blind fear of a certain woodland hollow where streams writhe among crooked roots, and where on a buried altar terrible sacrifices have occur’d—Phosphorescence of dead trees. Ground bubbles.

98. Hideous old house on steep city hillside—Bowen St.—beckons in the night—black windows—horror unnam’d—cold touch and voice—the welcome of the dead.

1923

99. Salem story—the cottage of an aged witch—wherein after her death are found sundry terrible things.

100. Subterranean region beneath placid New England village, inhabited by (living or extinct) creatures of prehistoric antiquity and strangeness.

101. Hideous secret society—widespread—horrible rites in caverns under familiar scenes—one’s own neighbour may belong. 

102. Corpse in room performs some act—prompted by discussion in its presence. Tears up or hides will, etc.

103. Sealed room—or at least no lamp allowed there. Shadow on wall.

104. Old sea tavern now far inland from made land. Strange occurrences—sound of lapping of waves. 

105. Vampire visits man in ancestral abode—is his own father.

106. A thing that sat on a sleeper’s chest. Gone in morning, but something left behind.

1923

107. Wall paper cracks off in sinister shape—man dies of fright.

108. Educated mulatto seeks to displace personality of white man and occupy his body.

109. Ancient negro voodoo wizard in cabin in swamp—possesses white man.

110. Antediluvian—Cyclopean ruins on lonely Pacific island. Centre of earthwide subterranean witch cult.

111. Ancient ruin in Alabama swamp—voodoo.

112. Man lives near graveyard—how does he live? Eats no food.

113. Biological-hereditary memories of other worlds and universes. Butler—God Known and Unk. p. 59.

114. Death lights dancing over a salt marsh.

115. Ancient castle within sound of weird waterfall—sound ceases for a time under strange conditions.

116. Prowling at night around an unlighted castle amidst strange scenery.

117. A secret living thing kept and fed in an old house.

1924

118. Something seen at oriel window of forbidden room in ancient manor house.

119. Art note—fantastick daemons of Salvator Rosa or Fuseli (trunk-proboscis).

120. Talking bird of great longevity—tells secret long afterward.

121. Photius tells of a (lost) writer named Damascius, who wrote “Incredible Fictions,” “Tales of Daemons,” “Marvellous Stories of Appearances from the Dead”.

122. Horrible things whispered in the lines of Gauthier de Metz (13th cen.) “Image du Monde”.

123. Dried-up man living for centuries in cataleptic state in ancient tomb.

124. Hideous secret assemblage at night in antique alley—disperse furtively one by one—one seen to drop something—a human hand—

125. Man abandon’d by ship—swimming in sea—pickt up hours later with strange story of undersea region he has visited—mad??

126. Castaways on island eat unknown vegetation and become strangely transformed.

127. Ancient and unknown ruins—strange and immortal bird who speaks in a language horrifying and revelatory to the explorers.

128. Individual, by some strange process, retraces the path of evolution and becomes amphibious.

1925

129. Marble Faun p. 346—strange and prehistorick Italian city of stone.

130. N.E. region call’d “Witches’ Hollow”—along course of a river. Rumours of witches’ sabbaths and Indian powwows on a broad mound rising out of the level where some old hemlocks and beeches formed a dark grove or daemon-temple. Legends hard to account for. Holmes—Guardian Angel.

131. Phosphorescence of decaying wood—called in New England “fox-fire”.

132. Mad artist in ancient sinister house draws things. What were his models? Glimpse.

133. Man has miniature shapeless Siamese twin—exhib. in circus—twin surgically detached—disappears—does hideous things with malign life of his own.

134. Witches’ Hollow novel? Man hired as teacher in private school misses road on first trip—encounters dark hollow with unnaturally swollen trees and small cottage (light in window?). Reaches school and hears that boys are forbidden to visit hollow. One boy is strange—teacher sees him visit hollow—odd doings—mysterious disappearance or hideous fate.

135. Hideous world superimposed on visible world—gate through—power guides narrator to ancient and forbidden book with directions for access.

136. A secret language spoken by a very few old men in a wild country leads to hidden marvels and terrors still surviving.

137. Strange man seen in lonely mountain place talking with great winged thing which flies away as others approach.

138. Someone or something cries in fright at sight of the rising moon, as if it were something strange.

139. DELRIO asks “An sint unquam daemones incubi et succubae, et an ex tali congressu proles nasci queat?” [Red Hook]

140. Explorer enters strange land where some atmospheric quality darkens the sky to virtual blackness—marvels therein.

1926

141. Footnote by Haggard or Lang in “The World’s Desire”: “Probably the mysterious and indecipherable ancient books, which were occasionally excavated in old Egypt, were written in this dead language of a more ancient and now forgotten people. Such was the book discovered at Coptos, in the ancient sanctuary there, by a priest of the Goddess. ‘The whole earth was dark, but the moon shone all about the Book.’ A scribe of the period of the Ramessids mentions another in indecipherable ancient writing. ‘Thou tellest me thou understandest no word of it, good or bad. There is, as it were, a wall about it that none may climb. Thou art instructed, yet thou knowest it not; this makes me afraid.’ Birch Zeitschrift 1871 pp. 61–64 Papyrus Anastasi I pl. X, l.8, pl. X l.4. Maspero, Hist. Anc. pp. 66–67.

142. Members of witch-cult were buried face downward. Man investigates ancestor in family tomb and finds disquieting condition.

143. Strange well in Arkham country—water gives out (or was never struck —hole kept tightly covered by a stone ever since dug)—no bottom—shunned and feared—what lay beneath (either unholy temple or other very ancient thing, or great cave-world).

144. Hideous book glimpsed in ancient shop—never seen again.

145. Horrible boarding house—closed door never opened.

146. Ancient lamp found in tomb—when filled and used, its light reveals strange world.

147. Any very ancient, unknown, or prehistoric object—its power of suggestion—forbidden memories.

148. Vampire dog. 

149. Evil alley or enclosed court in ancient city—Union or Milligan St. 

150. Visit to someone in wild and remote house—ride from station through the night—into the haunted hills—house by forest or water—terrible things live there.

151. Man forced to take shelter in strange house. Host has thick beard and dark glasses. Retires. In night guest rises and sees host’s clothes about—also mask which was the apparent face of whatever the host was. Flight.

152. Autonomic nervous system and subconscious mind do not reside in the head. Have mad physician decapitate a man but keep him alive and subconsciously controlled. Avoid copying tale by W. C. Morrow.

1928

153. Black cat on hill near dark gulf of ancient inn yard. Mew hoarsely—invites artist to nighted mysteries beyond. Finally dies at advanced age. Haunts dreams of artist—lures him to follow—strange outcome (never wakes up? or makes bizarre discovery of an elder world outside 3-dimensioned space?)

154. Trophonius—cave of. Vide Class. Dict. and Atlantic article.

155. Steepled town seen from afar at sunset—does not light up at night. Sail has been seen putting out to sea.

156. Adventures of a disembodied spirit—thro’ dim, half-familiar cities and over strange moors—thro’ space and time—other planets and universes in the end.

157. Vague lights, geometrical figures, etc., seen on retina when eyes are closed. Caus’d by rays from other dimensions acting on optick nerve? From other planets? Connected with a life or phase of being in which person could live if he only knew how to get there? Man afraid to shut eyes—he has been somewhere on a terrible pilgrimage and this fearsome seeing faculty remains.

158. Man has terrible wizard friend who gains influence over him. Kills him in defence of his soul—walls body up in ancient cellar—BUT—the dead wizard (who has said strange things about soul lingering in body) changes bodies with him . . . leaving him a conscious corpse in cellar.

159. Certain kind of deep-toned stately music of the style of the 1870’s or 1880’s recalls certain visions of that period—gas-litten parlours of the dead, moonlight on old floors, decaying business streets with gas lamps, etc.—under terrible circumstances.

160. Book which induces sleep on reading—cannot be read—determined man reads it—goes mad—precautions taken by aged initiate who knows—protection (as of author and translator) by incantation.

161. Time and space—past event—150 yrs ago—unexplained. Modern period—person intensely homesick for past says or does something which is psychically transmitted back and actually causes the past event.

162. Ultimate horror—grandfather returns from strange trip—mystery in house—wind and darkness—grandf. and mother engulfed—questions forbidden—somnolence—investigation—cataclysm—screams overheard—

163. Man whose money was obscurely made loses it. Tells his family he must go again to THE PLACE (horrible and sinister and extra-dimensional) where he got his gold. Hints of possible pursuers—or of his possible non-return. He goes—record of what happens to him—or what happens at his home when he returns. Perhaps connect with preceding topic. Give fantastic, quasi-Dunsanian treatment.

164. Man observed in a publick place with features (or ring or jewel) identified with those of man long (perhaps generations) buried. 

165. Terrible trip to an ancient and forgotten tomb.

166. Hideous family living in shadow in ancient castle by edge of wood near black cliffs and monstrous waterfall.

167. Boy rear’d in atmosphere of considerable mystery. Believes father dead. Suddenly is told that father is about to return. Strange preparations—consequences. 

168. Lonely bleak islands off N.E. coast. Horrors they harbour—outpost of cosmic influences.

169. What hatches from primordial egg.

170. Strange man in shadowy quarter of ancient city possesses something of immemorial archaic horror.

171. Hideous old book discovered—directions for shocking evocation.

1930

172. Pre-human idol found in desert.

173. Idol in museum moves in a certain way.

174. Migration of Lemmings—Atlantis. 

175. Little green Celtic figures dug up in an ancient Irish bog.

176. Man blindfolded and taken in closed cab or car to some very ancient and secret place.

177. The dreams of one man actually create a strange half-mad world of quasi-material substance in another dimension. Another man, also a dreamer, blunders into this world in a dream. What he finds. Intelligence of denizens. Their dependence on the first dreamer. What happens at his death.

178. A very ancient tomb in the deep woods near where a 17th century Virginia manor-house used to be. The undecayed, bloated thing found within.

179. Appearance of an ancient god in a lonely and archaic place—prob. temple ruin. Atmosphere of beauty rather than horror. Subtle handling—presence revealed by faint sound or shadow. Landscape changes? Seen by child? Impossible to reach or identify locale again?

180. A general house of horror—nameless crime—sounds—later tenants—(Flammarion) (novel length?).

181. Inhabitant of another world—face masked, perhaps with human skin or surgically alter’d human shape, but body alien beneath robes. Having reached earth, tries to mix with mankind. Hideous revelation. 

182. In ancient buried city a man finds a mouldering prehistoric document in English and in his own handwriting, telling an incredible tale. Voyage from present into past implied. Possible actualisation of this.

183. Reference in Egyptian papyrus to a secret of secrets under tomb of high-priest Ka-Nefer. Tomb finally found and identified—trap door in stone floor—staircase, and the illimitable black abyss.

184. Expedition lost in Antarctic or other weird place. Skeletons and effects found years later. Camera films used but undeveloped. Finders develop—and find strange horror.

185. Scene of an urban horror—Sous le Cap or Champlain Sts.—Quebec—rugged cliff-face—moss, mildew, dampness—houses half-burrowing into cliff.

186. Thing from sea—in dark house, man finds doorknobs etc. wet as from touch of something. He has been a sea-captain, and once found a strange temple on a volcanically risen island.

1931

187. Dream of awaking in vast hall of strange architecture, with sheet-covered forms on slabs—in positions similar to one’s own. Suggestions of disturbingly non-human outlines under sheets. One of the objects moves and throws off sheet—non-terrestrial being revealed. Sugg. that oneself is also such a being—mind has become transferred to body on other planet. 

188. Desert of rock—prehistoric door in cliff, in the valley around which lie the bones of uncounted billions of animals both modern and prehistoric—some of them puzzlingly gnawed.

189. Ancient necropolis—bronze door in hillside which opens as the moonlight strikes it—focussed by ancient lens in pylon opposite?

1932

190. Primal mummy in museum—awakes and changes place with visitor.

191. An odd wound appears on a man’s hand suddenly and without apparent cause. Spreads. Consequences.

1933

192. Thibetan ROLANG—Sorcerer (or NGAGSPA) reanimates a corpse by holding it in a dark room—lying on it mouth to mouth and repeating a magic formula with all else banished from his mind. Corpse slowly comes to life and stands up. Tries to escape—leaps, bounds, and struggles—but sorcerer holds it. Continues with magic formula. Corpse sticks out tongue and sorcerer bites it off. Corpse then collapses. Tongue become a valuable magic talisman. If corpse escapes—hideous results and death to sorcerer.

193. Strange book of horror discovered in ancient library. Paragraphs of terrible significance copies. Later unable to find and verify text. Perhaps discover body or image or charm under floor, in secret cupboard, or elsewhere. Idea that book was merely hypnotic delusion induced by dead brain or ancient magic.

194. Man enters (supposedly) own house in pitch dark. Feels way to room and shuts door behind him. Strange horrors—or turns on lights and finds alien place or presence. Or finds past restored or future indicated.

195. Pane of peculiar-looking glass from a ruined monastery reputed to have harboured devil-worship set up in modern house at edge of wild country. Landscape looks vaguely and unplaceably wrong through it. It has some unknown time-distorting quality, and comes from a primal, lost civilisation. Finally, hideous things in other world seen through it.

196. Daemons, when desiring an human form for evil purposes, take to themselves the bodies of hanged men.

197. Loss of memory and entry into a cloudy world of strange sights and experiences after shock, accident, reading of strange book, participation in strange rite, draught of strange brew, etc. Things seen have vague and disquieting familiarity. Emergence. Inability to retrace course.

1934

198. Distant tower visible from hillside window. Bats cluster thickly around it at night. Observer fascinated. One night wakes to find self on unknown black circular staircase. In tower? Hideous goal.

199. Black winged thing flies into one’s house at night. Cannot be found or identified—but subtle developments ensue.

200. Invisible Thing felt—or seen to make prints—on mountain top or other height, inaccessible place.

201. Planets form’d of invisible matter.

202. A monstrous derelict—found and boarded by a castaway or shipwreck survivor.

203. A return to a place under dreamlike, horrible, and only dimly comprehended circumstances. Death and decay reigning—town fails to light up at night—Revelation.

204. Disturbing conviction that all life is only a deceptive dream with some dismal or sinister horror lurking behind.

205. Person gazes out window and finds city and world dark and dead (or oddly changed) outside.

206. Trying to identify and visit the distant scenes dimly seen from one’s window—bizarre consequences.

207. Something snatched away from one in the dark—in a lonely, ancient, and generally shunned place.

208. (Dream of) some vehicle—railway train, coach, etc.—which is boarded in a stupor or fever, and which is a fragment of some past or ultra-dimensional world—taking the passenger out of reality—into vague, age-crumbled regions or unbelievable gulfs of marvel.

1935

209. Special Correspondence of NY Times—March 3, 1935 “Halifax, N.S.—Etched deeply into the face of an island which rises from the Atlantic surges off the S. coast of Nova Scotia 20 m. from Halifax is the strangest rock phenomenon which Canada boasts. Storm, sea, and frost have graven into the solid cliff of what has come to be known as Virgin’s Island an almost perfect outline of the Madonna with the Christ Child in her arms. The island has sheer and wave-bound sides, is a danger to ships, and is absolutely uninhabited. So far as is known, no human being has ever set foot on its shores.”

210. An ancient house with blackened pictures on the walls—so obscured that their subjects cannot be deciphered. Cleaning—and revelation. Cf. Hawthorne—Edw. Rand. Port.

211. Begin story with presence of narrator—inexplicable to himself—in utterly alien and terrifying scenes (dream?).

212. Strange human being (or beings) living in some ancient house or ruins far from populous district (either old N.E. or far exotic land). Suspicion (based on shape and habits) that it is not all human.

213. Ancient winter woods—moss—great boles—twisted branches—dark—ribbed roots—always dripping. . . .

214. Talking rock of Africa—immemorially ancient oracle in desolate jungle ruins that speaks with a voice out of the aeons. 

215. Man with lost memory in strange, imperfectly comprehended environment. Fears to regain memory—a glimpse. . . .

216. Man idly shapes a queer image—some power impels him to make it queerer than he understands. Throws it away in disgust—but something is abroad in the night.

217. Ancient (Roman? prehistoric?) stone bridge washed away by a (sudden and curious?) storm. Something liberated which had been sealed up in the masonry of years ago. Things happen.

218. Mirage in time—image of long-vanish’d pre-human city.

219. Fog or smoke—assumes shaped under incantations.

220. Bell of some ancient church or castle rung by some unknown hand—a thing . . . or an invisible Presence.

221. Insects or other entities from space attack and penetrate a man’s head and cause him to remember alien and exotic things—possible displacement of personality.

[humblemagic]

a meeting of equals

She had not wanted to come South, to risk enduring more abuses at the whim of another Southron ruler. Since Joffrey had proved himself a monster, she had only ever wanted to go home and remain within the walls of Winterfell. But Jon speaks truth as if everyone surrounding him does the same. He is transparent and unaccustomed to the life at court, and Sansa has been told that the dragon queen is even more beautiful than Cersei.

She arrives at Dragonstone with only her sworn shield and Brienne’s squire, Podrick, despite Jon’s protestations. She is greeted by Missandei, the queen’s most trusted advisor, and her former husband. A smile lightens her grim expression at the sight of him. Tyrion was always kind to her. She feels safer with him here.

“What can one sword do against the Mother of Dragons?” Sansa asks when Missandei bids them to relinquish their weapons.

“Quite right,” her first husband laughs.

The dragons fly overhead, and Sansa cannot help the look of wonder and astonishment that crosses her face. They are majestic. And terrible.

“How have you fared in the years since I’ve seen you, my good wife?”

“As I was married after, I believe you are now set free from your vows, my lord, though I admit I have not been quite as happy in my second marriage as I was when we were wed.I am quite happy to set eyes on you again.” She looks away from the blush reddening his cheeks.

“And I you, though I am surprised Lord Snow did not come himself.”

“Winter is here, and his attentions are better kept North. I hope you do not find me lacking as an emissary.”

“Of course not. You are most welcome at Dragonstone and, I beg you to believe, quite safe. Queen Daenerys values loyalty. If you bend the knee, you will be afforded her protection.”

Sansa gives a noncommittal sound.

Tyrion and Missandei lead them into a great barren hall made of stone.  Across the room, rigidly sat on her throne is a slight girl of no more than nine and ten, Sansa guesses. Her advisors walk to stand to either side of it.

“You stand before Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, rightful heir to the Iron Throne, rightful queen of the Andals and the first men, protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains,” Missandei introduces.

Breaker of Chains, Sansa thinks, and yet you mean to use those dragons to enslave us all.

“I present to you Sansa Stark, eldest daughter of Lady Catelyn and Lord Eddard Stark, the Winter Rose, Winterfell’s Reclaimer, Princess of the North, Lady and Blood of Winterfell.”

“Thank you for traveling so far, my lady. I hope the seas weren’t too rough.”

“Not at all, Your Grace,” Sansa answers. “I have heard of your trials and accomplishments and commend you for returning to your home.”

Her eyebrows lift in surprise. “Thank you, Lady Stark. With that commendation, I must assume you are here to bend the knee like your forefathers before you.”

“I understand the assumption as Your Grace may not be aware of the strife between our families beginning with the kidnapping and rape of my dear Aunt Lyanna Stark by your brother, Prince Rhaegar, and the murders of our liege lord, Rickard, and his son, Brandon Stark, by your father, King Aerys.” She brings her hands together in front of her.

“Lady Stark, I ask your forgiveness for the crimes committed against your family. I am not my brother or my father. I have outlawed raping and reaving in the Iron Islands, and I have no intention of repaying loyalty with the death. I ask you not to judge me by the sins of my family.”

“That is kind. Many women will be spared torment,” Sansa nods.

Queen Daenerys leans back on her throne, her back straightening at the acknowledgment of her benevolence. “Torrhen Stark, the last King in the North, swore fealty to House Targaryen in perpetuity. I am the last Targaryen. Honor his vow. Bend the knee.”

“Will you apologize for your family’s crimes in one breath and negate the consequences to them in the next? I mean no disrespect, Your Grace, but you ask House Stark to honor an allegiance to your House that no longer bears weight. We must agree to leave past allegiances and crimes alike behind.”

The corners of her mouth lift in a facsimile of a smile. “If you have only come to break faith with House Targaryen, why are you here?” she demands.

Lord Tyrion’s gaze darts to Sansa anxiously. Those who anger the dragon queen do not survive long.

“To become allies, of course.” She gives the queen a genuine smile, a smile called up from her times with Margaery surrounded by scents of the sea and good humor. “Apart from the North, the kingdoms of Westeros will be yours. I hope that you are open to discussing a trade agreement that will come into effect when you take your throne.”

“We do not know each other, Lady Stark. Allow me to begin remedying that.” The queen stands, walking towards Sansa with slow steps, her hands stiff at her sides. “I spent my life in foreign lands. So many men have tried to kill me. I don’t remember all their names. I have been sold like a broodmare. I’ve been chained and betrayed, raped and defiled. Do you know what kept me standing through all those years of exile? Faith. Not in any alliances or gods, not in myths and legends. In myself. In Daenerys Targaryen.

“The world hadn’t seen a dragon in centuries until my children were born.,” she continues. “The Dothraki hadn’t crossed the sea, any sea. They did for me. I was born to rule the Seven Kingdoms, and I will rule. All of them. By declaring himself King in the North, your bastard brother is in open rebellion. Can you tell me what happens to those who rebel against the crown?”

Will you obey now, or do you need another lesson? Sansa is reminded of forcefully. The last time she was brought before a monarch to answer for her brother’s perceived crimes, she would have knelt and begged for mercy. But there is no mercy in this world, no knights or heroes. She lifts her chin.

In the pause she takes to temper her tone, Lord Tyrion speaks first.

“I believe Lady Stark is quite tired from her journey, my queen,” he says, drawing the queen’s attention. Sansa’s eyes remain on the threat before her. “If it pleases you, we could continue the discussion over supper after she rests.”

“It pleases me to have an answer to my question.” Lord Tyrion retreats. “Lady Stark?”

Sansa clears her throat delicately. “I do not discount your might, and you have my admiration and sympathies for the trials you have overcome as I have said, Your Grace. To answer your question, I must ask one of my own. At one point, there were five kings in Westeros: Kings Joffrey, Renly and Stannis Baratheon, King Robb Stark and King Balon Greyjoy. Now, there are three monarchs. Which crown would you find House Stark in rebellion against?”

“You said this woman was smart.” Queen Daenerys accuses Lord Tyrion.

“One of the most intelligent ladies I have encountered,” he affirms.

“In the time she’s been here, she has admitted that I will take the throne, still refused to bend the knee, and now she means to mock me.”

“Lady Sansa,” Lord Tyrion starts, capturing her gaze. “I once promised that I would never hurt you.” The queen watches curiously. “Though our marriage was in name only, I took that vow very seriously. I still do. Queen Daenerys can be trusted. She will avenge your father. Your brother will be Warden of the North, and you will be as safe there as you were when you were a child.”

“The North will never be safe under a Southron ruler,” she says, her unyielding tone at contrast with the softness of her expression. “She has already threatened the king’s heir.”

Queen Daenerys contradicts, “I threatened your brother who has no right to call himself king.”

“Were your family ties so weak that you don’t know any threat to my brother is a threat against me?” She lets rage color her voice, stepping closer, her chin raising another notch. “The Northern lords and ladies chose to follow Jon and name him their king. You need no rights to what is freely given.”

The woman stares at her stonily as if none of Sansa’s sound words can move her.

Frustrated, Sansa steps closer. “I imagine you think diplomacy is beneath you. You have armies and dragons. What can stand against you?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me,” she drawls.

“After the Lannisters named my father a traitor, my brother, Robb, was made king and led his armies against them. He won every battle. The people revered him as I am sure yours do you. With dragons and more men than can be counted with the eye, they must think you an insurmountable wall of force. The people called Robb the Young Wolf. They said that he could not be killed. Then, he was. The Boltons and the Freys cut my mother’s throat to the bone, murdered his pregnant wife and took his head. Why?

“He had enough might to rule the North and overthrow the Lannisters,” she adds. She ignores the false glaze of boredom in the queen’s eyes and continues in a bemused tone. “I have the scars to prove it. Yet, fierce as he was in battle, he never was good at diplomacy. He ostracized his bannermen, and,” her pitch falls like a blade, “ they betrayed him.”

“She speaks true. My father orchestrated the attack, but Stark’s own bannermen executed it.”

The queen is no longer feigning disinterest. Her eyes lock on Sansa’s with rapt attention. When Sansa speaks again in a lower tone, the queen’s head leans forward slightly.

“‘What do you want that you do not already have?’ When you sit the Iron Throne, surrounded by subjects who bent the knee only to save their lives and the lives of their people, I do not wonder what your answer will be. I know. You will want to be safe without your dragons or guards close at hand. You will want for true allegiance. Lords who hate you will swear fealty to you to save their lives, but I will not lie to you. I knew that an alliance with the North would not be sufficient to satisfy you. I knew that one sworn shield and her squire could not protect me should you decide to execute me as an example. I answered your summons anyway,” she pauses to give the queen time to decide on the reasons Sansa might have. “The North remembers. We have greater fears than death. My bannermen will not follow someone they do not trust. Will you work to earn it?”

There is nothing in the queen’s expression that belies the answer she will give. Queen Daenerys closes the distance between them, looking at her intently. Sansa forces herself to appear as calm as the first snow. She will die here rather than live the rest of her days in fear of the dragon queen’s wrath.

“The men will follow your brother, and he follows you,” the queen surmises.

Sansa gives no answer. There is none that helps her cause. To rebut it is to deem herself useless. To acknowledge it undermines him.

“And how do I earn your trust, Lady Stark?”

“With patience, Your Grace. With time, King Jon may find that you are worthy to lead the North. If you are not amenable, I must return to my brother with the news that you have refused an alliance with House Stark and our allies, House Arryn and House Tully.”

Instead of flushing with anger at the threat, the queen’s face becomes alight with the first true smile she gives Sansa. “I will not wait forever.”

“No, I would not expect you to. I only ask that you give a House that has been betrayed and nearly ruined time to know you as the queen Lord Tyrion believes you to be.” She lowers her head deferentially.

“In the meantime, you will stay here to get to know me.” She quirks an eyebrow, waiting for Sansa’s nod of agreement. She turns to Missandei. “Please show our guests to their rooms.”

With that, she walks away, and Sansa watches her go.

The tension does not leave her shoulders until she is within her chambers with the door barred. It is only then that she lets the relief she feels make her limbs tremble and her knees weak. She sits on the edge of the bed, hands clutching its sides, exhaling slowly. Her head aches as if she has been sewing intricate designs for hours.

How quickly she turned to threats, Sansa thinks, rubbing her temples.

Despite her willingness to kill, Sansa cannot deny that the queen does impress her. Not many monarchs would have allowed a stranger to convince them to wait for true loyalty. She is different. Cersei would have made an example of Sansa, not seemed genuinely pleased to be threatened. But it is not enough. In the morn, she will offer fleece and wool for the queen’s armies in exchange for dragonglass. She will bide her time, offering glimpses of trust, until Jon has enough to win the war against the dead. She cannot afford to do otherwise.

[sinfulfolk]

Poem: Paradise Lost - a contemporary adaptation

Paradise Lost: A Contemporary Adaptation

Ned Hayes

  Book I

lines 1-75

Calling the Angel of Song

Let’s agree to tell the truth, for once, about that first time: the deadly fruit They ate that night, the lethal lust that spreads still through the universe, An eternal poison eating like acid through our once-perfect little world.

None of us can get back through Heaven’s door, until that One comes for us: But only you know this story, only you can tell what happened. Oh creature Of the stars, I was in love with you once and I’ll still sing any song you choose.

For I long for your music, oh Muse of every angel-dusted poet from here to eternity – Lover of Moses and Marvell, Byron, Blake, & Burroughs – help me sing something No one has ever heard before. Come to me, sweet Spirit, take me to a higher plane.

I know you were watching as the quanta winked into time, when the lizards Crawled out of the slime, you nested infinitely on the Mountain of Dream, Spreading your wings vast over the deep, until the void gave birth to light.

Now I toss and turn, straining to open my blind eyes, wanting to know God Trying to understand something I’ve never had the guts to believe before: I’m begging you, please, bring into my great darkness some kind of holy light!

The Fall of Satan Where does this story begin? On the skyscrapers of Heaven, or down in the Hellstorms of the Pit? Tell me one thing: that’s all I want to know: Why? What caused those two great lovers to throw all our lives away?

Once, I know they had it all, and yet they smoked everything away. They ruled the world, yet like any dream of a new world, it couldn’t last. You’ve told me how they could not resist that last taboo – the one restraint.

So they fell with broken wings and empty hopes, betraying all they had. I swear he was a lying snake from Hell who dealt her that first hit: That shit was pure envy and revenge, and he lied as he put the needle in.

For he’d seen them living large on the beaches of Eden, a lordly life he’d had Before he’d made the hostile takeover attempt, and split the infinite Company Into shareholders and outcast useless rebels, Heaven’s union broken forever.

In his own fantasy, he was still CEO, an Executive staff and an Angelic masseuse At his beck and call. He didn’t plan on the business ending in gunfire and death. But he did pull the first weapon, he fired the first shot in God’s own Boardroom.

The conspiracy revealed its plans for takeover during the attempted assassination Just before his bomb detonated an explosion more powerful than any loaded 747. Heaven’s immense towers burst into fiery shards and fell. All Hell broke loose.

Yet the battle was in vain: each of the conspirators were launched into dark depths. In unbreakable chains, they were hurled into orbit towards some hideous prison. All those who defied the omnipotent law were destined for that eternal smoking pit.

Time twisted and tore on the voyage: pain was all they knew for nine days and nights. He’d met the worst fate an immortal could imagine: a place of endless anguish. His friends lay stunned, half-buried in the lava sea, but his agony was interminable.

Rage pulsed through him at the memory of lost happiness and the torment of defeat. When he opened infrared eyes, a deluge of flames seared away every last hope; Yet even this scorching vista gave no radiance across the plain, only darkness visible.

Their world had been destroyed by Justice, their lives rendered into a burning prison, Utterly dark from any sun, it was a sulfurous wasteland in which to blaze and die. Or, for these immortal rebels, a place to suffer forever and to long for their lost light.

……………….

Book II

lines 650-720

At the Gates of Chaos

From light-years across the cosmos, Satan could see guards standing at the Gates: The first one had tits and a lovely pair of hips, but her legs were gone, only Rotting snake skin coiled incessantly over the rest of her body, and a stink rose

From the mouths of the hell-hounds that were welded into her reeking thighs. The dogs howled until the stars quivered at the sound. Then they ripped their way Back inside her sick cunt, the sound of their howls resounding through her flesh.

You’ve heard the old tales they tell about Hecate, the mother of all witches, who Hurtles yowling through the night, called down by the blood of murdered babies? You’ve heard how she dances insanely until the moon drowns in gore? This was worse.

The second guard at the Gate was hardly there at all, but Satan shuddered a moment At the Absence of it, a shadow emptier than any night, a nothing terrible as Hell. The thing had no limbs – not even any coiling snakes or clacking spider-claws.

On the head of this black fury a red crown glowed radioactive in the endless gloom. Satan watched as a hollow hand held out a stinging spear throbbing with dark energy. Then the shadowy monster walked to him, space itself shaking apart under his stride.

But Satan feared nothing that could be created in the universe except God Himself and God’s unearthly Son. He sneered at the wraith of doom that stood before him, and spoke:

“What kind of damned terror are you to hold me up here? I’ll tell you now that I’m going Through the Gates of Chaos and I’m not asking permission. You mutant spawn of Hell – I am the One born in Heaven itself, so get the fuck out of my way, or taste annihilation!”

The perverse shadow raised its voice and roared back at him: “Are you the Traitor? Are you the one who obliterated Heaven’s eternal peace? Are you the one who was Too proud and rebellious to bow – and took a third of the Stars of Heaven with you?

“You swore to destroy the Highest, and for that I know you were condemned to Hell And you still have the balls to claim you’re an Angel in Heaven’s Company? You’re doomed to spend eternity in agony, yet you’re still breathing defiance –

Even here, where I myself am King of Chaos – and let me twist the knife for you – In this Place, I am also your Master and your Lord. Get the Hell back to that pit, You lying sack of shit, fly fast on wings of fear, or I’ll lift my endless whip of

Scorpions and flog your lying ass! If you’re slow to go, I’ll fire a volley into you too, Sending volts of unbelievable pain that will resound through centuries in your soul!” The shadow grew as it spoke, deforming into something ten times more dreadful.

Yet Satan stood still upon the deep, indignant and incensed, flaming like a Comet Whose deadly tail wipes out constellations, he burned across the cold night-sky, And when he shook his head with fury, pestilence and war rang across the galaxies.

Each of them aimed to land a lethal blow, one that would end the battle immediately. Their faces were contorted with rage; they moved like two immense thunderheads Frozen over a reflecting sea of night, lightning shattering from them as they hovered

In deep space, a cosmic wind forcing these two together. Hell would falter and The galaxies darken under their vast weight. Each of them had met their match in fear. Yet then the coiled snakes of the Sorceress by the Gate hissed and rushed between them:

Her voice was a hideous screech, echoing between the suns: “Oh Father!” she cried. “Why are you killing your Only Son? And you, my child, what kind of hatred Would cause you to slaughter your own Father? You think you’re serving God,

“But God has damned us all – He sits above and laughs at your slavish devotion. God calls this screwed-over mess Justice, but one day He’ll turn the guns on Both of you!” She howled, and Satan’s great foe shrank back against the stars. ……………….

Book III

lines 318-395

God Speaks to His Son

“You, My Son, will be Executive Supreme over all the Company of Heaven, For all creatures will bow to you, in Heaven, on Earth, and even those in Hell And I will grant you an entourage of Angelic warriors when you appear in the sky

Then you will send the Arch-Angel to appear and sound a final warning to the Earth, And from every direction, the Dead from time immemorial will rise out of the ground Roused by the resounding notes of that last trumpet call from their everlasting sleep.

All your chosen Saints will help you choose between Evil and Angels. Those condemned by you will sink back down beneath your judgment, and When Hell is full of demons and their kin, You will lock that pit forever.

The World itself will burst into flame, and from its ashes will be created A New Heaven and a New Earth, and those chosen by Justice will live there. Their torture will end in golden days of bliss brought by their golden deeds.

The Joy and Love of our kingdom will triumph, and we will know its Truth Finally, you’ll be able to lay aside your Dictatorial Duties and your Royal Sceptre We’ll have no need of Kings or Queens, for even God will no longer need to rule.”

The Almighty’s light blazed out as bright as dawn: “Now all you Gods and Servants Of my Kingdom, I command you to praise My Only Son, the Ruler, who has chosen To die, so that we might bring all things back to right. Honor him as you would Me.”

The sound of the Almighty’s voice had barely died away when the collected crowd Of Angels began to shout, an infinite echo of His voice repeating without number. Heaven’s towers rang out with joy, and happiness spilled over in an eternal flood.

Solemnly each one of them bowed, and with a heartfelt reverence they cast Every one of their gold and jeweled crowns to the ground. As they rose again Each eye saw the immortal amaranth, an undying flower, once planted on Earth

By Eden’s Tree, now brought to the center of Heaven for safety. They saw this flower Bloom above the fountain of Life, its petals shading the stream of endless happiness That flows out of the eternal reaches, a molten river of golden light that never dies.

Decorating their hair with beams of this light, Heaven’s Spirits glowed themselves, Refracting like rose-colored diamonds, they danced along Heaven’s glassy walks, And took hold of the glittering instruments that hung like weapons by their sides.

The song of a unceasing symphony rang out, rapture sweeping across the spheres A melody of sound that was irresistible, as every voice joined in the harmony. The chorus went: Omnipotent Executive! Immutable, Immortal, Infinite, Eternal King!

You are the Creator of all life – the fountain of Light itself, Invisible, All Powerful! You are Bright Glory on an inaccessible throne, and we must wait for you to shade Yourself, to draw a cloud around your radiance, so that we might see your Glory!

Dark with shining brightness we see the edge of your garments – you dazzle us! Even the strongest Seraphim must use their wings to shield their eyes from your Glorious Light, oh God! We sing to You of the endless multitude of your Creation,

And we sing of your Only Son, whom you have now chosen to make Executive Supreme, the one ruling Kingdoms, Thrones, Princedoms, Dominions, Powers! You’ve laid the mantle of succession on his shoulders – for you are all powerful!

For He was the One who put down the first insurrection, let loose the terrible Thunder Of God’s immortal wrath, charged out with flaming swords and righteous anger And cried as Heaven’s great structure shook to its foundations! Oh Warrior Strong!” ……………….

Book IX

lines 725-793

Satan Causes Eve’s Fall

“If, as you say, God did make all things, who put Wisdom into the leaves and Fruit of this Tree here? Why would He make it possible for someone to eat? So where, I ask you, is the wrong in doing what is natural with this Tree?

After all, if it’s possible for you to know – you should know! And how, I ask you, would the fact that you know something hurt the Company? After all, you’re owned by Heaven, and so is the Tree – you’re just part

Of the same Family. You don’t envy the Tree’s inborn Knowledge, do you? I can’t believe that a beautiful woman with such incredible breasts would envy! God you’re so wise and beautiful! I’ve given you all the reasons, but most of all

I know you’d like a hit!” Satan ended with a smile, his words laced with lies Dripping into her veins, a needle sliding easily, deep into a beating heart. Transfixed by the hanging Fruit, his speech sang through Eve’s empty ears.

In her own mind, all he said seemed persuasive, impregnated with logic, And she was hungry: the mere smell of that Fruit gave passion to her desire She longed to touch it, to taste it. She watched it swell in the mouth of the snake.

Yet she paused, unable to take her eyes away, and talked, as if to herself: “God made you a Great Tree of Knowledge and the best kind of sweet Yet He’s kept it from his creatures – making it impossible for us to eat.

So where is the wrong in doing what is natural with this luscious Fruit? After all, the merest taste of it gave human speech to this forked-tongue beast And shouldn’t we praise God by knowing you – after all, He made this Tree.

Of course, the Company prohibits us from touching you, from tasting you, Yet we are part of the same Family, for we are all made of Good, are we not? To be clear then, he forbids us to be good – and that kind of law is not a law!

And if we die in eating such a Fruit, then perhaps it would be better to be free Perhaps it is our doom to simply eat, and die. Yet look again at the Snake – He ate the thing, and look – he lives, and knows, and even speaks so wise!

I saw him yesterday, and he was deaf and dumb to me. Is Death only for us? Or is it only that we can’t become smarter – only the beasts can get wise? It’s not envy that beats so passionately in me, but joy at the good in this snake.

For he has found great good, it seems, and shared his discovery with all so free. He doesn’t lie or fake what’s happened to him, and so what do I fear? I live in ignorance – I don’t know Good or Evil, God or Law or Death.

I am sick with stupidity, and here, in front of me, is the cure for my ill. On the Tree it grows, this divine Fruit that will take me to a higher place: Beautiful to look at, incredible to the Taste, and oh – so full of Wisdom!”

As she spoke these final words, she reached out rashly and plucked the Fruit. It was an evil hour when she ate, the planet shuddered apart from the stress, And the universe quaked on its moorings, bleeding from that fatal wound.

All was lost, and quickly the serpent slithered away through the quaking bushes. It didn’t care anymore: Eve was slurping up the taste, intent on getting more. She felt she’d never known a fruit so ecstatic, yet perhaps this was imagination.

For she thought of endless knowledge as she ate, and of becoming a Goddess too: Everything spun in drunken frenzy as the lust for that Fruit sang in her veins. She gorged herself without restraint, and yet was blind as she ate her Death.

  [Read more Poetry Posts]

Poem: Paradise Lost – a contemporary adaptation was originally published on Ned Hayes

[safestsephiroth]

Another assassin, come for vengeance. He saw the girl recoil in fear. Beg not to have to fight. Try, clumsily, to defend herself. She was overmatched and out of her league.

She was going to die in front of his eyes.

He thought of a red-swaddled infant, screaming next to a mother’s corpse.

No.

The brush began to ignite, a product of the strange magicks that he knew surrounded the girl. He saw the other assassin’s muscles tense, the barest flicker of blades being drawn. This wasn’t a clean kill. She was here to gloat. She was here to torment. She was here to murder.

No.

In an instant, he was next to the girl. The would-be murderer was dead. He had heard her shout for vengeance, cry for blood. There would have been no talk. No matter what he had tried to do.

“Are you hurt?” He asked the girl.

“Oh god, another one?!” She asked. Eyes wild. Terrified. Overwrought. Crying. Unstable. He needed to defuse this.

“Your life is in danger,” he said. “I choose to protect you. If you wish to live, we must leave. Now.”

The girl already had her staff off the ground. Her hands were shaking so much she could barely hold it. He watched the wheels turn in her head. It wasn’t long before she nodded, tears evaporating from the heat.

“This way.”

He hadn’t felt so awake since everything that mattered to him died. His heart was racing. There could be more nearby. If anyone had known the girl’s identity, there should be more nearby. As they passed the fresh corpse, the girl gave it a slight bow.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“This way.” He wanted to disappear, to watch from the shadows, to do anything but be out in the open with a target on his back. He thought of a man being torn apart by bullets he never saw coming. He thought of running away, bleeding, broken, hunted.

But he didn’t flee. He guided her to cover, hiding behind a nearby ruin. She got low to the ground. He stood there, listening. Looking.

And what he heard was the girl shaking. Panicking. Traumatized. It dawned on him that for all her magical prowess, she might not have ever killed anyone. He recalled that the Tachibana patriarch hated magic.

It all made sense.

“Do I...” He counted her breaths. Far too rapid. “Hmm, I...what do I...”

He recalled his teacher.

“Take a deep breath. Hold it. Count to three. Release.”

She did so, immediately, and he concluded she must have been used to having to calm herself down. A few breaths later she was no longer a maelstrom of twisting aether, at the least.

“We will wait here one hour”, he said. Mor Dhona wasn’t far, and there was a watch. But they couldn’t stay long, he realized. The other assassin was also Doman. Staying amidst others was dangerous for the girl. But she wouldn’t be able to travel far. Not like this, not without a mount, and being caught in the open at night was far more dangerous. “Then we will return to the camp. You live in the desert?”

“I don’t have a home... I mean, a friend lets me use her apartment, sometimes.”

So she didn’t have a proper home, either. That explained the wandering. There hadn’t been a pattern, after all - she was merely going from place to place with her whims.

“...I see.”

“Who...are you? I was going to introduce myself, but... I don’t think I need to.”

“Call me what you wish.” He realized this wouldn’t be enough for her - he could see the confusion on her face. “The last person I spoke with called me ‘Shadow’.”

“Shadow...” she repeated. “Were you... looking for me, as well?”

He said nothing, choosing instead to keep a silent vigil. When he had judged the hour to have passed, he bade the girl follow him and made for the camp. The corpse lay exactly where it had been, and the girl gagged when she saw it. He tried to comfort her.

“If I did not kill her, she would have returned. She would keep returning until one of you was dead.” After a few seconds, he added: “Sitting and eating will help.”

They reached Mor Dhona without any further incident, though he was ready every step of the way. He said nothing beyond the bare minimum required, exchanging nods with the guard at the gate. At the inn, he paid for the girl’s food. She took a seat with a plate, and seemed confused when he instead stood to the side of the fireplace, almost melting entirely into the darkness.

“I will stand,” he explained. “If we are attacked, I will be ready.”

The girl picked up her fork, and he could see it tremble in her hand. “Is it true?” She asked. “Did my family cause all of this?”

He hadn’t expected the question. He wasn’t prepared to answer it. He said nothing.

“I’ve...had a feeling,” she continued. “After the refugees arrived. I was afraid to find out the details of what happened. I avoided all the Domans I found...”

She didn’t know.

But she needed to.

“The Tachibana clan’s treachery is known of by all. As are their deaths.”

The fire in the hearth flickered a moment, then burst, the crackling sound of logs burning giving way to what was practically a roar. The girl dropped her utensils, burying her face in her hands. She tried in vain to muffle the sobbing. The other patrons in the building became conspicuously more fascinated with their food and paying attention to themselves.

He said nothing. There was nothing to say. Not yet. Not while she was still sobbing. Not while the grief was so great it was all that could fit in her thoughts. Interceptor crawled under the table to sit at her feet. 

The dog was better at reading emotions than he was.

It took time, but eventually the flames died down once more, and the girl was wiping her face with the sleeves of her dress. This, then, was the time to be plain with her.

“You will need to consider your next move.”

Realization dawned on her. “You think there are others?”

“So long as you are reviled for your name, more will come.”

“By the gods... what can I even do? Change my name and dress? Hide? My father kicked me out of our house when I wasn’t even ten, and only because I carried magic in my blood. And now shinobi hunt me down for the sins he committed?!”

“They think revenge will lessen their burden.” He didn’t add that he spoke from experience. He hoped she hadn’t realized.

“Then... I guess I’d better be ready to die?” She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. She knew it wasn’t fair. He knew it wasn’t fair. She was lashing out, wounded, hurt terribly by everything. He did not challenge her. She came to the realization on her own: “I should not make hasty decisions,” she said. A deep breath. The wheels turning again. She wasn’t a helpless girl, just one who didn’t want to hurt anyone. He saw the difference. 

She nodded softly to herself. “First, I need to find a safe place to stay.”

“I’ll help you,” he said, before he’d even realized it. He’d made the decision days ago, he realized. But was it one to stay with? “But know that I might leave at any time, if I so desire. Death follows wherever I go. I may not be suited to serving you.”

“Serve me?” She asked. There was bitterness in her voice, he recognized. “That takes me back...” A few seconds lost. It was likely she was recalling her youth. Recalling something painful.

When she came back to the here and now, she looked up at him. “I would appreciate your help, and your company. And... I understand if you decide to leave.”

“Then the first step,” he said, “Is to secure a place to sleep tonight.”

“We can teleport to the Mist and use Enea’s apartment,” she said.

“No.” he replied, a bit too quickly. “To use teleportation magic is to tread upon the realm of the dead. It disturbs their rest.”

“Oh,” she said. “It does?”

“Yes.”

“I guess we could walk there,” she concluded. “But it will be a few nights before we make it there. A room would be more defensible than camping in the open.”

“I will secure transport”, he caught himself saying before he realized it.

“Thanks,” she said.

“We will leave in the morning.”

She gestured to the dog at her feet. “Is he yours?”

“His name is Interceptor. Be careful. He eats strangers.”

“Interceptor...” For the first time he’d seen that day, she smiled. “Did you name him? He alerted me back there...”

“I know.”

“Should we find somewhere to stay the night then?”

“This tavern has rooms. If you would prefer, there are other buildings in town. You risk encountering other Domans the longer you travel here.”

“Let’s stay here, then.”

“Very well.”

It was a long night, one in which she barely slept. He set up his small altar in the corner of the room, gave thanks for the guidance, put the altar away again and sat in the corner the rest of the night.

He wasn’t sure where this would end, but he knew he had done the right thing.

@red-dlai