#the problem is my sister. who is catholic in name but it’s clear to me how hard she’s fallen away from the faith | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

milshelbsrequests · 2 years

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Request : Could you (if you don’t mind) do a fic where the reader is a Shelby Sister (closest to Thomas) and is gay. I don’t mind whether it is a coming out fic or one where she has a crush on the same lady Tommy is getting close to. (And in the end that lady chooses the reader)

prompt : none

Warnings : swearing, smoking, mentions of homophobia

Authors note : Y/N and Tommy would be around 22 (Tommy turning 23) in this, Ada 16, John 18, Arthur 26 etc etc

if you like my work and want to read more regular updates, here’s the link to my chapters of “child’s play”, a peaky blinders Shelby!sister Fanfiction on my main

Fate had tossed Y/N right smack into the middle of the Shelby family…. Technically the middle, at least. She was older than Ada and Finn and John, but younger than Thomas and Arthur. It was an even number of children, but technically her and her brother John shared the roll of middle child. But she was about four years older than him, which made her closest in age to Tommy, as there was barely twelve months separating the pair. Ten, to be exact. While Thomas was born in January, Y/N was born in November. They were what was called catholic twins (or Irish twins, Dutch twins, Scottish twins… there was many words for it). Two siblings born less than twelve months of one another, and Thomas and Y/N Shelby were born ten months from one another both in the year 1890; which made them the same age for five months.

What a chaotic bunch that they were. Always enforcing mayhem all across the city and never behaving themselves. Y/N, was the most misfit of them all as it seemed most days, because she stuck out like a sore thumb no matter how hard she tried otherwise. She was always…. different, and her family always assumed she would grow out of it by the time she was a teenager. But no, when she was a teenager Y/N had come to terms with what exactly was wrong with her. Although she viewed it as natural, the entire law and world insisted it wasn’t.

When she was fifteen years old, she had befriended a girl her own age by the name of Nancy McClougden. Even today, Y/N’s heart fluttered at the recollection of the girl who she hadn’t seen in years. You see, the problem began when Y/N realized that if she were a boy, she would be all over Nancy and be trying to woo her to the best of her abilities, and the problem escalated when Y/N realized that she didn’t want to have to be a boy to kiss Nancy. That she would kiss Nancy any day, if she would ask her to. By then, it was clear to the eldest Shelby girl what she was, and it was clear to her that no one could ever know.

And with being so close (in both age and relationships) with her brother, Thomas, that proved to be difficult as growing up the two came in a pair and were inseparable. Not to mention the fact he was a nosy bastard who always had his hand in other people’s business when he shouldn’t have.

One night, later in the evening, when everyone was in the garrison celebrating the new year of 1913, a situation occurred and was one that Y/N personally believed wouldn’t ever happen. Moments after everyone had shouted ‘happy new years’ as the clock struck twelve AM on the first of January with the year now 1913, the party had truly began. Loud talking and drinking that was accompanied by what was almost even louder music that played on a gramophone someone brought in. Y/N found herself seated at the crowded bar line with a woman roughly around her own age that had introduced herself as Isla, and of course, Y/N wasn’t just talking but she was rather blatantly flirting with the red haired woman who giggled along to the Shelby woman’s words and played along. It was going well, to say the least. That was, up until Y/N gave a small jolt of surprise as an arm fell around her shoulder. “Hello, Thomas.” She greeted her brother, a slight roll of her eyes coming his way as she took a sip of her drink.

“Why, Y/N, aren’t you going to introduce me to this pretty lady?” Her brother urged to set him up with another young lady that probably, just like most, wouldn’t last long. She would be around for a few weeks at best, because it was safe to say every Shelby man had, in lack of better terms, commitment issues.

Smiling with tight lips up at her barely elder brother, Y/N glanced back to the woman sitting in front of her. “Tom, this is Isla. Isla, this is my brother, Thomas.” She briefly introduced the two in order not to simply brush her brother off and seem catty over nothing. “But all you get is an introduction, Tommy. Her and I were having a private conversation that doesn’t need dropping in on.”

Isla laughed slightly at that, her round and rouged cheeks turned up at the apples as she smiled. It caused Y/N’s heart to soar and flutter as if she was a little schoolgirl again. She had come to discover that unless serious, Isla was capable at making everything lighthearted in a positive way. It was a relief, in y/n’s opinion to be truthful as it was a rare thing to see in Small Heath.

Barely nodding his head, Tommy casually gestured for the current bartender to fetch him a drink before speaking again. Y/N sighed, knowing there was no getting rid of him now, as he would be stealing away yet another girl who was just out of her grasp. “Ah, well, what is it you were speaking about?”

“Didn’t I just say that—“

“Horses.” Isla interrupted, not on purpose, but her and Y/N began to speak in union and the Shelby girl gave up her words rather easily. As soon as the word horses was spoken, she could see her brother’s ears perk up. There definitely was no getting rid of him now. “Y/N here was telling me about horses…. Or I suppose I more so asked about them. I understand that you work with horses, Mr. Shelby.”

“I shovel shit at the stables located in my uncle’s scrapyard, if that’s what you refer to.” He joked, and Isla had giggled at him which caused Y/N’s eyes to roll to heavily she was sure that they would stay jammed in the back of her skull. “Now… what is a lady like yourself doing in a place like Small Heath, in a pub like this one, and asking about horses on New Year’s Day?”

“Nothing special, truly…. I suppose I thought celebrating the New Years in a new environment would be the best way to start off the new year. I’m here with my sister, you see…. But I lost track of her awhile ago, I’m sure I’ll mean her again sooner or later.” Her reply was rather simple. “Besides, if I didn’t have the need for adventure, I wouldn’t have met Y/N tonight.”

The Shelby girl smiled at this, pleased with the fact that she made so far a good impression with the lady. But soon Tommy smirked as he looked over Isla. “And where might you be from, Isla?”

“Balsall Heath. Not far from here.”

He gave her that charming Shelby smirk, and offered her his hand, and it was in that moment Y/N had realized her brother may have won this battle. “Well, Isla from Balsall Heath, how would you like a drink? On me, of course.”

As the night passes on, Y/N had watched as her brother flirted and attempted to woo over Isla. The only thing she could do is sit and pout at the bar. When Isla had been dancing and laughing with her brother for what Y/N counted as the third time, it wasn’t long before the young woman’s little sister approached her; the sixteen year old linking arms with the elder of the pair, and leaning into whisper. “Think you could get me a drink? Aunt Polly has be watching me like a bleeding hawk all evening, and I think it’s only fair that I get at least one hard drink. It is new years after all, Y/N/N.”

“No, you don’t need a drink.” Y/N dismissed her and her wanting of alcohol. “You’re not drinking tonight. Don’t you remember how you got at Christmas after a few drinks? We’re not having that replay.” She reminded her younger sister, who was to her junior about only four or five years. “Besides, I saw John slip you a few glasses of champagne anyhow. You’ve had your share.” She added with a grin, and Ada simply groaned in annoyance before watching her blue eyes sister’s gaze drift back to the woman their brother was dancing and evidently flirting with smoothly yet obviously. The bloody Shelby charm was a blessing yet a curse depending on what side you fell on.

Ada’s dark eyebrows creased at this, and she looked back towards her elder sister. “Is something the matter? You’re sitting here pouting and gazing longingly at that lady Tom’s with. He steal your friend away from you or somethin’?” Naturally Ada assumed they were friends as they arrived together and hadn’t parted until Tommy swooped in.

Y/N grumbled at that, taking a sip of her drink. “Something like that, I s’pose….” She mumbled in reply, every word coming out of her laced with bitterness of the situation. But what was Y/N meant to do? She couldn’t exactly have told her brother to piss off because she was smitten over Isla. She could only imagine his reaction. Tommy would blink at her dumbly for a few moments before disowning her ass right then and there. Y/N would rather have allowed him to steal Isla from her for the night than have that happen.

Half an hour after everyone left the tiny New Years party at the Garrison pub, hanging around the extra half hour in order to regain their own acknowledgement of the real world; Y/N found herself walking home with her brother that night, both hanging onto each other for dear life as they tried to find their way back home in one piece while drunk at one in the morning. This wasn’t new to the pair, but also was one of the most traumatic things they do together every so often. Isla had left with her sister around ten minutes before them, meaning neither Shelby was victorious of bringing her somewheres alone; but with how drunk everyone had gotten, it was for the best.

Trying to support one another’s weight while venturing home, tripping over one another and nearly yelling at each other while speaking. One must remember that this was 1913…. And Thomas Shelby wasn’t currently the Thomas Shelby that was the fierce leader of the notorious Birmingham street gang. The peaky blinders were formed, but during these early days, to most people they were just a bunch of school boys trying to be men and out dick whoever they came across. “Oi, get offa me fucking toes, ya fucking wanker.” Y/N hissed at her partner in crime when he trampled her feet whilst trying to walk.

“Fucking walk straight, and maybe we won’t run into each other.” He simply said. “I swear, the only thing you’re good for is introducing me to ladies…. Though, that Isla tonight seemed rather stuck up. Took a few free drinks and a few dances, and then went straight back to chatting with you before her sister came and collected her to go home.”

“Here’s an idea, brother, maybe she wasn’t in to you.” Y/N laughed, soon noticing they stumbled upon number six of watery lane, where both of the siblings were relieved to find one of them still had house keys on them so that they wouldn’t have to wake everyone up by banging on the door. Y/N would have felt most sorry for poor little Finn, as the five year only always got cranky when woken up loudly. “Can’t always steal every woman from me, can ya? I’m gonna win some every once in a while, you know.”

“Eh? The fuck do you mean?” Tommy turned his nose up to her absurd words, and Y/N blinked through her drunkenness and caught her own mistake.

“What do I mean by what?” Y/N naturally played dumb on it, soon shushing her brother loudly as he stumbled inside the house and crashed into the hallway table; making a loud thud noise. “Be quiet, for fucks sake, if we wake Finn Polly is going to have our asses!” She hissed at him.

Rubbing his shin where he had roughly bashed it against the table, Tommy momentarily grumbled beneath his breath before glancing back at his barely younger sister. “I know what you said. So what the fuck do you mean by it?” Tommy re-asked. “You a homosexual now or something?” He nearly laughed at that, finding his own words and joke absolutely hilarious in this moment of drunkenness.

“A homosexual? Of course not, Thomas. Don’t be absurd now.” She was quick to brush away his words. “But if you’re flirting with a woman, like fuck I’ll be her friend because as soon as you forget about them, that would make it far too awkward to have a friendship.” She lied easily through her teeth.

“‘M just saying, Y/N.” He shrugged at his sister. “If you were, I’m just gonna remind you that that shit is illegal. Be careful.”

And that was the last of that for the night, as both weren’t in the right minds to discuss such things. Y/N had gone up to her room not long afterwards, and her brother passed out on their aunt’s sofa. The only remaining siblings living in watery lane had been Finn, Ada, Y/N and Thomas. Even though Thomas was on the verge of moving away, but Y/N always stayed to assist with her two youngest siblings in order that Polly didn’t have the burden of them. The next morning hit Y/N’s head felt like a bloody train had crashed into it in the middle of the night and she felt like her entire body had been as well. This is why she only tended to get drunk on special occasions such as the New Years; she hated the aftermath of being so intoxicated. But at least she wasn’t the type to be bent over a toilet spewing up her guts all day.

After forcing herself out of bed, Y/N ventured downstairs into the oddly quiet home where there surprisingly wasn’t much talking other than a slight mutter coming in from the kitchen; where she could pin the voices to belong to her aunt and two elder brothers. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, the chatting seemed to stop as she entered the kitchen. “G’morning, family.” She greeted before going straight to the cupboard where she knew her aunt kept teas and such, hoping that would help take away her booming headache.

“Good morning, Y/N.” Polly seemed to drawl her words whilst greeting her eldest niece, and her eyes shifted to her eldest nephews momentarily. “How’d you sleep?”

“Like a fuckin’ log.” Y/N replied, grabbing the still hot kettle in order to make her tea. “A log that got hit by two trains, because let me tell you, Aunt Pol, I have never felt worst in my entire life. This is the exact reason why I tend to be the sober one.”

“Well are you sober enough to answer a question?” Arthur had asked bluntly, and Polly could be heard hissing at him to shut up and be nice.

Turning back around to face the small portion of her family while sipping on her heavily sugared tea, Y/N’s dark eyebrow raised and she was soon to give a shrug of her shoulders. “I suppose so. It’s only a hangover, after all. I’m sure I’ve had worst, and if not I’m sure there’s worst to come.” Y/N said lightheartedly, as her hangovers always would hurt like a bitch but never lasted more than a few hours.

Then, out of nowhere before anyone else could utter a word, her eldest brother spoke again. “Are you a fucking homosexual?” This caused Y/N to snort into her drink out of surprise, and have a bit of it go up into her nose; causing her to sputter and cough.

“Arthur Shelby!” Their aunt hissed at him, and he simply held her hands up in defence for a brief moment.

Once Y/N had stopped sputtering and coughing over her tea that had just burnt her nostrils due to the fact she inhaled some, she quickly wiped her face with a dish towel before looking at her eldest brother in astonishment. “Pardon me?”

“You heard the question just fine based on that reaction.” Arthur gave a small roll of his eyes. “Tommy said—“

Immediately, she was set off like a firecracker; just like the ones that had been set off for the new years last night. “Tommy fucking said, eh?!” She hollered. “Tommy fucking said what exactly?!”

“Tommy said that when the pair of you two came stumbling home last you, you were yapping about something along the lines of not being eager to introduce every woman you meet to him because you’d like to win her over once in awhile.” Polly added in. “So, Y/N, it’s a yes or no answer. Which is it?”

Y/N scoffed defensively. “Oh yes, because if I was homosexual, I would just be jumping at the bit to say so and get my arse disowned and arrested.”

This time, Tommy’s eyebrow raised. “Who said shit about disowning?”

“How the fuck else is it supposed to go?! Are you fucking dense in the head, brother?” Y/N asked rhetorically with a snap in her voice. This was not how she wanted her hungover morning to be spent. There was a sacred time during a hangover where the said person was left alone and in peace, and so far Y/N was experiencing no peace of the sort. “If someone likes the same gender, it is frowned upon. Might not be something they can necessarily change about themselves and it’s still frowned upon. Do you know why? Because it’s fucking unnatural. It’s always been unnatural and the moment I were to say, yes I like women more then men, then I would be fucked.”

Throwing his hands up in exasperation, Arthur spoke, “Jesus fucking Christ, Y/N, we don’t give a fuck what gender you like!” He spoke with irritation seeping from his gruff voice. “It was just a bleedin’ question out of curiosity!”

When she noticed Arthur’s irritation over the simple fact she was making a scene about it, as well as Polly’s growing smirk that she attempted to hide with her blue and white tea cup as she took a sip of the drink, plus Tommy’s unbothered stature as he leaned against the back cabinet whilst smoking a partially smoked cigarette, Y/N’s mouth snapped shut as she was just left blinking at the three family members. “Repeat that?” She asked.

“Look, is it unnatural? Sure it is. Aint exactly the most common thing in the world… You could get in real shit for it.” Tommy spoke up, shrugging his shoulders. “But you’re of fucking sister, Y/N. You were our sister yesterday, the day before that. Last month. Last year. You’re out fucking sister, and that isn’t about to change because of somethin’ like this. Ya hear me?”

Y/N ran up to her brother and hugged him incredibly tight at that. Probably in a tighter embrace than she had ever put someone in before. Tommy could only chuckle a bit and hug her back. “So that all it took, eh?” Y/N asked the room while pulling away from her elder brother, standing beside him with his arm over her shoulders, wiping tears from her eyes before they even had the chance to fall. “Just one slip of words while I was drunk?”

Polly gave an amused sigh of laughter before going back to reading the newsprint she had in front of her. “Oh no, dear, we’ve been suspecting things ever since Nancy McClougden.”

TAGLIST:

@bdudette

#peaky blinders imagine #arthur shelby #finn shelby #ada shelby #peaky blinders #john shelby #milshelbs #shelby #thomas shelby #michael grey #polly grey #peaky fucking blinders #request #y/n shelby #shelby sister #shelby sister imagine #shelby sister reader #peaky blinders imagines #Milshelbsrequests

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silver-tongued-bby · 3 years

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Devotion - Part I

Pairing: Dark!Loki x Nun!Reader

Warnings: NSFW, 18+!!! This is a Dark!Loki fic and it explores sexual and dark religious (catholic) themes, including mind control (paralysis), loss of faith, oral sex (m and f receiving), loss of virginity, knife play, blood play, dirty talk, a dom/sub relationship, and general blasphemy. Read at your own risk!!

Words: 3,668

Summary: You chose to devout yourself to God. But did you choose the right one?

A/N: If there is a hell, I think I'll be going straight to it for this one. Please remember this is a work of fiction- if you take issue with the themes mentioned above, please do not interact.

...

It was late when you finished your prayers- much later than usual. You’d stayed by the chancel, kneeling on the soft velvet of the hassock well beyond the sunset, your Sisters excusing themselves one by one. The votive candles were mostly out by the time you stood on shaky legs, the feeling slowly coming back to them as you extinguished the remaining flames.

You sighed, hoping that the twelve hours of prayer today would be enough to rid yourself of the dream. Walking behind the altar, you turned off the lights. Things were still somewhat illuminated by the soft glow of the moonlight coming through the stained glass.

Moving back around the altar towards the nave you stopped, seeing the outline of a figure before you, your heartbeat in your ears as you held a palm to your chest. You tilted your head, blinking furiously in the darkness, attempting to make sense of the form. It looked like a person- a man, standing by the open doors. Must be a trick of the light, you thought as you squinted in an attempt to make out the tall shadow.

Sighing, you gingerly stepped down the altar’s carpeted stairs to slowly approach the form, keeping your eyes on it. Suddenly, you stopped, the hairs standing on end at the back of your neck. This was how the dream started. A figure- a dark figure is what you’d see before it would float towards you, wrapping you up in its darkness and consuming you whole. You’d wake gasping for air, your eyes wet with tears.

You took a deep breath, chastising yourself for your foolishness. You were awake, and the dark mass in front of you was likely a shadow from outside, or the coat rack, or the monstrance- Sister Anne always left the monstrance out after she buffed it.

Shaking your head, you stepped down onto the cold stone floor. Then you thought you saw the figure move. Your heartbeat was loud in your ears as you stopped once more, trying to make out the shapes in the shadow. You attempted to calm yourself down- you were awake, this wasn’t a dream. Besides, in the dream you always heard that laugh- the dark, velvety laugh ringing out in the silence. There was no laugh now.

You pinched yourself for good measure, nodding when you felt the pain, ensuring that this was not a dream. Huffing, you decided to speed-walk down the nave, your steps ringing out as you approached the shadow.

You were about four paces away when you finally saw the glint of two eyes in the moonlight. You gasped and scrambled backwards, the figure before you now clear.

“At last.” A voice- the voice from your dream. It was deep, dark velvet ringing out through the silence. A sliver of moonlight was hitting two green eyes, illuminating pale skin and a dark brow. You could see the inky, black hair that fell around his face in waves.

You were stunned, and wanted so desperately to turn and run but you couldn’t bring your body to move. You opened your mouth to scream but no sound came out, just like the dream. You began reciting The Apostles Creed in your mind, attempting to calm yourself and awake from whatever this was.

The familiar deep chuckle hit your ears. “Your prayer falls on deaf ears, little one. As they always have.” He stepped closer, then slowly circled your paralysed form.

Undeterred, you kept praying, shouting each word within your mind at the presence before you.

A hand came to grip your face firmly, long fingers digging into your delicate skin. “No more of that, little one.” With that, your thoughts were silenced. Held in place like the rest of you.

Your breath was loud against the silence, shaky puffs coming in and out as the entity observed you. You were struck by the beauty of this presence, his chiseled face more breathtaking than the paintings of Christ. He stood tall, before you, lithe figure covered in a crisp black suit.

“Your god has long since abandoned you. All of you, worshipping an entity who simply flicked the switch to humanity, who left once the beginnings had been set in motion.” He let his hand fall from your face and circled you once more.

“Yet you continue to pray, to worship, to adore him. And this Jesus Christ you vow yourself to,” he laughed pitifully, “a mortal. Long gone.”

“So much work, so much devotion, to an absent god. A god who cannot solve your problems, empower you, or answer your prayers.” He stopped in front of you and reached to pull at the veil covering your head, letting it drop to the floor. Tears were welling up in your eyes, obscuring your vision.

“Beautiful,” he breathed against your ear, “what god would ask for such beauty to be hidden away, like a dirty, little secret? What god would tell their most devout followers to vow themselves to never be touched,” he lightly traced your cheekbone with his knuckle, “be pleasured by another?”

His eyes searched yours for a moment, and you felt the hold on you release. “You may answer,” he watched you as you blinked and shivered, a tear falling down either of your heated cheeks.

“You can’t know that- that He isn’t with us,” you frowned at him, your voice small.

He gave you a pitying look, his head tilting slightly. “Oh but I do, little one. And so do you.” He clasped his hands behind his back, regarding you darkly. “You prayed to your god for twelve hours this day, ten hours each day before. I heard you. I watched you.”

Your eyes widened. How could he have known? How long has he been watching you?

“A long time, little one. I heard you praying to your god to take away the dream I sent you. The dream foretelling you of my arrival.” He circled you again, leaning in to speak close- so close to your ear. You shivered. He could read your thoughts.

His mouth quirked upwards in acknowledgement before he continued. “If your god is with you, why did he not answer your prayers and protect you from me?”

“I- He must be testing me,” you said, the tears still falling.

“If your god is here with us, why is he not striking me down for standing on his ground? Speaking such blasphemy, in his own house?”

“I- I don’t know,” you said, a quiet sob shaking you. You felt alone, scared, and lost. If He was not with you, how could you carry on devoting yourself to Him? Was any of this His will? Or were all the rituals, the sacraments, fabricated by man?

You’d been having doubts for a while- since the dreams started. Instead of opening up to your sisters about it you held your tongue. Saying it out loud would have made it all so real. As it is now.

“Hush now, little one. Tears won’t do a thing.” He touched under your chin, forcing you to meet his eyes.

You felt defeated and betrayed by the cause you’d so devoted yourself to. Pointless. What were you to do now? Without your faith you had nothing, no one.

“You started down the wrong path.” His eyes were locked with yours, a glint of something beneath the blue-green. “I can help you correct it. Worship me, and I’ll hear your prayers. Devote yourself to me, and I’ll answer them. Adore me,” he brushed his finger tips across your lips, “and I’ll empower you.”

You felt a thrill with his words, his actions, and his darkening stare. “What must I do?” You asked, your heart racing.

“Get on your knees.”

You knelt in front of him, bowing your head to his towering form, your hands clasped together in your lap.

“Eyes on me. Always.” He said, and you brought your face up to meet his stare. Before you were fully aware of what was happening he’d taken himself out, his hardened member before you.

Your eyes widened at it- you’d never seen a phallus up close in person. The vow you took promised yourself to your lord. You weren’t even supposed to touch a man, and had stuck to that for the majority of your life. You were nervous, unsure of what to do, how to please this dark entity before you. You also realised you’d never even asked him his name.

He chuckled darkly. “I am known to many as Loki, but you may call me Master. Now, bring yourself closer to me.” You leant forward. “Good. Open your mouth, little one.”

You did as you were told and he laid his thick member over your tongue, the taste of his skin salty, his heady scent enveloping you.

“Use your lips and tongue to worship me. Show me your devotion,” he angled his hips forward so more of his length filled your mouth.

You kept your eyes on his as you started to run your tongue along him, pursing your lips slightly. You took him deeper until he hit the back of your throat, which made you gag, tears springing to your eyes.

“Relax, little one. Breathe through your nose,” you did as you were told, consciously relaxing the muscle at the back of your throat. You found you could take him further, more of him pressing into you as your saliva dribbled around your lips.

“Good,” his voice sounded deeper, a small edge to it. He grasped your head, his nails lightly scraping against your scalp, bringing a little hum from you at the sensation. He twitched at that, and you took note, humming and groaning around him as he began to move you back and forth over his length.

His lips were apart as he moved you over him, his eyes running over your features. The lustful approval of his gaze made your heart flutter, and your core ache. You were so pleased to serve him, to have a God you could so tangibly show your devotion to. You wanted him to use you, use your body and soul for his pleasure.

He grunted, teeth clenched as his grip against your scalp became harsher. His hips stuttered and he groaned, his warm essence spilling into your mouth and down your throat. You were filled with pride to receive his seed, eagerly swallowing and revelling in the taste. You cleaned him off, his length remaining hard as he watched you work below him.

“Very good, little one.” He removed his hands from your scalp, gently brushing the hollows of your cheeks as you continued to suck his length. “What do you say after such a gift?” He asked.

You let him fall from your mouth, licking your lips. “Thank you, Master.” You said breathlessly.

He nodded at you in approval then motioned you to stand from the cool stone floors. You stood on shaky legs and he held up one hand, palm upwards. You tentatively put your hand in his and he gripped it lightly as he guided you towards the altar.

Once up the steps, he turned to you and in a flash of green he held a dagger. He hooked the blade into your tunic, tearing the fabric as he brought it downwards. The linen opened to expose the virginal white of your underwear. He pushed the cloth off your shoulders, letting the tunic fall to the ground. He did the same with your underwear, tearing the soft white fabric of your bra and panties to shreds, leaving you naked before the altar. He flipped the knife in his hand, catching it before disappearing it in another flash of green.

“Present yourself to me,” his eyes were busy running over your exposed skin.

“Yes Master,” you said, moving up against the altar before settling upon it and spreading your legs, exposing yourself to the cool air. You laid back, looking up at him from heavy-lidded eyes. Remembering all the times you’d prayed staring up at this altar made you ache for your new Master, needing him to feel your worship.

“So wet and needy for me,” he brushed a knuckle over your heat, forcing a shudder from you. “Though since it’s your first time, I will ready your body to take me.”

“Thank you Master,” you said again, resting on your elbow so you could maintain his gaze.

He smirked at you and bent a knee to bring his face closer to your heat. Your muscles twitched in anticipation as he lowered his gaze to your wet heat, his hands sliding up from your calves to your thighs, stopping so they could grip your tightly.

“Have you ever been touched here by another, little one? Kissed?” He asked, his breath ghosting over your heat.

You swallowed, shaking your head. “No, Master. N-never.”

“So pure,” his eyes ran over you before capturing your gaze once more. “Have you ever touched yourself here?”

You cast your eyes downwards, “yes, Master.” You whispered, feeling shame bubble within you, your face hot.

His hands tightened around your thighs. “Look at me,” he commanded, and you quickly met his gaze. “Never feel ashamed for taking your pleasure. Worship me through it. Give into your pleasure, give into me.” He licked a slow stripe up your folds, and you cried out, your back arching against the hard wood of the altar.

From the angle of your gaze you could see the crucifix, inverted at your position. Blinking your eyes up at the sculpture of Christ, you felt your Master’s tongue swirl over your bundle of nerves and you moaned, still gazing up at the crucifix, as if you were expecting it to come to life.

You heard a low chuckle. “I told you. He’s long gone, little one.” Your brow furrowed- you still felt your Master’s tongue over your centre, hot and wet. How could you hear him?

“Look at me,” you heard his voice once more and pulled yourself up on your elbows to meet his icy gaze as he dipped a finger within you, causing you to shudder. “Do not question. Surrender,” he curled the finger on a spot that had you seeing stars, “surrender to me.”

You nodded, licking your dry lips as you panted. You were close. His hand was pressing hard into your thigh, while the other was quickly moving in and out of you, his tongue moving in tandem. “Let me feel your euphoria, little one. Let me drink it from your very soul.”

It was all so much, the feel of his fingers within you, the flick of his tongue against your most sensitive part. You were lightly moaning, the sound of your voice and his ministrations echoing off the stone of the church. His eyes were cold steel, demanding your gaze as he steadily stoked the fire within you, the flames licking at your skin.

“Oh! Oh my…” you trailed off, “God.” He finished darkly, and you came undone, writhing against the altar. As you rode out the waves of your high you whispered, “thank you Master,” over and over in prayer, your eyes slipping to those of blue-green below.

“Very good, little one. You’re ready to take me now. To feel me deep within you.” He pulled his fingers from you and stood, eyes roaming over your naked form. He ran one finger, wet with your excitement down from the hollow of your throat to the soft tufts of hair between your legs and you shivered, the cool air kissing the trail he’d left.

Smirking down at you he gripped himself, coming closer to run the head of his length up against your dripping core. You inhaled sharply, your hand gripping the wood of the altar below.

“You were built for worship. Body and soul,” he spoke, his voice rough. He slowly pushed in an inch, your channel tight around him. You squirmed, feeling a sharp pain as he continued to push in.

“Relax. Deep breath, little one.” You did as you were told, filling your lungs with air and he slid the rest of the way in on your exhale. The pain turned sharper still, and you whined, your breaths quick and pained.

“That’s it. Don’t cry,” he brushed a stray tear from your cheek. “It will feel better soon. But I need you to feel the pain. I need you to feel me stretch you, to feel me break you.” His eyes went to the skin where your bodies met, where he was stretching you, holding still while you desperately tried to relax your muscles, your nails digging into the wood of the altar.

He brought his hand down, swiping around your folds. Bringing his fingers before you, you could see they were wet with slick and bright red with your blood. He brought his fingers to your lips and swiped them over your tender skin. He bent to kiss you, his tongue running along your lips. He hummed at the taste before kissing you deeply, the metallic-tinged taste lingering in your mouth.

He started to move his hips, pulling back out of you before coming forward. Your back arched, the pain mingling with some deep sort of pleasure as he began setting a pace. He moved to whisper foreign words over the shell of your ear.

You felt a warmth wash over you, the pain slipping away with it, leaving the pleasure. He came away from you, standing back up to his full height as he looked at you, his head tilted. “Does that feel better, little one?”

“Yes, Master,” you moaned, your hips moving in time with his thrusts. His hands gripped either side of your waist, long fingers pressing into the skin as he continued to move with you.

“That’s it little one, worship me as I fuck you. Worship me as I taint you.” He continued to thrust into you, the stained glass windows of the church framing his dark figure. He gave a little flick with his fingers in the air and you felt a pressure on you- similar to finger tips, gently rubbing at your clitoris. You cried out, and he bent forward to clasp his fingers over your wrists, pulling them upwards to hold them firmly on the altar over your head as he continued to thrust within you.

You were writhing against him, the soft, woven material of his suit rubbing up against your sensitive skin, the phantom touch still continuing below. He was grinning at you, the glint in his eyes that of pure sin as he watched you lose control. You came fully undone beneath him, giving in to the pleasure he was wringing from your body, every nerve alit with it. Your vision blurred slightly but you kept your eyes open, his smirk taunting you as you came thanking him at the top of your lungs.

The touch below had continued as you rode out your orgasm, coming back in full force once your breath settled. He moved to grip your wrists with one hand, the other coming to firmly grasp your jaw, pushing your face to the side. You felt his tongue against the shell of your ear and you cried out at the sensation. He chuckled lowly before taking your earlobe between his teeth, marring the flesh then running his tongue over the heated skin. Your breaths were quick puffs, your chest rising against his as he continued to nip, bite and lick at your skin.

“You will cum once more, little one. Cum for your Master and I will reward you,” he nipped at your earlobe once more, “I’ll fill you little one. Would you like that?” His voice was divine, the dark tone of it bending you to his every will.

“Y-yes please, Master, please fill me,” you stuttered, your hips arching towards his thrusts, angling you slightly off the altar.

He chuckled once more, “good. Now, little one,” he licked the skin beneath your earlobe, “cum now.” With that he bit you- you could feel his teeth break the skin of your neck as you moaned, the pain mingling with the pleasure sharply bringing your release. The pleasure electrified you, you couldn’t keep your body still as it fully overtook your every sense, clouding your vision.

As if it were far away you heard your Master moan. His muscles tensed against you, and you felt him twitch within you. As your breath returned he pulled out of you, stepping backwards to admire your form.

He smirked and brought two fingers to your dripping hole, swirling them in the wet there. Removing them, he traced a line down your chest in the slick, forcing a shudder from you.

He connected the vertical line with one horizontal, painting a cross over your breasts. You flinched when his fingers skimmed across your nipples, your body still overstimulated.

“Perfect,” he breathed, his hand moving to close his trousers.

His eyes falling back to you, he held a hand out towards you. You took it and he guided you to stand, the cum dripping down the insides of your thigh.

He snapped his fingers and suddenly you were clothed in a tight fitting tunic, the neckline low and the colour a rich emerald green. A golden pendant hung between your breasts, a small, detailed snake on the end with emeralds for eyes. You could still feel the cold wet slick on your chest and between your legs- he hadn’t given you any underwear. “That will do,” he nodded, “very fitting of a high priestess.”

He swiftly turned on his heel, heading down the steps and down the nave. Your heart beat loud and fast in your ears as you watched him walk away, unsure if he wanted you to follow. Stopping at the final pew he turned, long fingers of one hand beckoning you.

“Come along. You have work to do, little one.”

Part II here.

End Notes: There will be a part 2! Keep your eyes peeled- let me know if you'd like to be added to the tag list.

I apologise if I got some aspects of the church wrong- I spent some time researching but I am in no way an expert.

Want to read more Loki fics of mine? My masterlist is here.

And as always, thank you for reading!

#dark!loki x you #dark!loki x reader #dark!loki x you smut #dark!loki x reader smut #dom!loki x you #dom!loki x reader #dom!loki x you smut #dark!loki x nun!reader #bd/sm fic #dom!loki x sub!reader #loki smut #loki fic #bd/sm smut

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vavuska · 3 years

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This girl is right: Freud's mom was a hottie!

Sigmund Freud (aged 16) and his mother, Amalia, in 1872

More about Oedipus complex:

Who were Freud's parents?

Freud was born to Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire (now Příbor, Czech Republic), the first of eight children. Both of his parents were from Galicia, a historic province straddling modern-day West Ukraine and southeast Poland. His father, Jakob Freud (1815–1896), a wool merchant, had two sons, Emanuel (1833–1914) and Philipp (1836–1911), by his first marriage. Jakob's family were Hasidic Jews and, although Jakob himself had moved away from the tradition, he came to be known for his Torah study. He and Freud's mother, Amalia Nathansohn, who was 20 years younger and his third wife, were married by Rabbi Isaac Noah Mannheimer on 29 July 1855. They were struggling financially and living in a rented room, in a locksmith's house at Schlossergasse 117 when their son Sigmund was born. He was born with a caul, which his mother saw as a positive omen for the boy's future.

In 1859, the Freud family left Freiberg.

Jakob Freud took his wife and two children (Freud's sister, Anna, was born in 1858; a brother, Julius born in 1857, had died in infancy) firstly to Leipzig and then in 1860 to Vienna where four sisters and a brother were born: Rosa (b. 1860), Marie (b. 1861), Adolfine (b. 1862), Paula (b. 1864), Alexander (b. 1866).

How was Freud's relationship with his parents?

The answer to this question could be found in the letters from Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, a Berlin nose and throat doctor with whom Freud carried on a passionate 15-year friendship. The letters suggested a greater anguish by Freud over the abandonment of the seduction theory and several details about his auto-analysis.

Mothers and Nannies

Amalia was considered by her grandchildren to be an intelligent, strong-willed, quick-tempered but egotistical personality. She has been described as lively and humorous, with a strong attachment to her eldest son whom she called "mein goldener Sigi".

Just as Amalia idolised her eldest son, so there is evidence that the latter in turn idealised his mother, whose domineering hold over his life he never fully analysed.

However, nannies or nurses were always present in the Viennese's bourgeois households. The Freud-Fliess letters attracted attention to Freud's nanny and also to the role played by nannies in the ideal family of psychoanalytic theory. Included in the models that explained the bourgeois family since the nineteenth century, but excluded by analytic theory, the nanny, ever present in Austrian upper-class families, still poses a question to the father-mother-infant triangle. The relevance of the nanny's presence in children's development is fundamental and could introduce themes such as adultery, sexual harassment by the master, illegitimate children.

Freud's interest in nannies began, it seems, with the analysis of the cases that would be known in the analytical literature as those that were in the origin of the 'seduction theory' – and also with his auto-analysis. His interest, though, extended well beyond the time of this emergence, as we will see.

Almost all of his patients had a nanny or nurse – some of them had two, what would lead to a curious unfolding of this character, either in the duo good mother/ bad nanny, or, in a kind of duplication, as good nanny/bad nanny.

Freud's nanny, from whom even the name is disputed, could have been a Czech woman, a catholic, who took him to masses and reproved him for being good for nothing. He wrote:

"Today's dream has, under the strongest disguise, produced the following: she was my teacher in sexual matters and complained because I was clumsy and unable to do anything."

In the next letter (October, 15), Freud registers what his mother had told him about the nanny. Asking her if she remembered the nanny, he got the answer:

"Of course", she said, "an elderly person, very clever, she was always carrying you off to some church; when you returned home you preached and told us all about God Almighty. During my confinement with Anna (two and a half years younger) it was discovered that she was a thief, and all the shiny new kreuzers and zehners [coins] and all the toys that had been given to you were found in her possession. Your brother Philipp himself fetched the policeman; she then was given ten months in prison."

Telling that his nanny made him steal money to give her, Freud interpreted his dream as a reproach for asking money from his patients for his bad treatment of them, in the same way as "the old woman got money from me for her bad treatment." The fact that Freud used his mother's remembrance to strengthen the interpretation he made of the dream –in which he was the thief - doesn't matter here, neither his identification with the nanny, observed by some analysts of this famous dream ("I = She"), but it is relevant to consider that it seems that it was with his auto-analysis that the nanny figure began to be seen as a malignant one or, in the best hypothesis, as an ambiguous one.

What needs explanation is how the theory of the Oedipus complex accounts for the boy's guilty impulses toward his mother but ignores the boy's arousal at the hands of his nurse, especially in view of how much more attention his nurse gets from Freud than his mother does.

Discussing the possible interpretations of Freud's dreams along his auto-analysis, many authors saw the relevance of the nanny's presence in his development until his conclusion that "the remarkable circumstance" is that Freud, in effect, had two mothers, his actual mother – whose nakedness he can only mention in Latin – and his nanny whom he remembers in association with numerous disturbing sexual experiences. Having two such mothers, and the luck of having the 'bad' ugly mother banished from his life when he was only two and a half, allows Freud to maintain a secure split between the internalized good and bad mothers.

Unconsciously, Freud's nurse was his seductress and shamer, his mother the pure object of guilty desire.

Thus Freud's discovery of the Oedipus complex emerges not only from memories of a small boy's guilty, aggressive lust for his mother, but from memories of dependence on her, too – a dependence remembered, however as the seduction of a small bourgeois, Austrian boy by a Czech working-class woman in a province of the Austrian Empire still recovering from the Revolution of 1848.

Freud's father

To begin with the so-called 'seduction theory': in 1896 Freud published a polemic article in which he attributed the origin of hysteria to a sexual trauma suffered by his female – and some male - patients that ranged from sexual harassment to sexual abuse in the hands of a member of the family: uncles (some of whom were revealed as fathers in subsequent publications), brothers, guardians, school colleagues, or nannies. He said that this trauma was "unhappily" caused "too frequently, by a near kin."

In this article he said that in 18 cases of hysteria until then analyzed by him (six men and twelve women), all of them showed this etiology, or cause, of the condition.

By 1897, Freud was spending six days a week analyzing his patients, many of them suffering from hysteria. Increasingly, their problems resonated with his own. Freud began to suspect that he too was neurotic, suffering from what he described as "a little case hysteria." He became consumed by his own self-analysis.

In the spring of 1897, Freud wrote his friend Fliess about a new patient, a young woman with hysterical symptoms: "It turned out that her supposedly otherwise noble and respectable father regularly took her to bed when she was eight to twelve years old and misused her…"

It was Freud wrote, "fresh confirmation" that the prime cause of hysteria was the sexual abuse of an innocent child by an adult, most often, a father. But his theory had alarming implications. If he himself suffered from a form of hysteria, and if an abusive father caused hysteria, then Freud was forced to draw a distressing conclusion. He began to imagine that his own father might have abused him. Three months after Jacob's death, he wrote Fliess: "Unfortunately, my own father was one of these perverts, and is responsible for the hysteria of my brother… and those of several younger sisters."

Freud realized that he can not get further in understanding others unless he analyzes himself. That was another one of those great ideas. [But] The dreams that he analyzed are not really particularly well analyzed.

Freud interpreted the message "close the eyes" in his dream after his father's death to mean that there was something he was not meant to see, nor to know about, his father. To make his theory work, his father's secret had to be that he had sexually abused his children. But, when he could find no evidence of such behavior and no clear memory of abuse among his brothers and sisters, his seduction theory collapsed.

By the next year, he began doubting his proposition, and wrote to Fliess: "I don't believe in my neurotica [neurosis theory] any more." Even if he mentioned the seduction theory in other letters of this year (and also years after), he began, then, to treat these denounces of his patients as a fantasy.

#vavuskapakage #sigmund freud #freud #historical figures #historical #History of psychology #oedipus complex #oedipus #psychoanalysis #Psychological projection #psychology #Seduction theory

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creepingsharia · 4 years

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Vatican Betrays Virgin Mary for Islam’s Prophet Muhammad

Vatican Betrays Virgin Mary for Prophet Muhammad

By Raymond Ibrahim

The same folks to bring you “Abrahamism”—the idea that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are intricately connected—have narrowed their sights on promoting Mary, the mother of Christ, as “a Jewish, Christian and Muslim woman,” in the words of Catholic priest Fr. Gian Matteo of the Pontifical International Marian Academy. In a ten-week webinar series titled “Mary, a model for faith and life for Christianity and Islam,” the academy will seek to present Mary as a bridge between the two religions.

This may be easier said than done — at least for those still interested in facts. For starters, the claim that Mary was a “Jewish, Christian and Muslim woman” is only two-thirds true: yes, she was a Jew by race and background; and yes, she was a Christian in that she literally birthed Christ(ianity); but she was most certainly not a Muslim — a term and religion that came into being 600 years after Mary died.

Worse, far from being the Eternal Virgin, as she is for 1.5 billion Christians of the Catholic and Orthodox variety, Islam presents Mary, the Mother of Christ, as “married” to and “copulating” with Muhammad in paradise — a depiction that would seem to sever rather than build “bridges.”

In a hadith that was deemed reliable enough to be included in the renowned Ibn Kathir’s corpus, Muhammad declared that “Allah will wed me in paradise to Mary, Daughter of Imran,” whom Muslims identify with Jesus’s mother. (Note: The Arabic word for “marriage” (نكاح, or nikah, denotes “legal sexual relations,” connotes the “F” word, and is wholly devoid of Western, “romantic,” or Platonic connotations.)

Nor is this just some random, obscure hadith. None other than Dr. Salem Abdul Galil — previously deputy minister of Egypt’s religious endowments for preaching — affirmed its canonicity in 2017 during a live televised Arabic-language program. Among other biblical women (Moses’s sister and Pharaoh’s wife), “our prophet Muhammad — prayers and be upon him — will be married to Mary in paradise,” Galil said. [Arabic video of Galil stating this on the Mahwar television network]

If few Christians today know about this Islamic claim, medieval Christians living in Muslim-occupied nations were certainly aware of it. There, Muslims regularly threw this fantasy in the face of Catholic and Orthodox Christians who venerated Mary as the “Eternal Virgin.” Thus, Eulogius of Cordoba, an indigenous Christian of Muslim-occupied Spain, once wrote, “I will not repeat the sacrilege which that impure dog [Muhammad] dared proffer about the Blessed Virgin, Queen of the World, holy mother of our venerable Lord and Savior. He claimed that in the next world he would deflower her.”

As usual, it was Eulogius’s offensive words about Muhammad — and not the latter’s offensive words about Mary and any number of other things — that had dire consequences: He, as well as many other Spanish Christians vociferously critical of Muhammad, were found guilty of speaking against Islam and publicly tortured and executed in “Golden Age” Cordoba in 859.

One expects that all of these “inconvenient” facts will be quietly passed over during the Pontifical International Marian Academy’s webinars. And if they are raised, no doubt Christians will somehow take the blame, as almost always happens in academic settings. As one example, after quoting Eulogius’s aforementioned lament against Muhammad’s claim of being married to Mary, John V. Tolan, a professor and member of Academia Europaea, denounced it as an “outrageous claim” of Eulogius’s own “invention.” He then railed against the martyr — not against his murderers or their prophet:

Eulogius fabricates lies designed to shock his Christian reader. This way, even those elements of Islam that resemble Christianity (such as reverence of Jesus and his virgin mother) are deformed and blackened, so as to prevent the Christian from admiring anything about the Muslim other. The goal is to inspire hatred for the “oppressors[.]” … Eulogius sets out to show that the Muslim is not a friend but a potential rapist of Christ’s virgins. (Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination, p.93)

As already seen, however, it is Muhammad himself — not any “Christian polemicist” — who “fabricates lies designed to shock,” namely that Mary will be his eternal concubine.

This, incidentally, is the main problem the purveyors of Abrahamism fail to acknowledge: Islam does not treat biblical characters the way Christianity does.

Christians accept the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, as it is. They do not add, take away, or distort the accounts of the patriarchs that Jews also rely on. Conversely, while also relying on the figures of the Old and New Testaments — primarily for the weight of antiquity and authority attached to their names — Islam completely recasts them with different attributes that reaffirm Muhammad’s religion as the one true and final “revelation,” as opposed to Judaism and Christianity, whose biblical accounts on these figures are then seen as “distorted” because they are different from Islam’s later revisions.

Far from creating “commonalities,” it should be clear that such appropriation creates conflict. By way of analogy, imagine that you have a grandfather whom you are particularly fond of, and out of the blue, a stranger who never even met your grandfather says: “Hey, that’s my grandfather!” Then — lest you think this stranger is somehow trying to become your friend — he adds: “And everything you thought you knew about grandpa is wrong! Only I have his true life story.”

Would that create a “bridge” between you and this stranger trying to appropriate and recast the image of your grandfather?

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

#Islam #Muslim #Sharia #Jihad #Legal #Law #News #Media #Politics #Religion #Pope #Mary

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izzielizzie · 3 years

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Now I’ve Seen You I’ve Seen It All Chapter Three

okay this is actually a really short chapter because a) i haven’t been able to write a lot lately and b) this is kind of an... explanation chapter? idk how to explain it but you’ll see and I promise the next one is going to be good

(chapter one)

(chapter two)

The girls come barreling into the Big Cabin after everyone’s gone to bed, and the counselors look up in confusion. They take in the rain soaked girls and their tattered clothes and the scratches on their arms and legs and jump into action.

“What did you do this time?” Knox asks as Kris rushes forward to take care of their cuts.

“Would it kill you two to get along?” Maeve groans as she observes the brouhaha.

Ali pulls out of Addy’s grasp, climbs onto a table, and whistles a sharp, loud whistle. Everyone freezes. Luis, who’s closest to Ali, reaches over and lifts her off the table.

“Impressive,” he says, placing her on the ground. “Bet you learned that from your dad.”

Cooper kicks his shin.

“I mean dad what dad?”

Maeve sighs at her husband. “Did you two actually hurt each other?”

Ellen looks affronted. “No! Why would we do that?”

Maeve raises her eyebrows. “Then what is it?”

“Well, Aunt Maeve,” Ellen starts, crossing her arms. Ali crosses to Ellen’s side and mimics her pose. Maeve looks apprehensive.

“Yes?”

Everyone watches in silence.

“Did you really put us together in a cabin knowing that we were twins and then didn’t tell us we were twins?”

Maeve pauses. “Well when you put it that way… yes.”

The sisters raise their eyebrows and shift their weight in unison, looking remarkably like their mother.

Maeve falters under their stern gaze. “Well, it’s not my fault your parents had terrible divorce arrangements!” She throws her arms up in defeat.

“Divorce?” Ali asks.

“Yeah, divorce.” Maeve sighs and sits on one edge of a bench, patting the space next to her. Both sisters scramble for her lap. Ali beats her and Ellen doesn’t even try to push her off Maeve’s lap. She simply sits calmly until Luis swings her up and puts her in his lap.

“Why?” Ellen asks.

“Well, maybe I should start from the beginning. Okay, so you both know your parents grew up in Bayview, California right?”

Both girls nod.

“Okay, so. Your parents went to the same elementary school: St. Pius. It was this private Catholic school thing. I never went. Anyway that’s beside the point.

“Your mother’s parents, my parents were very… how do I say this?” Maeve pauses. She looks at Luis, who shrugs. No other spectator has a suggestion for what Maeve’s trying to say. “Traditional. They wanted their daughters to get a good education, marry, things like that. Not to say they were awful. They’re not, I love them and I still see them from time to time.

“But they didn’t like that your parents were friends. You see, your father’s mother, your grandmother Ellen - you’re named after her dear - she left when your father was eight. And your grandfather had a drinking problem and couldn’t work. He pulled your father Nate out of school, so your parents’ friendship ended abruptly. Until high school.”

“What happened?” Ali asks. She’s never heard about her grandparents, her father doesn’t talk about them.

“They reconnected in their senior year, and they dated at the end of the year, and continued on and off during college. Your mother went to Yale, which is across the country, so they had a hard time making long distance work. And during this entire time, my parents still didn’t like Bronwyn and Nate together. After graduation, your father proposed, and they didn’t know it at the time, but your mother was pregnant.”

“With who?” Ellen asks.

Ali rolls her eyes as everyone laughs.

“You, silly El,” Luis says, ruffling her hair.

“Oh.”

Maeve smiles and smooths down Ellen’s curls before continuing. “So they eloped, they didn't have a wedding or anything. And when our parents found out… oh boy.”

“They were mad?” Ali asks. She hasn’t spoken in a while, and Maeve thought that she might have fallen asleep.

“Infuriated.”

“So what happened?”

“They lived in an apartment for a while as your mom tried to study to be a lawyer and eventually… well, not to say that they weren’t happy they were but… your parents were arguing. A lot. I remember your mother calling me at three in the morning crying about how unhappy your father was and how they didn’t fit anymore.”

“Why?” Ellen asks.

“Well…” Maeve pauses. She’s trying to figure out how to proceed without the girls getting the - very incorrect - impression that they were the reason for the divorce. “Your father didn’t want Bronwyn alienating herself from her parents. Keep in mind that your father didn’t have his parents growing up, not really, so he wanted Bronwyn to have hers. And Bronwyn had big plans for her life that weren’t coming to fruition and it upset her. They were young. And they didn’t know what was best for themselves,” she finishes with a sniff. It’s clear to see that Maeve believes what’s best for Bronwyn and Nate is to not live across the country from each other.

“So dad left?” Ali asks.

“No, it was your mom,” Cooper says, reaching forward to run his hand through her hair.

“Why?”

“She didn’t want your father to be stressed anymore. He had a lot going on, his father was sick. So she let him go,” Kris says.

“Although we all thought she shouldn’t have,” Phoebe adds.

Ali looks like she’s going to cry again. “So they just gave up?”

“I guess so sweetie,” Maeve says, cuddling the girl in her lap - for her comfort or Ali’s she’s not sure.

“So, Mom went to Connecticut to be with her grandparents with me?” Ellen asks.

“And Dad stayed in California with me?” Ali asks.

Maeve nods. Ali slumps against her. “So why are we here?”

“That’s a good question Maevey why are they here?” Luis asks his wife with a grin.

Maeve smiles a little. “Actually, that was my doing.”

Ellen tilts her head.

“Well I knew that Bronwyn was bringing you Ellen, and I thought well… Why not bring Ali too? You two are sisters, you’d get along.” Maeve pauses as everyone laughs. “Well, clearly that didn’t happen. But you’re here. That’s what matters right?”

“Right,” Ellen agrees as she wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.

Ali snuggles against her aunt. “So… we just spend the rest of our lives knowing we have a twin?”

“I’m sure when you’re older your parents will tell you,” Maeve says. “And speaking of, Ali, did anyone ever tell you I’m your godmother?”

Ali grins up at the woman who changed her life for the better.

“I love you,” Ali says seriously.

“And I love you dear,” Maeve responds, smiling over her nieces’ heads at her husband, who shakes his head, half exasperated and half in love.

#izzielizzie's fics

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spurgie-cousin · 4 years

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WHW Royals Edition 👑 Part 1: Anne, Queen of Great Britain

Born: February 6th, 1665 at St James's Palace, Westminster, Middlesex, England Died: August 1st, 1714 (age 49) at Kensington Palace, Middlesex Reign: March 8th, 1702 - August 1st, 1714

I thought I’d give you guys a little intro to Anne, Queen of Great Britain as a start for my series on weirdo royals. I got big into her after seeing the Yorgos Lanthimos film The Favourite (can’t recommend enough) and that resulted in endless hours of internet wormholes about her bizarre and interesting life. I’ve read about a lot of fucked up royals in my life (truly there’s many) but it was only when I was reading about Anne that I kind of had an ‘a-ha’ moment about how really drastically the monarchial system can fuck a person up.

Queen Anne fits this bill for me for a lot of reason; she was a surprise Queen who was woefully underprepared for ruling, which led to people pushing their political agendas on her under the guise of genuine affection. It’s hard to know if the relationships that define her legacy and life in popular culture were genuine, or if they would’ve existed at all had she not been a royal. Her legacy is muddied by the traditional, patriarchal writers of history of course and it sometimes is hard to get a clear picture of who she really was, but here are a few tidbits about her life and rule:

Anne’s signature

1. Queen Anne was born Anne Stuart, daughter of James II and Anne Hyde and raised in the traditional way for aristocratic girls, with an education that emphasized on arts, language, and music. This eventually proved to suck dick for her big time later on in life when she became queen. Traditionally, girls were purposefully taught nothing useful about politics or history because it was assumed they would never rule (cough) and this left Anne very much lacking in the political discourse department as a monarch; all of her future speeches and even remarks made around political figures would have to be scripted by advisors. If she found herself off script and not knowing what to say, it’s said that she’d sometimes “move only her lips and make as if she said something when in truth no words were uttered.”

2. 8 year old Anne first met friend Sarah Jennings (Churchill) when she was a lady in waiting at just 5 years old. As you’ll see later on, Sarah goes on to be one of the (if not the most) influential person in the Queen’s life, becoming a trusted friend and political advisor.

3. Anne was what we would probably refer to today as a ‘hot mess express’. The poor gal had a myriad of health issues, both mentally and physically, all of which only got worse as she aged. She suffered from gout and an undefined auto-immune disorder (we think) as well as a bizarre eye-watering disorder and poor vision. It’s also pretty evident that she didn’t have the best relationship with alcohol or food and most likely developed a binge eating disorder later in her life (she was very large at the time of her death and there are a few accounts of her eating to the point of puking in front of other people).

4. Besides her relationships with Sarah and Abigail Masham, Queen Anne is also known mostly known for the tragic loss of her 17 pregnancies. Of all her births she had only 5 live babies, only one of which survived beyond infancy. Her son William was also afflicted with various illnesses all of his life and died at the age of 11.

Prince William, Anne’s longest surviving child

5. Anne became queen by accident, after her Catholic father was ousted as king by her protestant brother in-law. He and her sister ruled for a short time before dying of pneumonia and smallpox respectively with no heir in place, so Anne, who supported the protestant reformation, was crowned Queen.

6. Over the years Anne and Sarah Churchill became extremely close friends, and most accounts agree that Sarah had an incredible amount of influence over Anne’s political decisions. Sarah is said to have had a more natural affinity for politics, and to have had a completely opposite disposition than Anne. Some think that Sarah may have maintained the relationship only to keep her political control.

7. A lot of people that believe that Anne and Sarah were so close because they were lovers. The pair at one time wrote each other 4 letters a day, that included things like “I had rather live in a cottage with you than reign empress of the world without you,” “Oh come to me as soon as you can that I may cleave myself to you,” one of Queen Anne’s “I can’t go to bed without seeing you… If you knew in what condition you have made me, I am sure you would pity.” I don’t think I necessarily share that opinion, for reasons you’ll see below.

8. Sarah was the only person under Anne that was allowed to speak to her without using a title. The two often used their nicknames for each other: Mrs. Morley (Anne) and Mrs. Freeman (Sarah).

Sarah Churchill, 1702

9. A lot of scholars disagree with the notion that Anne had any gay affairs with anyone, including Sarah, for a few reasons; first because, at the time, it was just apparently normal to act hella gay with your friends, particularly for royals, so excessive touching or writing wouldn’t have raised any alarms. Most historians attribute this to the extreme separation of the sexes, particularly in upper class households. Most people spent 90% of their time exclusively with people of their own gender, so it was a means to have your emotional needs met within the confines of your station. If an aristocrat started ‘friend flirting’ with you, it was also seen as rude to not reciprocate.

10. A few other reasons Anne was probably not lesbian: she had a pretty good relationship with her husband (Prince George of Denmark), and the 17 pregnancies thing suggests that they weren’t having any problems in the bedroom department. Also, when Anne later became close friends with Sarah’s cousin Abigail, Sarah became jealous and began to spread rumors that the two were gay lovers (more on that below). This rumor probably stuck and carried over into other areas of her life. Or maybe Anne was bi and both things were true, who knows.

Anne circa 1685. All physical descriptions of Anne, especially in her later years, don’t describe her in the most glowing terms, which is insane to think about when I see portraits like this.

11. Anne began to grow distant from Sarah after her husband’s death in 1708, which all sources agree flung the queen into a huge depression. She was said to have sat by and kissed his dead body long after his death. Sarah took a tough love approach to try and snap the queen out of it, which backfired. This was when Anne began to get close to Abigail Masham, which infuriated Sarah.

12. Sarah was so mad at Anne for this that she literally wrote a song about her and Abigail being gay together, printed it out on a pamphlet, and passed it around court Mean Girls-style. The pamphlet read: “When as Queen Anne of great renown / Great Britain’s sceptre swayed / Beside the Church she dearly loved / A dirty chambermaid O Abigail that was her name / She starched and stitched full well / But how she pierced this royal heart / No mortal man can tell However for sweet service done / And causes of great weight / Her royal mistress made her, Oh! / A minister of state Her secretary she was not / Because she could not write / But had the conduct and the care / Of some dark deeds at night.”

13. Besides Sarah, a lot of people took Anne’s relative political ignorance as an invitation to push their own political agendas. It didn’t help that her reign coincided with a rapid development of a 2 party parliamentary system, as the gap between the protestant Whigs and the Catholic Tories began to widen.

14. One of Anne’s crowning political achievements was the 1707 Act of Union uniting England and Scotland under the banner of Great Britain (she had good ideas sometimes, although it’s hard to tell if they came from her or her many influential advisors). Consequently, she was the first ruler to ever rule over united Great Britain.

15. After a series of pretty horrible strokes, poor Anne died at the age of 49 in August of 1714 with no heirs and without reconciling with Sarah Churchill. To her credit, it’s said that despite her failing health she continued to attend cabinet meetings as often as possible until her death. She is buried beside her husband and children in the Henry VII Chapel on the South Aisle of Westminster Abbey.

#weird history wednesday

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anotheronechicagobog · 4 years

Text

The Crackship Sails To Molly’s - Jay Halstead x Ethan Choi

written by @anotheronechicagobog

A/N: Homophobia, the Catholic church, Catholic guilt, mention of canon-compliant violence, mention of two men having sex, it’s all pretty mild but I wanted to make sure it was all in the warnings, also I don’t like Doris and it shows

A/N 2: What do you guys think their ship name would be? Choistead? Haloi?

A/N 3: If you have a problem with LGBTQ people please go fuck yourself

They ran into each other at the last place they thought they would. Since Jay and Ethan had both been in the military, though in different factions, they figured they might run into each other at military events, they already had. But literally bumping into each other at an LGBTQ+ military personnel picnic? That shocked both of them. Ethan took notice of Jay’s pansexual flag pin and Jay looked at Ethan’s bisexual one. After the initial shock wore off, Ethan smiled, he was happy to know that he wasn’t alone in his social circle. Sure, Leslie Shay was a loud and proud lesbian, but they didn’t have anything in common and just made sure to say ‘hi’ whenever they ran into each other and buy each other nachos whenever they ran into each other at pride events (don’t ask, it just became their thing). Ethan went to give him a ‘dude hug’, as Leslie had dubbed them, when he noticed the fear etched onto Jay’s face. “Halstead, are you okay?” Honestly, he looked like he was about to burst into tears. “Jus- uhh” Jay hiccuped and Ethan was now justifiably worried. “Don’t tell Will.” And then Jay ran away from Ethan and the gentle arm he’d had on his shoulder like a bat out of hell. Jay could still feel the warmth of Ethan’s hand on his right shoulder as he drove away.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ethan didn’t tell Will. He didn’t give any indication that he knew something Will didn’t. He understood how important it was for him to keep quiet, but at the same time, it was so hard. Ethan wanted nothing more than to march up to the redhead and beat some sense into him. Will had obviously made to Jay that he wouldn’t be accepted if he came out. And he didn’t care, quite frankly. He had absolutely no sympathy for homophobes, he was done giving kindness and sympathy to people who wished that others wouldn’t exist because it deviated out of what they considered ‘normal’. So he’d gone back to being impassive and straight-faced. He pushed all of his feelings down because if he allowed himself to feel anything it would be complete and utter rage.

The next time he saw Jay was when he’d come into the ED to interview an assault victim. Apparently, there was a group of men catfishing and then assaulting LGBTQ+ men. Ethan’s heart ached just thinking about the case, all of the injured, betrayed victims. And Jay. Ethan didn’t want to know what was going through his mind, he probably viewed this as another reason not to come out.

The eye contact between them was brief, but Jay showed him vulnerability, and then thanks when Ethan gave him a sympathetic smile. Just trying to untangibley reach out and connect with his aching soul. And then suddenly it was gone, the grace that had bound the two of them temporarily, and Ethan had to watch with a sinking heart as Jay emotionally shrunk in on himself. “How’s our victim doing, Choi?”

“Not great, I’m afraid. He’ll live, but there’s going to be long lasting health problems for him.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Yeah, it is.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two days later, after the catfishing homophobes were caught, Ethan ran into Jay outside of Molly’s. His eyes were dark, broad shoulders were slumped, and he moved like his mind possessed all the strength his body just couldn’t muster. “Hey Choi- uh, Ethan?”

“Yeah?”

“Could we go somewhere to talk? Maybe get a drink?”

“Well, we are standing outside of a bar.”

“Somewhere that’s not packed to the seams with nosey people who know who I... Don’t want to hear what I want to talk... About. Y’know what? This was stupid-”

“How about Osso’s? Over on Folger street? It’s not a bar, but I’m starving and their booths have curtains.”

“Yeah, that sounds great, actually, thanks.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I figured out that I was bi when I was fourteen. I was watching The Mummy for the first time and I couldn’t stop thinking about how hot Brendan Fraser was. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Rachel Weisz was hot too, but Brendan really got my attention. When the movie was over, uh, well let’s just say that my Catholic guilt took hold. My mom knew, I told her when I was seventeen, and she kept trying to set me up with her friends’ daughters. She didn’t care, just told me that she loved me and that there was nothing wrong with me, but that I shouldn’t tell my dad or Will. She didn’t sugarcoat anything, she took me to this secluded spot on the pier and told me about homophobia and how bad it was, not just morally, but that it ran rampant, and that my father and brother were two heavy believers in an institution who made it their mission to oppress as many people as possible. Looking back, I think my dad knew, don’t know how or if he actually does, it’s just more of a gut feeling. My brother is still incredibly Catholic, he’s become more accepting over time, but it’s clear that while he’s okay with strangers being LGBTQ+, he’s not okay with anyone he’s close to being anything other than straight. The, uh, my first time I was nineteen and it was during my rangers training, with one of my now best friends, who I dated during that time for a while. Everything kinda fell apart when we got discharged. Mouse or-”

“Greg Gerwitz. I remember him.”

“Yeah, we broke up after we were discharged. Well, he broke up with me. Neither of us were handling being back well but he was handling it worse. It hurt like he;;, I missed him so much. After I started in Intelligence I brought him in as a CI. I just wanted to know he was okay, be near him again. But he was not the same man I’d fallen in love with. He was an addict, had a record, a small one, but still. I broke my heart almost as much as our breakup did. A little later I got him a job as our tech guy. It was good having him around, especially cause he was coming back, y’know? He’d quit his habits, became a law-abiding citizen. It was great. Then, he asked me out, asked me to take him back, and I did. Without a second of hesitation. Being together again felt amazing, but then he got his record expunged, dumped me, again, and went back to the rangers. It completely tore me to pieces, I got time off and didn’t get out of bed for two weeks after he deployed. Uh, wow, sorry to unload all of that on you. And that was probably a lot of information you didn’t want to hear-”

“No, no, Jay. It’s actually nice to talk about this, even though I’m out and open, I don’t actually get the chance to talk about it all that much. I’d actually like to share if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all, go ahead.”

“I was twenty-one when I figured it out. I was on brief leave in the navy, just a couple of days without duties while we were docked in Puerto Rico. I got pretty drunk, a guy I was dancing near was pretty drunk too, he kissed me, I kissed him back, and one thing lead to another. When I got back to port the next day, my friends all asked where I’d gone off to. I told them I got laid. It didn’t really hit me until the following night when I was in my bunk, lying awake because I couldn’t forget the feeling of his lips, or the callouses on his hands, or... Other quite honestly filthy details I probably shouldn’t share in a public place. I couldn’t sleep properly for two weeks, I come from a traditional Korean family. All I could think about was how they’d react. What would they do if they found out? I found out when I was twenty-nine. My sister, Emily, had somehow found out, and when she burst through the door, drunk off her ass, at the first Thanksgiving I’d been able to attend in five years, she announced it to everyone when I tried to calm her down and get her up to bed. The look, on my parents’ faces, I couldn’t even look at my grandparents. I just said sorry and ran out. I crashed at a fling’s place for a week. I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone or to go see them. I felt like someone had put my chest through a trash compactor, I couldn’t stop crying. I had lost my entire family in less than ten seconds. You know that subtle, back of the mind dread you feel when you’re boarding a plane for your next deployment? Normally, you push it away, accept it’s a possibility but try not to think about it. I welcomed it. I hoped I’d get killed, that I wouldn’t make it home. But then... My grandparents were at my gate. Their faces just lit up and they welcomed me with open arms. They both hugged me and made me promise to come home, not to be a hero. They gave me hope. They loved and supported me, went toe-to-toe with the rest of my family for me. I’ll never be able to thank them enough.”

“They sound really great, I’m glad that you have them.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Suddenly the heavy curtain closing off their booth from the rest of the world was pushed to the side. “Gentlemen, your food is ready. Who ordered the grilled salmon?”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ethan and Jay had grown much closer, having bi-weekly dinners. Sometimes at Osso’s, sometimes at Bartoli's, sometimes at their own apartments. They’d become close, close friends. But because drama followed them around like a moth to a flame because it felt like they lived in an overly dramatic tv show sometimes, it couldn’t stay that way.

Jay started to watch Ethan when he licked his lips after he took a sip of a drink, when the muscles in his arms lengthened themselves when he reached for something, that twinkle he got in his eyes whenever he got cocky. Jay knew what was happening from the first moment he found himself looking at Ethan’s lips for more than a millisecond. He was falling in love. And all that he could do was loathe himself for boarding a vessel with impending doom.

Reasons I Can’t Fall In Love With Ethan

Will doesn’t know I’m bi

Ethan works with Will

Ethan is in the reserves and Mouse left me to go back to a warzone, it would kill me if it happened a second time

His ex, April, is currently trying to get back together with him

April also works with Ethan and Will

Ethan doesn’t love me so I’d just be ruining our friendship

Jay looked down at his list and recited it in his head, over and over again. He needed to memorize it, live by it. If he didn’t his entire world, which he just finally found comfort in again, would crumble to the ground.

Jay didn’t distance himself from Ethan, his heart wouldn’t let him, but it got harder and harder to ignore his ever-growing feelings. But he couldn’t tell Ethan, he couldn’t be with Ethan, he knew that far too well. So the next time Ethan confided in Jay that April had made a move on him Jay did something incredibly, fabulously, thoroughly idiotic. “You should ask April out, man. I think that you guys would be great together.”

Yup.

He actually did that.

Sigh.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Alright, who is she?”

“Excuse me?”

“Come on Jay, I’m your brother. I know you. The last time you looked like this and were drinking vodka, of all things, was when Erin left. You only drink vodka when you’re experiencing troubles of the heart.”

“I drank vodka when Mouse went back to the rangers.”

“After he’d broken up with you to go back to the same warzone he’d almost died in.”

Jay choked on his drink and felt his heart plummet out of his body and onto the floor. Burning tears blurred his vision and Jay felt more afraid than he’d ever felt in his life. He’d been shot at, blown up, shot at again, taken hostage, tortured, and he never felt this scared, this small. “Jay? Oh my god, Jay are you okay? Breathe, man.” But he couldn’t. Why couldn’t he breathe? Why was his chest so tight? Why couldn’t he move? Suddenly he was yanked off of his couch and onto the floor, his head shoved between his bent knees. “Deep breaths, Jay. Just take slow deep breaths, in and out, just like me... Okay... Good, name five things you can feel, four things you can see, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.”

“Uh... floor, couch leg, carpet, coffee table... you... Um, I, uh, I see...”

“Four things you can see.”

“Jeans, scrubs, crumbs, Kim’s wine stain... Hear, u-uh, Netflix, heating system, the Needlers arguing again...”

“Your neighbours sure do fight a lot, but you’re doing great. Keep going. Two things you can smell.”

“... Pizza and your terrible cologne...”

“Ignoring that, one thing you can taste.”

“Your terrible cologne. Seriously, Will, your supposed to spritz it, not douse yourself in it.”

“Well you’re feeling better, but you’re still shaking. You feel a bit cold, get back on the couch I’m gonna grab you a blanket.” Will was right, he was still shaking, and he felt cold to the bone. His heart was pounding so hard it was terrifying and his chest was still tight... But he was feeling better. Panic attack. He’d gotten them before, along with anxiety attacks, night terrors, and paranoia. All connected to his PTSD. He’d just never had a panic attack about his sexuality before, only about the action he’d gotten overseas and in Chicago. When Will returned with a thick fluffy blanket he’d gotten from Kim for secret Santa, the same night she’d made that wine stain on his carpet, Jay was on the couch and gripping his knees tightly, trying to get a grip on himself. Will had also brought Jay’s first aid kit and was checking him over, after he’d been wrapped up like a traumatized child, and Jay released a shaky breath, unable to look his brother in the eye before speaking at the same volume as a mouse. “How long have you known?”

Will stopped what he was doing and regarded his brother. Jay was older and had always been Will’s hero growing up but right now... He just looked like he needed a hug. “I’ve known since you were nineteen. You brought Mouse back to visit with you while you guys had leave and when mom and dad had work and I had school, you guys had the place to yourselves. I realized when I was a couple of minutes away from the house that I’d forgotten my lunch, so I went back to get it. When I walked in you guys were making out on the couch. You were really... into each other, you didn’t even notice me. I was gonna bolt to the kitchen and back... But then you took off each other’s shirts and started reaching for belts so I bolted. I love you, Jay, and I don’t care who you have sex with, but I never want to actually see it.”

“Jeez, I’m sorry we must have traumatized you.”

“No you didn’t, I would’ve reacted the same way if I saw you with a girl... Which we both know is true cause you and Erin had a very bad habit of not closing your bedroom door.”

“Sorry about that... If you’ve known all this time, why have you never said anything? I mean you used to make these weird comments about being related to gay people, but...”

“I thought that you needed to be the one to tell me. It was your closet to exit, I thought it would’ve been rude to force it. And about those comments, I don’t know, it’s just you never told me. More and more time passed, and from the letters you were sending mom I could tell you and Mouse were still together but you never said anything. I was trying to give you hints that I don’t care, your sexuality doesn’t matter to me. I love you no matter what. The only reason that I brought up any of this now, forced you out of the closet... I’ve never seen you like this. It rivals when you came back. You are hurting and I want to be there for you, but I can’t if you won’t talk to me, if you won’t let me in.”

“But I’m sinning. You’ve always been more devout than me.”

Will scoffed. “Have you been reading the news? The Catholic church really can’t decide what’s right and wrong considering all they’ve done and covered up. Plus, did you really think I was going to make all my life choices based on the teachings given to me by men who forced us to wear plaid suit jackets for elementary and high school? Really, I can’t wear plaid anymore, I don’t understand how you can tolerate it, I swear I’ve got plaid PTSD.”

“Well, maybe it’s cause I actually have PTSD and there are far worse things to go through than having to wear plaid to school every day.”

“That was a bad comment, I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright... So you’re really okay that I’m bi?”

“As long as you're happy, I’m happy.”

“You have no idea how much it means to me to hear you say that and mean it.”

Jay was tearing up again, but this time they were happy tears. Will just wrapped his big brother in a hug and relished ina feeling of closeness that he hadn’t felt since they were kids.

“Okay, now seriously Jay, who’s giving your heart trouble?”

“I don’t know, Will...”

“As long as it’s not Connor Rhodes I don’t care.”

“Well...”

“Oh no-”

“Ha! Just kidding! Your face, seriously, what did that guy ever do to you?”

“We’re not talking about the man who thinks he’s smarter than me. C’mon, tell me who it is. Is it someone I work with?”

“It’s Ethan Choi...”

“You guys have been spending a lot of time together over the past year, so I can see that. And he’s pan, right? Yeah, I think that you guys would be cute together and I think he’s got a thing for you, honestly. Why don’t you ask him out?”

Jay fell back and groaned. “I told him to ask out April the next time she hits on him.”

Will just blinked and stared at his masochistic and self-sacrificing moron of an older brother. “Why would you say that?! You clearly like him! You idiot!”

“... I’m gonna need the vodka back if we’re gonna keep talking about this.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jay felt like the weight he’d had on his shoulders was traded for another. He wasn’t worried about Will despising his existence anymore, but now he had to watch Ethan date April. And on top of all that, Will was always on his case about his miserably non-existent love life. So yeah, he wasn’t really enjoying his life at the moment. He was currently sitting up at the bar at Molly’s, avoiding ‘chexton’. He could hear April’s giggles and Doris squawking “you’re so perfect for each other!”, “I’m so glad you got back together!”, and “I call maid of honour!” over and over and over again. He knocked back the last of his beer when his phone buzzed.

Mouse: Hey Jay, I’m back on leave for a couple of days, just got off the plane. Want to meet up?

Jay: Sure, you up for a beer at Molly’s? I’m here right now.

Mouse: Actually I was thinking of a different kind of meet up. Your place? Just the two of us?

Jay: Sounds like a plan.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jay and Mouse spent the two days he was home screwing each others’ brains out. That really was the best way to put it. Their time together was hot, heavy, and passionate. They wouldn’t get back together, no, but there was a bond there that would always remain. They’d both had tension that needed to be released and release it they did. Jay dropped Mouse off at O’Hare early on the third day. “Hey, thanks for this weekend. It was nice, it was good to see you again, Jay.”

“Yeah, you too. Stay safe Greg.”

“It’s Greg now?”

“You’ll always be important to me. You were the first man I loved, but you’ve left me twice. I need to move on.”

“It sounds like you already have. I’m happy for you, you deserve nothing but happiness, Jay. But, uh, should you have just spent an entire weekend naked with me if you’re with someone?”

“He doesn’t love me back.”

“Is he straight?”

“No, but he’s pan and got a girlfriend.”

“I’m sorry Jay. For your situation and everything else.”

“I know. Stay safe.”

“I will.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jay turned on his phone for the first time since he told Mouse to come over. He was met with an abundance of texts and missed calls. The texts were mostly from his colleagues, asking if he was going to be at Molly’s. A couple were from Will, asking if he wanted to get together to watch a game. The person who’d sent him the most texts and had made most of the missed calls was Ethan. Jay didn’t bother going through them all, he just sent his brother and Hailey quick text messages letting them know he was alive and would be at work on time, he’d just spent the weekend with a friend. He called Ethan as he made his way through the city. “Jay? Are you okay? Where have you been? I’ve been so worried, I called your brother and Hailey and none of them could tell me anything.”

“I was okay, I was at home the whole time.”

“But I went by your place, I knocked on your door, no one answered.”

“Oh, that was you? I thought it was Karen from down the hall. I was a little... Busy.”

“All weekend? Alone in your apartment? With no assigned case or old case that’s been bothering you?”

“Well, I wasn’t alone, actually.”

“What?”

“Yeah, Mouse was on leave for the weekend so he came over.”

“... You were alone with your ex-boyfriend for an entire weekend... Doing what?”

“Each other.”

“Damnit, Jay.”

“Eth-” And then Ethan hung up. Jay was confused and distressed, but he’d arrived at the district so his relationship with Ethan would have to wait. Well, friendship, not relationship.

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When Voight needed someone to go collect a statement from an accomplice at MED Jay’s reaction rivalled that of Katniss Everdeen. He was given a couple of odd looks, but he and Hailey made their way to the hospital, Hailey side-eying him the whole way. “Do you need to talk to Ethan?”

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“He hounded me for two days because you weren’t texting him back. He was really worried, Jay. What’s going on with you two? I mean, he was acting like...”

“Like what?”

“Like a worried boyfriend.”

“We’re not dating Hailey. Why would you think that?”

“Because you two look at each other the way Trudy and Mouch look at each other. Like you’ve hung the moon and the stars for each other. I don’t judge, Jay... You’re always really happy around him. I think you’d be good together.”

“He’s dating April.”

Hailey scoffed and rolled her eyes so hard her head rolled with them. “No, they’re not dating. She was acting like it, and Doris was yapping away about it on Friday at Molly’s, but Ethan was just quietly sitting there the whole night, he looked really uncomfortable honestly. A couple hours after you left he asked April if they could speak in private. It didn’t stay that way for long. Ethan had tried to tell her that he didn’t want to get back together and didn’t love her anymore, and she was upset, obviously. But it seemed like she understood. She hugged him and went to sit back at the nurses, but I guess she told them and Doris blew up, screamed at him, made a huge scene. April had to actually take her home. Ethan immediately came up to me and asked where you were.”

“Oh.”

“So you volunteered us to talk to him?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

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“Hey Ethan.”

“Can we talk, Jay?”

“Yeah, I’d really like that.”

“The doctor’s lounge is free, we can talk in there.” They entered the darkened gray room together, both feeling the tension between them. It felt strange to just stand there, in the middle of the room, and Ethan wasn’t meeting his gaze. So Jay sat down, hoping that Ethan would follow his lead. He did. “I’m sorry that I worried you.”

“Don’t apologize, I should actually be apologizing to you. You didn’t owe me an explanation, we don’t have the kind of... Relationship that warrants you letting me know when you’re going to disappear for a weekend with your ex. We’re just- We’re just friends.” Jay was silent for several moments, trying to think of what to say. How to phrase what he was feeling. There didn’t seem to be an eloquent way to phrase it, so he decided to just jump in and hope he didn’t get hurt. “I don’t want to be friends with you Ethan. I want to be more than that, I love you. I understand if you don’t feel the same way, but- I’ve never felt this way about anyone. I’ve been trying to distract myself, with Mouse most recently, but it didn’t work. It doesn’t change that I really want to kiss and date and be loved by you. Will you go out on a date with me?”

“Yes, there is quite literally nothing else I’d rather do. How about tonight, because I don’t think I can wait any longer. And I love you too.”

“I know that the wall behind us is basically just a window but I really want to kiss you-” Thankfully Ethan didn’t care about that, and gave Jay a kiss so incredible, he saw stars.

... And missed Hailey and Will high-fiving behind him.

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After informing the accomplice that he was being arrested for armed robbery, obstruction of justice, and public urination, Jay and his partner left MED. Jay was so happy he was practically vibrating as he skipped out of the hospital. His, highly amused, partner got into the passenger side of his truck and thumped his shoulder. “See? I told you that he likes you.”

“How did you figure out I’m not straight, anyway? I’ve... Played that pretty close to the vest. I only told Will a week ago.”

“You know Nico’s Diner over in Greektown?”

“Yeah.”

“My family owns it. I started working there when I was nine, I think? I worked there through high school and college. And I go there once a month to catch up with my brothers. You used to go there all the time with this guy and you’d hold hands and kiss him quite a bit, so I figured you were more than friends. I recognized you when I walked onto that robbery scene a couple years ago.”

“So you knew, this entire time, that I was bisexual and you didn’t say anything to anyone? Why not?”

“It wasn’t my place to tell Jay, besides, I didn’t know that you were bisexual, just that you liked men. I just spoke up now because you were really hurting Jay, it was so obvious, and it was obvious that Ethan was hurting too. I really hope that you guys are happy together.”

“Thanks, me too.”

“Soooo... Where are you gonna take Ethan on your big date?”

#One Chicago #chicago med #Chicago PD #ethan choi #jay halstead #ethan choi x jay halstead #jay halstead x ethan choi #will halstead #hailey upton #greg gerwitz #greg mouse gerwitz

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fierceautie · 3 years

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A fear a lot of parents do have about their autistic children whether or not they will find someone who will love and accept them for who they are. Yes, it can happen. My husband and I met a year after I escaped home and have been together ever since. 16 years ago, Nick and I got married and about 20 years ago we first got together. Escaping Home and DatingI used going away to college as a means of escape from home. I dated a few guys in the year before I met Nick. It was ingrained in my head to find a "nice Jewish boy" and being in upstate NY, there weren't that many Jewish guys to choose from. Since I was a teen, I vowed I would not have sex before marriage. It was not for religious reasons but my best friend's sister had a lot of trouble from being a single parent and I did not want to deal with it. I wanted to keep my life simple. Unfortunately the people I dated could not deal with that so I remained by myself. Keep in mind this is before I knew I was autistic. Once they found out I wouldn't sleep with them, they broke up with me. Thats it. It was their loss and at least I was nota at home. A Trip to RememberOne day I was going upstairs in the dorm to visit a friend from Hillel, a jewish organization on campus, and I tripped on the stairs. It was not just the stairs. There was a guy crying because his ex girlfriend really messed with his head. I gave him my number if he needed a friend. Then after I spoke to him, I went to visit a friend.Traveling in the Same CirclesThe guy who was upset was Nick. We got to talking and my roommate knew we would end up together before we did. He lived in the dorm room right above mine. We would communicate through my ceiling and his floor using morse code. After a while, we figured out that we had a lot of common friends. We played in a table top role playing game together and really got to know each other. He thought my hearing aids were cute (I thought that was a little weird to be honest but to each their own). First Date to RememberSoon after this game, he asked me on our first date. He picked me up from my dorm room and brought me a rose. One problem with that. I am allergic to roses. I was not going to advertise that I was allergic to roses to everyone I ever dated and we spent our first date in the emergency room. I thought he would never want to see me again. Then we spent more time together. Meeting the FamilySoon after our hospital date he asked me to accompany him to his mother's house an hour away. He used the excuse that I had a learners permit but the law in NY anyone with a learner permit cannot drive after 9pm.Her house was an hour away from school. We had to drive around a mountain in order to get to her house. I grew up on Long Island so driving through the Adirondack mountains was something different. When we got there, he brought me into the field behind her house. I had never seen so many stars in the sky before in MY LIFE. It was beautiful. This is a moment I will never forget. After we looked at the stars, he brought me inside to his mom's house. He first brought me in and said to his mom "I can see clear over the top of your head." He looked at his mom and then looked at me. His mom was laughing and the first thing she ever said to me,"Go ahead, slap him." She is an Italian mom so fo course she was joking. After that, Nick's sister, B's mom was 11. She locked Nick in her closet so he couldn't go back to school. She missed her brother. Fast ProposalAbout a month later after this, Nick proposed to me. We had 2 year engagement. Soon after he proposed to me, he got me a job in a grocery store he worked at. I had worked at one for my entire time in high school so it wasn't hard to get hired. One day I was training and I lifted nick to reach something on a pallet and the manager said "which isle are you two getting married in?" Everyone laughed. Being Accepted into My Real FamilyAfter getting to know Nick's mom, I never called her by her first name, she was always mom. She was the one who showed me how a mother is supposed to love. She had told my parents off more times than I care to admit. I never knew what a loving family was. I never had good memories about my childhood. Long EngagementWe had a 4 year engagement while we got our finances in order. Nick wanted to wear orange at our wedding because that is his favorite color so he did it in a way where he looked real good in it. We really let our personalities show. He is from a catholic background but doesn't like religion. I am jewish. We mesh both cultures together at home really well. At the wedding we had a Rabbi that specialized in interfaith weddings. Unfortunately there was only one priest that was willing to co officiate. His father was Jewish. We would run into him in town buying challah (Jewish egg bread for those who don't know). He would always say to us,"You think I was a gentile with a nose like this?" We knew he was kidding when he said that. The only problem the weekend we were getting married, he was out of town. Anyway, the Rabbi came from Brooklyn, which is a 6 hour drive. She included some catholic parts as well as the Jewish parts. She did a fabulous job and so grateful to her. This was a great start to something beautiful. We have our ups and downs but I swear we were made for each other. We come from such different backgrounds but compliment each other so well. Autistics can get married and it can be a beautiful thing. Parents don't you worry, if your child is meant to find someone they will.

http://www.fierceautie.com/2021/07/autistics-can-find-love-story-about-how.html

#actuallyautistic #stop quackery #autism

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grayhouse3 · 4 years

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SJTR is my villain origin story

So I finished Stalking Jack the Ripper.

Originally I told myself that I was going to just stick it out and read the next one (“Oh, it’s about vampires and Dracula. It’s probably more fun. You can forget all about the pain this one inflicted on you"). No. I got 12% of the way through and had to DNF. So here are my messily compiled thoughts on the book, basically expanded from the last post. Honestly, kind of feel free knowing I won’t be writing more about this series. (Also I am adding some TWs down below but don't know if I am doing them right!)

More on the exoticism, weirdness with Audrey Rose's Indian mother, and the British Empire:

In chapter 14, we read, "Dark strands of hair were piled atop my head, my eyes more mysterious somehow with the dark liner, and my lips were the bright crimson of freshly spilled blood … I thought of my mother and the saris she’d brought me to wear from Grandmama’s homeland. I felt just as stunning now as I did then, and the memory warmed me.” I am still trying to figure out why Maniscalco made Audrey Rose mixed race. Why is Audrey Rose’s grandmother from India? Literally, what did it add to the story? Was it nothing more than just a cute lil quirky fun character trait to her? I don’t think I missed any key moments where there were important conversations about race, imperialism, British occupation, etc., mostly because Audrey Rose’s father (a big fancy rich lord) is a white man and because Audrey Rose is white-passing. I can’t recall any moments in the book where she faces the realities/consequences of being a socially mobile POC WOMAN in LONDON IN THE 1880s. Honestly, if someone else can point out a passage I glossed over or explain some nuance I missed I would actually really appreciate it, because this drove me CRAZY.

(Audrey Rose and her brother also go visit a circus in town in chapter 15; of course these events existed purely for England/colonizing countries to exercise and display their power and to exoticize/exploit the communities/cultures that they came into contact with. Audrey Rose sees silks, beads, etc. that remind her of her grandmother’s saris, smells the foods of her family’s “homeland,” etc. Also in the same chapter there’s this great scene where her brother is describing their mother and father’s marriage: “Grandmama told me she’d refused him twenty times just for fun,” Nathaniel replied. “Said he squirmed like a cobra in a basket. That’s how she knew he was in love.” Uhhh … Is that supposed to be romantic?)

On the feminism stuff:

I am too *gestures vaguely* to write much more on this. Yeah, it’s heavy-handed. Yeah, it’s cringey. But at the end of the day, it’s not really that harmful, I guess. Here’s just a fun sampling of some of my favorite lines from the book:A few of my favorite bites from the book:

***“close-minded society” (chapter 21) Okay

***"Why turn a murderer of women into front-page news?” (chapter 15) Bro do you know how the media works

***"But what of her [mother’s] insistence that I could be both strong and beautiful? Surely Father had to be wrong.” (chapter 21) Yes girl you are strong and beautiful!

***"There would be no skirts or bustles to wrangle with anymore. I was through with things confining me” (chapter 22) Ugh down with corsets just another tool of the patriarchy amirite

On the violence against women, weird classism, and stuff about prostitution:

I was bound to be uncomfortable about a lot of this because I have weird feelings about true crime stuff, and this is historical fiction set around the Jack the Ripper murders. It was going to go sour somewhere.

Consistently Audrey Rose wants to be sympathetic, but is unable to connect all the parts of this situation together: she struggles to imagine the women (very real-life victims) beyond their lives of prostitution, poverty, squalor. When she does, we see something like this: "The women he murdered did matter ... They were daughters and wives and mothers and sisters” (chapter 28). Oftentimes she wishes she could continue to cut cadavers open in peace (women in science!) without having to think about how those cadavers came to be on her examination table: “I needed to get away from those women and their tragic lives before my emotions got the better of me” (chapter 25). Perhaps Maniscalco deserves more credit here, and perhaps I’m just being a bitch, because Audrey Rose is a very privileged girl and her actions and thoughts make that clear. It’s just that the conclusions she comes to in the name of feminism, justice, etc. weren’t at all satisfying to me.

Also: OH MY GOD. Oh my god. There is this one moment that is BRANDED AGAINST THE GRAY MATTER OF MY BRAIN FOREVER and I will never forget it. At one point, Audrey Rose and love interest Thomas decide the best thing they can do is go out and—yes—stalk Jack the Ripper. To do this, they know they need to “blend in” with the crowds in East End. So … like … cosplaying as poor people? Audrey Rose manages to find and wear the dress of ONE OF THE MURDER VICTIMS (long story short her medical doctor uncle was in a relationship with this woman and when she died he acquired her worldly possessions). It’s like, so fucked up, I can’t even describe my reaction when I read it. In chapter 25 we read, "The dress was a little too old, a little too ragged, a bit too big. If I were to wear this ghastly dress out, I’d look as if I belonged in the East End, begging for work to feed my addictions … It was absolutely perfect.” Oh my god. And THAT’S NOT EVEN THE WORST PART. While they’re “stalking Jack the Ripper” on this incredibly stupid mission, the two main characters just … make out in an alley. Like, okay. People are being murdered and you’re wearing a dead woman’s dress and you suspect your father of being guilty, but yeah, that kind of stuff makes us all a little horny. Super relatable. Absolutely no concept of reality or consequences or anything at all.

Another random note on class: I noticed the only time Maniscalco writes in dialects/accents, she’s writing seedy/working-class characters. Not saying this is a problem unique to Maniscalco’s writing by a longshot, but ... something to think on. (I think it’s ingrained in a lot of author’s writing habits/minds at this point.)

Weird stuff about the dad, the brother, and what justice means to Audrey Rose:

I had to add a whole new highlighting color for this stuff!

Any growth Audrey Rose might’ve shown over the course of the novel—anything about how these women mattered, and how they deserved justice as any “highborn” individual might, simply by dint of being humans—goes away when she and Thomas come to the conclusion that the Ripper murders must have been committed by Audrey Rose’s father. She realizes her moral dilemma when she contends with the harsh reality: if her father is the Ripper, can she turn him into the authorities? Audrey Rose worries how that might impact her own moral virtue: "They’d hang Father. Given who he was, they’d make it as public and brutal as possible. Just because blood might stain his hands did not mean I wanted his on mine. No matter if it was right or wrong” (chapter 24). First of all, BITCH. You have to. You have to report this kind of thing. No ifs, ands, or buts. I HAVE to imagine Maniscalco’s intended audience would feel the same? It’s? Serial murder? Second: Audrey Rose, baby, sweetie, honey. This is just a reminder that ACAB. I actually don’t know a whole lot about how the late Victorian criminal justice system functioned, but something tells me her family's public outlook would’ve been less bleak than she imagines here.

Lucky for Audrey Rose, her dad isn’t guilty in the end—but her brother sure is. He’s a mad scientist, using the brutalized bodies and souvenirs of his victims for Frankenstein-style experiments. Ultimately, he wants to reanimate the corpse of his and Audrey Rose’s long-dead mother, and he believes he can achieve this by transplanting fresh organs into ? Her dead and decomposed body? The thing is that, this moral dilemma persists for Audrey Rose—and her dad, too. He pressures her not to bring the little matter of Nathaniel’s issue—you know, his casual murder of a number of local women—to Scotland Yard: “They’ll have your brother hanged,” he said quietly. “Could you honestly watch that happen? As a family, have we not suffered enough?” (chapter 29). Nathaniel electrocutes himself to evade capture by the authorities, and Audrey Rose and her father feel relief. The book ends by confirming that "Lord Edmund covered up Nathaniel’s involvement, I didn’t ask how. One day I’d let everyone know the truth, but the pain was too raw now” (chapter 30).

((Side note: Listen. I knew Nathaniel had something sinister going on from the GET-GO (I’m not trying to be obnoxious) because he basically started some nighttime vigilante group called the Whitechapel Knights of Justice or whatever bullshit, I don’t know. All I know is that my red flags IMMEDIATELY started going off because that sounds exactly like the terrible and awful Crusader cosplay clubs from my (bad) Catholic childhood, where everyone thinks they’re a knight for Good but really they’re the bad guy.))

Overall, kind of ...

I think one of my biggest issues with this ending was … You have already stepped into a realm of fantastical revisionist history here in writing such a fictionalized version of these real-life events. (I know Maniscalco is far from the first to do it.) That means that the rules you are playing by are essentially your own—evidenced by the liberties she points out in her Author’s/Historical note (dates changed for convenience or storytelling purposes, real-life individuals changed for narrative purposes, etc.). So WHY would you not conclude this fantasy retelling of the Jack the Ripper murders by meting out some form of justice? I hear the counterargument: "Well, because we still don’t know the culprit today. This book would ring hollow if it named someone since historians, forensic scientists, etc. still don’t know who committed these crimes." My question: is that really a problem though? This is a work of fiction. Nothing in history happened the way it is written here. Is it crueler to the women who were murdered and who remain spectacles for true crime junkies and authors like this, less satisfying to readers who want some more concrete kind of closure, to not offer that up? I am asking this in earnest here, because I don’t know. Maybe it is insensitive to make up a murderer, to fill in the gaps in order to make sense of the violence that happened. But in my brain it feels almost like a responsibility at this point, since these murders served as the backdrop for the romance between Audrey Rose and Thomas, for the background to Audrey Rose’s empty feminist diatribes, and as inspiration for a book that went on far longer than it needed to. To me it kind of feels like the least an author could do, but I have no clue.

Anyways, I'm just glad I get to put this series to bed. No more.I truly lost sleep over it this weekend. Onto something better, please, for the love of god.

#mnc reads #mnc writes #stalking jack the ripper #sjtr #I dont know what to tag this as but I dont want to leave anything out!#tw death #tw suicice #body horror #violence #classism #I guess #racism #maybe #I dont know #Im sorry

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initiumseries · 5 years

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CAOS Part 3 - review

Uh, okay, so I think by now, we all know this show is terrible. Netflix gives showrunners a lot of creative freedom, and I think, for better writers, you could get some really interesting content, but they just seem to keep giving these assholes who wrote the travesty called Riverdale, so many opportunities to make more shitty television, and I feel like they really deserve to be limited in their ability to create/write if not stopped completely and thrown into a well with Julie Plec. Anyway, I’ll try to break this down as best as I can into different piles of shit and this will contain spoilers:

Characters

Prudence and Ambrose

So, to be really honest, I watch this show exclusively for Prudence and Ambrose. Because, well, look at them:

I wish they had more chemistry because they are super hot together, and I still ship it. A young Black couple? On TV? In this sea of shitty interracial relationships? I’ll take it. Anyway, of course, the progression of their relationship is ridiculous and frustrating. Ambrose decides at the last minute, not to kill Father Blackwood because he has a weird time egg thing that they don’t really understand, also he has the twins under some weird mind control for no clear reason, so they stay their hands. It doesn’t make sense, but it becomes clear, Father Blackwood has an insane amount of plot armour and ultimately would have to serve as a vessel for Satan. Father Blackwood uses the manipulated mind of the other weird sister to sic her on the coven, and she ends up killing Dorkus, whom Prudence finds. She then blames Ambrose for not allowing her to kill FB, and they break up. Now...this would kinda make sense, if not for the fact that they trapped one of the pagan witches and forced her to change everyone back, but no one bothered to do anything about the mentally ill witch who you all strapped up for a reason? Lol ok. Seems like an oversight on your part Prudence, but...okay. Clearly manufactured breakups are exhausting, especially since [young] Black couples with no serious relationship dysfunction are now an endangered species. It’s also frustrating because we barely got to see them....*be* together, especially after they returned home.

Nick & Sabrina

So, I know from the beginning, we were supposed to believe that Nick and Sabrina had that kind of, Bad Guy, seduces the girl Good Girl, luring her into the dark side, hot, intense, passionate relationship. But their lack of chemistry and really shitty acting just made them really dry (which I get into here). I don’t believe them, and I definitely don’t believe that Sabrina would, once again, break a shit ton of rules to get Nick back. I just don’t buy that they had that kind of an intense, desperately in love, kind relationship, because they do not look all that comfortable around each other, much less in love.

I personally find Sabrina utterly unlikeable as a main character, largely because who IS she? She has no personality, she just does whatever the plot needs her to do in the moment, and the actress makes Sabrina appear smug and unremorseful while she fucks up everyone’s lives. There is a lot of exposition of everyone telling us she’s this power hungry, manipulative character, but we never see that. She just does stuff and everyone is all “Sabrina how could you?!” and there are never, ever any consequences. I would have liked to see her push so hard to get Nick back and the struggle being, sure she wants him back, but mostly she’s doing it because she can. But that’s not what happens.

So Nick ends up in this weird drug addiction, alcohol, sex demon spiral because he has parts of Satan still in him and it all just falls so flat and lame, because this show is SO bad at pacing, and these actors suck, so nothing is believable. The idea of him scrubbing his club foot, having nightmares, suffering PTSD, is fine, the execution was trash. Nick sees Caliban and Sabrina have one interaction and he’s like WELL, GUESS I GOTTA CHEAT. And just ends up in some S&M situation with sex demons and heavily self medicating, but none of this has any weight, and we don’t really see him...spiralling. He just immediately resorts to these things and it has no real impact on anyone or even him really, and that’s it.

Harvey and Roz

Uh, they’re probably the most confusing match here, because there is no lead up to their relationship, there’s not suggestion, there’s no pacing. Just BOOM, we’re into each other now. BOOM, Roz is the only sexually active person in her friend group (lol of course the Black girl is sexually active. Gotta maintain white innocence at all costs), so she’s just ready to jump Harvey’s bones any second now. So of course, the show punishes her by having the pagans turn her to stone. And as if that’s not bad enough...

Which I talk about here and here, because honestly I’m just sick of this show’s antiblackness. Theo & that other guy

So I was watching this unfold like, yeeaahh, they’re gonna make the trans guy get with the enemy aren’t they? And yes, they did. Cool, they didn’t kill him off, but I’m still perplexed at how Theo isn’t even a little upset that this guy was basically sent to infiltrate his friend group and sat by while his people harmed Theo’s friends, and also...used him? Like...we just...are gonna...gloss over that because he changed his mind? Lol ok. Sure.

Mambo Marie and suddenly Zelda?

I...I mean her name is Mambo Marie. I love the idea of Black witches finding Black spirituality and magicks through Vodun and a Hatian Priestess. But they quickly undo that, by ensuring that Mambo Marie only teaches Prudence in the presence of these white witches. And we see her...doing...an African drum circle (eye roll), only to be interrupted by the High Priestess of White Feminism, Zelda Spellman. It quickly devolves into thinly veiled racism where Zelda doesn’t trust Marie because she’s Catholic (says the woman who worships Satan, has an anti Pope and prays to Lilith with the same prayer for Mary mother of Jesus? LOL. Not even unpacking the fact that Vodun is an African spirituality having 0 roots in catholicism WHITE WRITERS). Then suddenly, out of nowhere, Marie and Zelda are a thing for no reason? After the way Zelda treated her? Why did Marie even stay? This isn’t her problem. This is a white witch problem. Okay. That’s too much to unpack.

Plot

So, my biggest problem with almost all Netflix English programming is that they are so obsessed with aesthetics, and don’t pay enough attention to actual character chemistry, plot, story flow, details, pacing etc. Like...things that actually make stories interesting to watch. So they slap all these people together and throw them into aesthetically pleasing backgrounds, shake it up with so much exposition that nothing actually happens, and are like BEHOLD A STORY. And CAOS is *especially* guilty for this.

First of all those musical breaks were annoying as fuck. Musicals serve 2 story functions: advancing the plot or telling a story. These musical numbers did neither and were honestly ridiculously gratuitous, highly annoying and totally pointless.

What time of year is this? Why are we having pep rallies and how the fuck and when did Sabrina and Roz join the cheeleading squad, and why?

for the aesthetics and not for any real plot reason. It just seems stupid because now I don’t know how much time has passed between Nick going to hell and this, because you’re all handling it like it’s been a few weeks and is still relatively fresh, but suddenly, Theo, Harvey and Roz are in a garage band? You’re a cheerleader? For what? Since when? Why? These choices introduce more questions than they answer and serve no narrative purpose. So much wasted time on shit that doesn’t matter.

Sabrina is supposed to be fighting Caliban (who is literally the only person she has chemistry with on this show and they killed him bc ofc they did), for her seat on the throne, and yet the trials only seem to come up when it’s convenient, and also seem to be directly related to her dealings with her coven, which is also convenient. I’m so confused about Satan. His powers come from being a celestial being, and so, because his coven mistreats him he’s like...lol okay, well fuck you guys and goes through all these convoluted small motions to greatly inconvenience them and withdraws his powers? This is so petty and pathetic. Also, what’s the point? He could just wipe them out and start over, instead of skulking around inside FB then suddenly decides to track down Lilith. Again, convoluted. This plot is all over the place. Why does Satan need Sabrina to be Queen of Hell in the first place? He seems perfectly healthy. Why can’t he just rule it? Like...that makes no sense. What is he gonna do? Retire? WHAT is going ON?

How did Sabrina come back in time to herself stuck in stone? Is that trip to Pontius Pilate (lol) supposed to have created a loophole for her to save herself and everyone? This is giving me hardcore Twilight Breaking Dawn vibes, where, the show finally, FINALLY gets interesting, there’s real stakes, shit is actually happening instead of everyone talking about things happening (Hilda ending up killing her fiance was literally the only time I felt something watching this show because it was genuinely sad, and well acted, and Hilda coming through with that doll at the end was pretty disturbing, I’ll give them that), and ofc, Sabrina goes back in time and undoes it all. Lol. Okay. God forbid there be real consequences to anything on this show.

Final thoughts

Once again, the white feminism runs high on this show. They treat this Black Vodun Priestess Marie, like garbage, allude to her “foreign” magic, but Marie is sitting here like “we’re not men, we’re women, let’s work together.” This is why I hate white writers writing for Black characters. Black characters should have Black motivations, and a Black Vodun Priestess, should know that white women and Black women do not have aligned motivations just because they share a gender. Once they started with the bullshit right from her arrival, she should have handed Prudence her card and peaced tf out. Instead she tolerates the isolation, ostracization and thinly veiled racism...and decides to stay, and help. WHY? Marie has gained nothing by sticking around helping these ungrateful ass witches. I honestly would have preferred Prudence asking her to stay to learn more about Vodun, and them building a mentor/mentee type of relationship, especially since Prudence was the one who invited her and stepped to Zelda to defend her. I want(ed) to see that relationship go somewhere. The deliberate denial of healthy Black female friendships on tv is frustrating.

These witches finally finding their power in their ancestors and I donno, some female creator or whatever, reminds me of white women “finding” wicca and praying to “Gaia”, (reminds me of BTVS s4 when Willow joins the wicca group) which is basically what happened but lol okay whatever. I guess they aren’t satanic witches anymore. Lol, I love how Harvey and Roz and Theo are teenagers, human teenagers, who have lead largely normal teenage lives up until this point, but see their loved ones tortured, deformed or murdered in hell, with basically no residual issues, and are all like, YES, let’s roll up on these adults with shotguns and swords and kill the FUCK outta these people!! That absolutely sounds normal! Like...what? Lol. God this is just so bad.

Also, I’m so confused by this aesthetic choice for Sabrina as Queen of Hell. Like what the fuck. Why is she dressed like a Victorian era queen, with shoulder and a broken rib bodice? What?!

This show is truly awful, this season made no more sense than the last two and now that Prudence and Ambrose aren’t together, I might be done watching.

-20/10

#caos season 3 #caos part 3 #caos prudence #prudence x ambrose #prudence night #ambrose spellman #the chilling tales of sabrina #sabrina spellman #caos spoilers #long post #caos review #rosalind walker #mambo marie #zelda spellman #hilda spellman #harvey kinkle #theo putnam

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angelsandacceptance · 3 years

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Family Remains

A ringing interrupts the relative silence in the Lincoln waking Chase up. The girls quickly locate the phone emitting the noise and answer it, quickly putting it on speakerphone upon realizing it’s Dean calling.

“What?” Chase asks annoyed and tired.

“Got a case.”

“So you decided to wake us up?” Harley asks even though she hadn’t been sleeping.

“That’s not a great excuse. Couldn’t this have waited until morning?”

“Figured we start heading there now,” Dean responds.

“Dean, let Chase and Sam sleep.”

“Thank you!” Chase exclaims before rolling back around in her spot and trying to go back to sleep.

“Dean, If you can’t sleep, we could go for a walk. If you want,” Harley suggests.

“Yeah, okay. Don’t got anything better to do.”

“Cool. Meet you outside in a sec,” Harley says before hanging up.

Harley climbs out of their Lincoln, while Chase waits calmly. Right as she is about to close the door, Harley is startled by Chase.

“So. Where ya goin?” Chase asks in a mocking voice.

Harley turns, a deadpan look on her face, to see Chase half sitting up, a smirk on her lips, eyebrows raised. “Go back to sleep.”

Chase raises her hands slightly in defense. “Okay, okay.” Right as the door closes, Chase calls out loud enough to be heard, “Be safe!”

Harley groans, but doesn’t respond.

***

“Hey,” Harley says walking over to Dean.

“Be safe, huh? What did you have in mind?”

Harley punches his shoulder hard, but not hard enough to bruise as they walk away from the cars, “Shut up. Chase is clearly off her rocker. She’s been bugging me about you ever since we kissed.”

“Which time?”

“The only time she knows about. Right after you came back.”

“Yeah, I could see that. Sam’s been on me about it too. You’d think they’d get over a kiss by now.”

“I know it’s been three months of this shit.”

“So am I the hunter then?”

“Huh?”

“Last month you mentioned Chase thought you were madly in love with some hunter, and you wouldn’t tell me who.”

“Oh, yeah. That was you.”

“And you didn’t tell me, why?”

“I was embarrassed. Jeez, hitting me with the hard questions.”

Dean pulls Harley closer, slinging his arm over her shoulders, “Don’t have to be embarrassed with me, sweetheart.”

Harley just rolls her eyes and leans into Dean's side.

***

“So on a scale of one to ten, how safe were you guys?”

“I am so not answering that. Just no.”

“So a zero then? No, no, probably a ten. One, you’d tell me if you guys did anything. And two, you both are too fucking stubborn to do anything.”

“If we did have sex, and that’s a big gigantic if. Would you really want to hear about it? I mean do you really want to hear about how amazingly good your brother is in bed?”

“Yes and no… Ugh that’s annoying. I would usually 100% want all the details but, that’s disgusting. Okay, yeah, just tell me if you do the deed and if he treated you right. I need no other information.”

“That’s what I thought,” Harley smirks.

“Yeah, okay, point made. Now shut up.”

“For now. Do you think Cas is a virgin?”

Chase turns a shade of pink as a look of bewilderment spreads across it. “Wait, what, excuse-why the fuck? What is that- why is that something you ask me?”

“Because I don’t have anyone else to ask.”

“That is deplorable.” Chase pauses for about one second. “But, duh. Have you seen the look of confusion he always has on? That man- angel- wouldn’t know what to do with a man or woman even if he read a “how to” book for dummies.”

Harley bursts into laughter at Chase's response.

“What?” Chase asks. “What about him makes you think he has done anything more than touch someone’s shoulder?”

“Nothing, but it sounds a hell of a lot funnier out loud than in my head.”

“That’s fair,” says Chase, sighing in relief as though dodging a bullet.

“Wait, Cas touched your shoulder. Is there something you’re trying to tell me?”

“Other than Cas being a giant prude, no. Seriously, I have had like four conversations with him that lasted more than a few sentences. What makes you see something there?” Chase throws her hands in the air for a split second before they return to the steering wheel. “For crying out loud, the first few times we were in the same room, he pretended I wasn’t there!”

“Yeah, but you think he’s cute and he ‘always notices you’.”

“Well, I do attract a lot of attention with my dazzling and annoying persona.”

“You’re only annoying sometimes.”

Chase shoots Harley a sideways glance. “Thanks,” she says dryly.

“You’re welcome.”

Chase sighs. “Anyhow. Anything else you want to randomly talk about? Or is pestering me about Castiel the only goal you had?”

“Pizza is legally a sandwich.”

“Excuse me- what the fuck?”

“It’s true.”

“Do I wanna know?”

“Probably not.”

“Cool. Moving on!”

“There’s a Catholic Church that’s decorated in the bones of it’s parishioners.”

Chase just sighs in defeat. “Anything else?” she asks dejectedly. “Or can I be allowed peace this once?”

“I can’t think of anything else, so sure.”

“Alright then, back to you and Dean!”

“Fuck my life,” Harley groans.

***

“Boy, three bedrooms, two baths, and one homicide. This place is gonna sell like hotcakes,” Dean says upon entering the supposedly haunted house.

The Winchesters and Co. immediately go to separate areas and investigate the house for any signs of paranormal activity.

“Hey, check this out,” Harley says, knocking on the wall. “It’s hollow.”

“It’s probably just a dumbwaiter.”

Everyone looks to Chase who shrugs. “What? I used to read about older houses like this.”

“Know-it-all,” Dean mutters.

“You wanna say that again?”

“Say what again?”

“You said- you. Jackass.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “You guys need to grow up. I thought I was the youngest.”

“You still are, Sammy-boy,” Chase says grinning.

Another eyeroll is earned. “Let’s continue checking out the house.”

“Agreed,” Harley says, concealing laughter.

They wander into a large bedroom, investigating further.

“Well, no bloodstains, fresh coat of paint, it's a bunch of bubkes,” Dean says after a few moments.

“Needle’s all over the place,” Sam says, looking at the EMF reader.

“Yeah, power lines most likely.”

“Know-it-all,” Dean mutters again.

Chase shoots him a look.

Harley goes to the closet and opens the door. She sees a decapitated doll’s head lying on the floor, and slowly closes the door.

“What was that?” Chase asks her. Harley motions for her to go ahead and check. Skeptically, Chase opens the door. She stares down in confused horror. “Uh huh, okay then.”

The boys look over her shoulder, and mimic her expression.

“Well, that’s super disturbing,” Dean says.

“Think it got left behind?”

“By who?” Dean asks.

“Unless Bill Gibson liked to play with doll heads,” Chase scoffs.

“Or Sid from Toy Story lived here,” Harley says.

Chase laughs, only to stop, hearing a car outside.

“I thought you said this place was still for sale?” Dean demands.

“Apparently not anymore,” Sam says sarcastically.

“Wait, what?” Chase asks. “Did you two not see the ‘Sold’ sign outside?”

“No,” Dean responds hastily, before rushing to the front door. The other three quickly follow behind him.

“Who are they?” A teenage girl asks.

“Can I help you?” A man asks them.

“Are you the new owners?” Sam asks.

“Yeah. You guys are?”

“This is Mr. Stanwyk. I'm Mr. Babar. County code enforcement. Those two are Miss Wentz and Mrs. Babar. Specialists.”

Harley shoots Dean a look, before shaking off the comment.

“We had the building inspected last week. Is there a problem?”

“Asbestos in the walls, a gas leak.” Sam lists it off hurriedly, obviously just wanting the family gone. “Yeah, I’d say we have a problem.”

“Asbestos? Meaning what?”

“Meaning until this house is up to par, you can’t stay here. It’s uninhabitable,” Chase explains.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You mean we can’t stay here?”

“Obviously,” Chase deadpans.

“It’s a health hazard,” Dean amends, rolling his eyes at his sister. “You don’t want to.”

“Hold up, we just drove four hundred miles!”

“Look, what’s your name?” Chase asks.

“Ted.”

“Look, Ted. This house is a health hazard. You’ve got fairly young kids as well as yourself. Staying here is not a bright idea.”

“There’s a motel just down the road. Until this gets cleared up, I suggest you stay there,” Harley adds.

“All right, and what if we don’t?”

“Are you an idiot?”

“Wentz!” Sam says warningly.

“You either get a fine or you go to jail. Pick your poison.”

“One night,” the man says. “One night and I’ll take care of everything. ASAP, I promise.”

“You do that,” Dean says.

“Another motel? Awesome, Dad. I hope this one has hooker sheets, like the last one,,” the teenager pipes up.

Harley laughs and cracks a smile at the comment.

“Danny!” The mom of the group calls out as they near their car.

“Come on, Danny!” The man who isn’t Ted shouts.

Harley gently hits Dean as soon as they’re out of view. “Where do you get off pretending I’m your bloody wife without warning me.”

***

“What did the room look like when you found it, Mrs. Curry?” Harley asks gently.

“I already told the local boys, there was blood everywhere.”

“And Mr. Gibson? Where was he?” Dean asks.

She shakes her head. “Everywhere.”

Chase has to stifle a laugh, only successfully disguising it as a cough after Harley elbows her in the stomach slightly.

“How long have you been cleaning Mr. Gibson’s house?”

“About five years.”

“So you knew him pretty well,” Dean surmises.

“Well, not really. He was real private. Not the easiest man. Not that I blame him.”

“What do you mean?” Harley asks.

“His wife died in childbirth. Daughter hangs herself in the attic twenty years later. I’d be bitter too. Oh, I think I got some pictures.” With that, she goes off to find them. She quickly returns. “Here.”

“Thanks. Can we keep these?”

“Suit yourself.”

“So, why did she kill herself?” Chase asks.

“I don’t know. Was before my time.”

“Did you ever notice anything odd around the house when you were cleaning it?” Dean asks.

“Like what?”

“Like,” Dean pauses.

“Like, you know. Lights going on and off and things not being where you put them,” Harley lists.

“Well, maybe there was one thing.”

“What’s that?” Sam asks.

“Well, sometimes, I thought I heard like a...rustling in the walls.”

“Like a rat?” Dean asks.

“Yeah.”

“Must have been some big sons of guns out there, huh?”

“Wouldn't know. Never saw any.”

“Do you happen to know where Mrs. Gibson and her daughter were buried?” Sam asks.

“They were cremated.”

Winchesters and Co. headed back out to the cars.

“All right. So it probably wasn't the mom or the daughter. Whose ghost was it?” Sam says narrowing down their list of suspects to nothing.

“I don't know. But I say we give that place a real once-over and see,” Dean says.

“Lovely now all we got is who it probably isn’t,” Harley sighs.

“We’ve got a whole lot of nada and a shit ton of zip. I’m just tired of this already,” Chase complains.

***

Chase and Harley pulled up to the haunted house of the week with the Impala not far behind. The house’s lights were on and they could see people moving around.

“Shit! They stayed in the house!”

Chase rolls her eyes. “Fucking dumbasses.”

“They’re gonna get themselves killed.”

“We did warn them though. So, technically, we are not liable.”

“I love you,” Harley says laughing.

Chase laughs in response, her eyes tearing up slightly. “Am I wrong? Just, am I wrong? No. Exactly.”

“Definitely not wrong.”

“When have I ever been wrong?”

“You’re wrong about me and Dean.”

“Ah, but you are actually the wrong one. Guess who has another few photos to add to her collection? Me. And why is that? Oh yes. Because I caught you two cuddling! Again!”

“You know it’s kind of creepy that you have a bunch of pictures of me sleeping half naked.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not creepy because you’re with Dean and in my defense, Sam has the same file. That’s creepy. At least I’m a girl.”

“That doesn’t make it any less creepy.”

“But it does.”

“Dude, you’re into chicks. And you have pictures of me half naked. It’s weird.”

“I have literally seen you nude. Remember when we went skinny dipping that once? C’mon get a better argument. You know you don’t count. You’re practically my sister.” Chase smirks. “And soon to be sister.”

“It’s still weird. And no I’m not.”

“Oh come on. At least do it so we’re actually related finally.”

“I should’ve never kissed him in front of you.”

“Oh, so you would kiss him not in front of me? Wait. Have you kissed him before but not in front of me? How could you not tell me this?!”

“Because it’d only fuel your weird ship. Sometimes you just need a little affection.”

“OH MY GOD YOU JUST ADMITTED YOU HAVE KISSED HIM BEFORE OH MY FUCKING GOD!”

“Platonically.”

“There is no such thing as platonic kissing if it’s you and Dean.”

“Yes, there is. Although something was definitely different earlier today,” Harley says, shooting Dean a text.

Chase lets out an inhuman squeal in response. “You kissed earlier?! When?”

“While we were watching Scooby-Doo.”

“How romantic.”

Harley rolls her eyes at Chase.

“Give me details. Was it like for long or just short? Was it French? Wait, it’s Dean. Do I want to know? Nevermind, obviously I do. Sooo. Tell me everything.”

“I’m not dignifying that with a response.” Harley says, getting out of the Lincoln and sticking her tongue out at her best friend.

“You are such a child. Just tell me.”

Harley doesn’t respond; just sits on the hood of the car. Chase groans dramatically.

***

Screams erupt from inside the house and the four hunters quickly rush to aid the family. Pounding on the door with a frown, Dean takes the lead.

The man- Brian- opens the door. “Oh, you. Did you touch my daughter?”

“What? No,” Dean says confused. “I have her.” Dean makes a motion with his thumb, gesturing behind him to Harley, who rolls her eyes at him.

“Who are you guys?” Brian asks.

“Relax, please. You have a ghost,” Sam calmly states.

Chase resists snorting a laugh at the comment, covering it up with a cough. “We’re here to help,” she revises.

“A ghost,” Brian says again, as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing.

“I told you!” Hooker Sheets Girl exclaims.

“It’s the girl!” Danny says.

“Both of you relax,” Brian chastises before turning the group. “What are you four playing at?”

“Oh nothing much, just saving you lives.” Harley says offhandedly.

“Your family is in danger,” Chase says.

“You need to get out of the house,” Dean demands. The girls roll their eyes at his abrasiveness.

All of a sudden, the lights go out, pitching the group into darkness.

“Nobody move,” Dean commands.

“Buster!” Danny calls out, hearing their dog start to bark and whine.

The four hunters follow Brian out of the house, alongside Ted. The group, while chasing Brian who is yelling for Buster desperately, comes across the words, ‘TOO LATE’, painted in large red letters.

The rest of Brian’s family comes out onto the porch, gasping at the sight before them.

“Go back inside. Go!” Brian yells at his kids; worried for their safety.

“We are not the bad guys, but you're in danger.” Dean states sternly.

“First thing's first. You got to get your family out of here.” Sam says quickly.

“Head to the motel I was talking about. You'll be safe there,” Harley says.

“What’re you guys gonna do?”

“We’re going to solve your ghost problem, obviously,” Chase says.

“Oh, come on! No!” Dean exclaims, drawing everyone’s attention.

All of the vehicles have slashes in all four tires.

“Excuse me? That fucking ghost is gonna pay!” Chase shouts, running over to Jack. “My poor baby.” She shoots a quick glance at the group behind her, “Sorry, excuse my french.”

Sam pops Baby’s trunk and looks for any of their supplies, while Harley checks Jack’s.

“Dude, the guns are gone. So is the... Basically, everything is gone.” Sam says.

“Same over here.” Harley sighs.

Ted had disappeared to check on his truck unnoticed, and only just returned. “Truck's no good.”

“Tires slashed?” Brian asks, and Ted just nods.

“What kind of ghost messes with a man’s ride?” Dean whines.

“Really though,” Chase agrees. “That’s a new level of bastard.”

“What's going on? What's going on?” The teenage girl asks before screaming, “She's there! She's there!”

“Where?!” The mom asks.

“She was right there in the woods!” The girl yells.

“What's a ghost doing outside?” Dean asks.

“Maybe it’s picking apples, Dean. For apple pie,” Chase says sarcastically. “Why are you asking? Does it look like we know why a ghost is outside?”

“Hey, it was a rhetorical question!”

“Do you two want to stay out here arguing and find out?” Sam demands.

“Are you crazy? We need to get the hell out of here!” Ted says freaking out.

“In what, Ted?! In what?! I don’t see a horse ‘n carriage anywhere, do you?!” Harley yells, fed up with their ignorance.

“Everyone back in the house,” Dean shouts. “Move! Now!”

***

“Whatever's outside, it can't get in this circle. As long as the salt line is unbroken, this is the safest place to be,” Dean explains.

“Safe from ghosts?” Brian asks skeptically.

“Actually, yeah, so shut up and just listen to us,” Chase snaps. These people were starting to get on her nerves.

“Okay, I’m not listening to this anymore. Come on. I got to get my family out of here.”

“Nobody is going anywhere until we kill this thing,” Harley reiterates.

“Sir, please, this is what we do.” Sam casts a wary glance at the other hunters. “Just trust us.”

“You hunt ghosts?” Danny asks excitedly.

“You betcha,” Chase says with a smile.

“Like Scooby-Doo?”

It is believed at this moment, Chase and Sam could’ve sworn they saw both Dean and Harley fall in love with the boy. Both of their faces widened with grins as they nod.

“Better,” Dean says playfully.

“You saw her outside, right? Okay. Does she look like either one of the girls?” Sam asks, showing them a couple of pictures.

“Her. She was paler and a lot dirtier, but that was her,” Kate says.

“That’s the girl in the walls,” Danny adds.

“The girl in the picture- she’s dead?”

“She killed herself in this house.”

“Wow, Harley. Tact,” Chase says flatly.

Harley just shrugs.

“So the maid got her story wrong?” Chase asks. “Rebecca didn’t get cremated?”

“Unless she’s attached to something else in the house,” Sam says.

“She hung herself in the attic, right?” Dean asks.

“You wanna babysit?” Sam asks. “I’ll check it out.”

“I’ll stay with Dean,” Chase says. “Harley, you go with Sam. Is that okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Harley asks, confusion written on her face.

Chase glances at Dean out of the corner of her eye, before quickly looking back at Harley. “No idea.”

“Weirdo.”

“Look—I don't care who hung themselves where. Maybe something is going on here, but—” Ted starts.

“It’s a spirit, man,” Dean says.

“No, it's just some backwoods hillbilly bitch, and I'm not about to sit around here waiting for her to go all Deliverance on my ass.”

Chase laughs at his comment. “Okay, so you’re not all bad.”

“Nobody’s leaving this house,” Dean snaps.

“Stop me,” Ted challenges.

Harley butts in between Ted and Dean, moving her jacket and flannel so her gun is visible. “Listen. I've got a gun. You don't get your ass back in that circle, you're gonna have yourself a third hole.”

“Technically a fifth.” Everyone looks at Chase with an annoyed expression. “What?”

“You guys cool?” Sam asks.

Chase and Dean nod. “Go,” Dean says.

***

Harley and Sam arrive in the attic and pull out their flashlights.

“God, there’s so much fucking dust,” Harley sighs, heading to an unmarked box on the floor.

“Yeah. Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Is Harley your real name, because there’s no record of a Harley Pawlak, but there was a C-”

“Don’t say it!”

“So that is you?”

“No, she’s who I used to be. She’s been dead a long time.”

“What happened?”

“Trauma, growing up. Pick your poison.”

“Off limits, noted.”

“Wait. Why were you looking me up?”

“I did it awhile back, I think it was after the first time we caught you and Dean sleeping together.”

“Had to make sure I was good enough for your brother?”

“Yeah. Kinda.”

“You do know nothing is actually going on right?”

“So Dean has told me, many times.” Sam sighs before perking up at finding a journal. “I think I found something!”

“What?”

“Rebecca’s journal.”

“Sweet! Now we can get out of this musty old attic,” She says before sneezing.

***

“I can’t believe we got ourselves into this,” Chase groans. “This would all be over with already if you lot had just left when we told you to.”

“You couldn’t really expect us to leave,” Brian says.

“Well, no, I merely said it for the sake of my health,” Chase responds sarcastically.

“Chase, why are you such a child all the time?” Dean asks.

“And why are you such a dick?”

“Now that’s just uncalled for,” Dean says with an eye roll and a pout.

“Hey. Fonzie. Question for you. This indestructible force field made out of salt... Have to be kosher stuff, or what?” Ted asks.

Chase whirls around, but Dean grabs her arm, pulling her towards him.

“Ted, knock it off,” Susan says.

They all freeze when they hear a sound only a small distance away.

“Dean-”

“It’s fine.”

“What was that?” Kate asks.

They all look around, before spotting her. The girl from the photo was there, opening the door.

“Stay calm, guys,” Chase says.

“She's a ghost. She can't come in the circle,” Dean explains.

They all watch carefully as she slowly approaches them. She stops at the salt line and gazes at it warily, before brandishing a knife, and stepping over the line. Chase blanches while Dean looks on in panic.

“I thought you said ghosts couldn't cross the circle.”

“They can’t. She’s not a ghost.”

The girl attacks Dean, but he manages to fight and hold her off.

“Dean!” Chase cries out in panic, attempting to help him.

“Chase, get them out of here!”

“But-”

“Now!”

Chase nods before herding the others outside, running away from Dean.

She sighs in relief however, hearing Sam and Harley.

***

“Where is everyone?” Dean asks, coming outside to see Brian and an annoyed Chase.

“Hiding, which is where this lunatic should be, but he isn’t.”

“I want to help.”

“Go get your family,” Dean says. “Go!”

Brian rushes off to get his family while the four hunters look at one another. “So,” Chase says. “Not a ghost.”

“Just a girl then,” Sam adds.

“Girl?” Dean asks incredulously. “It's psycho Nell. I'm telling you, man—humans.”

“So who is she then?” Harley asks.

“I don't know. Maybe it's the daughter, Rebecca. Maybe she didn't hang herself.”

“Dean, you realize she would be like, fifty now or something.”

“Well, what did you two find in the attic?” Dean asks Harley and Sam.

“Not much,” Sam says.

“Just Rebecca’s old diary.”

“I wish you'd found a howitzer. Listen, we got to get this family safe. I mean, it's just a human, so they can make a run for it. We just got to hold her off,” Dean says.

“We're okay,” Susan says as the family runs up to the hunters.

“Danny! Ted!” Brian calls out. “We’ve got to go!”

“I’m good!” Ted calls back, running over.

“Danny, come on!” Susan calls this time.

“Danny!” Brian calls again. “Buddy, we got to go!”

“Told you it was some crazy bitch,” Ted says.

“Yeah, you did. Want a sticker or something?” Chase asks, rolling her eyes.

“Head to town. We’ll take it from here,” Sam says.

“Danny, come on, baby! We're leaving!” Susan calls again.

“Danny, we’ve got to go!”

“Brian, where- where is he?”

“Danny!”

“Danny!” Susan calls.

“Suse, Suse, Suse. We will find Danny, I promise you,” Brian says.

“No,” Susan says, in denial, shaking her head as though she couldn’t believe this was happening.

“No. Take Kate and go now. Now, while you still have a chance.”

“Not without Danny.”

“I am not going out there with mom alone.”

“She’s right,” Dean says. “Until we find your son, the safest place for you right now would be in the shed.”

Kate looks at him like he’s grown another head, “I’m not going in there either.”

“Yes, you are. It is the best defense. The windows are boarded up. It's got one door. It's our best shot right now. Trust me,” Harley says.

Kate looks at her warily, but nods finally.

“Suse, Kate, go.” Brian nods towards the shed. “Go.”

“Okay,” Sam starts. “You three go take the house,” he continues, gesturing to Harley, Dean, and Ted. “The three of us will take outside.”

***

Dean, Harley, and Ted walk into the house. Ted begins poking around the room and finds a butcher’s knife. While Dean investigates the walls and Harley the floor; actually doing something useful.

“What are you doing?” Ted asks.

“She's human. She had to come from somewhere.” Harley answers in a snarky manner.

Dean finds a loose board and pulls it free of the rest of the wall. Ted flinches at the smell emanating from the hole.

“You smell that?” Ted asks, scrunching up his nose.

“Every day,” Dean replies.

“You get used to it,” Harley adds.

Dean pulls a knife out and shines his flashlight through the hole before entering it, “Come on.”

Harley quickly followed suit with Ted in tow. They stop at a hole.

“You’re not going down there,” Ted says.

“Do you want to?” Harley challenges.

Ted stays silent.

“That’s what I thought.”

Dean starts lowering himself down, “Please nobody grab my leg. Please nobody grab my leg.”

Harley does the same after him. Dean shines his flashlight throughout the room. When it lands on Buster’s body torn to shreds. Dean quickly turns around and turns Harley so she’s facing away from the dog.

“What are you doing?” Harley asks, confused.

“Just get out of the hole,” Dean says.

“Why?”

“Just trust me, you don’t want to see this.”

“Okay?” Harley says unsure, but struggles to get up before Dean gives her a boost.

“Danny?” Dean calls out after Harley gets back up.

“Find anything?” Ted asks.

“Yeah, her kitchen,” Dean responds.

“Her what?”

Ted turns around and the girl stabs him through the neck.

“Dean! She’s here!” Harley yells as Ted falls on her.

Dean hurries to climb through the hole while Harley pushes Ted’s body off of her.

***

Chase paces back and forth, ignoring the stares of the rest of the family, as well as her own brother.

“Chase,” Sam says. Chase doesn’t even hear him, mumbling to herself. “Chase!” Sam repeats.

Chase’s head jerks up, as she finally takes notice of Sam. “Yeah, what?”

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“Pacing. You’re giving me anxiety.”

“Yeah, well, I have anxiety all the time, so deal with it.”

Sam rolls his eyes as Chase begins to pace again, continuing her incessant mumbling.

“Look, why are we just standing here? Let’s go check the house,” Brian suggests.

“Yeah, no bueno. No offense, but that’s an awful idea,” Chase says.

“It’s better than pacing around like you! How’s that gonna help?” Brian demands.

“You wanna go? You’re only in this mess because you prideful assholes didn’t want to listen to us in the first place!”

Brain turns away, silenced by the indisputable facts of Chase’s accusation.

“Best thing we can do is just wait for the others to get back, okay?” Sam says, trying to ease the tension in the air.

A few moments later, the group startles at the sudden knocking.

“Sam, it’s us,” Dean says.

“Chase, could you please open the door?” Harley asks, sounding slightly aggravated.

“Help me,” Chase says, jumping into action to move the items blocking the door.

Harley and Dean rush in as soon as the door opens, only to shut it behind them.

“Where’s Danny? Did you find him?” Susan asks hurriedly.

“No,” Dean says shortly.

“Okay, well where’s Ted?”

“Outside.”

“Well why doesn’t he come inside?”

Chase at that moment realizes what happened.

“Because I had to carry him out. I’m sorry,” Dean continues, looking to the ground.

“What- what does that mean?”

“Are you saying he’s dead?” Brian asks.

“No, of course not. That’s not what he’s saying, right?” Susan asks.

“We were in the walls and she attacked,” Harley explains.

“Oh my God,” Susan gasps.

“I couldn’t make it to him in time,” Dean continues.

“Uncle Ted is dead?” Kate asks, looking back and forth between the adults.

“She snuck up behind us, I’m sorry Kate,” Harley says gently.

Dean leaves the shed and Harley follows behind him.

Chase looks at them as they leave before sighing heavily. She turns to Sam. “Anything useful in there?” she asks, gesturing to Rebecca’s diary.

Sam shakes his head, “Not yet.”

“We’ll find him, Suse. We will.”

“Where else is there to look? He’s dead,” Susan says dejectedly.

“Don’t say that,” Chase says gently, cutting in. “We will get your son back.”

“And if he’s already dead? She killed my brother and now she’s killed my son.”

“Danny is still alive,” Brian says.

“No, he isn’t,” Susan argues.

“Yes, he is. Do you remember what he said about the girl who lived in the walls? She said he could stay,” Brian explains.

Chase looks at him in shock. “Wow, you actually just said something useful.”

“I just don't understand why this happens to us. I mean, we're good people. We're a good family.”

“What happened to Andy happened, okay? I cannot change that. But I will find Danny, I promise you. And when I do, we are gonna be fine. You and me, the kids, we're gonna be fine.”

Chase looks to Sam and takes notice of his eyes darting away from them and back to the diary. She shakes her head lightly.

Brian nods to Chase before heading outside, presumably to where Dean and Harley had gone to.

***

“You okay?” Harley asks.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be,” Dean responds not so convincingly.

“Because I know you. You’ll blame Ted’s death on yourself. Which is ridiculous. If anyone should get the blame it should be me. Not that I actually care.”

“You just got up there.” Dean defends her.

“So it was no one’s fault.”

“ I guess you're right. But I doubt my subconscious will accept that.”

“Fair enough.”

“The most important thing is you’re still alive, so there’s that at least.”

“Did I just get Dean Winchester to look on the bright side?” Harley teases.

“I think plenty of positive thoughts.”

“Like what?”

“Like you without a bra, see positive.”

“Pervert.”

“You love it.”

“I tolerate it.”

***

Brain stares up at the house, taking deep breaths, trying to keep himself calm.

“Andy your son?” Dean asks. Brian glances at him quickly. He nods.

“Oldest. He got himself killed in a car accident last year.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It nearly tore Suse and I apart. Still could, I imagine. That's why we moved here. Fresh air, fresh start. Not even my line. Marriage counselor. 'Course, she might be right. After all, what could possibly go wrong in the country?”

Harley allows herself a bitter laugh, to which Brian raises his brows, cracking a smile.

“I'm getting your son back. If it's the last godforsaken thing I do,” Dean says seriously.

“Why do you care so much?” Brian asks him.

“Dean,” Sam says. “Harley.”

The three look to see Chase and Sam approaching them. Sam holds up the diary.

“We gotta talk,” Chase says shortly.

***

“What is that?” Dean asks as the four of them walk into the house.

“Rebecca’s diary,” Harley says. “Sam and I found it earlier.”

“I just finished reading it,” Sam explains.

“And?” Dean asks.

“That girl back there? Pretty sure she was Rebecca's daughter,” Chase explains.

“Rebecca had a kid?” Harley asks.

“It's all she talks about. Being pregnant, being ashamed of being pregnant,” Sam explains.

“Jeez, rent Juno and get over it. Wait, why kill herself after the baby?” Dean asks.

“Wow, Dean. Sympathetic,” Chase responds sarcastically.

“Maybe because her dad called her a dirty little whore and said he was gonna lock the baby up,” Sam responds.

“Why would he say that?” Harley asks.

Chase and Sam exchange glances before pointedly looking back at Harley and Dean.

“Oh, gross.”

“Yeah,” Chase says.

“So the daddy was the baby daddy too?” Dean asks.

“Dean, you have got to work on being tactful.”

“Dude was a monster, Dean,” Sam says.

“Wow, a story ripped from an Austrian headline. Humans,” Harley says, shaking her head in disbelief.

“Harley, you’re still partially human,” Chase reminds her.

“Yeah, whatever.”

“So she's been locked up her whole life?” Dean asks.

“You saw her eyes. Has she ever seen light? She's barely human,” Sam says.

“Okay, so, what, then, she's been caged up like an animal and she busts out and ganks dear old Dad? Slash Granddad?” Dean asks.

“I guess,” Sam shrugs.

“Well, can't say I blame her,” Chase says. “Someone did that to me, I might’ve not lasted as long. I definitely would have snapped eventually though.”

“Yeah, I can’t say I blame her either,” Dean agrees.

“I'm sure her life was hell, Dean. It doesn't mean she gets a free pass for murder.”

“Like you know what hell's like.”

Sam makes a surprised and regretful face, “I didn't-”

“Forget it,” Dean says.

“What the hell, Dean?”

Dean looks to Chase in shock.

“You can’t not talk to us about it, then use it against us, Dean. That’s not fucking fair.”

“You can’t even begin to imagine what hell is like-”

“Yeah, because you never fucking talk to us, Dean! So shut the hell up about it or tell us. Then, then you might be able to use that against us.”

Dean just stares at Chase in shock, before turning away.

“So where do we find her?” Sam interjects awkwardly, trying to break the silence.

“Kid's gotta eat, right?” Dean says, ignoring Chase.

“What?”

“He kept her hidden, locked up, but he had to feed her, didn't he?”

“I guess.”

“I think we know where,” Harley says, realizing where Dean was going with his train of thought.

***

The four hunters are breaking a hole into the kitchen wall, letting light into the shaft of the dumbwaiter.

“Could've kept her hidden here for years. Kept her fed, nobody would ever know,” Sam says.

Brian, who had insisted on coming with them, calls out for his son. “Danny! Danny!”

Dean shines a light down the shaft. “Watch out, I'm going down.”

“No. That's my son,” Brian attempts to argue.

“I know it is, but I said that I would get him. I will. Let me.”

Dean looks down and up the shaft and scoots through the hole, then starts to climb down the side.

“Hey, you got curtains? We need rope,” Chase says, getting an idea.

While Sam holds the light for Dean, Brian and Harley search around for curtains or fabric they can tie together for rope.

“You good down there?” Chase calls out.

“Yeah, just got to the bottom!” Dean pauses, obviously rustling around a bit. “Bitch is a klepto,” he finally mutters.

They all wait, having tied together enough curtains to make rope long enough, and finally, after several minutes, hear a boy’s yell.

“Was that Danny?” Brian asks.

“Know of any other boy we’re looking for?” Chase asks sarcastically.

Sam drops one end of a rope of knotted curtains down the shaft. Danny appears at the bottom.

“Danny!” Sam exclaims. Upon his urging, Danny ties himself into the rope.

“Okay!” Danny calls up, signalling that it’s clear to hoist him up.

“Okay, pull!” Sam says.

“Come on, buddy. Come on, buddy. Don't look back, Danny. Just come on, come on,” Brian mutters as they continue to pull Danny up the shaft.

Once Danny is to the top, Brian grabs onto him, hugging him. “Come on. You okay? It's okay.”

“Get him out of here. You gotta go,” Chase says.

As soon as Danny and Brian have left, Sam turns the light back down the shaft.

“Dean?” Harley calls.

“Dean!” Chase says again.

Sam quickly starts descending the rope, hearing a gunshot go off. Harley and Chase hold onto the rope, steadying it for Sam.

Five minutes later, the two reappear, climbing up the rope.

“Oh thank God,” Chase cries, throwing herself onto Dean. “I got so worried that the last thing I’d said to you was about-”

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Dean says, trying to be soothing, hugging his younger sister. He brushes a hand through her hair, making eye contact with Harley, who also shows relief at Dean being safe.

***

Dean jacks down the Impala after replacing the tires. Sam pulls Dean’s duffel out of the repacked trunk and throws it in the back of the car.

Harley and Chase pack up their things, Jack parked alongside Baby. Brian and Susan walk over.

“Thanks for the head start,” Dean says.

“Why doesn't it surprise me you guys don't like the police?” Brian asks.

“Because it’s not surprising,” Chase says.

“It's sort of a mutual-appreciation thing, really,” Sam responds.

“Well, thank you.”

“Thank you,” Susan says.

“You okay?” Dean asks the couple.

“No, we're the opposite of okay, but we're together,” Susan replies.

“Thanks again,” Brian says.

The group nods to the family before gathering the last of their things and heading on their way.

***

Sam, Harley, Chase, and Dean all sit around, eating burgers. Well, the first three are. Dean, however, simply unwraps his burger, only to rewrap it.

“You okay?” Sam asks.

“You know, I felt for those sons of bitches back there. Lifelong torture turns you into something like that.”

“You were in hell, Dean. Look, maybe you did what you did there, but you're not them. They were barely human,” Sam says.

“Yeah, you're right. I wasn't like them. I was worse. They were animals, Sam, defending territory. Me? I did it for the sheer pleasure.”

“What?” Chase asks, slightly confused.

“I enjoyed it, guys. They took me off the rack, and I tortured souls, and I liked it. All those years, all that pain. Finally getting to deal some out yourself. I didn't care who they put in front of me. Because that pain I felt, it just slipped away. No matter how many people I save, I can't change that. I can't fill this hole. Not ever.”

“That’s not your fault, Dean,” Chase says.

“It is, and I’m going to have to live with that.”

Chase, determined to be of some support, simply wraps an arm around Dean’s waist. “But you will never have to live with that weight by yourself. Not as long as you have me. Not as long as you have us.”

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creepingsharia · 4 years

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“There Was Blood All Over”: Muslim Persecution of Christians, January 2021

by Raymond Ibrahim

The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of January, 2021:

Attacks on Churches

USA: Arsonists torched an Armenian church in San Francisco in a spike of anti-Armenian hate crimes believed to have been inspired by Armenia’s recent clash with its Muslim neighbors, Azerbaijan and its Turkish supporter. According to the Jan. 6 report,

In the San Francisco Bay Area alone, there have been four hate crimes committed against the Armenian community over the last six months including a local Armenian School being vandalized with hateful and racist graffiti, which was followed by an arson attack on St. Gregory Armenian Apostolic Church. There are about 2,500 Armenian-Americans living in the San Francisco Bay Area, so these crimes per capita is a very high number given how small the community is. For a region of the country that prides itself on its progressivism, diversity and acceptance of all cultures, these latest attacks should be a warning sign that hate and violence can rear their ugly heads irrespective of where you may live…. The vandals at the Armenian School in San Francisco spray-painted the colors of the Azerbaijan flag and used threatening language in Azerbaijani. In many ways, these latest hate crimes, coupled with the resurgence of hostilities in the South Caucasus, are a continuation of the Armenian Genocide that is now finding its way to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is often said that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We are clearly seeing these prophetic words come to life for Armenians in the San Francisco Bay Area who have fought for decades for recognition of the Armenian Genocide. As victims of oppression, Armenians see these latest attacks as an extension of Turkey and Azerbaijan’s denial of the 1915 Armenian Genocide and a threat to their very existence.

Sweden: Twice over the course of four days, an 800-year-old church in Stockholm was firebombed. First, on Sunday, Jan. 24, 2021, several Molotov cocktails were hurled at the twelfth century Spånga church, which is located in a Muslim majority area. According to the church’s pastor, “the alarm was triggered when a window was smashed and flammable liquid thrown at the front gate and one of the windows. However, the fire was quickly put out by the police, who used a powder extinguisher.” The same church had been fire-bombed just four days earlier, on Jan. 20, 2021: two explosives were hurled at and smashed through the church windows, and another was lobbed at the church gate. Moreover, according to one report,

Spånga parish has been subjected to attacks on several previous occasions. In December 2018, an explosive device was detonated in the same parish. No one was convicted for the blast.

Hailing from the 12th century, the Spånga Church is one of the oldest in the Swedish capital. It is located on the outskirts of Tensta and is flanked by Rinkeby, both notorious for their heavy presence of immigrants (about 90 percent of the population)… Both areas are dominated by immigrants from Muslim countries and are formally classified as “particularly vulnerable” (which many consider to be a palatable euphemism for a “no-go zone”) due to failed integration and major problems including unemployment, rampant crime and Islamic extremism.

Attacks against churches have become a familiar sight in Sweden. Last year alone, a number of churches, mostly those in troubled suburban [i.e., heavily Muslim migrant] areas, were subjected to various types of attacks and vandalism, including those in Gottsunda, Uppsala and Rosengård, Malmö.

Philippines: An Islamic group consisting primarily of teenage Muslims opened fire on a church. According to the Jan. 8 report,

the Islamic State-linked Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters [BIFF], a terrorist group based in the southern Philippines, attacked a parish church after conducting a raid on the town’s military and police outposts. After a 15-minute firefight, both the church building and a statue of the patron saint bore bullet holes. Police and military authorities said the BIFF had also plotted to set ablaze Sta. Teresita parish church and the church-run Notre Dame of Dulawan high school in the area. However, their attempt to burn the two church facilities was foiled by policemen and soldiers.

BIFF is an Islamic separatist organization operating in the Philippines; it swore allegiance to the Islamic State in 2014. Right before the church attack, dozens of gunmen from the Islamic group attacked the local police station and burned a police vehicle parked outside. The police attack came after two men connected with the group were arrested and is seen as a reprisal attack against police. Muslim terrorism has been on the rise in the Philippines, the population of which is 86% Christian. According to the report,

In August [2020], pro-ISIS terrorists blew themselves up in attacks that killed at least 15 people … and injured 80 others in the city of Jolo … in the far south of the country, whose population is majority Roman Catholic.

In 2019, terrorists set off two explosive devices at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Cathedral, also known as the Jolo Cathedral, in the Mindanao region. The attack resulted in approximately 100 injuries and about 20 dead.

In August 2019, pastor Ernesto Javier Estrella of the United Church of Christ in Antipas, Cotabato Province, was shot and killed on the Island of Mindanao.

In June 2018, Catholic priest Richmond Nilo was gunned down in a chapel in Zaragoza town in Nueva Ecija province, at the altar where he was preparing to celebrate mass.

Slaughter of Christians

Pakistan: The bloated bodies of two Christian sisters, who had long rebuffed the advances of their Muslim employers, were found in a sewer in January 2021. Earlier, on November 26, the sisters, Sajida (28) and Abida (26), who were both married and had children, were reported as missing. The two Muslim men for whom they worked had regularly pressured them to convert to Islam and marry them. Even though the young women “made it clear that they were Christian and married, the men threatened them and kept harassing the sisters.” Forty days after they were reported missing, on January 4, 2021, their decomposed bodies were discovered. Their Muslim supervisors, during their interrogation, “confessed that they had abducted the sisters,” said Sadija’s husband; “and after keeping them hostage for a few days for satisfying their lust, had slit their throats and thrown their bodies into the drain.” The widower described the families’ ordeal:

When police informed us that they had identified the two bodies as those of our loved ones, it seemed that our entire world had come crumbling down…. I still cannot fathom the site [sic] of seeing my wife’s decomposed body.

Discussing this case, Nasir Saeed, Director of the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement in the UK, said,

The killing of Abida and Sajida in such a merciless way is not an isolated case, but the killing, rape and forced conversion of Christian girls have become an everyday matter and the government has denied this and therefore is doing nothing to stop the ongoing persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, such cases happen very often in the country, and nobody pays any attention – even the national media – as Christians are considered inferior and their lives worthless.

Nigeria: On Jan. 16, Muslim Fulani herdsmen opened fire on and killed Dr. Amos Arijesuyo, pastor of Christ Apostolic Church and a highly respected professor at the Federal University of Technology. “The university condemns in the strongest terms this senseless attack that has led to the untimely death of an erudite university administrator and counselor par excellence,” the university said in a statement. “Dr. Arijesuyo’s death is a big loss to FUTA, the academic community in Nigeria and beyond. It is a death that should not have happened in the first place…. Our prayers and thoughts are with the wife, children and family members of our departed colleague at this difficult period of unquantifiable grief.”

In the two weeks before this murder, Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed 26 more people and wounded three in Christian majority regions. A separate report appearing in mid-January revealed that “More Christians are murdered for their faith in Nigeria than in any other country.”

Finally, in a speech released in January, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the Islamic terror group Boko Haram, made clear that, despite Western claims that his organization is motivated by secular interests, religion colors everything. According to the Jan. 28 report, Shekau called on the new Chief of Defense Staff, Lt. General Lucky Irabor, a Christian, to “repent and convert to Islam.” He also told the new Chief of Army staff, Major General Ibrahim Attahiru, that, by going against Boko Haram, his behavior is “un-Islamic” and “he is no longer regarded as a Muslim.”

Attacks on Apostates and Evangelists

Uganda: A Muslim man beat his 13-week-pregnant wife, causing her to miscarriage, after he learned that she had converted to Christianity. On Jan. 13, Mansitula Buliro, the 45-year-old woman in question and mother of seven, was preparing for Muslim evening prayers with her husband when she began to have Christian visions. On the following day she secretly visited a Christian neighbor, prayed with her, and put her faith in Christ. Right before she left, a Muslim man knocked on the Christian neighbor’s door and said, “Mansitula, I thought you were a Muslim—how come I heard prayers mentioning the name of Issa [Jesus]?” Then, when Mansitula returned home her husband informed her that he had been told that she had become Christian. “I kept quiet,” Mansitula later explained in an interview:

My husband started slapping and kicking me indiscriminately. I then fell down. He went inside the house and came back with a knife and started cutting my mouth, saying, ‘Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar [jihadist slogan “Allah is greater”], I am punishing you to not speak about Yeshua [Jesus] in my house. This is a Muslim home.’

Her screaming caused her two youngest children (six and eight) also to start screaming, prompting neighbors to rush and stop the attack. “There was blood all over from my mouth,” Mansitula said. “My in-laws arrived, and in their presence my husband pronounced divorce: ‘Today you are no longer my wife. I have divorced you. Leave my house, or I will kill you.’” A neighbor took her by motorcycle to a nearby hospital. “I was examined, and they found that my fetus had been affected, and after four days I had a miscarriage…. It is now very difficult to reunite with my family. I am now Christian, and I have decided for Issa’s cause.”

Separately, on Dec. 27, around 7 pm, eight Muslims ambushed and beat Pastor Moses Nabwana and his wife, a mother of eight, as they were walking home from a church function: “They began by beating my husband, hitting him with sticks and blunt objects on the head, the back, his belly and chest,” Naura, his wife, said. “I made a loud alarm, and one of the attackers hit me with blows and a stick that affected my chest, back and broke my hand.” Christian neighbors rushed to their cries, prompting the assailants to flee. Due to the severe injuries they sustained, the wife was hospitalized for five days and her husband, Pastor Moses, was hospitalized for several more days. The assault came after area Muslims learned that an imam had converted to Christianity and joined their church; mosque leaders incited the attack. On that same night, “area Muslims demolished the roof, windows, doors and other parts of the[ir] church building that has a capacity for 500 people, leaving a heap of broken debris… Chairs, benches, musical instruments, amplifiers and other items were destroyed.”

Then, around 4:30 am on Sunday, Jan. 24, while the pastor was still recovering at the hospital, three Muslims broke into their home, again beating his wife, Naura—who was still recovering from her first beating—as well as two of their eight children. “I heard loud noises and plates being broken,” Naura recalled. “The children and I woke up. The attackers had broken the door and entered in. One started strangling me, while another threw one of my daughters outside through the window and broke the skin on her leg.” The Muslims fled before inflicting more damage once they learned that her brother-in-law and his family were rushing over: “The assailants left behind a Somali sword,” she said, “which I think they possibly had planned to use to rape and then kill me.” Naura’s 10 year-old daughter suffered a deep cut on her knee, and her 12-year-old daughter suffered an eye injury. Atop all the injuries she suffered from her first beating, Naura’s neck was injured: “I am still in great pain, and the doctor has recommended that my uterus, which is seriously damaged, needs to be removed,” she said. “This will need a big amount of money.” According to a church leader who visited Naura and her family in their thatched-roof dwelling the day after the attack, “She is still in pain and needs basic assistance in the absence of the husband, the bread-winner.”

Iran: On Jan. 18, the Islamic Republic’s “morality police” arrested Fatemeh (Mary) Mohammadi, a 22-year-old convert to Christianity and human rights activist, on the accusation that “her trousers were too tight, her headscarf was not correctly adjusted, and [that] she should not be wearing an unbuttoned coat.” This is the third time officials arrest Mary. She did six months of prison time, after her first arrest, for being a member of a house church—which the regime recently labeled as “enemy groups” belonging to a “Zionist” cult; she also spent a brief time in jail after participating in a peaceful protest in April 2020. Officials have also pressured her employer, whom she always had a good relationship with, to prevent her from returning to work as a gymnastics instructor; and she was kicked out of her university on the eve of her exams. Reflecting on her travails, Mary wrote that:

Everything is affected… Your work, income, social status, identity, mental health, satisfaction with yourself, your life, your place in society, your independence…. And as a woman it’s even harder to remain patient and endure, in a society so opposed to women and femininity, though crying out for them both.

Attacks on Christian ‘Blasphemers’ in Pakistan

Pakistan: On Jan. 28, hospital employees slapped and beat a Christian nurse who had worked there for nine years, after a Muslim nurse told them that she had said “only Jesus is the true Savior and that Muhammad has no relevance.” A hospital member recorded and loaded a video of the attack on Tabeeta Nazir Gill, a 42-year-old Catholic gospel singer. It shows the woman surrounded by a throng of angry Muslims who slap her and demand she “confess your crime in writing.” “I swear to God I haven’t said anything against the prophet [Muhammad],” the Christian woman insists in the video. “They are trying to trap me in a fake charge.” “Fortunately, someone called the police, and they promptly arrived on the scene and saved her life,” Pastor Eric Sahotra later explained. After questioning the accused, police concluded, based also on the testimony of other co-workers, that “A Muslim colleague made the false accusation due to a personal grudge,” continued the pastor:

Other hospital employees were misled into believing the allegation, so they also attacked Tabeeta…. News of the incident spread quickly through the social media, raising fears of mob violence outside the hospital and other areas.

A Muslim mob later descended on and besieged the police station; this prompted police to register a First Information Report against Gill under Section 295-C of Pakistan’s blasphemy statues—which calls for the maximum death penalty for anyone who verbally insults Islam’s prophet, Muhammad. Last reported, the woman’s two young children were “in a state of shock since the time they saw the graphic video of their mother’s beating,” said the pastor. No legal action was taken against the Muslim nurse who fabricated the blasphemy accusation to instigate her coreligionists. The report adds that,

In Pakistan, false accusations of blasphemy are common and often motivated by personal vendettas or religious hatred. Accusations are highly inflammatory and have the potential to spark mob lynchings, vigilante murders and mass protests. Many of those accused of blasphemy never reach the courtroom; violence has killed 62 accused people since 1990, with few prosecutions.

Separately, hundreds of Muslims descended on the village of a 25-year-old Christian man, and threatened to behead him and torch his and adjoining homes, soon after it became known that he had shared a Facebook post critical of Muhammad. According to the Jan. 5 report, on first learning that Muslims were angry, Raja Warris apologized, pointing out that he had only shared the post “for academic understanding between Christians and Muslims and did not mean to offend any Muslims.” The matter seemed to be closed after that; but then, and in the words of Rev. Ayub Gujjar, vice moderator of the Raiwind Diocese of the Church of Pakistan,

[W]e were informed by our congregation members in Charar that a huge mob had gathered in the locality on the call of a cleric affiliated with the extremist religio-political outfit, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan [TLP], and were demanding the beheading of the catechist. Fearing violence, hundreds of Christian residents fled their homes while around 400 anti-riot policemen were deployed in the area to thwart violence.

Rev. Gujjar and other Christian leaders rushed to the police station, which was quickly surrounded by Muslims who “chanted slogans against Christians,” prompting police to insist that Warris be handed over. Police then registered a First Information Report under Section 295-A and Section 298-A of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which call for up to 10 years imprisonment for blasphemers, and then showed it to the mob leaders, at which point they called off the siege and dispersed. Discussing this incident, Bishop of Raiwind Diocese Azad Marshall said that “Warris is an educated youth who loves to serve God.” Even so,

Christians especially need to be more careful in sharing content, because any faith-based post could be used to instigate violence against the community… We need to understand that Islamic religious sentiments run high in our country, therefore it’s important to carefully analyze the content before posting it online.

General Hostility for Christians and Christianity

Pakistan: On Jan. 5, a Muslim man severely beat his Christian employee because he had taken leave to attend a Christmas Day prayer service. Even though Ansar Masih had compensated for the missed day of work by working on the following Sunday, his manager was abusive. “When I argued with him, he called four other staffers to teach me a lesson for going to church and arguing with him,” Masih later explained. “They abused Christians for their religious practices and said derogatory words when they came to know that I was busy praying at the church.” The Christian man sustained several injuries during the assault and was taken to a local hospital. According to the report, as often happens in such cases,

Police officials and the men that assaulted Masih are now putting pressure on his family to settle the matter out of court. Masih has submitted an application to police regarding the incident, but not action has been taken by officers against Masih’s assailants.

Austria: According to a Jan. 5 report, approximately 40 Muslim migrants rioted and burned down a Christmas tree in Favoriten. On coming to extinguish the large tree, the fire brigade heard one of the migrants yelling: “A Christmas tree has no place in a Muslim district,” even as the raging mob pelted the emergency service officials with projectiles to screams of “Allahu Akbar.”

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again and Sword and Scimitar, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

About this Series

The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has become endemic. Accordingly, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed in 2011 to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that occur or are reported each month. It serves two purposes:

1) To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, persecution of Christians.

2) To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Islamic Sharia.

Watch video below as Ibrahim describes his monthly report.

youtube

#Islam #Muslim #Sharia #Jihad #Immigration #Legal #Law #News #Media #Politics #Mosque #persecution #Terror #Travel #Religion

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gaytransmalefeedist417 · 4 years

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Love Least Expected Part 9

When Jake woke up he quietly grabbed one of Samu's hoodies and quietly left Samu's room to grab his black pinstripe suit from the back of the door. Jake grabbed his tin of Kiwi black shoe polish to shine his shoes to be extra sure to look his best, grabbed his personal blend of cologne which was frankincense and sage. Set everything on his bed and went to make Samu some bacon roses, and nutella on toast with some cherry milkshake.

Jake took the small breakfast over to Samu's room and left it on the bedside table and kissed Samu on his big, pillowy left cheek before heading to the shower.

Samu caught a whiff of the bacon and nutella and woke up when Jake was in the shower washing up.

Samu dug into the toast with a slow, savoring nature by picking off one of the meaty, greasy, salty blossoms before taking a bite of the toast to get the rest of the sweet flavor of the nutella on his tongue to blend with the bacon.

By the time Jake was washed and walking out in his robe and fresh pair of Thinx Samu was drinking the cherry milkshake and daydreaming of last night's sexual encounter with Jake.

Samu's daydream was interrupted by Jake saying "Huomenta korvapusti(Good morning cinnamon roll)" Samu stopped slurping his milkshake and responded "And a good morning to you too my sweet, little wake up call."

"Ready to help me with the eulogy or do you still need a moment?" Jake asked

Samu responded, " Yeah I'll need a moment to freshen up and get dressed."

"Okay" Jake responds and heads to his room to get dressed and slick back his hair.

"Jake?" Samu calls out.

"What is it babe?" Jake responds.

"I don't have a suit." Samu replies.

"Not to worry, my mother and I will help you out." Jake assured him.

Jake made a scrambled egg and a small piece of toast with garlic, salt, and olive oil on it.

Roksana handed Jake some cash and assured him by saying "Tell your uncle Reggie that you need one quick and classy for Samu since the funeral won't be until around 2:00pm."

"Sure thing mom we have about a good 5 hours which should give us some ground to cover." Jake reassured her as Samu entered the kitchen with his dishes in a white button down, a black tee shirt, khaki slacks, and black loafers.

Both of them rushed off to the tailor shop his uncle owned down the block and walked into the shop with the little bell on the door ringing as they walked into a huge showroom of suits and dress shoes. Jake screamed "Uncle Reggie, you free at the moment?!"

Reggie walked out from the back room tall, lanky, and with jet black hair with a few silver streaks on his widow's peak wearing a black, velvet suit with a pair of silver, semi circle, half rimmed glasses, sporting a pair of black patent leather dress shoes.

"Do you carry a size 5XL or a 6XL?" Jake asked as he was hugging onto Samu's right arm.

"Jake you haven't changed a bit my crazy nephew, you always dated the big and tall section despite being so darn tiny."Reggie chuckled from his booming voice and grabbed a few black suits from both the 5 and 6XL area with a dress shirt while Jake looked at shoes for Samu.

Samu tried on the first suit from the 5XL in a pin stripe similar to Jake's and asked "How does it look?!"

Jake looked over at Reggie and asked "Do you have something modern but flattering?"

Reggie responded, "No problem and had Samu try out a classic, black, modern cut in a 6XL for some give."

Jake responded "It's perfect." He reached for the cash and also asked, "How much for the tie, pocket square, and shoes as well?"

Reggie refused the money and said "He's part of the family now."

Jake blushed and thanked him.

"We were talking while you were picking out the shoes, tie, and square and I noticed he was wearing your mother's engagement ring on a chain around his neck". Reggie pointed out.

Jake responded, "He met your brother just minutes before he died, he wanted Samu to take care of me and handed us Mom's engagement ring before he flat lined. It was what he wanted."

Reggie choked up, "He didn't want you to be alone and he was afraid because you were being yourself would make you lonely. He found out from Sister Eusebius, he didn't know how to react after all that had happened."

Jake handed Reggie the last written words of his brother. Reggie unfolded the piece of paper and choked up.

Jake asked, "Would you like to sit down and have me grab some water from the break room?" Reggie sat down and responded, "Yeah, you'll find some bottles in the fridge."

Jake dashed to the back and opened up the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water and dashed back to hand his uncle the water.

Reggie cracked the bottle of water open and took a sip and sighed very deeply to regain his composure on the grey, leather, antique style, lobby sofa while Samu sat on a black, velvet chaise, and Jake sat on an electric blue, velvet seti.

Jake took out his olive green Moleskin book to get started in on writing the eulogy and asked his uncle "Would you like us to stick around a bit longer or should we all head off to the funeral home?"

Reggie responded, "Stay a while, heck both of you help yourselves to the food and the scotch that I have in the filing cabinet in my office."

Jake dashed into the office and reached into the third drawer at the top and shifted the false folders in the back forward and took out the decanter of Dimple Pinch Scotch and grabbed the shot glasses from the back of the very bottom drawer.

He dashed back out and put the bottle of scotch and the shot glasses on the glass top of the coffee table and let Reggie pour the scotch since he was their host.

He served Samu first, Jake grabbed his in suit, and Reggie grabbed his last.

Jake asked, " Should I do the eulogy or would you like to be the one to do the honor?"

Reggie leaned in while slowly nursing his scotch and Samu putting his large hand on Jake's tiny shoulder.

"I ask since I'm still trying to process your brother acting like a father to me for once just literally minutes before he slipped off of the mortal coil." Jake choked up.

"I understand." Reggie replied

Jake handed him the tortoise shell patterned pen with cherry blossoms enameled on it and the tiny olive green moleskin book.

Samu held Jake and said "Let it out, we all need the release."

Jake cried into his shoulder as Samu swigged the scotch.

Reggie got to writing as Jake tried to find his composure before drinking the shot glass of scotch.

When Jake regained his composure despite still in the state of bereavement Reggie completed writing the eulogy.

Jake prepared himself to clear the coffee table and Samu gestured and said " I'll pick it up, you two have taken a lot."

Jake responded still choked up, "All three of us have been through a lot."

Samu cleared the table and asked, "Where do you store the scotch?"

Reggie responded "In the back of the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet in my office."

Samu went to the break room to put the shot glasses in the sink to wash them later and entered the office to put the scotch in its hiding place. While Reggie locked up the back door. Samu returned to the break room to quickly wash and rinse the shot glasses. He returned to the showroom to meet Jake and Reggie.

All three of them left the shop and Reggie locked the front door and caught a taxi to head to the funeral home to make it 30 minutes early. The viewing was still in progress.

They greeted and shook hands with the relatives.

Roksana was by the casket crying, while Jake and Samu were greeting Jake's siblings along with his sister-in-law and future brother-in-law. Roksana held the hand of her husband and kisses him for the last time before going to her seat.

Jake and Samu excused themselves to the "restroom" when in actuality they walked into the showroom of caskets and spotted one designed to fit a 600 pound person.

Jake whispered "Let's wake up the dead, I feel a touch of rigor mortis setting in below my belt".

Samu laid on his back as Jake straddled his stomach and closed the lid. Samu felt under Jake's dress pants as Jake kissed Samu with a burning passion and ground his clit into Samu's stomach, Jake grinded into Samu harder and it built up to thrusting that caused the casket to rumble.

When they were in the middle of climaxing the funeral director who was a close friend of the family opened the casket. Jake apologized profusely to Zhair Simon, the funeral director and he responded, "It's no big deal, you're not the first living couple to be caught waking the dead in an empty casket. I saw 5 crazy instances of widowed spouses pulling necrophila where I had to report all of them to the authorities.

Both of them went to their seats just 5 minutes shy of the service starting.

Reggie walked up to the podium with the tiny, green book in tow. He stated "I guess all of you know why we are here. We are here to mourn the loss of Giovanni Pietro Moretti. Admired son, loving brother, committed husband, devoted father, and innovative business man." My nephew along with his fiancé was able to get his last words in writing. Reggie started to cry Jake, held Samu's hand and both of them walked up to the podium after reassuring him. Jake took the paper.

Jake stated, " I know all of you if not most of you may remember my father speaking fondly of a daughter while speaking of her in grief about her becoming a man, I am to put the claims to rest along with him in a positive nature. I'll read this in exerpted form. He wrote "I will try my best to understand who you are besides it'll be my last hours with the son I never knew I had and the partner of his choosing." He gave me my mother's engagement ring and said "I want to go into eternity knowing my boy isn't alone." He told Samu to take care of me and asked for my prefered name before he left us.

The minister went in and did the formal service stuff and the casket was carried to the cemetery. Jake, Samu, Reggie, Piotr, Guido, and Zhair carried the casket to the resting place as a Catholic priest chanted the funeral rights in Gregorian.

After the service was done. Everyone went to the restaurant that Giovanni built his life around that went over to Roksana for the wake. Samu comforted Jake as he dug into the food in that was served buffet style in the huge dinning hall. He asked Jake "Would you like something honey?"

Jake replied, "Some water and 8 pieces of gnocchi."

Samu asked, " Are you sure? You are 2 days into your period, there is no shame in trying to get a meal in when in grief."

Jake nodded and Samu grabbed a glass of water, a small thing of minestrone soup, and a big plate of gnocchi with alfredo to share with Jake.

Jake was able to eat half of the soup, and muster to eat a quarter of the gnocchi.

Samu said "I'm glad that you're trying to manage through the pain."

They both thanked Jake's mother and said their goodbyes to everyone and returned to the apartment to pack their bags and return to Vermont.

#feedism needs a trans person in the mix #transguys can be feeders #transguys can be gay #bhm #fat guys #transperiods #transmale #transguy #gaytransmalesolidarity #gaytransguysolidarity #gaytransguys

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1phoenixfeather · 4 years

Text

Cursed... #3

Hello, had to change a few details to make this work with the change. But I think I made it work. It was fun and I have a possible continuation, just have to work through details. Give me time, might come out with something else meanwhile I work on cursed...

Still kind of tired after an attempt to an all nighter, and remembered why I shouldn’t stay up all night. But I do my best.

#1, #2

enjoy! Vigilante gasped and their breathing hitched, every shard of glass that was removed hurt like hell. But Vigilante had to remove them and wouldn’t ask for any help. That was one shirt ruined.

Vigilante ignored the shards of glass at the side of the tray wit alcohol and glasses. The taste of whiskye was sour and Vigilante shook violently, they spilled the drink in their lap. Then throwing the glass in the wall, hearing the crash, and glass splitting. They had known their sword was cursed, what had changed in a few hundred years. “Nothing…”

The door opened a bit, Hero looked in and Character was with them. “Vigilante,” Hero hawked, unsure of what to do now.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t come here.” Vigilante took a good look and sighed, knew the blood colored to the sofa, and hurt when they leaned back. Vigilante gestured them to come in, rose up, and turned around. “I’m fine,” Vigilante said and none of them believed them. “Did you tell them?”

Vigilante heard a metallic sound, Hero murmured low. “There was no choice really… What happened?” Hero came to them and took a good look at their back.

“It will heal.” Vigilante just said and scoffed to Heros stupid worry.

Hero touch one of the scars and Vigilante gasped. “This will be infected before that, I have to take care of this.”

Vigilante tensed, “I have survived worse.” Vigilante gently pushed Hero away and showed their red and puffy eyes. Hero tackled them down and if it didn’t hurt so much they would have fought Hero.

“I know, but if you wasn’t immortal your pride would have gotten you killed!” Hero turned to Character who didn’t know what to do, “get the medkit from their bathroom, it’s just right down the hallway.” They took hero’s order and went to look, meanwhile, Hero held on to Vigilante. Gently remove the shirt and reveal the wounds.

They were quiet as Hero took care of Vigilante’s wounds and they made sure not to make a sound. Cleaned and a few needed stitches, but Vigilante wouldn’t make a sound or give away to pain.

“That’s better,” Hero said content and rose up. Vigilante groaned and took support up, “is that your sword? And please tell us what happened.” Hero asked and must have understood, Vigilante took a look at it before looking up on the roof.

Vigilante nodded in despair, “my father made it and gave it to me. But he was also the one who made sure it was cursed, it’s the easier way to disarm me.” Then turned to see the sword on the table again, “I can’t wield that sword anymore.”

“Do you mean magic is real? Why did you want to touch it then?” Character asked unsurely and Vigilante nodded.

Their fight against magic had been unjustified and none the least fruitless. “At least it was, as far as I know. I have been to every so-called ‘magic show’, your illusions aren’t close to real magic.” Vigilante cursed, “as I saw it I could feel hope… I needed to… Did I break anything?”

Character nodded and Vigilante blushed out of embarrassment, “don’t worry about it.”

Hero thought, “I didn’t even consider magic to be real, Vigilante. Illusions are all we know.”

Character held the sword up high just as Vigilante used to and did with other none cursed swords. “Was it you they found trapped in a room?” Vigilante nodded, took their keys and a flashlight. As they walked out to the stone door, “your sword must have been right up there.”

Vigilante took a closer look, that was right. The lines and how someone forced it out of its prison. “I see… Must have been taken when I was freed, I couldn’t see so much by then.” Character analyzed the text first, “do you know what it means?”

“I can translate, can you tell me?” Character said and followed the carved lines, “you where a knight, I assume, you must have learned Latin.”

Vigilante nodded again, the only thing missing was that they took a closer look at Vigilante themselves. “I can speak, understand it to some point. Read, not so much, haven’t done it since back then.”

Character didn’t say so much about it and Vigilante was surprised by Character. Had expected them to be different. They spoke the words, a little clumsy maybe but good enough. “‘A tomb for the cursed, an eternal prison’. Property of the catholic church.”

Vigilante repeated the first message, a warning not to open. “Well, I’m glad people don’t take a curse serious nowadays or can Latin.” Otherwise, Vigilante might still be inside. “Come to think about it, I think I spoke some Latin to those who found me.”

Vigilante opened the door and without any problem the heaved it. “But it’s pitch-black…”

“I know,” Vigilante gave them the flashlight. “If you dare take a look. Take these too, I have extra. Just in case…” Character slowly took a step and then one more with, first in total darkness. Then the light came on and the walls in stone where uneven, the floor, also uneven, was dirty and mostly covered with rugs.

“Is it renovated?” Character asked, Hero was behind Vigilante. Some part of them was afraid Hero would betray them.

“Just so I could put in a kitchen, get water and… See it as my mancave, for when I need to think without distraction.” Vigilante gave Hero a look if only to keep an eye on them. But it wasn’t needed at all, “I could need a drink.”

Vigilante throw Hero the key, “don’t leave it in the door.” Hero just scoffed as an answer.

Vigilante held the drink up and drunk everything up at once. Then they took a newer sword and not as fragile. Swinging it with precision and control they had been taught at an early age. But their back hurt only by the movement. “Can I see your swords?!” Character asked loud and came in with Hero behind.

Vigilante took their father’s sword, “this was proof of my father’s heroism and new nobility. From a king, I really can’t remember the name on.”

“You can’t?” Hero said, “to have lived so long… Shouldn’t you be more considerate of your past?”

Vigilante laughed, “it was one tyrant after another. The other had a war with another country, the next made peace and started a war with magic… And so on. Besides, I don’t have a grudge with any king, it’s because of the church this was build I can only imagine.” They then started to swing a swing with a deadly angle, which could separate someone’s head from the body.

Hero winched, “be more careful, Vigilante. I don’t want to stitch you up again.” Vigilante sat down.

“What was your family like?” Character asked looking at the golden sword.

Vigilante dropped the sword, it scrambled loud on the floor. “My family… They were my guidelines, tyrants who made rules of how to keep nobility. My mother was the hardest on these rules, needed me and my sister to be perfect… That’s why she married the third prince, the prince loved her. My father did what he thought was right, to my mother’s disappointment… I did everything to keep it that way.”

Vigilante clinched their fist so it turned white. But ignored Hero and Characters surprised face. Vigilante looked at the punch marks on the wall, every one of them visible, “pressure…”

Hero gently touched vigilante’s shoulder, “you’re angry. I get it, I think I know what can make you on better mood…”

Hero took the sword from the floor and gave it to Vigilante, “you always say no.” Vigilante smirked and easily made dangerous tricks with the sword, “I would fight you, but now… You could train me.”

Vigilante gave the sword to Hero and they whimpered at the weight, “try to lift it.” Vigilante asked and Hero could barely make it with two hands. Vigilante thought of Hero as strong, “it’s not that heavy.”

Hero glared at them, “because you’re stronger than me.” But Hero smiled suddenly. “Then you have to tell me exactly what happened when they took you.” Vigilante thought a little bit and could hear Character shift in their steps.

“Right… Character, would you care to join us?” Vigilante reaches the sword to them with an elegant movement and their face shines up. Of course, Character can’t handle the weight of the sword either.

“It’s an honor.” Character said and fell down on knees, Hero laughed and Vigilante just left the room. Somehow amused.

Well in Vigilante’s training room they tried to remember where they had started with their own father. “I expect you to use both your hands, think of the sword as a part of your arm, and aim at your target.”

Vigilante pointed to the dummies, Hero wouldn’t let them demonstrate.

With expecting an answer Vigilante made sure both were there, on a dummy they did some easy and some hard maneuvers. “I was partly taken down a move I memorized,” then Vigilante could feel their body protest and what wouldn’t they do to do something. “Luckily I had some protection…”

Both Hero and Character were quiet and they started a hard training Vigilante had started at an early age. “Now it’s your turn.” Hero swallowed but took a step forward to begin their training. It started slow and every movement made them sweat. Vigilante didn’t remember it to be that hard, “start to tell us.” Hero ground out between their teeth.

Vigilante overviewed their word and small progress, “a lot happened after I was cursed and I got away with wounds I’m confident would have killed me. Then I got the plague…”

“WHAT…?!” Character exclaimed and the sword fell with a clang.

“Concentrate, you can ask questions afterward.” Vigilante ordered, “I was sick for weeks and the pain… I can’t even explain it, I thought I was going to die. Others did too. But I didn’t and people’s whispering and hidden fear were clear to me. Meanwhile, everybody died I survived and just had a cold to trace back to it. Hero, breath.”

Hero had collapsed on the floor and had a hard time breathing, but with their shaking arms, they rose up and was calmer now.

“Good, keep cool, and remain focused.” Vigilante stated and had their eyes on them, “all I could think of was to find the mage and get rid of this pesky curse. So ready I could be I sneaked out… I got jumped by another knight, they asked why I was alive. I didn’t give an answer and their fear made me fight them. As soon as I touched my sword… The light blinded us both and got others to come too.”

Hero’s grip was hard and their hands shifted colour, Vigilante laid a hand on their shoulders to calm their anger. “Don’t be angry and swing a sword, that’s how you make mistakes. More precisely that’s how I got cursed.”

“Really? What did you do?” Hero asked and Character had an amazing concentration on the training. More then Hero was.

Vigilante sighed and wasn’t proud of what they had done. “A friend… A knight was killed because of magic, I went rampage. Tracing the witch to a peaceful village where they hid, when they didn’t show themselves I started to kill with no control. When the witch came the village was dead they saw the slaughter… They could fall down and cry, but they started chant something. I wanted to run… People didn’t let me leave, the witch cursed me and it was painful. I was thrown down a cliff and left there.”

Hero turned with the sword up high, “you kind of deserved it then?” Vigilante nodded and turned Hero around towards the dummy.

“Kind of… Keep training, before you know it there’s a villain we need to catch.” Vigilante patted their back, “well, surrounded and confused I took support against a wall. My father shows up, pick up my sword, and put it to my throat. I begged for help, but none was there.” Vigilante took a sharp sword and buried it into a third and free dummy, cursed when pain pierced “together they took me to the church… I begged and begged and inside I fought for hours, days. Maybe even weeks, then all I saw was those people. Mythical creatures such as wyverns, griffins, or… Then I realized I can’t live in the past or believe myths like that.”

Do you like what you read send me an ask or a message. I would love to hear from you.

#not hero and villain #hero and villain #villain and hero #writer #writers on tumblr

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