#they are so oblivious to everything and like its the 1940s and just feels like the writers dont know how to write stakes

[swingsetindecember]

look, there aren’t that many female lead sports films. a league of their own means a lot to a lot of girls. i just wish they spent more time on the show about the actual baseball and how amazing it was for women. the show just uses it as backdrop and it’s a missed opportunity 

[imagine-loki]

Ruin

TITLE: Ruin

CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT:

AUTHOR: fanfictrashdump

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine that halfway through a makeout session, Loki stops abruptly. He stares for a long moment before he says anything. “I can’t ruin you like this.” He anxiously stands to put space between you. “I have to leave.”

RATING: T

NOTES/WARNINGS: My to-do list is a mile long , but I saw this and my mind wrote it on its own. Did I never intend them to be romantically involved? Yes. Did I really think of Lily as an oblivious ace for a long time? Also yes. Do I enjoy the current chaotic bi vibes she’s putting out? H e l l  y e s. Language. Kissing. Idiots. Speed run, so errors may be plentiful.

SUMMARY: Loki has been feeling feels that he can no longer shove into box and ignore. Lily didn’t know she could possibly have access to that box and would very much like the opportunity to do so. Loki is dramatic AF and is pleasantly surprised he’s been lied to. 

=

His lips trailed an invisible line over her neck, gliding over the expanse of skin until it reached a point where her pulse thrummed steadily. A second later his tongue darted over the heated flesh, tasting the electricity of her skin and what tasted like fresh morning dew. His teeth followed, pinching skin together so he could suck a half-dollar size bruise into it before returning to the honeyed lips he had already kissed swollen. The half-gasped whimper that followed as response would have usually spurred Loki on in his actions. This time, it was the noise that broke him from his reverie.

He pulled back, blinking drunkenly at the flushed face staring back in wide-eyed, pouting surprise. For a second the perfectly sky blue marbles beckoned him back like a siren call, but the Prince caught himself before he managed to drag her back onto his mouth. Fine, silver strands slipped through his fingers, the ends curling delicately around his digits and tickled his palms. He tried not to focus on the fact that the fact that they felt like each follicle was woven of spider’s silk.

A kiss brushed onto the inside of his wrist, startling him out of the silent exploration of her hair. There was a silent question in Lily’s stare, a curiosity as to why he had pulled away when they both had been perfectly content to try to devour each other a moment prior.

All Loki saw was an innocent curiosity reflected back at him and a genuine desire to share affection. It was all very overwhelming. Loki’s hands retreated abruptly, just as the dark cloud settled over his features. “I can’t ruin you like this,” he murmured, his face screwed into a frown that looked more distraught than Lily had ever seen it. He was on his feet a second later, almost as if shocked by lightning. “I have to go.”

“Wha–Loki!” Lily called at the already slamming door, leaving Lily behind, in his quarters, she might add, earnestly confused as to what had just happened. How all of it had happened.

Lily couldn’t remember who had started their short-lived tryst. It just sort of… happened.

The pair had been play-fighting, an increasingly common occurrence that would come about from Lily feeling a little too sure of herself and would decide to test her reflexes and element of surprise. Loki could always see her attacks coming a mile away, if he were honest. The little plant witch had only managed to startle him once, and it was very quickly rectified. He had not let his guard down ever again.

The familiar sensation of being watched crept up his spine and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. There was no ominous feeling, but rather a knowledge that he was not alone. The smirk that crept up on his face was unintentional, but it also unsuppressed. Loki continued sorting through materials as if there were nothing amiss. The slightest breeze fluttered his hair and the smell of ozone and magic filled his nose as he easily grabbed the arm that had intended to wind around his neck and he flipped the person over his shoulder.

Lily landed, flat on her back in bed with a choked gasp, scrambling quickly out of the vulnerable position, but Loki was far faster than she ever hoped to be. Not to mention that he was so much stronger, his hands bigger, able to pin her down neatly with little effort. Her veins glowed green in tandem with the vines that intended to squeeze Loki still.

He gave a surprised chuckle in response–they never had resorted to magic when they grappled like this. His response to shapeshift was second nature. The giant serpent that slithered eerily in her screeching direction dealt with the vines with little issue. She swallowed her protests to pin him down before the shape of a porcupine had her shuffling off again. More vines, more pliant and dense than the first, bound the creature down before a fox took its place. The ebony of its fur contrasted with the bright green of the vines was surprisingly endearing. Loki noisily gnawed at the vines as he rolled onto his back, hind legs kicking up a storm.

“Aww, I didn’t think you could shift into cute things!” She cooed, scratching him under his chin, prompting him to let out a startled yelp.

While Loki was no stranger to Lily suddenly thrusting affection in his direction in the form of hugs and genuine compliments, they were usually after he was in dire need of it, or vice versa. They never seemed to share this affection when they were both perfectly fine, but rather as comfort. And while the gentle stroking of her fingers up the bridge of his snout was soothing in a quasi hypnotic manner, there was still a bubble of emotion that he was sort of uncomfortable with gurgling at the pit of his stomach.

In the tumult of his emotions, he had shifted back, vines disappearing into the ether, and yet her fingers still trailed that lazy route from his forehead, down the bridge of his nose and back. He couldn’t exactly pinpoint when his head had shifted into her lap or when he decided it was a good idea for his teeth to playfully nip at her fingers. All he knew was that after a moment he her face was down by his and their mouths pressed together. Everything after that had been a blur.

And now she was sitting alone in his room, trying to piece together the last hour and why in every god’s name he had decided to bail on her.

Lily marched out of the dark bedroom and out into the hallways. She was sure Loki would be hiding quite proficiently–there wasn’t a creature alive that could find Loki if he did not want to be found, but she could certainly try. Lily peeked into the lab where Tony and Bruce tinkered away at their science projects.

“Tony, have you seen Loki?” She knew Bruce would rather stay far away from the demigod, so it wasn’t worth asking.

“Have I seen Scary Spice? No, I have not and I count myself lucky.”

“That’s not nice.”

Tony didn’t miss a beat. “Neither is he. What do you need him for?”

“He wasn’t feeling well,” she fibbed, easily. “I wanted to check in on him.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Bruce quipped, flashing an awkward smile and going back to adjust an array of tiny screws. Lily raised an eyebrow and Bruce did a double-take in her direction. “What?”

Lily ignored the question, dropping unceremoniously into one of the stools by Tony’s bench. “Honestly, I think we should kick Loki out,” she said after a long moment.

Tony’s face crumpled into an odd frown. “Not that I don’t fantasize about that every single day, but, why?”

“He’s a bad influence I think.”

“On who? The assassins, the 1940’s super soldiers, the recovering alcoholic with anxiety or the rage monster over there? Or do you mean you? Because I think we both know you’re your own bad influence. We’re all our own worst enemies, here, kiddo.”

“He’s going to ruin me.”

The loud bark of laughter spewing from Tony’s mouth startled Lily. “You lied to me for five years about who you really were and then you failed to mention that you would go all Poison Ivy if you were out on missions for too long. The only being brave enough to go into that room and keep your borderline non-murderous was that dumb, goth, wannabe-boyfriend of yours.” Tony peered down his nose at her. “Loki is a lot of things, mutant ruiner is not one of them.”

“He made out with me.”

“Good. If he’s busy sucking your face off, he can’t keep messing up the paint job on my suit.” He smirked when Lily pouted. “It’s not my fault if you make terrible choices. You have to deal with them yourself. Welcome to adulthood” He sobered slightly, cracking his neck in a nervous fidget. “So, you, er, like him or something?”

Lily turned a brilliant shade of red, suddenly becoming interested in a loose thread on her jumper. “I don’t know. I’m usually kind of oblivious and assume everyone just wants to be my friend, so I never… I didn’t think…”

“Oh, god, you do. Disgusting,” Tony quipped, making retching noises to tease her.

“Shut up, Tony.”

“But, you do! You’re totally–”

“Shut up, Tony!”

Tony frowned, the expression turning to curiosity when Lily’s eyes trailed to stare out of her peripherals towards Bruce’s benchtop. Realization lit up his face as his mouth formed a wide ‘O’ before he chuckled. “You better put everything back the way you found it or Bruce is going to Hulk-smash you into porridge.” Something clattered noisily onto the ground before the sound of footsteps shuffling overcame them. “He’s heading for the balcony,” he whispered just as the steps retreated. “Don’t make sudden moves, he looks terrified.”

“Thanks. Pleasure wreaking havoc with you, Tony,” she announced, hopping to her feet.

Cool air rushed her face as the automatic doors hissed open. The weather was already biting in the late autumn, and Lily was in no way prepared to be outside for any length of time in just her jumper and jeans.

Loki stood at the railing, staring off into the city when she pressed her forehead to his back. His body stiffened, taking several heartbeats before his muscles stopped seizing up. By that time, however, the bone-wracking shivers had prompted some protective instinct within him to turn, shedding the charcoal zip jumper off his shoulders and over hers.

“You’ll catch your death.”

“Do you mean you or the weather? Because you’re rather elusive today”

Loki scoffed. “Lilian–”

“Not my name.”

He drew in a deep breath whose chill rattled noisily in his chest. “How’d you even know?”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Bruce pretends you don’t exist. He wouldn’t express his sympathy for your illness. Rookie mistake. I know how to read people rather well.”

There was a long stretch of silence between them, eyes jousting before he couldn’t bear to hold her gaze any longer. “I’m not what you want.”

Lily chuckled to herself, burying herself deeper into Loki’s coat. “Forgive me, but you have no clue what I want. Mostly because I don’t know what I want. Frankly, I didn’t think making out with a Norse god was one of the options.” She shrugged, leaning into his side and smiling to herself when he instinctually pressed in closer. “I mean, if you don’t want it, that’s a different matter, altogether.”

Loki cut his eyes to the side to stare at her. “You’re ridiculous. You can’t tell me you don’t see–don’t you?”

“See what?”

“Fucking oblivious.”

“It’s not like I actively seek anyone. I can’t exactly be myself with anyone else.” She smirked, nudging him with her hip. “I don’t want to be–” A yelp cut her short, swallowed into Loki’s throat before it ever got the chance to break through the air. His long digits bunched up either side of his coat to pull her closer. She sighed, molding herself into the curve of his body. Just as she was tilted her head to deepen their kiss, he pulled back.

“No. I–I have to go.”

Once more alone, wrapped in Loki’s coat, she remained confused. Lily let out a groan, letting the cold autumn air cool her down before marching back inside. She hoped he shifted into someone easily recognizable. And that this sudden attack of guilty conscience was short-lived.

It wasn’t.

A month-long game of cat and mouse, of watching him disguise himself as every single occupant of that godforsaken tower to escape temptation and they still had not managed to sit down for a conversation. Lily decided that if that was the game he wanted to play, that she was entirely fine with it. She prepared breakfast for the team, as usual, setting a bouquet of fresh flowers in the center with a smile. Eventually, everyone began to stream in for the morning meal and Lily sat at her usual spot at the far end of the table to watch everyone come in, half-asleep and ravenous.

Blue eyes trailed Loki shuffling in behind Natasha, who sat to her right while he sat to Lily’s left. Not missing a beat, Lily smiled at the assassin before tugging at Natasha by the strings of her hoodie. Their mouths met easily, the Widow’s lips quirking at the corners and prompting the sound of clattering utensils across the table.

Nat pecked Lily gently before allowing her to move back and grinned. She licked her lips almost lewdly and followed it with a sip of coffee. “Good morning to you, too, hon.” Impish energy glittered in her eyes. “You know what? I don’t think I got enough of you. Come here–”

A thud echoed in the room and the table clattered. Loki was half out of his seat and had buried his dagger into the mahogany surface of the dining table. Tony protested quietly, almost half-heartedly.

“If you so much as breathe on her, again, I will skin you alive, Agent Romanoff. I swear it,” Loki hissed. “When I said I didn’t want to ruin you, I wasn’t suggesting you go off and find someone who would!” Loki snapped back at Lily, his expression halfway between annoyed and hurt.

“What else am I supposed to do?” She declared loudly, grumbling unintelligibly for a long moment. “I have been driving myself dizzy chasing these stupid circles you’ve led me on. Do you want me or not?”

“In what Universe do I not want you? It cannot be more obvious that I love you and you make me feel special, you impossible woman! Even fucking Stark noticed! But I don’t deal well with emotions if you haven’t caught on, yet, and I don’t want to lead you on when I’m not sure how to feel anything!”

“I don’t know how to feel, either, you ass. Which is why I’d rather we figure it out together than have to play Guess Who?: Shapeshifter Edition with everyone in the Tower!”

Loki growled, scrubbing a hand down his face in frustration. “I’ve just told you I love you and you said you didn’t know how you felt!”

Lily stabbed a sausage rather aggressively onto her fork, bending two of the tines in the process. “Of course I love you, you moron. Who in their goddamn right mind would voluntarily put up with your moody bullshit, otherwise?”

He scoffed. “Fine, I guess we’re in love, then!”

“Whoop-de-fucking-do!”

Loki opened his mouth to snap another witty retort back, when the conversation caught up to him. His eyebrows rose to meet his hairline as wide, green eyes cut instantly at Lily. “We’re in love,” he mumbled. “We’re in love?” Surprise melted into hopeful softness.

“Wait, were you two not together?” A chorus of Clint and Barton followed the interruption, but it was enough to cut through the magic of the moment.

x

Loki fidgeted on his feet as he paced in front of the bed. Lily looked bemused as her eyes moved like the swing of a pendulum to follow him back and forth.

“I’m not good enough for you.”

“Not for you to decide,” she countered, easily.

“I’ve killed.”

“So have I. You’ve been there.”

He stopped to face her. “I tried to take over the planet.”

“Mind control.”

“I’m a monster.”

“I’m legitimately an eldritch horror hybrid.”

Loki kneeled, resting his forehead on her lap with a sigh. “But we–you–I don’t think I could bare losing you after a paltry few decades,” he reluctantly mumbled.

Lily giggled, which Loki thought odd, but weirder things had happened between them. “I mean, fair. I’m not sure how long I’ll live, but I am also a hundred and six.”

His head snapped up so quickly he felt the muscles contract painfully. “What?”

“The hair is not a fashion statement,” she whispered, feeling the weight of his stare and the million questions it contained with it. “There’s a reason I haven’t really dated. I’ve never met anyone I can ostensibly spend my whole life with.” She laughed nervously, rustling her hair. “Say something.”

“You lied to me?” He seemed impressed rather than angry.

“No. You’ve always just assumed. And, I let you,” she admitted, her cheeks coloring faintly. His hands had curled around hers, dwarfing them in his comfortable warmth. “If you had let me explain a month ago, I would have told you that I’m really not some innocent maiden you can ruin.”

The little anxious notch that she was so familiar with formed between his brows. “By the Norns, we have a lot to talk about then, flower.” Lily sighed good-naturedly at the statement. Before she had managed to protest, Loki craned his neck enough to slot lips to hers. “Later, of course.”

[not-close-to-straight]

I’ve been wanting to read some of your WinterIron fics after seeing all of your new updates, but the ship feels a bit off balance to me after everything that happened in the MCU. I was wondering if you’d like to share what you like most about the ship, as well as what backgrounds you usually give Tony and Bucky in them (I have a feeling yours are better than “he killed my parents and my friends chose him over me”). Thanks and congrats on starting your new blog! 💕

Ooooh WINTERIRON! It’s basically my favorite thing ever when people ask me why I love a ship/background info so buckle up, cos this will be a long post complete with links to all my best Winterirons and reasons why it’s fun. 

The thing I like the best about Winteriron is that Tony and Bucky have so.much.in.common. 

Shared trauma by way of non consensual body modification (WS and of course, the arc reactor). PTSD. Body image issues and probably at times crippling dysphoria. Panic attacks and anxiety. Repeating the question “am I who they made me to be, or am I actually me” and then “who am I, exactly” because both have gone through life altering horrifying events completely out of their control. Phoenix metaphors-- Tony in Afghanistan and Bucky as the WS/fighting free of the WS. A shared interest in science (see Bucky’s dorky face at the Expo as well as how he feels about Wakanda in IW). A wish against a battle but always ready to suit up. Top of their game in their own right (Tony with tech and Bucky as a sniper and Cap’s right hand man) and then even better after their trauma. Both struggling to find their place in a world they no longer recognize, Bucky as post WS and Tony after he’s confronted with the truth of Obadiah/Stark Industries. Shared trauma by way of “bucky is a victim forced to do terrible things, Tony is a victim of the terrible things Bucky was forced to do”. 

So much in common. 

When I get to write them, it’s not about who saves who like it is with most of my Stony where yes, Tony is bad ass but it’s still Steve who swoops in and saves Tony’s heart and emotions and sometimes also his actual life. With Winteriron they are both broken and both trying to get better one step at a time and I love that so much. I love soft soft nekkid times where neither has to be ashamed of the damage on their body or if their body doesn’t quite work the way they want it to, I love them finding each other after nightmares, or Bucky getting too rough with Tony and apologizing and Tony knowing Bucky would never ever hurt him.

As far as the background I usually give them...it varies from fic to fic and verse to verse but there always is lots of themes of body positivity and acceptance mixed in with quite a bit of flirting even in the more serious verses because at some point I decided Bucky was a flirty mc flirt and that’s just all there is to it. 

Some #NCTS-verse Winteriron Standards: 

Bucky calls Tony “sweet thing”. Signature phrase “sure thing, sweet thing” and it is in every single one of my full length Winteriron/Stuckony fics, and usually shows up in most of my short ones as well. I make the rules, and the rules include “sweet thing” 

Tony loves loves Bucky’s arms and shoulders and the way he walks all murdery. 

“Bucky-bear” and “Brooklyn” are Tony’s nicknames for Bucky ie: “come home again Brooklyn” and “Aww Bucky-bear, its’ okay I’m rich, I’ll buy another one” 

Bucky likes Tony’s fluffy hair and Dat Badonkadonk but also SIZE DIFFERENCE because I prefer my Winteriron to be TolSmol and also kaakjsdhkasjhdsmuscles 

I realize nowhere does canon Bucky talk with a ridiculously Brooklyn accent buttttt in my (funnier) fics, he 100% does. Also aware that how I write him talking probably isn’t Brooklyn at all, but that’s just how we do it on #NCTS. 

Also, you will notice a reference to Bucky “Bronco” Barnes and his tag line “You wanna know why they call me the Bronco? Cos I’ll give you the ride of your life” and this is something that happened actually in a Stony story where he was only around for like one chapter, but my readers loved the wilder, flirtier, sort of stupidly hot and also insanely dangerous version of Bucky so it stuck around. You find “Bronco” Bucky in my non powers, lighter hearted fics and quite a bit in my Stuckony fics. 

Steve is always 100% pro winteriron because he’s 100% pro Bucky being happy and even in the very few fics where he and Tony aren’t also best friends, Steve has never tried to actively break them up or warn Bucky away. Uh uh. Not in my house. If anything, he is basically oblivious to Tony or in my few post CACW fics, Tony isn’t Steve’s favorite person but he still comes around to Winteriron being together. 

I write very little canon verse winteriron that deals with WS and Tony’s parents. If it’s mentioned at all in fics, it comes with the obligatory apology and forgiveness scene and then they move on. We all cry at that part in the movie, no need to bring it up over and over in fics. 

Let’s get into the stories! Here are some that are sure to not only ease you into my version of Winteriron, but also to slay you with some fluff and some feels. 

Cookie Day: Bucky shares his cookies with no one but Tony. Plotless and fun

Bad Days: Even the WS wants to keep Tony safe

Ducks in a Row: Possibly the cutest shit I’ve ever written in my life ever. 

Professional Cuddles: Tony is lonely, Bucky has hugs, this was a 3am prompt fill and it turned out GREAT. 

Not Yet: A little spooky but maybe one of my fave short stories

Murder Floof: Tony brings home a grumpy kitten for Bucky. 

Sure Thing, Sweet Thing: the origin story for the infamous phrase. 

And I have to add this one for nostalgia’s sake...

Letters to Bucky: My very first Winteriron and honestly, so good. Non powered AU with a little canon mixed in. Epistolary style so they fall in love over letters before meeting. Top tier art by @latelierderiot which kickstarted our friendship and I love her so much. 

And if you are really up for a challenge, I rewrote the entire Captain America trilogy as a Tony-centric Time Travel shenanigan and it details Tony going back to the 1940s and meeting/falling in love with Bucky Barnes, returning to present day and trying to reconcile things with Steve Rogers, then both of them finding out about WS Bucky and working to bring him home, and you can read all that HERE.

I’ve got lots more Winteriron on my MASTERLIST and if you check out the themed masterlists like  CHRISTMAS and VALENTINES DAY  there are some pretty great fics on there too! 

I hope you get as hooked on this ship as I am. 

Cheers!

[lxvesickreality]

mistakes 3/4

Request: same request from first one

Pairing: Steve Rogers x reader

Warnings: angst, heavy swearing, again angst because this is nothing but angst except for the tiniest bit of fluff near the end

Word Count: 2777

Add on: i have been inactive lately due to lack of inspiration so hopefully i can regain it with the tips given to me by @queenofthehairharrington​ << go check out those imagines! also, the inspiration that has been hitting a bit recently hasn’t included the requests so i may take a break from them and come back to the later. thanks for all the support and 200 followers<3

gif is NOT mine, full credit to owners

8 hours, 17 minutes, 47 seconds

That’s how long the team had left to find his missing wife. With the video sent out just a few hours ago, it’d felt like an eternity to Steve. His wife was gone, somewhere with a death threat stuck on her back and there was no clue leading the way to her location. He couldn’t stop picturing the look on Y/N’s face when her eyes finally made their way to the camera. She was terrified, absolutely frightened and there was no nope shining in her e/c eyes that he loved so much. It was the first thing he fell in love with which sounds incredibly cheesy but the moment he looked into them, he saw the curiosity that was up in flames. He told her before, “Curiosity killed the cat,” but she laughed at him and said, “But satisfaction brought it back,”. In the beginning for them, it was full of honesty, loyalty, passion, and her curiosity, of course. Then it turned to hell all because of him and his stupid mistakes.

“We’re going to find her, Steve. Don’t give up,” Steve was sat outside on the grass looking out into the lake by his home, watching the ducks being fed by Sam and the others out in the middle of the lake. It was beautiful at dawn with the sun rising from just over at the other end of the lake. He knew by sitting here he was just losing time but he had to take a breather.

Finally, his blue eyes that had a hint of green reached up to stare at his best friend, sadness pooling in his eyes, “How do you know that, Bucky? We’ve got 8 hours. We’ve already lost so much time.” his voice cracked, new tears setting in. 

“Because I just know. C’mon, get up,” his best friend repeatedly shook his head, refusing to get up from his spot. He wasn’t ready to head back inside to face the team who still gave them expressions of disappointment. He would do that to himself as well, he cheated and he deserved everything he got from them. He didn’t treat his woman right. 1940′s Steve would be severely displeased with the modern Steve. He promised his wife he wouldn’t hurt her, he’d protect her at all costs even if it meant the cost was his life and he downright failed 100%. If they get her, he doubted she will want to be with him especially with his luck nowadays. 

“I made a huge mistake, Buck, a fucking huge one,” Bucky wasn’t used to Steve using this vulgar language and he usually was the one to tell everyone to stop but his friend was hurt and broken. Steve had stopped a few inches from where Bucky was and he faced his best friend, the tears falling down bit by bit that held the intense sadness forming in his heart. He really has given up, Bucky thought. “I don’t even think she’ll come back to me after all of this, back to our home we just finished building a few months ago. Bucky, why am I such a big idiot? I don’t know what was running through my mind. I mean I fought against Sharon the first few times she did it but the last time...I caved.”

“Steve,” Bucky laid a hand reassuringly on his shoulder. “you wanna know what Y/N told Tony and Natasha? She said it’d take time but with that given time, she’ll learn to forgive you. She loves you, she married you, Steve. She’ll come around and we will find her. Natasha thinks she has a lead so come on. Dry up those big, fat tears and go talk to her. One step closer.” 

~

“So we know where she is?” Steve questioned as him and Bucky arrive to the conference room the team was in minus Sam and Wanda. 

Natasha shook her head,”Not exactly, but I have an idea. Tony, bring up the video and pause it when he shows the timer.” Tony nodded and almost immediately had the video up at the right spot. “See those designs on the door handle? They’re made specially in Alaska and only Alaska. We’ve got it narrowed down to very few cities but even then, we still have to find the exact place.” 

“I know where that is at.” Wanda reveals. Steve felt a rush of relief slither its way down his body and he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, we got you, Y/N.

“Lets go then, what are we waiting for?”

“There isn’t an entrance, Steve. They somehow zap themselves in and out of the building and it’s underground.” 

Steve felt the walls crumble around him and the small sliver of hope he was just given was ripped away just as quick it was given to him. Reality seemed so far away from him all of a sudden, Bucky’s voice was like an echo and Steve’s heart felt like it was going to burst out if it got any faster. There was no more hope. They were at 7 hours already and she was all the way in Alaska plus Bruce would most likely have to build something to get inside of this building which could take days. He may not even have the equipment for it. It was over, he’d lost his wife for good and in just a few hours, he will be a widow. She was going to dead. 

Steve forced his way through the part of the team behind him, running out of the conference room with the heaviest heart that hung as low as the moon and it was turned to blue, color of the sadness and devastation he felt. It was over. She was gone. He could vaguely hear his best friend behind him, yelling and begging for him to stop what he was doing but honestly, Steve didn’t even know what he was doing. He couldn’t stop running or that was until Pepper made an appearance and Steve tripped. With the loud bang of him hitting his head off the wall echoing, it went dark for him and he was pulled into a dream.

~

Today was the day. The wedding day. Steve had waited 3 years to marry this woman and he couldn’t be happier to do so. He met her on the day of the battle against Loki and he’d saved her from getting killed when she ran out into the road to help him. Steve took one glance at her e/c eyes that sparkled as the sun beamed down on the both of them and he knew he was going to marry this brave woman who tried to save someone she didn’t know. Fury must’ve thought something similar and decided to have her join S.H.I.E.L.D. after witnessing the fight she did. 

To say Steve was nervous was an understatement, he was anxious and tense as he wanted the wedding to go well without an interference of work. Fury promised there was no upcoming missions nor was there nobody trying to take over the world. The wedding day was spontaneous, they’d had the whole wedding details planned out before picking a day because of the line of work they both had so when there was an available day for everyone, Steve set it all up where the love of his life chose. A fall wedding, in the woods where they found a clearing close to their favorite place; the waterfall where the first ‘i love you’ was exchanged, the first kiss, and their first intimate time. 

The ceremony was beautiful, she was beautiful. The dress was snug and tight at her breasts and torso until it got to her waist where it flowed nicely to the ground and the trail was a few feet long covered in a white lace design. The back was open where he could feel her soft skin when he dipped her to kiss her dark shade of pink stained lips but his favorite part was the little tiara she wore to keep the train in place that was layered with sapphire stones. She was his queen and he was her king now. 

“I love you, Steven Grant Rogers.”

“I love you too, Y/N M/N Rogers.” 

~

5 hours, 54 minutes, 27 seconds

“Bruce, I think he’s waking up! Steve? Rogers?” Steve’s eyes fluttered open shining his bright blue eyes that held the hint of green in them but was already beginning to hold tears in. His head throbbed in pain as the memory of him hitting his head came rushing back quickly. 

“Hey, bud, you had all of us worried there for a moment.” Bucky said, coming into view from behind Natasha.

Blinking rapidly, he shot up from the plain white bed, “How long was I out for? How much time do we have left?” 

“Steve, that’s not important right now. The rest of the team is working on it and you need to rest. You have a minor concussion that needs to be nursed a like a raging hangover.”

“How long, Bucky?” 

“5 hours and 48 minutes.” said his best friend sulking in defeat. “But you need to relax, Steve.”

“Relax? RELAX? Bucky, my fucking wife is out there probably beaten to a fucking bloody ass pulp and barely hanging on. I am not going to lay down and ‘nurse’ a fucking minor concussion that will not affect my help in this. My wife will come out alive, Bucky. Now, help me go help Bruce. We have to find a way into there.”

“We already found a way.”

Steve’s eyes shot to his best friend but the appearance of guilt that had a mix of satisfaction stopped the hope that was trying to worm its way to his heart. He’d done something stupid. “What did you do, Buck?”

“I told H.Y.D.R.A. I’d come back if they gave us Y/N. They said they’d do it as long as you don’t fight back.” 

“YOU WHAT?” 

The two boys continued to fight and bicker about Bucky’s well being, both of them oblivious to Natasha and Tony running in there yelling something at them they weren’t able to comprehend. Steve was beyond furious, no word can describe the anger he had. Giving himself to H.Y.D.R.A? Was he stupid? That was a stupid question to ask because clearly he was. 

“You lost all hope to find your wife, Steve. We all did!”

Steve nostrils flared with anger, “And you think I don’t know that? I’ve already lost her. How am I supposed to cope with the loss of you too?” Bucky let his eyes focus on the floor instead of looking into his best friends eyes. He was incredibly angry with him but he didn’t care. His wife mattered a lot to everyone and he wasn’t going to stand by and act like he couldn’t do anything to help it. H.Y.D.R.A. has wanted him from the beginning, he can endure a few more years with them if it meant Steve got his happiness back. “I can’t believe you did this, Buck,” 

“I’d do anything for my best friend, Steve. Even if it meant enduring just a little bit more pain.” 

“They’re here,” Natasha announced, catching the boys’ attention and Steve’s facial expression went blank. Nobody could tell what he was thinking or feeling, it just seemed like he was empty with no feelings at all and they didn’t know what was worse. Not knowing what he was going to do or knowing what he was going to do. He had a plan, Natasha could see that and so could everyone else as they stepped out of the compound with hard glares towards H.Y.D.R.A. who arrived not 5 minutes earlier. 

The team stood in front of the many men they brought, heavy hearts with the information of Bucky being traded off with Y/N. They knew Y/N would beat all of them if she found out Bucky was doing this and she’ll find out soon enough. Will it be before he’s taken away or after? That was a popular question.

“So,” a leader stepped forward with a proud smirk on his face. “The Winter Soldier has finally stepped forward, he’s not a coward. That’s nice to know.” 

“Never was one, just didn’t want to be around you. You tortured me-”

“Yet, you want to come back in exchange for your best friends girl. How brave and heroic. Well, Mr. Barnes, things have changed. We don’t want you. You’ve been too compromised. It’s been too long.”

The dreaded feeling sunk deep into Steve’s skin, soaking in every ounce of hope he had once again. Hope just wasn’t for him anymore. His wife was his hope and she isn’t here. His heart clenched and he willed himself to not cry, not to show weakness towards them because they would kill her as a game to go against him. Instead, he clenched his hands into fists and let the hope be taken over by anger. He was done. 

“I’m done. I’m so fucking done with you men toying with others. That’s my wife you have and if you don’t give her back, I will wipe out every fucking person in every H.Y.D.R.A. base. So help me god, I will tear everyone limb from limb!” Steve let himself threaten these men not caring about the language he has continued to use the last few days. The leader didn’t have to say it, he was terrified of the former soldier and the way he looked at him made his blood run cold. Steve was serious. “Have her come home.” 

The leader turned his torso to look at another man, nodding his head in confirmation of something and spun back around. He couldn’t show fear in front of his men but he didn’t want to lose everything. “We want you to come join us in exchange for-”

“Done. I’ll do it. Just bring her fucking home.” 

“Steve!” there was many protests against his decision, none of them wanting to lose Steve Rogers. 

“Bring her out, boys.” 

Then there she was. 

Bruised and beaten up. Clear broken bones in several places and cuts that were still profusely bleeding but the girl’s corner of her lips lifted up in a relieved smile upon seeing her husband. Steve didn’t hesitate to run towards her, past the men of H.Y.D.R.A. and through the line of cars and helicopter they brought Y/N on to get to his wife. Immediately, his arms wrapped around her in an embrace and the tears suddenly started to flow down but Steve didn’t care, his girl was here and alive. Bruised and beaten up, she still was the most beautiful woman in his entire life. He whispered in her ear ‘I love you’ over and over until she said it back with the same amount of love in her voice. He pulled back only to catch her lips in his. 

“Okay, lovebirds, we need to get going. Rogers, let’s go. Say your goodbye and let’s go.” 

“What?” her voice was hoarse and scratchy, full of confusion. “Steve, what’re they talking about?” 

“Bucky is going to look after you, Y/N. Just for a little while and I’ll be home before you know it. You just gotta hang in there, baby. Okay?”

She shook her head, putting aside the massive headache that pounded through the temples of her head, “No, no, no, Steven, please. Please don’t leave me.” 

“I don’t have a choice, baby. I’ll be back soon. I love you so much.” a few men came up behind Steve, taking his hands off of his wife’s body and handcuffing them behind his back. “I love you, Y/N Rogers. So fucking much.” 

She screamed, she screamed at them to let him go and they didn’t listen. They continued to the car that was a few feet away from them, dragging the love of her life in front of them away from her. She let herself fall to her knees, ignoring the pain in the one that was broken and screamed for him to come back.

With the door closing behind him, she whispered one final thing, no more voice to scream and she wished he heard, “I forgive you,” 

But he didn’t. He wouldn’t know until he came back years later down the road when they let him go. 

[setsureadsshit]

Lost At Sea: A List of WIP’s I am finally letting go of [ Part 1 ]

Finally going through my subscriptions on AO3 and clearing out the fics that haven’t gotten an update in too many years or have been orphaned since the last time I looked at them but what chapters were posted are worth reading as long as you don’t mind being left frustrated. Could also be considered a final plea and/or thank you/love letter to the authors for having written them at all, I don’t know how many parts this will take because I have like, 7ish pages of subscriptions on AO3 lmao so just, you know *hand waves* settle in the ride with me.

With the Bodies in the Gutter by TriDom

Summary: Derek works with the FBI to dismantle sex trafficking rings from the inside out. It's grueling, but he never believed that the wear on him outweighed the good he and his team did. Until he finds his mate with a new group that had been taken. He jeopardizes everything to get him out, only to have to turn his back on him before his mate is even awake.

Last Update: 2017

Fandom & Main Pairing: Teen Wolf; Sterek

Personal Notes: At 16 chapters it gives you enough progress to kinda feel satisfied. It dropped off at a kind of lull before ramping up into the next crisis action which also helps I think. Only mildly unsatisfying for not getting to the true “happy ending” but I’m not mad about it.

Where Is My Bright Future by Steamcraft

Summary: au: Derek and Stiles meet at a German camp.

“My name…” The boy trails, then grimaces. “Stiles Stilinski.”

Derek’s eyebrows rise. “Stiles. Nickname?”

Stiles nods. “You English, how is it… Butcher.”

That surprises a laugh out of him. Stiles looks startled at the sound, heart racing, before he tentatively smiles.“You laugh, but its true.”

Last Update: 2015

Fandom & Main Pairing: Teen Wolf; Sterek

Personal Notes: I read this a long time ago and I remember it being both really good and really heavy but also getting a little lost in the middle. It’s got 14 chapters though so, like the fic above I feel like it’s a satisfactory read even if there isn’t a real ending.

When Sparks Fly by LunaCanisLupus_22

Summary: “Derek,” Stiles thunders. “Were you ever going to tell me your house is trying to hook us up?”

Derek's head snaps up, eyes wide and scenting the evident crackle of magic in the air.

Or the one where spark!Stiles moves into an enchanted apartment block owned by a grumpy alpha and is completely oblivious to the building's efforts to matchmake them.

Last Update: 2016

Fandom & Main Pairing: Teen Wolf; Sterek

Personal Notes: This one is a little harder to categorize because it started out as a like, 2 chapter completely completed fic - and then the author came back and added more? So it’s unclear if they plan on coming back and adding more again since they’ve left it uncompleted but you know *hand waves*. In any event, it’s a definite good read, one of my favorites, highly recommended.

Where A Mask, Be A Hero by A_Whistful_Writer

Summary: Oliver Queen had started a crusade in his father’s name, alone. It was bitter, harsh and unrelenting. He was left with scars and bruises that only seemed to double with each passing day. But then he found companions in his fight. Laurel, Diggle, Felicity, Roy. They made things more bearable, and for a while, he was happy, even though there was a gaping hole in his heart. Something was missing.And that was when Oliver met Barry Allen.

Last Update: 2018

Fandom & Main Pairing: Arrow/The Flash ; Flarrow

Personal Notes: It’s honestly just a retelling of the first however many seasons of each show but with a little more OTP filling. The later chapters kinda lost the plot and I was hoping it’d pick up again and really start rolling but I’m throwing in the towel on this one. 

The Fault Is Not In Our Stars - Orphan

Summary: After a long and wretched campaign, Asgard has conquered Jotunheim. To ensure King Laufey's cooperation and later friendship between the kingdoms, Asgard takes home the apparent heir to the throne, Loki Laufeyson. Loki is, unfortunately, anything but complacent.Based on the art by stunningly talented Wantstobelieve: http://wantstobelieve.tumblr.com/post/18102496999/guess-who-just-watched-troy-again-yup-that

Last Update: 2013

Fandom & Main Pairing: Thor ; Thunderfrost

Personal Notes: I had hoped this would be a case of the author regaining their writing inspiration with a new Thor movie on the horizon and promptly forgot about it for...a long time, lmao. I’m glad that the author chose to orphan the story instead of simply deleting it because it may only be 8 chapters but they’re very well written and the story is compelling, even unfinished.

Time Will Crawl by coldhope

Summary: Inspired by one of kaciart's amazing drawings: the Winter Soldier faced with a pre-serum Steve Rogers and--conversely--1940s Bucky Barnes coming home to find Captain America lurking in the kitchen.

Last Update: 2014

Fandom & Main Pairing: Captain America (MCU) ; Stucky

Personal Notes: It’s only two chapters which isn’t long enough to *really* get attached to something but the concept was interesting enough to hold my attention/hope that it’d get continued. 

The What’s And How’s of Raising Werewolves by kit_cat

Summary: Stiles is twenty-five and shares his bed with a five-year-old werewolf who calls him mommy. This isn't how he expected his life to turn out.Or in which Derek is a kindergarten teacher, the Hales are alive, Danny is overly romantic for a five-year-old, and Stiles has somehow Magicked his way into being the legal guardian of three werelings all under the age of ten... and may or may not be on the run from a league of werewolf kidnapping hunters.

Last Update: 2017

Fandom & Main Pairing: Teen Wolf ; Sterek

Personal Notes: So I’m...technically not giving up on this one since it’s gone 3 years between updates before and really like this story so I’m going to hold onto this hope for a little while longer but it’s a very very slim hope. This is a fic that does NOT leave off with a satisfactory feeling even though it’s 9 chapters in, those 9 chapters really are just the place setting and maybe a charcuterie board or two while guests mingle but you could start smelling the main course from the kitchen. 

Trust by trufflemores

Summary: "Barry reels Oliver in for a hug. Oliver grants him three seconds, pulling back with his own irrepressible smile, knowing he looks like young-and-in-love which is ridiculous because he's not. Maybe, a tiny, impulsive part of him argues, he wants to be."

Last Update: 2017

Fandom & Main Pairing: The Flash/Arrow ; Flarrow

Personal Notes: I have spent I don’t KNOW how many months on and off trying to find this fic again, only to discover I’ve had it the whole fucking time! Specifically, the way trufflemores describes how they interact - giving words to all of the silent conversations they have, how they translated Barry and Oliver’s body language to so perfectly into writing. Like, even after I stopped watching The Flash (and had long since stopped watching Green Arrow), I still watched the crossover episodes because watching Barry and Oliver (and later Kara) interact was always my favorite thing. Honestly, watching both teams together was always so much fun - the episodes were just fun, but I digress. I don’t honestly remember where this fic leaves off but it was fairly episodic so I don’t really know that it needs an end per say, reading it shouldn’t leave you too dissatisfied. 

The Propinquity Effect by SwiftEmera

Summary: Oliver Queen pretty much ignored his bisexuality, until he clapped eyes on Barry Allen.Unfortunately, Barry is a social pariah, and Oliver's mother is currently running for governor, so Oliver is pretty much trapped in the bisexual closet, unable to come out and associate himself with Barry for the fear of tarnishing his mother's campaign. However, when their teacher pairs the boys up to work on a Psychology project based around the subject of sexual attraction, Oliver's willpower to keep his distance is strongly tested.

Last Update: 2015

Fandom & Main Pairing: The Flash/Arrow ; Flarrow

Personal Notes: I’ve been re-reading most of these as a final send off but this one I’m just not in the mood for unresolved angst. It’s really well written, the characters are really well adapted for the AU, but just knowing it isn’t finished and probably wont ever be I don’t want to invest my energy into something that doesn’t have a conclusion - for better or worse and this is the kind of fic I *need* to have an end. 

[insainlymarvel]

Wrapped Around Your Finger

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warning: Fluff

Summary: Everyone knows you have Bucky wrapped around your finger, everyone except you.

Bucky knew he was screwed since the day he met you. He couldn't help but stare at you every time you laughed, smiled, hell he couldn't help but stare at you in general. You were so breathtaking to him and he couldn't control it. But you didn't notice it.

"Hey Buck." You said as you sat on the couch next to him while he flipped through channels not finding anything worth watching. When he heard your melodic voice he stopped and gave you his full attention.

"Hey." He said with a dazed grin on his face as he saw you.

"Anything interesting on today?" You asked as you took the remote from his hands and started flipping through channels yourself.

"Not that I could find." He said and you gave a disappointed look at the screen.

"That sucks." You said as you continued to look.

"We could just watch a DVD," he suggested, trying to lift your spirits. "I still haven't watched a lot of movies."

"Sounds great," you said as you thought for a moment. "We need to go to the store though."

"OK, what are we grabbing?" He asked as he stood with you.

"We need snacks, we're turning this into a movie marathon and snacks are needed." You replied as you both headed towards the elevator. He smiled at the thought of spending the whole day with you lazily watching movies.

You both returned with a mountain of snacks in Bucky's arms.

"I could have carried something Buck." You said with a laugh as Bucky craned his neck to try and look at you over the mountain.

"Its no problem." He said as you both walked towards the living room, Bucky dropping the snacks at the coffee table. You walked towards the DVD collection and scanned through looking for something interesting to watch.

"How do you feel about watching Harry Potter?" You asked with a large smile on your face. He practically melted at the sight.

"Sounds great." He said with a grin as he sat on the couch watching you put the DVD in.

You both watched the movies, during the first one you leaned into Bucky's chest while his metal arm was drapped across the back of the couch. You snuggled into him comfortablely, at this point all he could do was stare down at you with the movie completely forgotten.

During the fourth movie you began drifting off into sleep, Bucky smiled as you started to yawn and rub your eyes.

"You getting tired, Doll?" He asked with a sweet voice.

"A little." You said as another yawn erupted from your mouth. "OK, alot." You giggled and reluctantly sat up. You always had feelings for Bucky, he made you smile more than anyone else. Everything about him had your heart beating, it felt like you were flying whenever you were around him. But you were sure he only saw you as a friend, or sister. It tore your heart in two but you lived with it. "I'm gonna go to bed." You said as you stood. "Thanks for the movie marathon." You said with a chuckle as you walked back to you room waving him goodnight.

"Anything for you." He said quietly as you walked out of the room, his eyes followed you until you were out of sight.

"You have it bad man." A voice said to him as he turned and saw Steve grinning at him with his arms crossed.

"I know." Bucky said with a groan as his eyes instinctively looked back at where you retreated to. "You think she noticed?"

"She's oblivious." Steve said as he watched Bucky nod at his response.

"I'm heading to bed." Bucky said as he stood and started towards his room.

"Have fun dreaming of Y/N!!!!" Steve called after Bucky teasingly.

"I will!!!" Bucky said back with a mocking tone in his voice before he went to bed.

When you woke up the next morning everything was strange. Everyone was up and chattering happily which was unusual, usually mornings consist of most people still sleeping or everyone groggy and grouchily sipping their coffee.

"What's going on?" You asked with a worried look on your face.

"We had a great idea that we're doing this weekend." Nat said with a large grin on her face.

"What's the idea?" You asked as a plate of waffles and coffee fixed just the way you like it was laid in front of you. You looked up at the person giving them to you and it was none other than Bucky himself.

"Good morning Doll." He said with a grin. You smiled up at him with a look of appreciation.

"Thank you Bucky!" You said happily as you grabbed the syrup and started going to town on those waffles. You waved to Nat to continue since you now had a mouth full of food.

"A 1940s themed party!" She exclaimed with a smile. "Its gonna be great! You and I have to do some shopping!" You were shocked but excited nonetheless.

After you were finished eating you got ready and met Nat at the elevator. That whole day was spent shopping with the party being tomorrow. It was surprising that Tony could dish out a party with no real notice but you knew anyone who got invited was gonna be there, it was a Tony Stark party after all.

"You excited for Bucky to see you in your outfit?" Nat asked as you sipped on a soda. You about spit the drink out in shock to her question.

"What?" You asked as you loudly swallowed your drink nervously.

"What? Its so obvious you have a thing for him." She said with a smirk.

"Is it really that obvious?" You asked with a sigh as your shoulders slumped in defeat. You knew it was pointless to argue with Black Widow herself.

"To everyone else yes, to Bucky no." She said with a grin. "Steve and I are gonna try and change that tomorrow."

"What!?" You said, your eyes probably looked as big as dinner plates they shot so wide. Nat laughed at your expression.

"Look we're gonna set you two up and that's that, don't worry about it, I got this." She said but you couldn't help but worry.

It was late when you two returned, you both found Bucky sitting on the couch flipping through channels as you both walked in. As soon as the elevator dinged Bucky's attention turned quickly to it as he saw you and Nat walking through. His shoulders relaxed with an ache, he didn't notice how tense he was all day until he saw you. You were always able to help him relax just by existing next to him, Steve was right he had it bad.

"How was your day?" Bucky asked as he stood and walked towards you two, he gently took the bags from your hands. He was always doing gentlemenly things like that, but only for you.

"It was good, lots of walking." You said with a laugh.

"Well its late, I'm going to retreat for the night." Nat said as she waved us goodnight with bags filling her hands as she left.

"I'm probably going to follow her lead on this." You said with a grin as you went to get your bags from Bucky.

"It's probably a good idea that I do the same, I will walk you to your room." As he skillfully avoided your hands as you both walked towards the rooms with him still carrying your bags.

Going to sleep that night was difficult, you couldn't help but let your mind wander and thoughts of Bucky filled your head. So safe to say you didn't get much sleep.

The day of the party you and Nat got ready in her room. She was wearing a black dress that hugged her body but the hem flew out in an A-line. You wore a similar dress except it was bright red and the neckline was showing off some cleavage perfectly. Both of you had simple make up with bright red lips. Afterwards you both looked in the mirror and nodded at the results. Both looking like proper 1940 pin up girls you finally headed out to the party that already was in full swing.

(Listen to this playlist while party is going on)

Music was wafting through the air the sounds of trumpets and violins melodicly filled the room as you walked in. You quickly spotted a man with dark hair in a soldier uniform with his back towards you, he was very familiar to you and you walked up to him to confirm your suspitions. You put your hand on his shoulder, he turned and you were met with those blue eyes that made your heart soar.

"Bucky." You said in shock as you smiled looking over him. He wore what looked like his old uniform and he looked damn good in it. He had his hair cut and was completely clean shaved.

"You look great!" You said with a smile on your face. Bucky on the other hand was speechless when he saw you, he had no words as he stared at the beautiful woman in front of him.

"Doesn't she look great Bucky?" You both heard Nat say and all Bucky could do was nod with a dazed expression on his face.

"Lets go get a drink." You said to Bucky with a smile, he grinned as he held his arm out for you which you took as he lead you towards the bar. You both ordered your drinks as you looked over everyone laughing and dancing to the music. "So did you use to dance Bucky?"

"Back in the 40s? All the time, going dancing was a usual date for me back then." He said with a grin as he took another sip.

"Come on." You said as you put your drink down and took his hand in yours.

"What are you doing Doll?" He asked as he let you pull him towards the dancefloor.

"We're dancing obviously." You said as you put your arm on his shoulder and other I'm his hand. His arm gently took your waist, you both swayed to the melody as your face nuzzled into his neck as you sighed with content. Bucky held a grin on his face that was plastered there since he saw you.

"What are you doing to me Doll?" He whispered

"What do you mean Buck?" You asked as you picked your head up and looked into his blue eyes, your heartbeat quickened as he stared into your Y/E/C eyes. His eyes shifted from yours for a few seconds as he looked behind you but quickly returned to you with a loving grin on his face.

"You wanna go to the balcony for a bit? Its hot in here." He said and you nodded as he took your hand and lead you outside to the cooling air. You stared out at the city lights, it was a very cramped city but beautiful nonetheless. You felt eyes on you as you turned and found Bucky standing close to you. His arms began wrapping around you pulling you closer to him, you felt your heart going crazy as you smiled widely looking down shyly with a blush creeping onto your face. "Do you know what you do to me Y/N?" He asked you, you looked back into his eyes with a questioning look on your face. He smiled at you as his eyes gazed over your face taking in every detail. "You don't have a clue do you Doll?"

"What are you talking about Bucky?" You asked with laughter in your voice. He chuckled with you as he thought for a moment how he was going to explain his feelings to you.

"Everything about you has me mesmerized," he stared deep into your eyes as he confessed himself to you, "and if I'm not near you I'm losing my mind. Ever since I first layed eyes on you I knew I was screwed. You had me wrapped around your fingers the second we met and I'm completely over the moon about it, about you." Your mouth was open in shock as he said this to you. "And who knows you may not feel the same for me like Steve and Nat say you do but either way they're right, I need to tell you this and take a leap of faith. I am head over heels for you Doll and nothing is going to change that." You didn't know what to say, it was your turn to be shocked. You stared at him for a moment before looking at his lips. It was your turn to take a leap of faith as you gripped the back of his neck and pulled him down to you, you stood on your tip toes as you met with his lips. He froze in shock for a moment or two before he tightened his grip around your waist pulling you closer to him as you both melted into the kiss it felt like fireworks were going off. You never wanted to stop kissing him everything was perfect. After a few moments you both heard cheering, you parted to see Nat, Steve, Tony, Bruce, and Thor clapping their hands while they shouted and cheered at you two. Your face was bright red at this as you turned your head away from them snuggling into Bucky he laughed as he held you, he kissed the top of your head as his heart danced in his chest from the amount of happiness he was feeling in that moment.

"So Doll, with you be my girl?" He asked as he stared down at you with an adoring look that you now noticed and it caused a blush to find it way back to your face. You had a feeling you were going to have to get use to this red burning on your face as you smiled at the thought.

"Yes Bucky, I would love to be your girl." You said, your face was in pain from all the smiling you were doing but you couldn't stop and you didn't want to. He put his hand on your cheek as he bent down to meet your lips once again. All the feelings came rushing back in that kiss as you felt everything disappear from the world, you and Bucky were the only two who existed at this moment and you were loving it.

[raiden-dryad]

Journal Entry | Raiden Dryad

March 28th, 1940

War is such a beautiful thing. It didn’t look like this before, the first time around in The Great War; I know it wasn’t like this. I keep thinking it’s because of advancement, as it has been some decades since I took steps into no man's land and since then, humanity has become creative in its methods of battle.

As I lay here now, writing in the dugouts, dried mud stuck to the edge of the pages, I can still only put it down to one thing: I had different eyes in the last war, I had been human. I had fought and almost died like any good soldier. Back then, it was for duty; released from my incarceration to march to my own death.

The screaming is so loud, it deafens me and everything I touch I feel its history; I smell the dead man who once held it. Oblivious to every man who gathers around the trench, I can’t help but smile that in this war, I am the only thing that the men should really fear. 

Blood is as familiar as it had been before; but now, I take it mercilessly to sate thirst. There is no remorse; no regret or even a passing moment to consider the lives I claim. Harken is here, he admires the courage it takes a man to march to their death. For some of the brave lads, we take their young lives before they die with the honour they might deserve. Hark laughs about it and I can see the humour in that; we’re the enemy. It gave blue on blue a whole new meaning. A bayonet is a masterful weapon, it hides our marks with such savagery that their pale corpse is believable. 

I don’t see much hope for bodies to be recovered. Half of them are buried in mud, crushed under the weight of more corpses or are blown to smithereens by overhead bombers. It was the first time I’d seen a man sliced in half just by a gattler and it had been glorious to watch. 

My uniform is shredded by this point, bullet holes have torn the majority of my torso and dried blood; my own and my comrades’ soaked into what remains of it. It has made me nothing more than a target for ‘close shave’ joking. It is a little irritating and I will finish the next man to dare make a remark. I promise that. I have to remind myself that they are so young and I have more years than them to know what lies at the end of a war. Especially if we don’t win; they will learn. 

I’ve told Harken that we could both end the war; we could decimate the opposition overnight if we want to. One battle at a time; wiped out over the darkness to be met with silence as the morning light graces the men their lives.

Hearing gunfire for the long nights quickly makes me realise that I have to hone my senses out before the constant drilling ceases. I find the daytime confines of our hideout awfully degrading, we burrow into the underground mounds of the trenches and use the heavy layers of dirt to shield us. 

Better that than face the sun.

Even now, I think about how a carefully placed landmine, claymore or B12 could open the ground to the sunlight and Harken and I would be nothing more than ashes. Should I be getting hard over the thrill of that? Cheating death, over and over again and waking up to a war that seems unending. 

There goes a grenade. It is a clear as if it had been right next to me, a rumbling sound behind me shakes my body against the mud with the sheer force. Amongst the night, I can see everything; hear every whisper and ultimately find it impossible to resist the lull. This was a test. Hark tortures me in his own way, teasing me with situations I find undeniable. 

So when I say that this war is not like the last, I can recall thinking how it was hell on earth back then; bleeding out on no man’s land, praying for God to have mercy on my soul. Now I know the truth, war is not only a beautiful thing, but it is a feast from the heavens; it is my playground and no other man on the field of battle stands a chance to get in on the game; nobody but Harken. 

And he is no man. 

[biavenger]

Benediction;

Summary:  "Tell me every terrible thing you did, and let me love you anyway." -Anonymous

A/N: Finally, a fic with no Infinity War spoilers!!! This takes place between the end of Captain America: Civil War and Infinity War. Like always, send in any requests if you have them xx 

Ever since the end of the civil war that had torn the Avengers apart, Steve hadn’t stayed in one place for long; being on the run from the biggest and most powerful government in the world meant always being one step ahead, sleeping with one eye open, and never getting too comfortable. He moved from big city to big city, small town to small town, and everywhere in between while trying his best to blend in with each new culture.  

That was, until he met her.

Although he tried to avoid being in public for too long, sometimes being so restricted by the walls of his tiny apartment that he would treat himself to a night out at some shady bar that, under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have been caught dead in. However, as long as the atmosphere was relaxed and the music wasn’t too terrible, he could stomach being just about anywhere if it meant even a moment of freedom. 

His new “going out” routine was relatively bland. Putting on the most unassuming outfit, Steve planted himself in a seat where he would have an eye on every entrance of the building at all times, while still having easy access to one just in case anything happened. He’d order one, maybe two on a particularly wild night, draft beers. As he drank it slowly, he would watch the way people would interact with one another. Occasionally, someone would take interest in him and try to engage him in conversation, and depending on his mood he would sometimes play along. Mostly, however, he just listened in on others’ conversations and chuckled at the petty drama he overheard.

That was most nights.

Steve specifically recalled that the beer he was drinking that night was cold. Alcohol didn’t have any impact on him, and he wasn’t particularly fond of beer’s taste; however, it was a bit of normalcy that he could use more of in his life, and it reminded him of how things used to be back when he would go out with Bucky before the war. 

He was already on his second draft by the time she crashed into his life. No conversations were particularly interesting, so for the most part he had retreated within his own mind. It was the sharp Midwestern tone to her accent startled him, though, snapping him right out of his internal monologue. The stark contrast to the more foreign accents he had become accustomed to hearing felt out of place and immediately made him alert.

“Let go of me, asshole,” the strange girl shouted as the situation began to escalate. Steve rose quickly from his seat, looking around to pinpoint the source. When he saw the girl cowering in corner, her arm captured by a much larger man, he knew he had to do something. Bucky used to razz him for always picking fights where he wasn’t involved, but if he didn’t stand up for what was right, who would?

Putting his hand firmly on the man’s shoulder, Steve said, “I think she told you to let go, sir.” The man turned around to sneer at Steve for interfering, but seeing how much larger he was, dropped the girl’s arm and scurried away defeated.

“C’mon, I had him on the ropes,” the girl complained, but the grin on her face clued Steve in to the fact she was kidding, “I’m Y/N. Thanks for helping me out. For some reason, even though its 2018, some men respect other men more than women.” 

“Steve,” he replied, “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? I mean, it’s like they’re stuck in the 1940s or something.” His joke was bad, and he knew it. In fact, if Bucky were there, he probably would’ve punched Steve in the arm for that one. Luckily, this girl seemed oblivious to who he was other than that his name was Steve and he just saved her from creep in a bar. 

“Steve,” Y/N tested out his name in her own mouth, the smile on her face only growing at the sound of it, “Let me buy you a drink, yeah?”

The two of them ended up talking until final call that night, and the thought of leaving her at the end of the night made his heart ache. Something about the way she moved and talked and hung on to every word he said made him feel like maybe, just maybe, things would end up being alright again.

That night he found out she was a student studying abroad for a few semesters, which quickly explained her accent. She was from a suburban Midwestern town, a normal family, and an overall average life. Despite how much she emphasized her “averageness”, he couldn’t help but find her absolutely extraordinary. 

Luckily for him, she didn’t pry too much into his background; she just picked up bits and pieces from the stories he told her throughout the night. She even genuinely laughed at all his stupid jokes, each time making his heart flutter more than it did before. 

He had ended up leading her back to his apartment to continue the conversation after the bar had shut down, where they didn’t do more than talk and eventually fall asleep tangled up together on the couch. The flowery scent of her shampoo comforted him, and for the first time in a long time, he slept the entire night through.

The next morning she was gone, but she left a note on the coffee table next to him with her number and the words:

Call me.

It had been a year since that first night, which was much longer than Steve ever stayed in one place, and the two hadn’t spent a day apart yet. Despite their closeness, though, and any question Y/N asked, he refused to open up too much about his past. If she knew too much, it would just put her in danger.

The war between Captain America and Iron Man had been all over the American news, but studying abroad had sheltered Y/N from much of that information. The beard Steve had grown while in hiding mostly disguised his appearance as well, so it was still somewhat difficult to put together. He was sure Y/N had some idea there was something wrong, though, because every time she asked a question that hit too close to home he dodged it as though it were a bullet.

“Hello, my love,” Y/N greeted as she pushed through the apartment door, struggling to carry a few too many grocery bags at once. Steve always told her just to take two trips or ask for help, but the girl insisted that two trips were for the weak and that she could easily do it in one.

Instead of asking if she needed help, he simply took the bags from her arms and placed them on the kitchen counter. Without even looking, he knew she was wrinkling her nose at him, which caused a deep chuckle to rise out of his chest. 

“I’m making spaghetti for dinner,” Y/N said. She was already bustling around the kitchen, washing her hands, drying them, and organizing ingredients she needed before he had fully even processed what she was saying. Before he could even respond, his phone began ringing. Weird, because only Y/N and one other person had that number.

After letting it ring for a few seconds, Y/N turned to stare at him accusingly. “Are you going to get that or not?” She asked, being more annoyed at the incessantly loud tone than anything else. He nodded, moving into his bedroom.

Staring at the screen, he knew how important it was for him to answer it. However, it killed him inside to know that whatever was making Tony call would tear him away from the comfortable life he was building with Y/N. Was it even his duty to help protect a country that betrayed him and the ones he loved? Deep down, he knew the answer, and it drove him to hit the call button and hold the phone to his ear.

“Hello?”

After the call, Steve sat on the bed and hadn’t moved since. He knew there would be a time where he would be called once again into action, but he didn’t know it would be so soon. How would he tell Y/N? How could he bring himself to give up this life they had began to build together? 

“Steve? Dinner’s ready,” Y/N called out, and he vaguely registered the sound of her feet shuffling on the rough carpeting. Opening in closing doors in an attempt to look for him, the girl most likely growing concerned by his silence, but Steve couldn’t bring himself to move. 

“Babe?” Y/N finally pushed the bedroom door open, and was startled to see the sight of Steve sitting there with such a vacant expression on his face. “Are you alright?” She rushed forward, kneeling on the ground next to where he sat on the bed. Afraid to move too fast and startle him, she simply blinked up at him until she got a response. 

“There’s so much I need to tell you, doll,” Steve said, his voice hoarse from the emotions he was choking back, “But now I’m afraid we have no time.” 

Y/N’s brows furrowed with concern, and it took everything in Steve not to break down and kiss the worry away. Everything he had done, all the avoidance and tip-toeing, had been to protect her. In the end, it seems he might have failed. She simply slid her hand into his, using her thumb to draw tiny, comforting circles into his hand as they sat in silence for a moment. 

“I’ve done so many things,” he finally continued, “And now I’m about to do the scariest thing yet, and I’m afraid I don’t have the courage to face it.”

He was afraid she would assume the worst. He was afraid she would take off out the door to never be seen again. Instead, she slowly kissed the back of his hand, before moving to sit next to him on the bed so she could kiss his forehead as well.

“Steve,” she began, “Tell me every terrible thing you did, and let me love you anyway.” 

It was the second time they had spent with no sleep since the very first night of their relationship. Steve poured out his story to her, and unflinchingly she listened. As the sunlight crept through the blinds to dance on their skin, Y/N smoothed the hair out of Steve’s face.

“Let’s go home.”

[vitalmindandbody]

Explorer, Eco-Warrior, Spy: The Battles of Jacques Cousteau

I wrote this long, intimate chart of Jacques-Yves Cousteau in the spring of 1993 and, for personal reasonableness, never publicized it. But at a time when deniers of scientific and of common sense are out to destroy the last better probability we have to slow climate change, it seemed an appropriate moment for this article to see the light of day. Cousteau had numerous flunks, but he changed the way we envision the natural world, and, unhappily, the world that he inserted us to is now in terrible hazard . — Christopher Dickey

PARIS, May 27, 1993 — After a long discussion about Antarctica, a continent he felt he had saved, and before the raspberries, which he anticipated with the greedy feeling of small children, one summertime Sunday afternoon in 1991 at the Brasserie Lorraine on the Place des Ternes, ogling out on Paris streets “thats been” warm and dark-green and pulsing with life, Jacques-Yves Cousteau talked about the death of his wife Simone a few months before. “For me it was terrible, ” he said. His look was reddened and the lower lids of his eyes were blood-red. At that time he gazed, uneasily, his 81 times. Chips of dandruff speckled the eyeglasses he used to read the menu. “For her the very best stuff was, I expended the last three days with her.”

Finishing the last of the Bordeaux, he went on. “The night she died, we had a exceedingly joyful dinner.” Simone was a minuscule woman, tough and reserved, who had wasted most of the last 40 times at sea on the research ship Calypso. She was known to the crew as “La Bergere, ” the shepherdess, and she dedicated herself to the ship she called “my best friend, ” to the fact-finding mission, its men and their Captain. “She is like a purser and a pastor, ” Cousteau liked to say. But in her seventy-first year she appeared as if beneath her skin skin there were bones of excruciating fragility. For the majority of members of the four months annually when “shes not” on the barge, she was in the Cousteaus &# x27; little suite in Monaco. She did not like Paris. Often alone, she left the radio and television turned on all the time to keep her company.

That night, however, her sister-in-law was there–and Cousteau. Simone was “gay, alert, joking, ” he remembered. They bided up late booze and talking before ultimately going to bed in their area overlooking the sea.

“At five o &# x27; clock in the morning she asked me to help her to the toilet. And I did. And”–he hesitated an instant–“she died in my arms.”

“I knew she was not well, but I had no idea “whats wrong” with her, ” read Cousteau. He told the doctor he pondered “she was drinking too much red wine.” But medical doctors, who had known the Cousteaus since the early 1950 s, and was the only physician Simone relied, said, “Jacques, it was either wine-colored or morphine.”

The old-fashioned explorer did not understand. Wine or morphine?

For the last five years, the doctor excused, Simone had had “a extrapolated cancer.” She had to have something to kill the pain.

“She made the doctor promise not to tell me, ” Cousteau supposed, “so as not to disturb my work.”

We ate the berries in silence.

Other patrons of the restaurants sector glanced our room sometimes. Undoubtedly they realise the “Commandant, ” as he is called in France. They were furtively inquisitive, but no beings oppress their curiosity with more neurotic strength than the Parisian bourgeoisie. They stood Cousteau his privacy and his secrets.

The rest of us think we know this old man of the sea because, of course, we grew up with him. From innumerable hours of television we &# x27; ve learned his accent and the rhythms of his speech and, in a general kind of path, we know how he changed the world. Can you remember a occasion when there were no scuba divers? When our imagination “of the worlds oceans” moved no deeper than the keel of a glass-bottom boat? That &# x27; s the direction it was before Cousteau. He fabricated the Aqua-Lung. He used it to explore oceans, creeks, caves in every corner the planet. And in the 50 times since World War II his cinemas, which always boasted his face and his expression, had two remarkable effects.

First, they communicated a wondrous excite about nature and–what is rare–a sense of good-natured intimacy with it. The spectacle beneath the seas was wildly alien when it was firstly revealed in the 1940 s, but through Cousteau it became unexpectedly and marvelously accessible. He and the members of his team seemed as fascinated as four-year-olds by just about everything they come across, whether sharks of Senegal or a skua sitting on its nest in Antarctica. Secondly, these scores of television curricula, programme and rebroadcast and translated into dozens of expressions, eventually obligated Cousteau himself the environmentalist emeritus of the global village. “He &# x27; s a educator, ” as Vice President Albert Gore said a couple of years ago. “He facilitates others to view “the worlds” and their relationship to it in a new way.”

In the last 15 years Cousteau has espoused the role of a visionary, even a revolutionary, preaching mainly to the young. As one generation would lose its fascination with him and move on from the world of true-blue adventure to the obligations of adulthood, the next generation would detect his undersea nature, sometimes at odd hours, often in reruns, and be hypnotized. There is no place he is not known. One biographer claims there are questionnaires that demo Cousteau grades second only to the Pope as “the worlds largest” familiar appearance on the planet. But that may banalize the skipper &# x27; s popularity, so singular and universal, so grandfatherly and benign is his image.

Which is one reason the narrative about Simone &# x27; s demise was so especially perturbing. Cousteau told it with plain candor, as if he was puzzled by what it intend. It &# x27; s not surprising for a genius to be filled with oblivious self-fascination. In France, at least since Diderot, the enlightened have rationalized comfortably the toll that the truly bright take over those close at hand.( “He is a tree which has stunted some others originating near by and extinguished flowers growing at its hoofs, but it has raised its heading to the heavens and its diverges have spread far and wide, ” as the philosophe would have it .) Still, ego alone did not quite show what Cousteau was alleging. There was something on his thinker that was missing from his account, and manifesting farther I pondered about Simone &# x27; s motivatings.

Bettmann/ Getty

Under The Sea

Before I congregated Cousteau for the first time five years ago, I retrieved from a long-unopened bundle box my yellowing transcript of The Silent World , a Scholastic Book Business publication decaying now with a smell of cheap mushy that accompanies back the perfervid daydream of junior high study halls. It was first are presented in 1953 and about certain parts of Cousteau &# x27; s firstly 40 years–the discoveries, the excitement–there is no better note. During and after World War II, Cousteau and Simone and their chums were experimenting in an utterly brand-new surrounding, using themselves as laboratory rats. They twiddled and investigated, desegregating discipline with pleasure, tribulation with mistake, almost at romp as they became, in Cousteau &# x27; s word, “menfish.”

Before the conflict a few oil machines had been developed to help divers move around freely without the aid of metal helmets, pressure suit and tubings tying them to compressors on the surface. But none was very effective. Simply inhaling bottled breeze wouldn &# x27; t drive. The question for a diver was to have an air quantity that recruited his lungs at the same pressing as the enclose water, which increased substantially the deeper he went. To do this manually was difficult, dangerous and impractical. What was required was a valve–a regulator, as it came to be called–that would respond automatically to the pressure around it. Cousteau and an designer named Emile Gagnan developed precisely such a machine, and it proved as vital to journey under the sea as the compass was to journey on the surface.

On the morning in 1943 when Cousteau ran a first full underwater exam of the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, Simone floated on the surface of the Mediterranean with mask and snorkel, literally watching over him. If anything went wrong, she was his link to the known nature and existence. “I gazed up and understood the surface glittering like a defective mirror. In the center of the looking glass was the trim silhouette of Simone, reduced to a doll. I motioned. The doll curved at me.” Cousteau tried out the mechanism from every slant, swimming vertically, inverted, planing through the liquid at different degrees. It acted perfectly, and Cousteau was in a living fantasy, moving without wings in slow motion among strange beings. Then he paused to explore a bit cave and bring up lobsters for himself and his wife in “occupied, ill-fed France.”

There was something virtually matter of fact about stirring biography in those epoches. “The gadgets that I happen to have invented would have been invented anyway, ” he added. “They were invented because they are integrated into our adventure.” And there was always, in the most extensive feel, an epicurean facet to Cousteau &# x27; s explorations: a sensual delight in his detections that runs parallel to, and sometimes overcomes, his scientific observations. The bland note-takers of academia rarely criticize Cousteau &# x27; s the ways and sniff at his lack of formal credentials. Many realise him as a voyeur poking on their world-wide of carefully filed knowledge. But Cousteau knew “the power of beautiful, ” as one of France &# x27; s most prominent researchers introduced it, and in his prose that mingled “Outdoor Life” adventure with sumptuous description, he perfectly transmitted his infatuations in his work The Silent World .

Consider his descriptions of the course coloring changes as the light-footed fades-out beneath the surface of the high seas. The naval investigate squad he required in the late 1940 s utilized colour charts and technical gadgets to measure the changes in color at different depths as liquid filters away the spectrum of the sunbathe. But it was an accidental panorama in the middle of an undersea hunting that he used to tell the legend. His sidekick and long-time colleague Frederic Dumas had speared a large fish about 20 grasps down, and the damn stuff wouldn &# x27; t die. As Cousteau watched, “Dumas hauled in the last paws of cord, and got a traction on the harpoon gibe. He flashed his loop bayonet and immersed it into the heart of the big fish. A thick-skulled puff of blood discoloured the sea . … The blood was light-green. Stupefied by the batch, I swam close and stared at the mortal creek shooting from the heart. It was the color of emeralds . … Flourishing his astounding trophy on the spear, Didi guided the way to the surface. At 55 hoofs the blood passed dark dark-brown. At 20 feet it was pink. On the surface it flowed red.”

In the summer of 1947, Cousteau and his unit began experimenting with the purposes of nitrogen narcosis or “rapture of the magnitudes, ” and his accounts of those trials, the majority of members of which he foisted on himself, expose a great deal more about “the mens” than about the molecules and capillaries that were his scientific concern. Cousteau and my honourable colleagues knew from earlier ancestries that as they started deeper health risks of hallucination and disorientation proliferated dramatically. They gasped compressed breath, which includes nitrogen as well as oxygen, and the actual capacity of gas they were inhaling increased the lower down they disappeared. A person 100 paws below the surface was subsisting breath four times denser than at sea level. The nitrogen built up in the intelligence, and eventually began to alter its functions.

Often the condition struck unexpectedly, replenishing a diver with giddy euphoria, and different parties were hit by the superstar at different extents. The consequence was hazardous , not least, because it was so seductive. “I am personally quite receptive to nitrogen rapture. I like it and dread it like destiny, ” wrote Cousteau. “It destroys the inclination of life.” But he stopped going back for more, and the chapter of The Silent World that deals with his record-setting dives of the time is as much an journey of hallucination as Aldous Huxley &# x27; s contemporaneous “Doors of Perception, ” where mescaline and LSD were the mediums.

“At 200 feet I savoured the metal flavor of compressed nitrogen and was instantaneously and severely struck with rapture . … My mind was jammed with self-conceited thoughts and antic joyfulnes. I struggled to fix my brain on actuality, was trying to mention the color of the sea about me. A race took place between navy blue, aquamarine and Prussian off-color. The dialogue would not resolve. The sole knowledge I could comprehend was that there was no roof and no flooring in the blue room.” Cousteau reached 297 feet that day, a record for the time. Fifty fathoms deep, “in my bisected brain the satisfaction was balanced by sarcastic self-contempt.”

The fun stopped merely a few months later when Maurice Fargues, a longtime member of Cousteau &# x27; s crew, lost it, his air hose and their own lives somewhere around 400 feet.

Simone was almost always there in those days, whether moving like a guardian angel on the shimmering surface during Cousteau &# x27; s first aqualung dives, or waiting helpless near the entryway of a cave in the Vaucluse, know … … if her husband had died in his descent to the source of a mysterious spring.

Inevitably their children, more, were reaped into the undersea macrocosm by a parent uneasy to share his experiences with everyone around him. “During the summer of Liberation I came home from Paris with two miniature aqualungs for my sons, Jean-Michel, then seven, and Philippe, five. The older boy was memorizing to swimming but a very young had still not been wading. I was confident that they would take to diving, since one does not need to be a swimmer to go down with the apparatus.” But the excited infants, from the moment they firstly caught a glimpse of the undersea world, couldn &# x27; t stop chattering, giggling, and strangling on ocean. “I caused another lecture on the topic that the high seas was a silent macrocosm and that little boys were advised to shut the fuck up when inspecting it. It took various dives before they learned to hold their volleys of chatter until they had surfaced. Then I took them deeper. They did not hesitate to catch octopi with their hands. On seaside barbecues Jean-Michel would go down 30 hoofs with a kitchen forking and retrieve succulent ocean urchins. Their mom dives very, but without the same exuberance. For the purpose of their own, dames are suspicious of diving and frown on their menfolk going down.”

” Diving Was My Cover “

More than 40 times after those epoches of picnics by the sea, Simone was in the VIP lounge of Charles De Gaulle airport, where Jacques had gone to receive her on her return from yet another expedition aboard Calypso. “People ask me if I follow my husband, ” she said with a tired smile. “I announce, &# x27; No, he follows me .&# x27; ” With her was a fluffy white-hot pup, incorrigible on territory and, one would theorize, insufferable at sea. But it seemed to keep her amused and on her lap it obstructed her warm. I asked her to sign my deteriorating facsimile of The Silent World . All she wrote, in letters suggestive of the Phoenician write on Calypso &# x27; s emblem, was “S. Cousteau.” Her spouse &# x27; s inscription on the same sheet, in clean, bold handwriting, speaks to one “who has the spirit to share my planned … for a few daytimes! “

Jack Garofalo/ Paris Match via Getty

The Diving Saucer Of Commander Cousteau. Cote d’Azur, Marseilles- July 23, 1959 – The first assaults at the diving saucer designed by Commander Jacques-Yves Cousteau: he sat before the plans of the saucer, inhaling a cigarette in his office.

Even in his early eighties Cousteau &# x27; s vigor appears inexhaustible, and he always seems a bit puzzled by those around him who were not sanctified with such vigour. He sounds unaware of the toll his boundless ebullience might take on others. His schedule is relentlessly kinetic. As I &# x27; ve tried to plumb his ideas and his personality we &# x27; ve wound up talking here about Paris eateries, in his Monaco apartment and driving along the Cote d &# x27; Azur; in Washington inns while he lobbied Congress, and in his little office off the Faubourg Saint-Honore. We &# x27; ve communicated by fax and by satellite phone.

One morning a summon came from the Calypso. Cousteau was off Palawan Island in the Philippines. If I could make it to the Paris airport by 3 p. m. there was a plane to Manila. He &# x27 ;d send a helicopter to pick me up and we could waste the week on the ship. “It is one of the exceedingly most beautiful places available in “the worlds”, ” he shouted over the Inmarsat line. “I ought to have diving in various caves … All of these islands are like Gruyere cheese … We have explored and filmed a river four kilometers inland … It &# x27; s like paradise.” Foolishly, because of other commitments I didn &# x27; t croak, and I never have been on the Calypso, never have find the old boy in the high seas. But, then, he invests less meter there now.

Since 1989 Cousteau has helped save Antarctica, explored the Danube and the Mekong, starred at the Earth Summit in Rio and become an “immortal” of the Academie francaise. Grandiose projects were inaugurated. Some persist, like his efforts to foster the teaching of “ecotechnique” at “the worlds” &# x27; s universities. Some disintegrated. Attempts to build Disneyesque delights foundered in bankruptcy and acrimony.

In December 1990, Simone croaked and in June of 1991, as it happens only a few periods after our lunch at the Brasserie Lorraine, Cousteau remarried Francine Triplet, the status of women in her 40 s, and introduced to the world their two young children, Diane and Pierre-Yves. Cousteau &# x27; s older enduring son and long-time heir evident, 56 -year-old Jean-Michel, has since gone off to haunt other interests, starting the break-up of a non-profit territory he and his father have improved during the course of 20 times. “It has not detriment our tendernes, ” Jacques told me this spring. “There is nothing else to pronounce but Jean-Michel is gone.” This is not all that Jean-Michel has to say. But perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves. The old person of the high seas is full of secrets, and there are some basic ones to be learned near the surface before we move deeper.

“The drive when I was young was interest, ” Cousteau showed one morning in Monaco in 1990. “I was curious to see what was under the keel of our crafts, even when I was very, even younger, even under small boats.” We were up in his analyse, which is poised like a widow &# x27; s go on top of the little apartment pulley-block where he officially resides, with a glassed-in terrace gazing down on the confuse of Mediterranean buildings that is Monaco. Watching the scribbled thoughts going into my notebook, Cousteau amended: “The important date was 1920, when I dived in Vermont.”

He was 10 years old then and living in the United States, on New York &# x27; s Upper West Side near the angle of 95 th and Broadway. “His fathers”, Daniel Cousteau, seems to have had knacks evaluated by parvenu Americans anxious for a patina of French edification, and he spent his entire busines cultivating between Paris and Manhattan as the private secretary of first one, then another American millionaire. Jacques learned to play stickball and speak English in New York, and in the summer he was shipped off to camp near a lagoon in Vermont. He was readily accepted, clearly headstrong, and apparently a bit of a disciplinary question. When part of the program turned out to be horseback riding in the hills, Jacques refused to go. “I don &# x27; t like mountains. I don &# x27; t like horses.” The German rector told him, as sanction, to retrieve some divisions from the bottom of the pond. No concealment. No fins. No ocean. But by Cousteau &# x27; s computation, his undersea undertakings had begun.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX BROOK LYNN/ THE DAILY BEAST

Cousteau &# x27; s adolescence was wasted mainly in France and traveling around Europe. He changed academies frequently and was never extremely tireless about survey, but he was anxious to create. He tried poetry and paint.( On the wall up the aerie above his Monaco apartment there is one of his teenage oils: a morose depiction of Jesus which he called “Disappointed Christ.” The most interesting thing about the painting is that it is still on his walls and, for Cousteau, it still has a word. “How could He not be disillusioned, ” replies the chieftain .) But the majority of members of Cousteau &# x27; s teenage originality is entered into attaining home movies. Other parties prevented their publications on paper, he continued his on film. Using acquaintances as actors he rendered little melodramas. Most often he played the criminal himself.

At the age of 20, Cousteau enlisted in the French navy. He had thought about being a professional movie manufacturer. He considered a job in remedy. But the navy offered a chance to keep moving, to interpret “the worlds”, as it were, and explore at other people’s overhead( as he would continue to do for the rest of his life ). All the while he remained filming. Aboard the training ship Jeanne d &# x27; Arc he circumnavigated countries around the world: Bali, Japan, even Hollywood. By the time he was 24, Cousteau was serving in China and when he got an extended leave, he went back home overland, through the Soviet Union. Cousteau stirred his space by study through the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution from the Pacific port of Vladivostok to Moscow, where the smattering of Russian “hes having” studied in Shanghai helped him shake the secret police. “During 10 daytimes I was free–loose–with a lot of rubles, ” he recollects. “So I had a great time.” After that he made his way to Tbilisi and Yerevan in the Caucasus. From there to Ukraine and Poland, then back home to France. Among the mementoes in his apartment is a photograph of the young patrolman before leaving Shanghai. A pencil-thin moustache only accentuates the unformed freshness of his face.

Cousteau &# x27; s passion was to clear his occupation as a naval aviator. The dreamlike experience of flight ever mesmerized him. But on a brief leave after several months of flight school in 1936 he was trying to drive all night from one corner of France to another to fulfill some friends when he disintegrated his gondola on a dark country road. It was two o &# x27; clock in the morning. None was around and for several hours, until he made his style to a farmhouse, he thought that he was going to die. As he described the vistum years later he remembered looking at the stars and thinking, “My God, I &# x27; ve checked a lot of things in my life.” Jacques Cousteau was twenty-six.

The convalescence was long and agonizing and merely after months of care was the young policeman able to regain the use of both his arms. By then his job as a captain was over. But it was precisely at this time that he was introduced to another naval detective, slightly his senior, appointed Philippe Tailliez. Both were mesmerized by the idea of diving and spearfishing, and Tailliez, in turn, established Cousteau to another young admirer referred Frederic Dumas. The three became constant diving attendants, constructing their reputation together for the next 20 years.

It was also during this period that Cousteau converged Simone Melchior. In 1936 she was seventeen. While Cousteau came from a bourgeois lineage in Bordeaux, in Simone Melchior &# x27; s background there was money, renown and, as she said, “seawater in my blood.” She was from three generation of admirals. Her grandpas and uncles had all harboured the rank, and her father was a director of Air Liquide, one of the world &# x27; s passing producers of bottled gases for industrial purposes. It was one of her leader &# x27; s employes, Emile Gagnan, who co-invented the aqualung with Cousteau, and the company still holds the patent. When she was eighteen years old, Simone and Jacques were married. They had just begun to establish their lives together when the Second World War began.

Marka/ UIG via Getty

The Silent World and the movies and notebooks and essays that followed it during the 1950 s in Life or National Geographic give the impression that as campaign was building in Europe and Paris folded before the Nazi threat, as French Jews were being extradited to the death camps by their French Catholic neighbors and the fate of millions of people hung in the remaining balance, Cousteau and his attendants somehow managed to spend all their epoch exploring under liquid, far from the inhumanities of defeat and alliance. Maybe this notion was comforting in the years just after the conflict was over. To discover a dreamlike world-wide under the sea was, for Cousteau &# x27; s audience as much as for him, a reprieve from all the traumas that became before. But Cousteau was deeply and painfully involved in the the dramas of Vichy France. His only brother, Pierre-Antoine, was one of the country &# x27; s most notorious Nazi traitors. Jacques-Yves was a snoop who worked with the Resistance.

Cousteau seems back on his espionage acts, as so much else in his life, with a mixture of pride matched by sarcastic self-contempt. In the early days of the conflict, before Paris fell, he was at sea on a mission to track the German pocket battleship Graf Spey in South America. “When I came back from these stupid military actions I was designated for the secret service in Marseilles” and at first “refused to do that grimy job.” For a guy styling himself law enforcement officers and a gentleman it seemed an affair of “lies and vice.” But his commander induced it an tell and formerly Cousteau was caught up in historic events, he admitted, “I enjoyed it a lot.”

As the Germans progressively occupied France, firstly exacting franchises from the Vichy government, then intruding on ever more area with their Italian allies, Cousteau took part in scuttling the French fleet at Toulon to keep it out of Nazi hands. His most well documented exploit was on property, where reference is declined into an Italian military post and photographed critical reports helpful in bursting the Axis systems. As he figured it, he had “about one chance out of ten to come out” of that operation. For these employs Cousteau acquired two Croix de guerres and the Legion d &# x27; honneur.

His experimentations with the aqualung certainly placed him in a position to gather further intelligence in and around the sea. But it was only recently, one morning in Monaco, that he admitted “during that last part of the battle diving was my cover.” For obvious intellects it was not shrewd for a humanity prowling “the worlds” in a scientific research barrel to advertise the facts of the case he had been a spy.

Pierre-Antoine constituted his profession as a reporter while Jacques-Yves was operating his course up the grades in the Navy. Writing in the popular gazette “Je suis partout, ” Pierre proclaimed conciliation with the Germans as the war with Hitler approached and, once France had been demolished, he counseled partnership. Certainly, on any day in the streets of occupied Paris the French could speak tracts signed off by Pierre Cousteau that were openly sympathetic to the Nazis, implacably hostile to the Friends and the Jews: a people “with a delicacy for debauchery, for gyp, for verbal onanism, ” as Pierre introduced it. He was a hate-mongerer par excellence in a country that was, to its standing dishonor, viscerally anti-Semitic.

To this day the French loathe to be reminded about the working day of Vichy, but every so often a reporter muckraking through Cousteau &# x27; s past will delve into the history of Pierre-Antoine. The most recent was Bernard Violet, who dedicates much of the biography he wrote earlier this year to a tireles sought for practices in which the proceedings of the fucking brother might reflect on the younger. Violet managed to contact far-flung members of the family, pored through the sheets of “Je suis partout” and the records of later court proceedings, sifted through such private mail as he could obtain and finally discovered that Cousteau &# x27; s first public prevail with an underwater cinema was a indicate of “Par dix-huit metres de fond, ” a spearfishing narration with Dumas as booster, was indicated in dominated Paris during a Nazi-approved festival for films. Violet suggests that, aided by Pierre &# x27; s contacts, Jacques dived and filmed with the authorization of the occupiers. But Violet offers no evidence that Jacques Cousteau shared Pierre &# x27; s anti-semitic vistums or any of his other smutty minds. Jacques was loyal to his brother , not to his politics.

After the battle Pierre-Antoine Cousteau was captured by the Allies and sentenced to fatality for collaboration. Despite the obvious probability to his naval job, Jacques-Yves attended the test, witnessed on two brothers &# x27; s behalf, and tried to bolster his mettle once the convict was handed down. “You have to live. And the said he hoped that we have, you were supposed to share in it! ” he wrote the day after government decisions. Eventually Pierre &# x27; s sentence was commuted to life in prison, and after almost a decade behind prohibits, Pierre was released after 1956. Bitter and ended, he died two years later of cancer.

Throughout their youth, Pierre had been the more bright of the two brothers. But when he is evident from incarcerate it was Jacques the world knew. The Silent World had been an international best seller. The film based on the book, co-directed with young Louis Malle, had prevailed a Palme d &# x27; or at Cannes and an Oscar in Hollywood. As Jacques &# x27; popularity changed, the histories of Pierre passed into gloom, and then out of sight.

When Cousteau talks about those times today he chimes weary, but he is frankfurter. “My brother was persuaded that we should collaborate with the Germans, ” he said one afternoon. “He was urged of that before the campaign and he did not change his sentiment during the course of its crusade. I did not agree with him. We fought like puppies about these things together. Extremely gentle but very serious. And when I was in the Resistance and he was a writer writing in favor of the Germans we are continuing met and discussed”–Cousteau searched for a moment for the right word–“like brothers, but with radically different opinions. He was a rather brilliant, extremely likable, very warm person. Full of absurdity. And eventually, what happened? We do collaborate with the Germans. After all those things…

“I was a military officer. I was helping my own country. My country decided to fight. I was campaigning. Bon . And I may have had other opinions”–Cousteau shrugged–“but I did not. “

The Science of Joy

In the study in Monaco, on the wall above fax machines machine that spewed out a constant river of law articles and proposals for a long-planned investigate of the Yangtze, there hung a portrait of Simone covered by Jacques in the 1950 s. She had a kerchief tied around her whisker and her showing was skeptical. Cousteau &# x27; s technical skills as a portraitist, whether of Christ or of his wife, were no longer great. But the eyes in Simone &# x27; s scene did have that ruse, which some photographs have, of following you guys later. Framed on the wall, she softly reigned the room.

In life, she was down in the kitchen. Lunch was ready late in the day, a simple banquet with friends a la Provencale : raw fava beans, salami, pizza, steak.( The only fish on the table was a little boy rubber ones is available as knife respites .) Everyone drank red wine and talked about nutrient. Much as the skipper might snack, he never seems to gain weight. Cousteau had always been skinny, said Simone. When they used to make love, she chuckled, he was so boney she used to get bruised.

Photo Illustration by the Daily Beast

After dinner, with a bit encouragement, Cousteau continued the recount of his life. “Obviously it &# x27; s almost overwhelming the amount of things I &# x27; ve participate in. It &# x27; s nearly embarrassing, ” he read. “And the amount of luck I &# x27; ve had, compared to the life of a bank clerk.”

“Your luck, ” pronounced Simone, “was marrying me.”

“Evidemment, ” he remarked. Obviously.

But as Cousteau &# x27; s popularity continues to increase, Simone began to retreat.

It is easy enough to suspect the enervating effect of his constant exhilaration. Like an psychological dynamo he would fill you with energy in short outbursts, but over the long run he could take that power back. And then some. Seemed at closely, so much of what obligates Cousteau alluring boundaries on self-parody, and occasionally intersects the line. His manner is as quintessentially Gallic as the French accent he has prevented despite 75 years addressing American. He was ever and remains a “bon vivant” filled with “joie de vivre.” A favorite text in English is “enjoy.” Cousteau not only has fun–diving, traveling, sleuthing during World War II–he watches himself having fun, registers himself having fun. And the effect for those working around him can be a little like living in a movie. Examining for the key to the cellar of his Paris apartment so he can take a guest to visualized his wines, he narrates specific actions in the existing liberal like a scene from one of his movies: “Now I am opening the drawer, taking out this key…” In the cellar area, among old-time works by John Gunther and rollers of article for oceanographic examine equipment are cases of Chateau Belles Graves, numerous antiques, from a Bordeaux estate owned by relatives. He fusses about the &# x27; 89, which is wonderful, he reads, but is not able to age so well. Opening a bottle, he admires the Teflon-lubricated Screwpull. “The French attain great wine-coloureds, ” he responds, “the Americans stimulate great corkscrews.”

In the late afternoon in Monaco, while everyone still had a glass of Belles Graves in hand, Cousteau ransacked through the videos near the television. He searched the dominations of the tape player like a sailor looking at the range. “People become nomads at home, ” he answered. “I allow people who would never become nomads the possibility to dream they are.

“I become frenzied when they put one over my films the word &# x27 ;d ocumentary .&# x27; That would entail a lecture at home by a guy who knows better. There is a kind of solemnity. Our cinemas are not films. They are true adventure films.”

He procured the one he was looking for, a shorthand detail of his life called “The First 75 years.” Cousteau said he hadn &# x27; t “ve seen this” television adoration but once or twice since it was produced for his birthday in 1985, five years old before, and like small children he sat rapt, the silver-blue brightnes of the television screen crystallizing his features, watching the decades pass. Here are still photographs of a naughty schoolboy in the United States, there is Cousteau the mustached criminal in his primitive melodramas. He circumnavigates the globe on the Jeanne d &# x27; Arc, camera in hand, exploring the world of geishas, Balinese dancers, the cardboard deck of a Hollywood battleship. A impressive clip presents him with Douglas Fairbanks at Pickfair. The movie star ignites a cigarette for the 22 -year-old midshipman. Cousteau seems completely, elegantly at home.

A particular noblesse pressure combined with joie de vivre is a key to Cousteau &# x27; s environmental consciousness. “There is a way to conduct yourself that is aristrocratic, ” he said that evening in Monaco. “What I tried to do with my children–unfortunately half of them croaked — was to educate them simply that: the noble room of judging yourself. As long as you were not able to look at yourself in the reflect, satisfied with your action, you better shut up.”

From the early 1950 s, he sensed that what was happening to the natural world he explored was unconscionable. “The start was curiosity, the enthusiasm about allure. Then I realized that it was threatened, ” he spoke. ” Bon . Now after the period of interest and exploring succeeded the period of alarm, because we were looking at thoughts that were actually vanishing already. That began to turn us into environmentalists. And that began in 1950 when I procured the Calypso.”

The boat–the far-famed boat–was built in Seattle in the early days of the conflict, a wooden-hulled minesweeper dubbed simply J-8 26. By 1950 it had established its acces to private hands in Malta where it served as a shuttle and was open its refer, after the nymph who stopped Odysseus enraptured on her island for seven years. Cousteau bought the Calypso with fund donated by one of “his fathers” &# x27; s prosperous pals. He then plotted to have himself assigned to a special schism of the Navy and the Calypso proclaimed France &# x27; s first ship for oceanographic research. Cousteau had been 20 years in the military, and technically he still was. But as he and his crew sailed aboard the refitted Calypso on their maiden voyage to the Red Sea he realized “for the first time we were on our own. It was not &# x27; the &# x27; navy. It was &# x27; my &# x27; navy.”

Here on the video in Monaco is the opening vistum of the movie “The Silent World”: an escadrille of divers, flares in hand, descending to the lower fringes of a ridge. There is the Calypso prospecting for oil off Abu Dhabi. There are the inventions–Aqua-Lung, Diving Saucer, the habitats under the sea called Conshelf I, and II, and III. Here is Cousteau being received by Presidents of the United States. John Kennedy gifted him a medallion. Simone stands, ill at ease, in the background.

With the endorsement and future directions of David Wolper in the 1960 s Cousteau began his television series “The Undersea World of …, ” and his slightly folksy gumption of showmanship became Hollywoodized. In that late-1 960 s period of ersatz interplanetary escapades( this is only the time of “Star Trek,” the first generation ), Cousteau &# x27; s divers were outfitted in silver diving gear with creepy helmets suitable for encountering aliens. But the chieftain ever saved his sense of humor, and some of the costumes were absolutely ludicrous. For a program about African hippos, he had two of his guys don a fiberglass hippo dres. At a scene in the video of web-footed divers trundling past a stumped elephant, Cousteau appears with laughter.

The documentary continues to play out in the Monaco evening. There by the banks of the river among the hippos is a lanky young man, his look principally hidden by a thick whisker, but his suffer and his lean build suggestive of his father &# x27; s. As the story of Philippe Cousteau appears on the screen, the captain watches in silence.

Throughout the 1970 s, while Cousteau became a grandiose old person, his son Philippe appeared as the heir to his fame and his causes. Philippe was a very young of the two children Simone bore Cousteau. But his lyrical temper, his drive and ego and interests all pushed him to the prow in his father &# x27; s activities. He had a good sense of his generation &# x27; s environmental preoccupations and a infatuation with gadgetry like hot air bags and seaplanes. He pushed the edge of the envelope to keep in the Cousteau cinemas the feeling of excite and detection that ever mounted them apart.

At first they traveled together, in later years they divided up the employment. It was with Philippe that Cousteau firstly explored the leading edge of Antarctica. It was Philippe who hovered his seaplane to the upper reaches of the Nile. And when Philippe was killed in Portugal in 1979, crashing his airplane into the irrigates of the Tagus River, there was no supplanting him, really.

Jean-Michel, the fucking brother ,~ ATAGEND was by oppose slog and reserved. His chosen metier was architecture, the stuff of a static curiosity. Philippe was 39 when he died. Jean-Michel was 41 when he was called on to take his brother &# x27; s situate. “I assembled the Cousteau Society on the needs of the my dad, ” as he set it. More than a decade after Philippe &# x27; s demise, times after Jean-Michel began seeming regularly in all the publicity of the Cousteau Society and in most of the films, there was often an uncomfortable tension evident between the effusive, effulgent spirit of the parent and the taciturn, responsible feeling of the older–but second–son.

When privately I would expect Cousteau about the deaths among Philippe( “half” of “their childrens”) he would say it did not change the space he saw “the worlds”, but he was less than convincing. “It has hurt me for the rest of my daylights, personally, but it has had no force on my thinking . … It gave me more courage maybe. Because he was convinced, he attempted to promote the relevant recommendations that we developed together and his death is almost an encouragement.”

But Cousteau &# x27; s world-wide changed profoundly precisely then, in some manner publicly, in many ways unremarked or unspoken. The captain had met a young airline hostess identified Francine Triplet, and it was soon after Philippe croaked that his only daughter, Diane, was born to her. A couple of years later she tolerated him another son, Pierre-Yves, and gradually the fact that there is this second lineage initiated to assume a larger role in his life. Francine embarked writing the dialogues for his movies. Eventually the children started to appear in them, although their identities were not become clear until after Simone had died. Cousteau stopped their existence “not really a secret, ” he enunciated afterward. “It was part of “peoples lives”. A little aside, but not very much aside.”

Also about the time of Philippe &# x27; s demise, Cousteau wrote a work that his staff in Paris handle with attention verging on admiration. Now long out of book, The Cousteau Almanac: An Stock-take of Life on Our Water Planet , constructed little impact on “the worlds” &# x27; s consciousness. Much of it is a compendium of , now, more or less out of date papers by Cousteau staffers about breeder reactor, oil tankers and other the risk to human. But there are divisions that Cousteau refers to constantly. One is the bill of rights for benefit of future generations that the Cousteau feet now circulate as a petition. “Future generations have a right to an uncontaminated and undamaged ground and to its amusement …, ” embarks this small manifesto. It concludes by advocating authorities, organizations and individuals to “take all appropriate measures” to protect the environmental issues “as if in the continuing presence of those benefit of future generations whose claim we seek to establish and perpetuate.”

There is, very, a brief essay designation “The Exploration of Happiness.” In it Cousteau proposes “a science of joy”.

Photo Illustration by the Daily Beast

Oracle of the Apocalypse

Through the 1950 s and 1960 s, Cousteau was predominantly content to take us under ocean, open those natural entrances of taste, and leave us to marvel at the the experience. But about the time of Philippe &# x27; s demise, his central preoccupation moved dramatically from disclosure to maintenance. Jacques Cousteau was 70 years old, and the Biblical milestone of three score years and ten had been bridged. Half his children were dead. And, perhaps coincidentally, he had glimpsed the apocalypse.

One of the last movies Jacques and Philippe made together was about Easter Island, and the Captain talks about it still. “In certain cases environmental ruins may contact the point of no return, ” he told the Rio Conference on Environment and Development last year. “In the seventh century A.D ., as told by petroglyphs, two large outriggers territory on a maiden, lush and uninhabited tropical island. Two hundred Polynesians–men, ladies, children–and swine and hens landed on the beautiful beaches of Easter Island . … For eight centuries after they set they nurtured, multiplied, developed a unique civilization, national societies fractioned in three status: boors, sculptors and pastors. Their population increased wildly. They loped short of resources, and when they reached the number of 70,000, dearth, blood insurrections and social chaos introduced into the full amounts of the breakdown of their society. When Dutch navigators territory at Easter Island in the seventeenth century, it was a barren, absolutely deforested portion of rock where a few hundred cannibals were hunting each other for survival. All that remained were undecipherable tablets and proud effigies, a stern warning to humankind of what will happen to Island Earth if humans do not exclusively control their demography.”

In the 1980 s Cousteau &# x27; s team was just going Haiti, another frightful little island, with “7. 5 million people on an exiguous and impoverished land.” They might be “beautiful, proud, smart, good-humored and hard-working, ” but “they have wearied the marine resources of their narrow continental shelf. They have deforested, without precaution, two one-thirds of their country and tropical rainfalls have thereafter wiped out the clay, laying bare the dirt boulder and impede agricultures for centuries to meet. To cook their scanty meals, they continue to deforest, and become timber into charcoal-grey. We asked: &# x27; What will you do when there is no timber left at all ?&# x27; &# x27; That will be the end of the world! Yes, the end of the world !&# x27; they refuted. Until then, the men of Haiti procreate, hoping that their male children will take care of their age-old father-gods, and women speak &# x27; I am not the one to decide how many children I will have .&# x27; “

Cousteau was in a unique position to put across virtually any message that concerned him. By the early 1980 s the nonprofit institutions that Jacques and Simone and their sons had created were taking on the proportions of an territory. From 1956 until about 1989 Monaco contributed Cousteau a virtual sinecure as head of its oceanographic organization. But after some of his most ambitious underwater jobs were cancelled by the French authority in 1972, the Captain increasingly moved his activities to the United States. First with the Cousteau Society, then in France with the Fondation Cousteau, the Captain/ Commandant cobbled together the tools to underwrite his life and hypothesis. Royalties from past cinemas provisioned some income, contributions from members plied much of the residual. To keep the cash coming for his new television projects–at a cost of $1.1 million a demonstrate, filming 50 hours of movie for every one that got used–Cousteau forged agreements with Ted Turner, then Banque Worms, employing stockpiles of past rights the mode geologists probe the mesozoic sediments of the Persian Gulf.

From the time the Captain bought the Calypso with a donor &# x27; s money and facilitated outfit it by selling some of Simone &# x27; s jewelry, he and his family were engaged in what he announced “our fiscal adventure.” The main objective was to continue his make, but on the side this most handsome of adventurers refined a mode of life in which “without personal ownership, I live like a prince. I have two boats[ the Calypso and the turbo-sail Alcyone ], an airplane, a helicopter. I tour all the time.”

He learned to play all sorts of inclinations to underwrite his activities. Today, for instance, Cousteau is one of seven surviving French beings allowed to live in Monaco tax free because they were there before DeGaulle pointed special privileges.( “We were several thousand, ” Cousteau supposes in passing. “Next time there will be six or five or four.”) But he has never accumulated much uppercase. Cousteau makes a fetish of traveling light and fast, carrying his rather oddly adapted rest suits and turtlenecks in a suitcase smaller than a gym pocket. If he can commute on the Concorde between Paris and New York, he does. His favorite briefcase is the one the stewardesses hand out to all their passengers.

Cousteau took a long time to realize the political capacity of his prominence, and longer still to decide what the hell is do with it. The antic activism of Greenpeace did not attention him, certainly. Cousteau didn &# x27; t need to draw attention to himself by hanging banners on warships or dumping goo on doorsteps. If he went down wall street he had been able to gather a audience. For times French canvas have graded him the most popular soldier in the country, and its term of office claimed it went 80,000 words asking him to run for president in 1988.

Still, it wasn &# x27; t until the struggle for Antarctica that Cousteau recognise just how much superpower he might have.

As he tells the story he was reading the International Herald Tribune one morning in 1988 where reference is noticed that several signatories of the Antarctic Treaty had given their initial admiration in Wellington, New Zealand, to a convention on mining and drilling in the frozen continent. It would place severe restrictions on prospecting, but by providing a legal framework for asserts, it could eventually open the door to exploitation. The United States and France fully supported the convention.

Cousteau knew this target, Antarctica. He and Philippe had gone there in 1972 and 1973 and been overwhelmed by its charm. The folly of mining there, of doing anything that applied this maiden continent at risk, was so manifest that he could not conceive why authorities would approve such undertakings. The rogues, he concluded, were bureaucrats who set their professions before the good of mankind. “The scribes are deciding and not the governmental forces, ” Cousteau swore. “The prime minister can say to his apparatchiks what he wants, when he is gone they do what they want.”

One Tucker Scully, the State Department official who treated immediately with the Antarctic Treaty, became the target of Cousteau &# x27; s special defiance. And after 15 times is currently working on the subject, the ever diplomatic Scully initially matched the chieftain &# x27; s reviews with polite defiance. “Maybe it &# x27; s hour for brand-new blood, ” he said in the hallways at a 1989 Paris conference on Antarctica. “But as of now 13 agencies of the U.S. government concur in its own position we &# x27; re taking.”

Cousteau decided to go to the top. He personally lobbied French President Francois Mitterrand, as well as the premier of Australia and New Zealand. And eventually Captain Cousteau went to Washington.

The fate of the frozen continent was not exactly a igniting problem on Capitol Hill. A few of environmental activists like Susan Sabella of Greenpeace and James Barnes of the Antarctica Project had followed the issue closely, be expected to overcome the Wellington Convention by working with congressional staffers, issuing reports, occasionally witnessing before such committees and laboring over every parole of pending legislation. They were, essentially, characters of the Hill, and when Cousteau hit town in his turtleneck and leisure clothing he seemed, to them, like someone from another planet. But there was no question he had an impact. “You have members of Congress that start ga-ga. They bring “their childrens” out for scenes with him, ” supposed Richard Munson, a congressional staffer and environmentalist who wrote a 1989 biography critical of Cousteau. “This is generally a reasonably contemptuous heap, ” remarked Munson, “but you visualize some of them plow him almost with reverence.”

Occasionally, wearisome from a relentless planned, Cousteau would muddle knowledge: 30,000 chicks affected by a recent petroleum shed in the Antarctic suddenly became 30,000 birds killed. Cousteau described the Wellington Convention as secretly negotiated, when in fact Barnes had been able to follow its growth for years. As the skipper spoke before members of the House Foreign Affairs committee Sabella and Barnes shifted in their sets, curbing giggles. “I retained wanting to say &# x27 ;p oint of information ,&# x27; ” articulated Barnes when it was over. “He doesn &# x27; t understand the politics of it at all.” But when Cousteau requested off on one question about Antarctica by saying “I am not a prophet, ” Congressman Wayne Owens of Utah gave as how “some think you are.” Nobody ever used to say about Barnes or Sabella.

Cousteau had access no other Antarctic lobbyists ever had. Republican senators opened their doors to him. Liberals cuddled him. At a breakfast in the Rayburn building, a dinner in the Capitol, they listened to him expound is not simply on the fate of Antarctica, but on the future of the world. “Since I was born, the population of the earth has tripled. And it goes on. Every two years there is another France. Every 10 times, another China.” There are, right now, more than 5 billion people in “the worlds”. “It &# x27; s a heavy, heavy threat. We weigh too much on the planet.” Some scientists guess the earth can feed three times its present person. “But is the goal to feed more beings and using them to induce a miserable life or is it better to have fewer beings conduct a full life? ” he expected. “If you have 12 or 15 billion people there will be no nightingales , no butterflies , no et cetera. And you will have only a few animals–cows, pigs, sheep–to feed those people. Everything else will be destroyed.”

Photo Illustration by the Daily Beast

Cousteau, inaugurated, in fact, to preach his revolution. “It is during this next hundred years that the future”–of mankind, of the et cetera–“will be decided.” Sure, the costs of preparing the record straight will be high: women around the developing world have to be educated so birth rates will go down, the poor have to be convinced that their own future protection does not depend on the proliferation of their descendants. Something like a world-wide welfare system needs to be created. “Urgency realise this possible, ” spoke Cousteau. “If the doctor tells you you have cancer you register research hospitals, even if you have to borrow money.”

People have to get over the idea that uptake and contentment go together. Cousteau modesties special disdain for the idea of having “sustained development” dear to most politically savvy environmentalists. If American-style consumerist fortune continues to be the framework for “the worlds” &# x27; s aspirations, in Cousteau &# x27; s belief all is lost. “Seven hundred million Americans, that &# x27; s all that the earth could subscribe: 700 million Americans, it symbolizes nobody else.” The positive side of the Third World &# x27; s underdevelopment is that “more than half the planet &# x27; s human being is still not consumers.”

All of which is consistent with respectful gestures among the photo opportunists of the Hill, and gleaned special attention from then-Senator Al Gore. For the future vice president, Cousteau was something special. The baby-boomer politician had grown up with him, just like the rest of us, then became a personal friend. “I first invited him to come and speak to the U.S. Congress 12 years ago, and I have expended a great deal of time with him, ” said the senator. “I was at his last-place birthday defendant in Paris.” They may have different accents, but two speak much the same eco-visionary language, clanging off fearing statistics, trying to drawing a nature that works quite differently from anything we &# x27; ve knowledge before. At the end of Gore &# x27; s best-selling volume he writes about the effect his son &# x27; s brush with death had on his opinion, and the importance of “inner ecology.” “We can believe in that future and work to achieve it and preserve it, or we can whirls blindly on, behaving as if one day there will be no infants to acquire our bequest. The selection is ours; the earth is in the balance.” All this sounds singularly like Cousteau.

In the end, on Antarctica, the captain–and Barnes and Sabella, and Gore, and the rest of the environmentalists–won. A terminated moratorium was proclaimed on prospecting as well as mining for the next half-century, and that was good enough for Cousteau. “It is a victory of good sense, genuinely, ” he said later. “I have just been a soldier of good sense.” But Cousteau, while he still giggles at himself, spots it hard to be humble. “I carry on piling up information and I &# x27; ve done that all “peoples lives”, ” he announced. “I &# x27; m in a position, and I didn &# x27; t crave it, it happened to me, where I know more about the environment than anyone else alive.”

There are, of course, numerous environmentalists who would query this claim. Even Al Gore, who likes to mention permissions as varied as Aristotle, R.D. Laing and Carl Sagan, merely mentions Cousteau formerly in his book, and then merely in passing. He doesn &# x27; t include a single duty by the skipper in his bibliography. It is as if, after all he has done and learned, all the photo opportunities and homages, in the end Cousteau is not to be taken seriously. His information is too general, the best interests wander extremely widely, his endowments are too gone for the penchants of a macrocosm attuned to specialists. Perhaps “they dont have” residence for a Renaissance man in a post-modernist age. Perhaps the influence of beauty has waned, or, perhaps, he has lost his appreciation of it.

Undeterred, the old person of the sea remains lowering his lance and billing at the apocalypse, pursuing the all-important, all-consuming make that those closest to him are reluctant to disrupt. “Utopia or fatality, ” he likes to say. The fright has been sounded. “Theres only” 10 years left to save the world, he announced last year. That &# x27; s nine years , now, and clicking. The letter from “the organizations activities” is unrelenting. Every young member of the Cousteau Society in the United States or liter &# x27; Equipe Cousteau in France gets a regular dosage of Cousteau &# x27; s philosophy in “The Calypso Log.” “All society is organized to employ those who are not yet born, ” he tells his child-revolutionaries. “The future of the human species is in danger.”

With the zeal of a guy who has investigated the light-footed, Cousteau preaches the teaching of something he announces “ecotechnique, ” a neologism for the simple-minded, sensible notion of creating interdisciplinary those programmes and universities to commit economics, engineering and ecology equal weight in the curriculums, and in the decision-making process generally. A few of European universities have endorsed the program. The Vrije University in Brussels has even made a Cousteau chair. The notion in the end is to prevent projects like the mining of Antarctica from ever get off the dirt by realizing clearly what would otherwise be “unforeseen consequences.”

But there is another aspect to Cousteau &# x27; s doctrine that is even more elemental, more essential to understanding his opinion. “You know, ” he said one radiant morning at a coffeehouse in Cannes, “I is argued that delight is for this world-wide, and I believe that we could teach happiness.” It is a theme he comes back to again and again, a “crazy idea, ” as he quickly declares, but one of which he is deeply enamored. The “science of joy” is the standard against which everything else is weighed. As if glee had no potential for disaster.

Cousteau holds: If beings extend their realm of suffer by memorizing, adoration, sharing and creating, as he wrote in his Almanac at the beginning of the 1980 s, then they can escape sterile, pernicious measures of well-being like uptake, spend, and “efficiency.” If we know well what joyfulnes is, and engage it together, anything is possible. The thought neatly bridges his personal and world-wide operations. But somewhere along the way, some of the people closest to him were left out. “He &# x27; s a one-man depict, ” announces Jean-Michel, “because he doesn &# x27; t representative, because he doesn &# x27; t known better, because he &# x27; s got to go where he &# x27; s proceeding: in pursuit of happiness.”

Cousteau &# x27; s last-place major documentary, a massive four-part line on the Danube that cost millions to induce, was written by his new spouse, Francine Triplet. It boasts his two young children, Diane and Pierre-Yves, who appear as amazed and often obviously unpleasant eyewitness along for the ride on their parent &# x27; s peregrinations through Eastern Europe. Publicity for the programs in France included dreadfully awkward photographs of Cousteau, looking ancient in his diving gear as he stands beside his 13 -year-old daughter and 11 -year-old-son.

“Are we born on globe to be &# x27; efficient &# x27; or to be happy? ” Jacques Cousteau questioned one afternoon in Paris last-place descent. It was an interesting question, and central to the method he recollects. “We have to say, &# x27; what are the parts of their own lives that you like to remember ?&# x27; ” Maybe there was a moment when you were playing plays in high school, or an afternoon invest having a glass of wine-colored, talking to good friends. “You can lose times trying to find the passion of a wonderful woman[ before] you finally get it. That &# x27; s not efficient, ” said the old-time sailor. “The efficient situation to do is to go to a bordello.”

The day was almost over at the offices of Equipe Cousteau near the Place des Ternes, across the street from the Brasserie Lorraine. Francine, Cousteau &# x27; s n

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