#to have kept to himself and refused collective efforts to feed him or treat his wounds

[llycaons]

the similarities between wq and wwx are so indelible and unmistakable and painful...soul siblings or something

[berrykook]

overtime (y!jk)

inspired by #4 on this prompt list

in which you’re fed up with the office temp jungkook and a terrifying experience at the end of a week of overtime together leads you straight back to him

contents: yandere!jungkook, kidnapping, foul play, violence, no smut (i cannot tag a yandere fic as sfw in good conscience i simply cannot)

word count: 4.5k

a/n: got stoned and wrote a yandere fic i’m sorry lmfao

 *☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ

The thread of patience you had left was being steadily thinned as sweat began to collect on the back of your neck for the fifth day in a row. You thought you were seeing red, but that was just the blood-colored light that filled the office at the same time each night. You cursed your boss under your breath as you brought your USB-powered desk fan impossibly closer to you. He knew you would have to pull the weight of your team and work late every night this week, yet he did nothing about the air conditioning that turned off before the sun even set. You wiped your forehead and shot another quick glare at the doe-eyed temp who had recently wormed his way into your workplace. As it had been for each night that week, you and him (Junghwan? Or was it Jungwoo?) were the only two remaining in the office. As it had also been for each night that week, the kid was on your last nerve.

He was an excellent worker, albeit nervous and a tad awkward. Your female coworkers seem to have taken a liking to him, which only further irritated you as it felt like no work had been done upon his arrival. Despite his mousiness, he had already gotten along well with your branch manager who never failed to personally see that your day was worsened somehow. In a month, he had managed to win over your boss as if they had known each other for years. You did know Hoseok for a number of years, and he still treated you like dirt.

Each night that week, the temp insisted on staying late with you (a nice gesture initially, but turned sour once you realized that his working pace after hours was nowhere near as fast as he worked during the day), he insisted on ordering takeout and eating it right by each other each night (what would be another nice gesture had he understood that he could eat at his own desk and not at yours), and he insisted on accompanying you home every night (you flat out refused this each time he begged). In the month-or-so duration of his time working with you, he repeatedly pushed boundaries that you thought were obvious and justified as you two were coworkers and nothing more. You supposed he was sort of sweet, but you were not interested in any office crushes.

You took a moment’s break and sighed as you stretched your curved back. You let out the faintest hint of a whimper when your spine popped softly. You had your eyes closed, but you knew that he perked up at the sound.

“Seonbae! Your back!” You kept your eyes closed, imagining the feeling of a cool breeze stronger than the fan on your desk.

“It’s fine, just a bit sore.” You nearly jumped when you opened your eyes to see him already halfway to your desk. You let out a quiet sigh, accepting that you wouldn’t get any work done until he went back to his own desk. He brought up a chair for himself and naturally, you scooted your own chair farther away from his. “It’s only seven thirty. We don’t have that much left - if we continue as we are, we can hit a reasonable stopping point for the weekend.”

He huffed softly, nearly pouting at you. “When was the last time you ate? I think it’s far past time we get something to eat.” You had to stop yourself from rolling your eyes - he totally ignored what you said! The look on his face was too concerned for someone you were practically strangers with.

“Seriously, we should be done by nine. I’ll be fine, just continue working as you’ve been and at the very least, be sure that the weekly summary is on the boss' desk before you leave.” You turned back to your work as best as you could with him taking up space in your area. You begged your posture not to stiffen angrily  as you realized that he was not leaving.

“...You seemed to like those noodles I ordered on Tuesday. I-I can order them again!” Without turning, you can sense that he’s leaning forward with his hands on his knees like a puppy. You cracked a faint smile at having just finished one of your remaining tasks for the workday.

“Hm...that’s alright. Don’t worry about it, I’m not hungry. You know...I really could get all this finished up by myself tonight and you can get out of here a little earlier.” He let out a tiny gasp. The sound helped snap your wispy memory - Jungkook was his name!

“No, no, I couldn’t. It’s not safe to leave separately! I-I’ll get back to work, but you have to eat too. The order should be coming within the hour.” He began to sluggishly wander back to his desk, but froze as if he was doused in icy water when you abruptly called his name.

“I told you already this week that you don’t have to order food to the office. I won’t accept any more delivery from you.” You kept your head down, trying to zoom through your team’s documents as fast as humanly possible. Jungkook looked crestfallen as a little boy.

“Seonbae...you really should be eating.” His tone of voice had your eyes snapping up to where he stood hunched in the middle of the office. Your breath caught in your throat for a split second as it almost sounded like he was crying at the idea of you not having regular meals. You willed yourself to not appear disgusted with his overbearing concern.

“It’s fine.”

You immediately turned back to your work and Jungkook finally sat back down at his desk, partly twiddling his thumbs, partly checking the delivery status of the meal he ordered for you, and partly doing his work as he was expected to do. The office was still trapping a ridiculous amount of heat despite the sun being completely down now - you even dared think that your boss was purposely turning the heat up in the middle of the summer after hours!

Thankfully, you were able to work in silence until Jungkook jumped up again with a small exclamation, mumbling something about the food being here. Completely choosing to not respond, you continued working before Jungkook was back at your side once again.

“Seonbae, let’s eat!” You swallowed your sigh and moved your chair away from his. He had already laid out several takeout boxes on your coworker’s and your own desks, and he was currently ridding a wooden pair of chopsticks from splinters. You were determined to get out of there, so you focused on your task at hand until a mouthful of noodles approached your lips.

“Jungkook! No!” You scolded the young boy for attempting to feed you for the fifth time that week. You glared at him while he shamefully slurped the noodles into his own mouth. He mumbled a sullen apology and handed you a pair of your own chopsticks.

You gave in to the food and ate in silence as your head swam with the remaining tasks for the week. Hoseok had just demanded so much of you, both as a normal worker and as the senior member of your team. He had even warned you about being nice to Jungkook and helping him feel welcomed, so you didn’t dare make any complaints about his incessant flirting. He was a temp and would be gone in a matter of months, surely. Surely you could endure a bit of flirting.

“This is nice,” he says wistfully, black bean sauce on the corner of his lip. You wordlessly hand him a tissue. You were steadily becoming sure that you actually could not endure any more flirting.

You get through the next few hours somewhat peacefully. The most spine-tingling interaction was Jungkook gushing over your apathetic thanks for the dinner, but the rest of the night was calm. Unsurprisingly, you were finished with all of your tasks fifteen minutes before Jungkook had begun his last one. His eyes became saucers when you suggested leaving first and having Jungkook lock up the office for the night. 

Of course, he could not complete the simplest of tasks you asked of him.

“I just don’t think I’m prepared for a responsibility like that! Seonbae, can’t you please just wait ten minutes while I finish up this last task! It’s dangerous outside!” For the first time, Jungkook spoke to you with his eyes laser-focused on his work. His hands moved faster than his brain so he could finish his work as quickly as possible. His whining was desperate, but you continued to put on your coat and gather your belongings.

“Jungkook, you really will be fine. You can be trusted locking the door, right? Just return the keys back to me on Monday. I’m leaving now,” you called out with your back to him as you swiftly dropped the office keys on his desk and sped-walked out the office. Finally! That hellish week of Jungkook desperately trying to get your attention was complete. The following workweek was projected to be filled with a lot less work from you and you hoped it would stay that way. Your feet shuffled with the desire to skip to your car once the elevator to the parking garage opened. You felt a twinge of guilt at leaving Jungkook alone in the office, but you completely saw through his weird gestures and efforts to win you over. How lucky you were to be so stagnant in your ways.

The elevator opened with its soft ping and you inhaled the night air deeply. Halfway across the garage to your car, the harsh clang of your keys hitting the asphalt echoed across the space. When you bent down to pick them up, you stayed close to the ground for a quick moment, mind racing as to what you would do next.

When your keys hit the floor and you stopped walking to pick them up, the sound of footsteps in the garage did not. It was obvious - someone was in there with you.

You were certain it couldn’t be Jungkook because he obnoxiously made his presence known to you at every chance he could. There was no way it was any of your coworkers, and any night staff for the building would be well into their jobs at this time of night. As you slowly picked yourself up and prepared to break into a sprint to your car, the unknown presence was just a hair faster than you and had already begun bounding loudly towards your still figure. You managed to get in just a few feet before your waist was grabbed and a hand went over your face.

You made a startled noise for a split second, and then instinctively spent the rest of your energy prying this creep off of you. Please, please, please, you thought. The car is right there.

You tried biting the leather-covered hand that took over half of your face, you tried using your elbows and hips, you tried stomping your heels, but it was as if no action could free you. You began to really panic when the screaming began - you couldn’t remember another time you felt so fearful that you released such desperate screams like that.

You kept fighting even as you felt yourself being dragged farther from your car and even as you began to lose hope. You heard a chirp of a car trunk being opened and you felt your dinner begin to churn. You briefly considered reasoning with your captor and investigating how to talk yourself out of your own kidnapping when you were harshly shoved to the concrete. You scrambled to get up and away before you realized your captor was being straddled and beat to a pulp by a raging Jungkook. You become even closer to losing your dinner as Jungkook brings his fists up past his head and repeatedly bashes the head of your captor, all while screaming at the top of his lungs unintelligibly. Jungkook is going to kill this man. You let out a heartbroken sob and Jungkook’s raised fist suddenly paused. His head snapped over to you, still on the ground and covered in scrapes. For the first time, Jungkook says your first name and makes a face of complete devastation in response to your own crying before he’s suddenly punched in the jaw so hard he tumbles to the side and your captor swiftly kicks his ribs before running off to the emergency exit into the night. You are sobbing at this point and Jungkook is holding himself up with his bloody hands and breathing shallowly. For some reason, you instinctively crawled over to him and held him up by his shoulders.

Your hyperventilating inhibited you from speaking and this quickly shocked Jungkook back into looking after you. He gently raises a hand to the back of your head and pulls you close to him. His other hand brings your lower half closer to where you were nearly on his lap - he begins rubbing your back like you would a baby. In fact, you faintly hear him murmuring something like “Shh, baby. It’s okay, I’ve got you. I’m here, baby. Just be quiet, shh.” You paid no mind to the fact that it was Jungkook holding you. You let out the most heart wrenching sob yet and wrapped your arms around him, hugging him closely. His ribs are screaming at him, urging him to push you off his freshly broken bones but he clenches his teeth and squeezes you. The pain of hearing you cry is a thousand times more grating than the pain in his torso.

“Don’t cry, don’t cry. Hmm, sweetheart, it’s okay. I’m here, don’t cry.” Your hyperventilating cools down after some time of Jungkook whispering in your ear. It’s...nice.

He lets out what seems like a sigh of relief. “Okay, baby? Are you feeling better?” He holds you by your shoulders and you stare at him lifelessly. His eyebrows are knitted together in that way that they do, and the mole on his lower lip is so noticeable when he’s on the verge of tears. You take in the worry in his face and your own lip trembles again as you look down and try to suppress a strong blubber. Jungkook grabs your chin with a coo and you are crumbling even more. “No, no, baby, don’t cry! He’s gone, okay? I got rid of him,” he chuckles nervously. You stare down at his knuckles, split from beating the man who tried to hurt you. Guilt blooms in your chest.

“Are you okay?” you whimper. Jungkook is taken aback and his heart beats faster, if that were possible. He stutters something, then nods his head furiously.

“Don’t even ask about me! It’s all about you.” He is still holding your chin with his thumb and forefinger and at this point, it feels like all the blood in your body is in your head. Jungkook laughs nervously again, and runs his thumb over your chin in admiration. “Tell me what you need,” he whispers. You let out a huff, completely defeated. Despite your valiant effort to stop it, you had suddenly fallen victim to an office crush and you had fallen hard. 

You opted to stay silent and instead grab Jungkook’s hand from your face and intertwine your fingers.

Jungkook nearly pops a vessel trying to not jump over the moon in elation. He opts to bring your hand up to his lips and kiss it.

*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ ゜ﾟ*☆*ﾟ

By the time you and Jungkook had finished speaking with the police and sorting out the logistics of moving forward legally, it was early Saturday morning and you were more than exhausted. Jungkook was not required to stay at the police station for longer than you, but he did so anyway. He insisted that his ribs felt fine and he didn’t want any medical attention. Like he said, this was all about you.

After thanking the officers profusely and bowing deeply to them, you began the grueling walk to Jungkook’s car. He gently urged you into his car back at the garage seeing as you were in no state to be driving. You faintly remember his hands running up and down your back, patting dangerously close to your ass as he helped you into the passenger’s seat with a hushed “there’s my girl.”

He kept a gentle, warm hand to the back of your neck. “A-Are you sure you’d like to go straight home?” he asked tentatively. “I want you to feel comfortable.” Ironically as he said this, he moved both of his hands to rub along your spine. Even now several hours after the incident, you still found yourself looking up at Jungkook with heart eyes. You hadn’t known how wonderful it felt to simply let yourself be doted over (it also very well could be the fresh trauma fiddling with your emotions).

You look up at him with a soft gaze. “Some company would be great.” He smiles and tilts his head as he looks down at you. Again, he leads you to his car, running a hand down your backside as he helps you get seated. He reaches to secure the seatbelt across your figure and you both find yourselves blushing.

Soon, as you are pulling into the parking garage of his apartment complex, you almost get whiplash from the intense realization that you were making a mistake. Not even twenty-four hours ago were you fuming over this kid’s weird and overbearing behavior, and now you were about to sleep in his bed - your coworker’s bed. Jungkook immediately notices your trepidation and places his hand over yours.

“Don’t worry, I’m here.” His smile is beaming towards you and you chuckle, wildly pulling your seatbelt off. Jungkook makes a small noise of surprise and rushes over out of the car around to your side to open your door for you. Fuck, you thought. This was probably some wet dream of his or something.

Jungkook walked you to his apartment with an arm around your shoulders, almost as if to protect you from the rest of the world. As his nervous hands fumbled to unlock his front door, you decided to allow yourself one more hour of this nonsense before you really snapped out of it and found your way home. For just one more hour, you would allow yourself to indulge in this inappropriate relationship with horribly inappropriate timing.

You were taking your shoes off when Jungkook softly pulled you to the couch instead. “Here, sweetie,” he cooed as he sat you down and got on his knees in front of you. You couldn’t yet tell if you loved this or hated it.

“Let me,” he says before daintily taking off your shoes himself and bringing your ankles up to his lap as he crawled up to sit on the couch. He rubbed your calf gently with his warm hand. “Did anywhere get hurt when that man touched you?” He leaned in closer to you.

You have to look away. You twiddle your thumbs and Jungkook watches your hands with fondness. “Mm, everywhere is kinda sore. My elbows and knees are all scraped up too.” Jungkook looks at you and nods seriously, cooing in understanding.

“Oh, I’m sorry. That’s my fault that my princess got scraped up like that. Aw,” he mumbles, grabbing your hand and observing it thoroughly. 

You decide an hour is too long to indulge in this (whatever this is) and jerk your hand back from him. His mouth drops open in offense as he whines a small, “baby…” You shake your head.

“Jungkook, what the hell are you talking about? A-and this...this is inappropriate. I’m your senior, we can’t just...especially after what happened, it just...feels wrong. In more than one way.” As you speak, Jungkook’s lip trembles more and more before he lets out a wail. Your eyes widen at how poorly he processes this completely obvious fact. He couldn’t...actually be using this traumatic event as fodder for courting you, right? You were sure that you felt that way, but there was just something about the way Jungkook treated you before and the manner in which he saved you...something was off. Jungkook was just the temp who flirted with you and would be gone in a few months, right? Perhaps there truly was something off about him, in a deeper way than his persistence. 

Perhaps Jungkook was much more than you ever expected.

The way he cries completely grates against your ears, so you make a frenzied effort to calm him. “Jungkook, please stop crying. We need to talk about this. Shit, it’s okay, just please stop.” You pat his back, fearing the way he cries so deeply that his chest heaves.

“That’s not fair, baby, it’s not fair! Why can’t you even see now that we’re obviously meant to be? I saved you, we’re perfect for each other!” You let out a disgusted gasp at his words and attempt to push yourself away from him.

For the past few hours, you dismissed Jungkook’s insane animalistic reaction in the parking garage as instinctual and justified - it saved you from being kidnapped. You had a gut feeling that reaction told you exactly what you needed to know about Jungkook’s character, but you desperately wanted to give the man who saved you the benefit of the doubt. Now, his psychotic crying set it in stone - Jungkook was a fucking lunatic.

“Shit, I-I’m sorry, Jungkook. I have to go,” you mumbled, scrambling for your shoes and stumbling a little with fatigue. Jungkook’s sobbing begins to quicken maniacally and you are rushing towards his front door. It is when you pull at the doorknob to find that it’s not moving that you realize that Jungkook had actually begun laughing.

You jiggle the doorknob a few times before Jungkook goes silent and growls lowly, “Sweet pea, get back here please.” You weren’t sure how much more fear your body could take in this short span of time. You continue trying to figure out the doorknob, panic rising in you, as Jungkook continues to call to you from the couch. “Honey, I said please come back here. Sit with me, baby.” He is starting to speak through clenched teeth. At this time, you are now trying to yell over him, asking desperately how to get on the other side of his door.

He yells your name. “I said get back here right fucking now or I’ll have to do something real fucked up.” Your hands fall to your sides and you hold your breath. Jungkook waits a moment before saying softly, “Baby, I’m asking you to come over here. Do I need to get up and come get you?” You pivot and walk quickly back to him, stopping a bit more than an arm’s length from him. He snickers and opens his arms. “Come here, baby. Sit with me.”

You shake your head, crying, “Jungkook, I would like to go home. I-I-I can’t figure out your lock,” you sob. “I want to go home, please.” You are now filled with a deeper fear than what you felt in the parking garage. You just knew that Jungkook was much more dangerous than whoever it could have been trying to take you away.

“Baby. Here.” He pats his thigh and you whimper, coming over to sit on his lap. He lets out a deep sigh when you finally land and he wraps his arms around you, burying his face in your chest. “Oh, sweetie.” One hand rubs your back and you are sure you’re going to pass out soon. “You can’t possibly think I’m going to let you out of my sight again, hm?” He rubs his head against you, planting a wet kiss on your sweater-covered sternum.

“I-I don’t understand. I have to go home eventually.” You hopelessly tried to find some justification for this, some explanation that the person who saved you from being kidnapped wasn’t a kidnapper themselves. Jungkook chuckles and you feel the vibration through your middle.

“You are home,” he says sweetly, reaching up quickly to peck your cheek. You stifled another gasp and shook your head. “Honey, you’re home now. Everything is going just the way it should be, okay? You’re safe here.”

You let yourself fall forward into Jungkook’s chest. The room had begun to spin.

“That makes no sense,” you mumbled. “This is not the way things should be. Are you saying I was meant to be attacked after work?” You chuckled nervously. As exhaustion and fear nearly spent you completely, you found yourself losing any will to fight back. If you could not beat that man in the garage, how could you beat the man who protected you from him? Jungkook’s body was big and hard with muscle. He was easily more athletic than you, and would likely stop at nothing to stay near you. He scoffed.

“I would never want to hurt you.” He presses kisses to your spinning head. “My baby...it was just a part of bringing you home to me. Don’t take it the wrong way.” Your eyes are open wide, staring at the knick knacks he decorated his entire living room with. You stare at one, a cute kitty cat photo frame - ah, quite obviously holding a photo of you. In fact, all of the artifacts littering his home had some connection to you. A cropped group photo from a work party displays your whole figure in the photo frame by the door. There was a white square hung up in a glass frame with a corner smeared by your favorite lipstick color - you didn’t want to believe it was your garbage. It couldn’t be. He keeps kissing your head.

“No sense,” you whispered brokenly. He shushes you, running his hands along your back once again.

“I know, I know baby. That’s just how you feel right now...don’t worry. I’ll help you understand it was for your own good. Ah, it was a shame I had to hurt Namjoon-hyung like that though...one day when you’re ready to meet him again, you’ll find out he’s actually the coolest brother I have.”

“...brother?”

Jungkook hums. He has begun to absentmindedly braid your hair, taking his time to run his hands through the strands and give each section a sniff. You pretend that you can’t hear his heart rate picking up when he smells your shampoo.

“Hoseokie-hyung was a big help, too. What, with the job and all. I can’t thank those two enough for everything they’ve done for me. Ah, they’ll make the best groomsmen at our wedding, don’t you think, sweetie?”

You opt to not respond. He sighs lightly, relieved.

“Of course, after that, it’s choosing which of the two becomes the first godfather. Ah, I might cry if I think that far ahead,” he chuckles. “I’m so glad you’re home now, sweetheart. I’ve been waiting forever.”

[pyrewriter]

Short Medical leave

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Eliksni name pronunciation: Sovrreik (Sov-rr-ike) 

 Uncle was ecstatic to see that we had not only made it through the night but managed to save all those that would have otherwise been left to their fate. The Dregs who assisted me in the trench were to be promoted for valiance as well as their display of loyalty and ability. Similarly to how my brother and I these Dregs would skip the rank of Wretch but they would not yet be vandals, moving directly to Marauders was a significant honor nonetheless. Ogethres had been thinking of rewarding them and my report gave him more than enough to use as justification. The fellow Vandal would not become a Captain but would be honored for their role in assisting defend the wounded. 

Deliberately I did not mention the Wretch who had earlier attempted to strike a defeated Risen's tiny machine. During the flight back in the Skiffs of a morning crew they approached me and expressed their regret, I scolded them but felt that was enough. There was no sign of deception in their words ,if there was they could not hide it from me, so reporting would be demeaning. I left them with wisdom uncle once told me once "An enemy defeated, be watched, but left well alone".

Uncle sent me to the infirmary just to be sure that I was not internally injured from prolonged combat. The medical staff asked me to lay down so they could properly examine me but when I tried my body refused to relax fully. While I was checked over I couldn't help but chuckle at the hilarity of how I most likely looked like one the old stone likenesses of humans often found in city remnants. Once the medical machines came up as normal the medics told me to avoid combat for a while just to make sure I wasn't on the brink of collapsing. 

Normally I would have simply thanked them for their care and advice before charging headlong into the next mission but I decided to listen to our medical experts for once. Fortunately there was always more than enough work that needed to be done, with my engineering skills I favored more hand on jobs. Sometimes younger Dregs that had heard of or seen my work in the field would murmur in curious clicks whenever I would dive for maintenance on submerged areas of our home. I always thought it sobering for the younger in the guild and humbling for myself as it kept me from discounting the effort of others or believing myself greater because of my station.

Brykis had similar sentiments but if one were to ask him he would tell them that he simply didn't like the thought of his brother being left out. I would often find him helping process collected salvage or teaching fresh Vandals how to use and maintain their equipment. Father Pyrrhaks was always busy with political squabbles as our uncle Ogethres trusted few others with such delicate responsibilities but they rather enjoyed more menial tasks. Often in luling times both Ogethres and Pyrrhaks would wear simple robes and chat casually or help with small unofficial tasks around the coast. 

A few days into our off time ,before Brykis or myself had even fully woken, our door opened, uncle's unhelmed face greeted us with a smile. "Come, relax today, little responsibility, Pyrrhaks join soon" he said nodding for us to follow him once we were dressed. During our medically required break, uncle seemed to realize just how long it had been since all five of us had been present at one time at the coast with little to keep us busy. Brother left first after wrapping himself in more relaxed cloth than our usual armor, I was still feeding on my morning Ether from Sekos-4 after wrapping myself. When I followed Brykis father was already with them so I was last but with all of us gathered now uncle revealed his intent.

"Long time since had much free-time, wanted to spend with family" he clicked with almost excited vigor, I smiled beneath my wraps and chuckled slightly. In my many years of life I had heard many recounts of the ferocity of Arkons, their amazing strength, how Risen struggled with an all but unguarded priest reclaimed from the Prison of Elders. All these stories are true yet they never tell of their lives off the battlefield or how they were as leaders. Sometimes I wondered if they were anything like uncle but from what I know of the times before House Dusk I doubted it. 

Following Ogethres we waved and warmly said hello to those we passed as we walked, the casual nature of our guild on full display. I've heard from wandering gangs and our usual traders that we are strange because of our lax attitude with a thriving gathering of Eliksni so close to the Great Machine. Whenever they remarked on such things I always compared us to when our people first met humanity, perhaps weak at a glance behind our walls but every maw hides teeth. Often such words would get me sideways looks and in truth I couldn't blame them, it was a human saying.

Uncle had walked us down near one the end of the wall that bordered our home where it met the waters edge. It was a rather quiet area while still having line of sight across everything to the opposite end of the wall. There were a small number of Dregs and Vandals milling about moving aquatic animals of all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors that they had caught. Ogethres called with a loud clack that got the attention of a more round looking Captain who raised an arm in greeting before lumbering over to us. 

"Greetings my Arkon, how been, long time no talk" she clicked with a flemish voice.

Ogethres waved a hand "Been well, busy and well, apologies for little talk, much happened" he chuckled "should know, you part of that". 

"Bahg, so much movement, difficult move so much so quickly, thankful for you, Ogethres my Arkon" the Captain replied with clear gratitude in her voice. Bowing her head she turned with a wave for us to follow as she showed us a spot among other workers casually chatting or humming tunes. "Four sets, as requested, told other to treat same as any" the Captain listed, adding with a chuckle under her breath "Hehe, can't stop all though" she joked 

"Your effort enough, thank you friend, Great Machine bless" Ogethres told them with a low chitter and a hand over his heart. Pyrrhaks, Brykis, and myself bowed our heads slightly and rasped in thanks for the Captains effort to coalesce as well as allowing us to use their equipment for recreation. The Captain echoed the blessing before heading off to direct idle dregs to what needed to be cleaned or stuffed with coolant. "Come, let us 'fish' as it is called" uncle stated as he strode across the sand toward a set of poles with string dangling from them. I recognized such poles from movies I had stored in Sekos-4. 

All four of us were absolutely terrible at using the poles which led one of us ,often uncle, getting a sharp metal hook caught on themselves. Despite this however we continued to learn both through trial and error as well as tips from fellow Eliksni around us fishing around us. Once everyone was able to get their hooks into the water with relative consistency we were fishing as a family, it felt nice, a calm that I hadn't known for quite some time. We caught a fair amount of aquatic life but nothing astonishing, patience, luck, and knowledge were what made one good at catching water dwelling creatures.

Time felt like it slipped by while we sat enjoying the presence of each other and before we realized it the sun was setting over the horizon. We had managed to spend an entire day sitting in the sand with poles in hand to help feed hatchlings and sprog. Thankfully nothing that couldn't be handled by those uncle left in charge appeared during our time on the edge of the wall. While the rest of my family went off to rest or double check the feeds for anything that slipped through I went to fulfill my nightly duties. Slipping into my work harness I chuckled at myself ,it was a completely peaceful day for our guild, still I worked through the night consuming only enough Ether to not deprive myself. 

The next morning I found myself being woken by an engineering Dreg, apparently I had blacked out with my legs dangling from an access hatch. Laughing at their description of how they found me ,"Similar Arkon threw you during accession, right in hole", I thanked the Dreg before heading to my quarter. Luckily I had been awoken before most others so no one knew that I never made it back after they bedded down. Brykis did wonder what I was doing up so soon as I fumbled around trying to get my standard armor on. 

"On Ether crew, morning deploy" I told him, it was no lie, I did sign on to be escort for an Ether extraction at the earliest signs of day. 

He shook his head while rubbing a set of eyes with one hand "Doctor told no exertion, you against better judge?" he asked pointedly.

"Extracted before, same spot, quiet, go stretch legs, take light load" I reassured him grabbing only my dagger "Worry much, brother". Taking a moment to pay tribute to Esyra before leaving I set off to meet the other members of what would be my crew in the hangar to be told the details of our mission. During the brief I learned we were taking our Prime Servitor ,Sovrreik, which explained the larger than normal present crew. Ogethres thought it best to keep them within the safety of the ketch ever since the Risen had discovered our underground compound before. 

I found it odd that we were taking the prime servitor but before I could raise the question as to why we were taking such an important figure I got my answer. "Risen damage collection servitors, as see, taking extra guard, collected sector before, near coast, safe, pack light" the leading Captain clicked tossing aside a data pad. Most were fairly new Vandals but they had enough experience with combat that I was unconcerned about any wildlife we may encounter. Boarding our Skiffs and hovering as we waited for Sovrreik.

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[your-worst-knightmare]

Broken Speech

Memory was a fleeting thing, nowadays. Whatever rose in that murky abyss drifted away just as quickly. It may have been a small mercy. Jay didn’t know. All he knew was now. And now was being shut up in the same elaborate room when the Mistress had no use for him. 

The Mistress talked to him, sometimes. Sometimes it was idle conversation. Other times it was commands. Most times it was “Talk.”

He could, he knew that. But every time he tried, his mouth would be dry and his mind blank and the words never came. 

The Mistress tried to help him. She really did. She gave him teachers. They died too easily. So the Mistress gave him books. They were left unread. Not because of lack of want, but he simply couldn’t. He knew how, but his body refused to listen to him once again. 

As so he was stuck with the fleeting library of his own memory. Not that there was much he could recall, anyway. 

Today, the Mistress came to visit him. “You will watch my son, Jay.” A command. She was in no rush to speak, and the words flowed like sweet honey. Jay envied her words. He so wanted them, but they refused to let him hold onto them. “He will be your brother. Treat him as such.”

From the corner of his eye, Jay watched a small child stride into the room sourly. 

“Be good, Damian,” the Mistress called as she left. 

The boy tutted. “I do not require a caretaker,” he scoffed, mostly to himself. He turned to Jay. “And you are not my brother.”

Jay kept staring ahead blankly. He didn’t respond. He couldn’t. Why had the Mistress left her son with him? He kept staring. 

“Well say something, you incompetent fool!” The boy leapt at him, all intentions turned towards attack. He was slammed to the floor the next moment. It was all reflex to Jay. He hadn’t meant to flip the boy, but his mind and body seemed to be twain nowadays. 

The boy growled, but didn’t attack again. Instead, he flopped down onto a cushion near Jay. Close enough to observe him if necessary. He grabbed a book that he had brought with him and began to read. 

Jay watched, not having moved a muscle since putting the boy in his place. The stared at the cover of the book, in some vain effort to absorb its knowledge. He yearned for it, but like many things, it didn’t seem to enter his mind. 

An hour passed. The boy continued reading. Jay remained frozen. The boy looked up suddenly. “Mother mentioned you were from America. I am currently studying American literature. It may be a clumsy language, but there’s hope yet. Would you like to hear a poem?” Despite the boy’s friendly words, his tone was frosty. The Mistress likely told the child to speak to him. He would have remained silent otherwise. 

But– at the chance to hear something that would feed his mind, Jay fought to speak. Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. Please. No words came. His face remained blank. The boy looked at him, huffed, and began reading anyway. 

“Do not go gentle into that good night.” The words were music to Jay’s mind. He savoured each syllable slowly, picking it apart and inspecting it. “Old age should burn and rage at close of day.” Jay found himself reading along in his mind. He knew them! The words! From the before– before memory. “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.” 

Jay’s vision became blurry. Those weren’t tears, were they? But he was grateful so grateful that the boy had read. That he had reminded Jay of the before. Of the warmth in a vast library. Of kind voices speaking to him as his fingers brushed aging paper. And that was something he would have a hard time repaying. 

___________

Damian al-Ghul did not require a caregiver. He was six years old. He could take care of himself. He had thought that Mother would understand that by now. But it seemed she didn’t, even after his previous caretakers had vanished under mysterious circumstances. 

It wasn’t just this new caretaker that irked him. Mother and insisted that he was his brother. Ridiculous! If Damian had a brother, he would have known. When he first met Jay, he almost laughed. Jay couldn’t even be considered qualified to watch a chicken. The boy’s expression remained blank he entire time he was spoken to. Damian expected some sort of reaction, at least, but Jay gave none.

That is, until Damian attacked him. Jay was proficient in combat, Damian gave him that. Not that the boy could do much else. Perhaps that was why Mother had chosen him. 

Damian resigned himself to reading under Jay’s watch. At remembering Mother’s request to talk to Jay, he figured he should read aloud. That technically counted as speech. Then Damian would not have to be distracted from his studies by idle, one-sided conversations. 

Jay seemed... happier after Damian read. Which was odd, because he had not previously shown any hint of emotion. Damian decided to disregard it. 

Much to his annoyance, he was required to stay with Jay the next day as well. And the next week. By the time the end of the month rolled around, Damian had consistently spent most afternoons in Jay’s lonely chamber. 

It was a late Friday afternoon when Damian returned to Jay’s room, carrying two steaming cups of tea. They smelled sweet and floral, reminding Damian of Mother’s perfume. He set one cup in front of Jay, knowing the boy would drink when he wanted to. 

“I shall resume our reading of Hamlet,” Damian informed him. “I suggest you drink your tea whilst I read, lest it go cold again, Jay.” 

Had Damian not spent the past month with him, he would have missed the slight smile that tugged on the boy’s lips. Satisfied that Jay was listening, Damian began reading. His words were clear and each character seemed to speak through him when he read. “To die, to sleep –/ To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub,/ For in this sleep of death what dreams may come…”

Jay, who had been nursing his cup of tea, stopped suddenly at the line. Damian had learned to take his subtle clues at communication rather seriously, so he closed the book. 

“What is it Jay?”

The boy’s eyes snapped around the room wildly, as if he did not recognize the place. It was vastly different from his usual blank, placid expression. He opened his mouth to speak. “Br’ce?” His words were garbled and his voice was raspy from disuse, but it was speech all the same. 

Damian sucked in a breath. Jay was talking. Talking. Mother would be ecstatic. “No Jay, I am–”

“Day’m’n.” Jay’s answer has surprised him. But Jay knew his name. He knew Damian! Mother would be ecstatic. 

“Yes, J- akhi,” Damian beamed. Jay, Damian supposed, was his brother. Mother had been right. he wouldn’t have been particularly concerned about Jay otherwise. 

He ceased his reading for the day and in favour of encouraging Jay to speak again. Another word, for Mother, he pleaded. 

By the time the last of the sun’s rays were starting to  disappear from the horizon did Mother arrive, as she always did. Damian did not need to be coddled, but he appreciated when she came to see him. Damian had made no progress with Jay, but he was still excited to share the news. 

“Mother, i have most excellent–” he stopped upon seeing Mother’s grave expression. “What is it Mother?” 

Mother opened a bag, filled with servant’s garments. “Help me dress Jay, child. You shall remain  here, until I come to collect you afterward.” 

Damian obeyed quickly. He was never one to question his Mother’s orders. However, something felt off. “ Jay spoke to me today,” he finally said. 

Mother raised an eyebrow. “Did he now, dearest?”

“Yes. It was not much, but I believe he said both mine and Father’s names.” 

She smiled sadly. “I am glad Jay was able to talk to you.But your brother has been able to say your Father’s name ever since he came to stay with us. However, you name is progress, i am sure.” She bent down to kiss Damian’s forehead before leading Jay out the door. “Sleep well, my pride.” With that, Mother left Damian alone with a sneaking suspicion that something wasn’t quite right.

Damian slipped out of his room and followed Jay’s lumbering figure in the poorly-lit hall. He lagged several feet behind Mother, which worked to Damian’s advantage. 

The sinking feeling in Damian’s stomach worsened as Mother led Jay farther and farther down into the compound. There was only one place they could be going. The Lazarus Pit.

Grandfather had acquainted Damian with its waters when Damian was three. Needless to say, it was not his most pleasant memory. And Damian suspected for someone in Jay’s condition, the experience would be even worse.

Damian did not want to watch his brother go stumbling into that green crater, but he found himself unable to tear his eyes away. Mother had not even led Jay down half of the final staircase when she pushed him.  Jay always fought back at a menacing touch, but never when it was Mother. The boy teetered at the edge of the platform before sinking into that ancient lake. 

Damian’s breath caught in his chest. He couldn’t breathe. How could he? How could he when his brother had been thrown into a pit that was the very mother of insanity? 

Time seemed to pass sluggishly. It was forever that Jay rested at the bottom of the pit. Then, hands started to claw their way to the surface. Their body and voice soon followed. Damian thought he was prepared. He wasn’t. 

It was almost absurd. The silence that embroidered Jay’s fall could have been broken by a mere pin-drop. Upon his emergence, however– Damian pressed his hands to his ears. It was all he could do to block out Jay’s heart-wrenching cries. 

It was worlds away from the raspy, stuttering voice those same lips had uttered hours before. Even from a distance, Damian could see the toxic green eyes the pit had cursed Jay with. He knew the rage the pit brought all too well. 

Dusk had fully disappeared when Damian returned to Jay’s empty quarters. There was nothing Damian could do for him at the moment but the moment but wait. 

He thought back to their first meeting. What was the poem he had read to Jay? Its words taunted him, but he could not seem to get the nagging thought out of his mind. Damian found the book and opened it, his eyes flitting to the final line. The irony was not lost on him. It could be all that was left of Jay now, if they weren’t lucky. 

Yet Damian had a strange urge to read the line aloud. His fingers brushed over the words, reminiscing all those afternoons he spent with Jay. Afternoons he may not get again. “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.” 

The poem in this story is “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas

[blankdblank]

Next Caller Pt 25

*

“How’d it go? Yesterday?”

“It was good,” Mal said looking you over, “Still no sharing why you’re so tired?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me,” she said propping her hands on her hips.

With a huff you recounted the night and in her creeping grin you poked her arm, “Hey, don’t do that plotting smirk.”

“Your babies are having-,”

“Our Ravens-,”

“Are like your children, and together your Ravens are bonding and settling into families in your greenhouse. If he didn’t like you he wouldn’t dare let you suggest matching up his Raven with one that was living in your home. Roac is a part of him, he knows you and trusts you, with his baby.”

“You’re still not helping.” You said brushing your hair back to pull it up into a ponytail.

“Don’t you feel bad. He is a grown man, he chose to get out of bed and come help you, he accepted the offer to bring Roac, who is just as excited and had every chance to refuse the offer as well. Stop worrying.”

“There’s a better chance cows would rain from the sky.”

At that a sudden crash of something plushy into your shoulder had you looking down at the stuffed rhino on the ground then to the elderly Dam saying to the huffing donkey beside her, “Bruno! That was very rude!” Hurrying over when you bent to lift the rhino and caught her smile when she reached you. “I am so sorry Miss Pear. My son is not taking his donkey days well. Been helping me with my deliveries. I wanted to bring you one of my stuffies, your story really has helped my Edgar get some excitement in his week since his surgery left him off his feet.”

“Oh, thank you. I’m glad to hear that.” Her smile widened and you said, “He’s healing fine? Break room isn’t the same without him and his coffee and snack stand.”

“He’s doing well, few weeks yet, but he is feisty as ever.” She turned her head and huffed seeing Bruno wandering off then rolled her eyes back to you, “You two have a lovely day,” pivoting on her feet she said following her son, “Bruno, I have three more stops then we can go home.”

Looking at Mal you lifted the plushy saying, “Rhino, not a cow.” Only deepening her playfully narrowed gaze at you, “It’s my hill and I intend to die on it.”

“One of these days you are going to realize that this grump of yours and his family are treating you with the respect and love you deserve.” Your eyes scanned over your face and she rested a hand on your shoulder, “Your past, forgive the wording, is charred earth. You deserve so much more than you have gotten. Don’t let that limit what you think you deserve.” She poked the rhino, “You are a supernova, bring light, excitement, joy and chaos all at once. Shine, and let them help you. Just have to, settle your roots, you’re strong, take the wind.”

“You do realize I slide in the wind?”

“I will take the joke as a sign you’re letting that soak in a minute.” You rolled your eyes and turned to pass the crew on the show ahead of yours exiting the booths.

“I will be asking about how it went with Dis again later.” You teased making her grumble and watch as you settled your Rhino adorably up against your mic stand on top of your bag.

 *

Behind the closed door Thorin turned around and got to rinsing off the dishes you had left in the sink he added to your washer. Tidying up a little bit and ensuring the pan he had used to cook the breakfast he added to the washer then turned to go and check on Roac. Along the way however he paused curious about those shelves and turned to see your sisters’ room. Instantly a smirk ghosted across his lips once inside seeing the peach and sparkly silver shelves that from where the bed would be he could see the full effect of the sprouting starry vines from your sketch you had added to the future bunk bed structure he couldn’t wait to see added. Small touches, simple shelves customized by you to blend in more of what he could imagine your clan to be like.

Through the other rooms there wasn’t much changed past the painting filled atrium around your piano. Each one he got a close look at then turned for the theater grinning at the incredible paintings signed with the same pear in the corner except for one with a gemstone under a night scene of a man on one knee proposing to a woman under a grand cherry tree. He knew the symbolism in it, or at least the Hobbit symbolism to it. It was possibly a wish for a fruitful union for you, assuming that it was your mother who had painted it for you. The night scene with scarce stars painted were to suggest it was a bond solely between the two, a faithful and devoted lover for you. Though in the doorway of the theater finding Roac still napping and it occurred to him that it might have been simply a scene of her own proposal to Cirdan.

From there he turned to your living room recognizing your media player that with the projector turned on he put on a random show he lowered the sound on and switched the radio on to your station and in the end of the show before yours he went to steal a glimpse into the greenhouse. Kuu’s house was still empty and contently Balakavallatagh was adorably snuggled up together inside his home in matching nests while the hummingbirds hovered around feeding before returning to their hatchlings. Dot alone slept in the new home set up and fluffed up contently in her new nest with the leaves Roac had chosen laid out just so making him smirk in turning back to the living room.

Onto the couch he settled and listened to the opening scene with a seemingly out of place mission Raul went on his ship the Tibelt by a voice they hadn’t heard often before, the narrator fully describing each moment same as from the epic cannon top proposal earlier in the story. A swashbuckling sword clashing adventure ending with his breaking into the court of Duke Frenn and requesting his aid and then leading them to join in on the search for their dear friend Bunny.

However anticlimactic it seemed next was a heart wrenching interaction between the Countess and Wolsey where she was left weeping when it seemed he was leaving her home with the impression he had given up hope. Though fully packed and ready to go he was heard boarding the Tibelt rousing hope once again that the army to meet up with the still gathering allies. It seemed their efforts could be for naught when Holm was heard shouting that the room you were being kept in was empty with a stone block on the wall missing forming a tunnel outside.

Covering his mouth like so many others Thorin sat with his heart thundering practically seeing Bunny racing through the forest around the hidden keep. Panting with earth crunching and twigs catching on her clothes muddled with echoes of Holm shouting out her name. A sudden gasp from her however cut the show to silence before it ended with a loud bellow sparking chills through everyone listening.

.

The sign off music played and Thorin’s gaze turned from the radio he shut off to Kuu, just noticed to have joined in on listening to the show whose cheeks puffed up in the start of a big yawn. “Do you listen to the show?”

After his full body shiver Kuu replied, “No. We prefer the book with the images. Off to bed now. Goodbye.”

Thorin chuckled saying, “Goodbye.” Watching him turn and walk back to his house before standing up and stretching his arms right up over his head from being in the same position for so long. Lowering his arms again he strolled through your home and made his way to your study. On a trunk from the doorway he spotted your typewriter, moving closer he felt a magnetic pull to get a closer look to your best friend who helped free you from the prison of your old life.

Around the edges he could feel the gritty scrapes hinting at when it had scuffed rocks and been halfway stripped of its fading former brilliant black paint job. Every inch showing your modifications and touch on repairing the various parts complete with the hatch on the side holding the Khuzdul and Elven character hammer sets to go with those characters etched next to the common tongue characters on the clearly hand engraved and polished keys once coated with gold and wax letter tops long since worn down. Just smoothing his fingers across a few of the keys he couldn’t help but smile sensing the joy just seeped into this little once abandoned machine you rescued and kept safe for so long.

The notepad however coated in Vanyar rune coated drafts clearly for the next in the series were left in the open and forcing himself to turn and inspect your book collection in the collapsing shelves from your open trunks lining the walls. Various languages coated each of the spines in various conditions with one that seemed to hold the oldest collection. Crouching down he smirked pulling out the copy of the leather bound phone book sized book on Durins half bleached by the sun you had found on Ruun. Around that were blank books fully bleached with faded smudged symbols on the spines, one of which he pulled out and smirked at the phone book sized patchwork book in a line with others.

Smoothing his palm across the sand worn cover he opened the front cover and saw the first page of Khuzdul runes hinting that it was the hammer set you first found in the typewriter. The first page had his heart rate slowing at the sentimental note from you introducing this as your first story that you hoped one day you could bring home to your mother. Biting his lip he closed the cover smoothing his palm across it again in turning it to put it back again waiting for the day he hoped you might offer to show him yourself. The sound of an odd chirping sound had him up again and heading through the house back to the theater where he smirked finding Roac awoken by a nature show on sea birds.

Thorin chuckled saying, “Sorry Roac. Kuu must have left it on.”

Roac ruffled his feathers standing up asking, “Has Dot eaten yet?”

“I believe she is still sleeping.”

“Good,” he rose up flapping hard to fly past Thorin, “I can wake her to a feast!” Making the Dwarf smirk in moving closer to turn off the projector and fold your blanket again then move to head back to the living room.

 *

Outside the doorway when you exited, your lips parted seeing the golden strapped and heeled black platform pumps on Echthellion’s palm you took hold of in his deep chuckle, “Where did you find these?”

You looked up at him and said, “Not telling. But they are yours.”

“Thank you.”

He chuckled and tilted his head, “Come on, off for contracts.”

You nodded then pointed at Mal, “I’m finding out what happened.”

She grumbled again and turned to head out to head back to her place readying for another visit from Dain to see BamBam and come see his latest check up at the vet. Following Ecthellion you went to his office and eased your fingers around the pen you were given while he readied the contracts. Already you signed the anonymity pages for him to ready the deal so that all the pages on these contracts had you named as Bunny. Dozens of signatures later and the papers were locked in his case freeing him to stand and walk around the desk to accept your crashing hug before he asked, “What else have I missed?”

In a groan your head fell back and his grin eased out hearing your latest chaotic unfold in your life. “Now not only do I have a giant bear shaped hedge trimmer in my yard I have two Great Owls. Not even mentioning I have one of the rudest courting birds in my house, I swear, if Roac didn’t seem to like her-,”

Ecthellion laughed and gave you another hug you melted into, “Go home, take a nap.”

“I’ll try, but who knows who will show up at my door this time.”

Back into the hall you pulled out your phone and smiled at the pictures of your sisters and mother with their necklaces along with pictures of Cirdan with his shirt and journals making you giggle at the raving reviews of the gifts and pictures you had sent their way. All the way down to the garage again you hugged the rhino to your chest smirking as you eyed your heels from the expensive brand in the lift.

Standing outside of his car with his arms on the hood Frerin was waiting and pointed at you saying, “Ents! I figured it out! The roar!” You giggled and came closer to the car luring his eyes to your shoes and rhino, “More gifts for the show?”

“The rhino is from a wife of our coffee cart guy, he’s out from a surgery. And the shoes are from Ecthellion, said to leave my shoes for the festival to him.”

“Hell of a pair of shoes. Had an ex who loved that style of shoes, so expensive.”

“Every now and then he demands to get me a new pair. I still have some pink ones but they don’t work with the look.” He nodded and you opened the door and lowered inside. “Eager for your flight?”

He chuckled and said, “It’s a flight out for an event then a flight back to get back in time for the festival. Can’t wait to see you fully dolled up.”

“What are you going as?”

“Badger, obviously, mask and all.”

“Adorable,” Making him chuckle again.

“I imagine you are straight off to bed when you get back.”

“May sit up a bit.”

Smirking at you he asked, “So, with the scooter does that mean you would be wearing heels more often?”

“Don’t think I go places often requiring heels.”

“That could always change.” He hummed out and said, “Let’s get you home, Sis.”

A buzz from your phone had you looking at it and saying, “Aviary is thrilled Belly and Darling got on so well.” Inhaling sharply you drew his eye and asked, “Have you seen Zebra Raven mating dance?”

Lowly he chuckled, “No, I have not had the pleasure.”

“They have it, on the site. It was painful to watch,” making him chuckle again. “I love him, but if a guy tried to pick me up dancing like that, I don’t think I’d make it to his bow.” Making him chuckle again, “I mean it’s a nice idea to have guys dance to pick you up but thinking it and doing it would be vastly different.”

“I will note that down, your guy has to be able to dance,” he chuckled at your nudge to his elbow, “Alright, just have an interpretive dance on standby. Got it.”

He chuckled again at your head leaning forward to tap against your rhino’s, “Terrible.”

“I’m teasing, I wouldn’t set you up to be embarrassed, even on another’s behalf, Sis.”

Glancing over you asked, “Did Dis tell you how her meet went with Mal?”

Frerin chuckled, “Not yet, Mal seem shaken?”

“Not shaken, but avoiding. If it went badly she’d be in tears but she’s not saying something.”

Frerin, “No doubt she’s just processing. Big weekend.” He looked at you again, “So that’s how you ended up at the tea shop? Your coffee stand guy got sick?”

“Well, I drink cider at work, coffee makes me jittery. I tend to have panic attacks when I get jittery.” You glanced at him and said, “Not all the time, but it’s like an intense house of terror like they have in theme parks. Brain just imagines things that aren’t creeping up on me.”

“I get like that with espressos. And hot air balloons, can’t even be near them.”

The final turn had him parking in front of the house and he reached over patting your knee, “Get some sleep, Sis.”

Out of the car you climbed and through the winds you slid your way through your propped open front gate and up to your front entrance where you exhaled relaxing in the relief from the force against you. With a final wave his way you let yourself inside seeing him wave back and start to drive off when you eased the door shut. His continued use of the term of sister was shaken off as you hung up your bag and followed the sounds of the show playing to the living room. The room was empty but the whistle of your kettle had you turning for your kitchen to find Thorin there with a grin saying, “Great show. I take it that was our mystery narrator?” You nodded and he asked with a smirk easing out, “Rhino and heels?”

“Ah, heels are for the weekend and the rhino was a gift. Our coffee cart guy is off his feet on medical leave and his wife brought this, show’s been helping keep him distracted.”

“That’s good.” You nodded and set them down on the counter as he said, “Roac brought Dot breakfast. She was pleased.”

“Doubtful,”

He chuckled and said, “She argued the berries weren’t bright enough but ate them anyways. Still good ground to start on. Him and Bala are flying around the back yard giving the girls some time to chat.”

For a few moments your eyes were locked in the silence until he turned to grab the kettle to fill your mug pouring water over your filled whale infuser, “No mug for you?”

He shook his head, “Not this time, had some earlier. I drink any more of your tea and you’ll run out by morning. I will get you more cider and teas,” your lips parted and he said, “I want to. Someone has to make sure you don’t get swindled on some imitation.”

“Well don’t forget your fruit, veggies, jams and bread.”

“I-,” Around the counter you strolled and grabbed one of your reusable totes you started to fill randomly making him chuckle at the hefty amount you set on the counter with a cling wrapped loaf of bread on top.

“Payback is painful isn’t it?” You teased.

And he rumbled back playfully, “Excruciating.”

“Good.” He smirked then looked to Roac in his flight into the kitchen from his stop into the greenhouse.

Proudly the bird landed on Thorin’s shoulder and puffed up saying, “Dot has asked me to leave.”

Your lips parted and Thorin chuckled walking over to stroke his hand down your arm, “Good sign. Thank you for the bag. Enjoy your tea and get some rest. No pressure on coming in tomorrow if you want to stay in.”

“You get some sleep too Mug Dealer.” You looked to Roac, “Thank you, Roac.”

“I am eternally grateful for you finding me my Mate.” Grinning at you while Thorin lifted his bag.

Thorin rumbled another low goodbye and you escorted the pair to the door and made sure they both got in safely before you turned back to your tea. Lifting your whale seeper you cleaned it out and rinsed it off and turned to lift your mug sending off a review of your tea. ‘Surprised by some company at home, but chivalrous as ever my Mug Dealer came to my rescue with another lovely pineappley touch to it.’

Again comments racked up with the usual amused statements egging you on to make a move with your Mug Dealer if you weren’t already together. And you pocketed your phone seeing some of the other shop owners from the expo still puzzled as to who you could be but no less amused by the dynamic involving the surly Dwarf they assumed to be the Dealer in question in need of a good wooing himself. A check on the greenhouse brought Belly to a swing closer to you stroking his head against your cheek before flying off to chase after Darling in another hopeful round for increasing their chance of a large clutch of eggs. Kindly you greeted Dot who eyed you curiously then asked, “Roac has left?”

“Yes.”

She nodded and said, “He certainly flies fearlessly.”

With a nod you replied, “Yes he does.” Taking a sip of your tea while she hopped to the perch outside of her home.

Fluffing up her feathers she said, “I shall not make him struggle too long I think.” Flying down to the ridge around the fountain to inspect the lily pads that she hadn’t seen before, testing if they would hold her or not.

Turning from there you went to check on your hummingbird house grinning at their parents who left you to watch their hatchlings now getting their feathery coating in order signaling in a week or so they could be left without their mothers for longer periods. Though here safe in your warm greenhouse they really didn’t need much heating and there was more than enough food to keep them and hundreds more well fed for generations to come. “Hello little ones.” Various personalities had begun to show already and before long their parents were back to catch their yawns in time for a noon nap signaling your turn back to your kitchen to rinse out your empty mug. To your couch you went to relax to whatever was still playing and slowly drift off into a nap of your own.

 *

“I am pleased with the territory for my dwelling with Dot.” Roac said shifting on the bar on the passenger side of the dashboard in Thorin’s car in his first turn.

“It is an incredible greenhouse.”

“Jack Rabbit has changed the lands to perfection for hatchlings.”

Thorin glanced at him wondering why he had called you that. “Yes, she has. Jack Rabbit?”

“That is what Bala and the others call her. I wish to fit in.”

“Ah,”

Roac’s head tilted looking his friend over, “Have you danced for her yet?”

That had Thorin look back at him, “We do not dance to attract Mates.”

“Singing then? You have a very deep voice, none can bellow as you can. Surely she will choose you.”

With a chuckle he replied, “Thank you, but again, our courting rituals are far more complicated than yours.”

Roac looked forward, “Hmm. She has a fondness for you, the home is-,”

“Roac,” he sighed in catching his friend’s nod, “The necklace she was wearing, I gave it to her.”

That puffed up his feathers giddily, “She is weighing her options then, just as Dot is restraining true impressions on my approval as her Mate! What is the next step I shall assist all I can!”

Wetting his lips Thorin replied, “It is a matter of working the right words at the right moment to agree for a courtship.”

“Words, of course. Poetry, not a song. I have faith in you that the right words might find you to secure her approval.”

Widely he smirked at his friend’s blind faith in him and the situation and rumbled back, “Thank you.”

The rest of the way Roac muttered his plans to finalize courting Dot only making Thorin’s grin deepen as it stirred options in his own ideas concerning you. Once parked he reached over taking hold of the bag first once his door was propped open and then for Roac who hopped onto his arm and walked up to his shoulder to free his hand. Securing the bag he took the short walk up to his apartment, inside which he spotted Frerin in the living room already smirking as he asked, “Ooh, she sent you home with goodies I see.”

Thorin chuckled and set the bag down feeling his stomach clench in Roac’s flight back to his dwelling in Thorin’s room to nap, from the bag he pulled out your bread and a jar for tomato soup and set up the tomatoes to let it simmer as you had. “Apparently this is revenge.”

Frerin on his feet hummed, “Revenge smells good.” Lifting the bread he asked, “She makes her own bread too?”

Thorin nodded and carried the bag to put the rest away in their pantry on a shelf usually left empty now entirely for your goods. “You have not tasted soup like this. So good.”

“She made you soup?”

“She was tired and anxious, comfort food.”

Frerin nodded and came to his brother’s side while he cut the bread just like you had, but left more behind to have some later, “Alone, together, cooking, details?”

Thorin sighed and looked at Frerin, “It was nice. Late night cooking, it was cozy. She was half asleep and the soup was incredible, grilled cheese too. She cooked we cleaned up and then handled the arrivals together.”

“That’s sounds perfect. I’m glad she called you.”

“So am I, even if Bala was the one who nominated Roac for his wingman and I’m just his chauffer, I have no clue how I could have handled being surprised like that.”

Frerin shook his head, “You and me both,” going to smell the soup, “This all she sent?” Then turned to head into the pantry to look at what you had sent.

Thorin’s eye however went to the box on the living room table and he smirked using his keys to open the package from which he pulled the cd out of. Across the cover a honey haired woman seated at the piano of singing stones in a brilliant silvery orange blend, clearly an older version of you. With you in a pink gown with strips laying delicately across your shoulders holding the dress above its drastic dip in the back lined with silver accenting gems matching those on the edges of the mermaid skirt. Facing the large mic they were left with just the silhouette of your face and sight of your lit up snowy curls braided up into an intricate bun.

Breaking the plastic wrap on it that dropped into the open box he switched on the disk player and put it on turning Frerin’s head at the intro of the ethereal piano. Taking hold of the case Thorin passed him he smirked as his brother focused on the soup he gave its first stir. Each and every song until the soup was served up building up their adoration for you upon discovering another of your hidden talents. Their own hums blended into the mix while enjoying the finished meal, only pausing when chills ran up their backs hearing the intro to the song that had been played on the Bunny show making the pair look at the track number to know the name of the song Frerin pulled up translated lyrics for on his phone only warming their hearts more. Fully cleaned up at the end of the disc Thorin took his box and the cd to his room to listen to again later on his way to dropping onto his bed once his heavy boots were taken off.

 *

Curiosity had gotten the better of you and upon waking up after sunset you brushed your hair out of your face and walked out to your back yard. Under the lights of the gentle glowing lanterns you walked the pathway back to the seating area already hearing Hector adjusting his wings on his exiting of their new home. Bright eyes landed on you and he turned fully at your brief wave, “Hello. Just wanted to check in, see how you liked your first day.”

Hector gave you a soft grin stepping closer and extending his wing to the side, “Come and see our changes.”

You nodded and came closer flashing another grin and wave at his mate upon stepping up into the seating area listening to all Hector and her had put into the area to make it comfy for their eggs. The trio that she revealed to you in their trade off on warming them on her way to the yard to stretch fully. Hector’s head tilted seeing you eyeing the eggs, “We would allow you to touch them.”

You looked up at him with a spreading grin, “Thank you,” knowing fully most birds would never allow someone to touch their eggs. But crawling carefully into the nest you got a better look and crouched down closing your eyes to listen to the warm eggs one at a time. “They sound very strong.” Climbing out again you asked, “Nearly time, right?”

They both nodded and she said, “We have agreed, should our daughter accept Kuu we would allow her to remain here with you. Our home has many daughters, she would find plenty and comfort here where we could always visit.”

“That’s so thoughtful, if that’s what you would wish for her. I would take very good care of her.”

Hector grinned at you, “We know. You have been most kind, the others, they tended me but did not see what we needed in that dwelling.” Settling carefully down on top of the eggs his feathers folded around.

“Yes, they have told me they might be taking some tips from my own dwelling. Especially for Striped Ravens, when they can find them. Their numbers are so low.”

She asked, “Your Raven has mated well?”

You nodded, “Yes, they took to each other right away. They seem very happy planning for eggs.” On her way to go search the nearby stream for fish you said, “Enjoy your night, I’m going to make some dinner myself.”

To which Hector answered, “Eat well, do not worry your mate will surely return to claim himself as yours soon.” Giggling to yourself mentally you walked back to the house catching sight of her one legged giddy hop with fish still wiggling in her foot she showed off to Hector. Dinner was pulled together, a thick stew using up more of your jarred goods and bread before you cleaned up and headed to your bedroom to change and lay in bed to a film waiting to fall asleep again knowing you needed more rest.

Pt 26

@himoverflowers​, @theincaprincess​​​, @aspiringtranslator​, @sweeticedtea​, @ggbbhehe4455​, @thegreyberet​, @patanghill17​, @jesgisborne​, @curvestrology​, @alishlieb​, @jogregor​, @armitageadoration​, @fizzyxcustard​, @here2have-fun​, @lilith15000​, @marvels-ghost​, @catthefearless​, @imjusthereforthereads​, @c-s-stars​, @otakumultimuse-hiddlewhore​, @mariannetora​, @shesakillerkween

Hobbit/LotR – @abiwim​, @jotink78​, @pastelhexmaniac​

[thatvixenchick]

AUgust Day 18 - Bodyguard

Hiroi/Take/Mine from Choco Strawberry Vanilla

(This is entirely self indulgent because I barely know anyone that enjoys this manga, but I love it, and this is gonna be reflective of their dysfunctionally functional relationship from the source material, so Dubcon Warning I guess. #hatersgonnahate)

Mine managed to get pretty far with his visitor pass half hidden in his jacket and a confident look on his face like he belonged. He skirted around security and cut a path straight through the set the crew was building in order to get to the trailers in the back lot. That was where the stars were. That was where Hiroi was.

Of course, Hiroi being the highest paid actor on the movie set meant he had a personal bodyguard who was always on duty. The guy, Take, was well known among fans, sticking to Hiroi’s side so much that fanfiction was written of the two. Mine was praying that his luck would hold out and Take would be taking a break himself, but Mine should have known better. Take was there, just outside the door of Hiroi’s trailer, and Mine wasn’t getting any further.

Mine wasn’t unprepared. He argued that he and Hiroi were friends from high school, and if Take looked it up, then he’d see it was true that they attended the same school and were in the same class. However, Take refused to listen to Mine, resulting in a too loud argument that had Hiroi himself poking his head out to assess the situation.

It was a dream come true to see Hiroi in person once more, and that would have been enough, but Hiroi actually remembered Mine, stating far too bluntly that Mine was shy and never talked to anyone in school and always made poor grades. Despite that, Hiroi appeared happy to see Mine and invited him inside, not that Take was happy about that. He followed.

Hiroi asked if there was anything Mine would like to say, and Mine, not wanting to waste his one and only opportunity, confessed. Hiroi looked overjoyed, but Take said, “No. Not again.”

What Mine didn’t know was that Hiroi loved to give all of himself for the chance at such love returned. He always agreed to date whoever confessed to him, but everyone expected happy, handsome, friendly Hiroi to be the man of their dreams. They didn’t expect him to be someone other than exactly what they dreamed he was. Take had to watch and pick up the pieces every time Hiroi’s heart was shattered, and he didn’t want Hiroi to suffer again.

But Mine remembered that in high school, girls would complain that Hiroi was soulless. Mine knew better. He’d seen a girl break up with Hiroi and how, after she’d left, he curled up and sobbed. Mine was determined to love Hiroi no matter what. When Hiroi entered the acting world, Mine devoured everything Hiroi was in. Mine loved every character, pure or evil, no matter what, because any one of them could be a full or partial reflection of the real Hiroi.

Take was protective and didn’t trust Mine’s distanced devotion to last in the face of the real Hiroi. So when Mine confessed, claiming that Hiroi was the only one that was kind to Mine in high school, Take assumed the worst. Take demanded that Hiroi test it. So Hiroi took off his shoe and stuck out his foot. “Kiss it,” he said, in the most sadistic voice he could muster.

To both their surprise, Mine did, gladly. Hiroi lit up like a beacon, his sunshine nature bursting through his acting in an instant. He said, “I’ve never dated a man before, so I hope you will patiently guide me.”

Take was still not happy about this, but he could never deny Hiroi anything. So when a date was set for Mine to spend two days at Hiroi’s apartment, Take continued pushing Mine’s limits. He took Mine’s phone and shoes first to lock away in case they tried to record anything detrimental to Hiroi’s career. Then he took all of Mine’s clothes, stating that Mine wouldn’t dare to share pictures of their time together if he was in such a compromising position.

Mine agreed, and Hiroi was excited to play a number of new games including “sit on the floor so I can feed you Take’s cooking by hand” and “use only your mouth to show how much you love me.” Mine never backed down, basking in the attention of the person he’d been in love with for so many years now, accepting his embarrassment as a sacrifice given to make Hiroi happy.

They continued like this for weeks until the night they were in a private booth at a club. Hiroi was drunk, and Take was quiet. Mine was happy simply being held and touched by Hiroi, despite the semi-public setting. But then Hiroi apologized to Take for being selfish. Hiroi explained that Take didn’t know how to feel anything, but after so much time together, he could share Hiroi’s emotions so long as Hiroi offered them.

Hiroi wanted Take to be happy, so Hiroi shared everything that made him happy. Take was devoted because of that. But Hiroi had been so happy with Mine, that he’d been afraid Mine would run if he pushed too far. Mine was confused since he had thought he’d proved that he would never leave Hiroi. Happy to hear this, Hiroi said he wanted to share how wonderful Mine’s body was with Take.

That was when it clicked. Hiroi wanted Mine to be sexual with the both of them. To Mine’s shock, Take wasn’t against this. Apparently, they’d done such things before, though historically with women, and the women typically broke up with Hiroi within a few months afterwards. Sometimes the women fell in love with Take instead, believing Take to be kinder, gentler, more attentive, but Take was none of those things, he only treated them with care because he shared Hiroi’s affection. If they didn’t love Hiroi, Take couldn’t love them.

Mine wasn’t sure what to make of all that he was hearing, nor could he understand it well what with Hiroi undressing him. Still, Mine was a man on a mission, and if this was Take’s next challenge, then Mine would take it head on.

As it turned out, having sex with the three of them was enjoyable, though it typically left Mine worn out. Take was a gentle lover if Hiroi asked him to be, but Mine had said that Take could do whatever pleased him. Take was NOT a gentle lover, but he wasn’t cruel, either. He cared for Mine, and even if it was because of Hiroi, it left Mine feeling odd. He didn’t want to have feelings for Take, ever. How would he be able to prove that he was forever devoted to Hiroi, with all of his being, if he also had feelings for Take?

So, Mine made sure to hate Take at all times.

Hiroi did his best to make the two get along, but it was a dynamic that Take and Mine approved of. Take wanted to be hated, and Mine wanted to hate. The sex was intense, to say the least.

It was nearly a year before Take would allow Hiroi to even talk about possibly making his relationship with Mine public, mostly because Mine was having a harder and harder time finding time off work to visit Hiroi. If Mine simply lived at the apartment or house Hiroi owned in whatever city he was filming, then it would save on housekeeping bills. Mine could cook, clean, and watch the plants. Maybe Hiroi could finally get a pet! He had always wanted a pet.

Mine wasn’t sure how he felt about being what was essentially a kept housewife, so Hiroi offered to make a space for Mine to work on cars since that was what his trade education was in. Being able to restore cars for sale sounded like a much better option to him.

Then, one day, they were out shopping when a crowd of people descended on Hiroi. The staff and Take did their best to control the mob while Hiroi giggled over the attention. Mine recognized a few of them from one of Hiroi’s more active fan groups. They would plot to move en masse whenever they could confirm where Hiroi would be. They all assumed he was with them, which was the only reason none of them spared him a look, and it was why Mine was the only one to see the danger closing in.

There had been one other guy in the fan club meetings that was as obsessive as Mine was, but that guy was dangerous, constantly talking about wanting to collect pieces of Hiroi. He was there, stepping forward with a knife in his hand. Mine threw himself at Hiroi and got himself sliced for his effort. Take took the guy down immediately after, while the girls began screaming.

It was a small knife, so Mine wasn’t sure why he felt so dizzy until someone shouted something about nicking an artery. What terrible luck. And now there was a mob of fangirls between him and the door if he wanted to get to medical care. Well, at least he’d been able to spend so much time with Hiroi, so perhaps that was a fair trade. Especially since Hiroi was holding him tight and saying that he loved him over and over. Mine’s only regret was that Hiroi was crying.

Mine woke in the hospital feeling groggy. To his surprise, Take was sitting beside the bed, but Hiroi was nowhere in sight. Apparently, the fan girls had proceeded to beat Hiroi’s attacker nearly to death and Hiroi had to follow the whole group to the police station to give a full report on what happened. Hiroi was torn in two, knowing he was required by law to go to the station (and also wanting to help his fans not go to jail for attempted murder) and desperately wanting to be with Mine at the hospital. So Take, for the first time since being hired, left Hiroi’s side to stay by Mine’s.

And since they had time alone, Take proceeded to explain everything he expected out of Mine when he moved in with Hiroi. It was the most round about way of approving their relationship, but for Take, it was huge. And perhaps Mine realized that Take did love Mine in his own way, and not in proxy of Hiroi. And maybe Mine loved Take as well, and that was okay, because it didn’t diminish how much of himself he gave to Hiroi. Take and Mine were bound to Hiroi, but that made them understand each other on a level nobody else could.

So in the end, Hiroi and Mine’s relationship was revealed, the fans loved it because Mine had saved Hiroi’s life, Mine moved in, Take made space on the bed for Mine to take the middle, and now there was fanfiction written about all three of them. Wouldn’t it be such a surprise if those authors knew that it was true?

[killian-whump]

In Which... Time Passes

This is the ninth chapter of my MC fic about Detective Rogers’ captivity at the hands of Mother Gothel, AKA Eloise Gardener. Previous chapters (collected in this Masterpost) have seen him suffer through abuse, humiliation, neglect, sexual assault, and outright rape. In this chapter, time passes... as he suffers much, much more of the same. Please heed the warnings.

Warnings: This story involves bondage, whump and rape. This chapter serves as a smorgasbord of injustices delivered over an unspecified period of time, and DOES involve references to rape and physical and emotional torment. There is also one specific instance of rape recollected in more detail. If any of these things bother you, please do not read this chapter.

The first time had been the worst. With each successive rape, a little more of his soul eroded away... and the pain itself grew a little duller.

It was easier when she took her pleasure from him and left him be. Harder when she made him climax, as well. Worse even yet when she tried to be 'nice' and insisted on focusing entirely on him. She'd service him with her mouth or her hands, not even taking any pleasure for herself, acting as if she was doing him some grand favor.

Yeah, it was a favor, alright - the kind of favor delivered to someone who was tied down, sobbing and begging to not have to endure it. Some favor.

At least she'd returned to feeding him the wet dog food. By no stretch of the imagination was it anything like real food, but it was practically fine cuisine compared to the hard, dry kibble she'd been giving him.

She didn't relent in any of his bindings. The blindfold stayed, bothering him less and less as he adjusted to maneuvering around blindly. The chain stayed, the friction from it breaking his skin painfully in spots. The straitjacket stayed as well, the pain in his arms having long eclipsed mere cramps and turned into excruciating torment that never abated. He was driven to periodic episodes of thrashing against the canvas jacket, the need to stretch and move his arms to relieve the pain overtaking any sense he had that such movement was impossible.

Sometimes she gagged him. The large ball gag wasn't needed to keep him silent in her presence, since he rarely bothered to speak to her. Reasoning with her was impossible, he knew, and she only ever used his words against him anyway. Still, she liked to force the ball into his mouth and buckle it around his head. She liked knowing how much he hated it, how humiliating it was and how it made his jaw ache endlessly until her return.

His grip on reality was waning. He knew there was a world out there, outside of Eloise and her torture, but he was beginning to forget what it felt like to be in it. He was beginning to believe the things she told him - that he was her pet, not worthy of being a man, not good enough to be anything more than her plaything.

She called him 'Hook' occasionally, always followed by laughter and a correction that no, he wasn't Hook, he wasn't strong enough or brave enough or man enough to be Hook. He was nothing but an impostor - a weak little nothing with Hook's face.

Rogers wondered sometimes who 'Hook' was, what made him so special... and if maybe he'd be able to better survive the nightmare his life had become if he was him. Eloise certainly seemed to think so.

She was probably right.

After all, she'd been right about no one coming for him. He'd lost track of time and had no real idea how long he'd been gone, but he was sure if anyone was going to bother looking for him, they would've found him by now.

But no one ever came.

Although that wasn't entirely true. Roni had come once, promising him that she would return for him with Weaver and other officers to rescue him. He'd believed her, of course, because Roni was good. Roni wouldn't lie to him.

Roni wasn't like her.

He hadn't told Eloise, of course. She would've done something to stop Roni, or to move him, or just plain ruin everything in some other way. That was what Eloise did, after all. She ruined everything.

So he'd waited, ever hopeful, for Roni to return. He'd known she would. Roni would. She wouldn't lie to him. She would come for him if she said she was going to.

And then, one day, she had.

The police hadn't come with her. She'd laughed when he asked her about them. "You actually believed that?" she'd said. "No, honey, the police have better things to do."

He hadn't even cared, really. Roni was there, and that was enough. She could get the straitjacket off of him. She could get him out of there. Couldn't she? Wouldn't she?

But...

But she hadn't.

"Lie down," she'd said instead. "Let me look at you." The way she'd said it hadn't seemed right somehow, but maybe... maybe she just wanted to see his wounds. Maybe that was all. Maybe...

He'd lain down, just as she'd asked him to, but then she'd started touching him. Stroking him. "N-No," he'd protested weakly. "Roni, no. I don't want you to-"

"Shhh," she'd said softly. "It's alright. You like me, don't you? We're friends."

"Yes, but..." He whined. "Roni, I don't want this. Please. I just... I just want to go home. Please..."

"But you are home, honey." She'd laughed then, the sound ringing in his ears like bells. He'd always liked her laugh. It was pure. Good.

That laugh wasn't.

"Roni, please..." He'd already begun to cry. It didn't take much any longer to make him start.

"Eloise is right," Roni had said in disgust. "You really are just a big baby. You cry over the slightest thing. That's why nobody misses you, you know. It's why no one's ever going to come for you."

"But... you're here..." A part of his brain had been screaming at him that something wasn't right, that none of it was right, but hope had a funny way of refusing to die when it was all one had left to cling to.

"I'm here to use you, honey. That's all you're good for - your cock and a good laugh at how pathetic you are."

"No," he'd said quietly through his tears.

"Yes," she'd answered simply.

He was so conditioned from Eloise's daily visits that his cock had responded quickly enough to Roni's touch. The fact that she touched him exactly like Eloise did should've rung all kinds of warning bells, but any common sense he still had at that point had been buried beneath miles of shame and betrayal.

Rogers had only cried quietly as Roni took her pleasure from him. Afterwards, he'd curled up on his side and continued to cry for several moments before speaking. "Why?" he'd asked her.

"I already told you. You mean nothing to me."

He'd shaken his head weakly. "You're not her. I know you're not her."

"Of course I am."

"She wouldn't hurt me." He didn't know what had made him so sure. He barely knew Roni, but it was something he felt was true deep in his gut - no, deeper than that. Somewhere far deeper, somewhere Eloise Gardener couldn't reach. "You're not her. Why..." He'd broken down and sobbed. "Why do you have to ruin everything?"

Eloise had at least shown the decency to drop the charade. It was her own voice that had answered his query. "Because you insist on holding on to silly ideas and hopes that anyone other than me actually cares about you."

"You don't give a damn about me."

"But you're so sure Roni does?"

"No," he'd said honestly. "But I know... she's better than you. She wouldn't do what you do to me."

"Hmmph." With that, it had seemed Eloise was done with her game for that day.

But she hadn't been done with pretending to be other people. Not by a long shot. She seemed to like to rape him while pretending to be Roni, but some days she'd show up as Tilly, Henry, or even Sabine in an effort to make him think he was being rescued, only to end up delivering a beating or some other torment whilst still under the guise of one of his friends. He didn't know how she could make herself sound exactly like someone else, but he chalked it up to whatever 'magic' she had that let her control the vines and make her blanket appear and disappear from his mattress in the blink of an eye.

Rogers didn't really know why Eloise didn't use her magical powers more often. He could only guess that there was a limit to what she could do - or maybe that she enjoyed the day-to-day tasks of looking after him like he was nothing more than her pet. She seemed to delight in everything that reminded him of his new role.

She even tried to get him to do tricks for her, though she thankfully didn't push it when he refused. It was bad enough that sometimes when he pleased her, by saying or doing whatever he was told, she'd give him treats. They were just bits of bread or sweets, and he hated himself for taking and eating them, but he was always so hungry.

He knew he was losing weight, knew his uselessly immobile arms were growing weaker by the day, but there was nothing he could do about those things. His shoulder didn't seem to be dislocated after all, though something seemed to still be wrong with it. It didn't really surprise him that he'd failed to do what he'd tried for. It seemed strangely fitting, actually. Eloise kept telling him he was a failure, after all.

Eloise had gotten rid of his bucket, replacing it with an actual litter box. She'd assured him it would be easier for him and he'd be less likely to miss it. He hated that she'd been right about that. He rarely ever had to go anything else, but Eloise was kind enough to bring him a box to do it in and to dispose of it immediately whenever he did. He hated how grateful he was for that, too.

He hated everything, really. He hated everything she did to him, everything she made him do, everything he was and everything she'd turned him into. He hated that this was his life, and he hated that he was living it.

And above all... he hated her.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

31st March >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflections / Homilies on (Luke 15:1-3, 11-32 for Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year C: ‘He was lost and is found’.

Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year C

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Luke 15:1-3,11-32

The prodigal son

The tax collectors and the sinners were all seeking the company of Jesus to hear what he had to say, and the Pharisees and the scribes complained. ‘This man’ they said ‘welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he spoke this parable to them:

‘A man had two sons. The younger said to his father, “Father, let me have the share of the estate that would come to me.” So the father divided the property between them. A few days later, the younger son got together everything he had and left for a distant country where he squandered his money on a life of debauchery.

‘When he had spent it all, that country experienced a severe famine, and now he began to feel the pinch, so he hired himself out to one of the local inhabitants who put him on his farm to feed the pigs. And he would willingly have filled his belly with the husks the pigs were eating but no one offered him anything. Then he came to his senses and said, “How many of my father’s paid servants have more food than they want, and here am I dying of hunger! I will leave this place and go to my father and say: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your paid servants.” So he left the place and went back to his father.

‘While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him tenderly. Then his son said, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son.” But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the calf we have been fattening, and kill it; we are going to have a feast, a celebration, because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and is found.” And they began to celebrate.

‘Now the elder son was out in the fields, and on his way back, as he drew near the house, he could hear music and dancing. Calling one of the servants he asked what it was all about. “Your brother has come” replied the servant “and your father has killed the calf we had fattened because he has got him back safe and sound.” He was angry then and refused to go in, and his father came out to plead with him; but he answered his father, “Look, all these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed your orders, yet you never offered me so much as a kid for me to celebrate with my friends. But, for this son of yours, when he comes back after swallowing up your property – he and his women – you kill the calf we had been fattening.”

‘The father said, “My son, you are with me always and all I have is yours. But it was only right we should celebrate and rejoice, because your brother here was dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found.”’

Gospel (USA)

Luke 15:1–3, 11–32

Your brother was dead and has come to life again.

Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So to them Jesus addressed this parable: “A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, ‘Father give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’ So the father divided the property between them. After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation. When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need. So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any. Coming to his senses he thought, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger. I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.”’ So he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ Then the celebration began. Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way back, as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The servant said to him, ‘Your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him. He said to his father in reply, ‘Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’ He said to him, ‘My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’”

Reflections (5)

(i) Fourth Sunday of Lent

In certain parts of Dublin, a common greeting is, ‘What’s the story?’ We all have a story to tell, or many stories. We all try to make sense of our life by talking about it, by telling stories. Sometimes the stories we tell about ourselves can be humorous, at other times they can be sad or tragic, or a mixture of both. When someone tells us their story, we can often see something of ourselves in their story. It may not be our story, but it is not completely strange to us either.

Jesus was a great story teller. In one sense, the stories he told were not about himself; they were about all sorts of people, the good and the not so good. Yet, at a deeper level, the stories he told were about himself. He was revealing himself in his stories, his fundamental values, his basic outlook on life, his experience of God. Of all the stories that Jesus told, the story in today’s gospel reading, is one of the most memorable. The setting is that of a wealthy family. Mention is made of inheritance, servants, a fatted calf, a good quality robe, a ring. It’s a world which is a long way from Jesus’ own world as the Son of Man who had nowhere to lay his head. We might wonder if there could be anything of Jesus’ own story in this story. The story is told from the perspective of the father of the household. He has two sons; both are troublesome for very different reasons. The younger son features in the first part of the story; the elder son in the second part. The father holds the two parts of the story together. Indeed, within the story itself, he is portrayed as going out of himself so as to hold his family together. If Jesus’ own story is reflected anywhere in this story, it is in and through the character of the father.

Jesus spoke this parable in response to those who criticized him for sharing table with sinners. The implication of the criticism was that, as a man of God, Jesus should only share table with those who kept God’s law. The story Jesus told was inviting his critics to look at what he was doing with new eyes. Jesus’ critics may have thought of themselves as experts in the Law of God, but perhaps they had lost sight of the God of the Law. What was Jesus saying about himself, and about God, through this story? The younger son was only entitled to his share of the inheritance on the death of his father. In asking for his inheritance immediately, he was wishing his father dead. The son compounded this insult to his father by wasting the value of his inheritance in a far country. When he sunk as low as he could go, the son began to come home to himself, taking responsibility for what he had done, declaring, ‘I have sinned against heaven and against you’. That coming home to himself was the beginning of his coming home to his father. People listening to the story for the first time would wonder, ‘What kind of reception is this scoundrel going to get when he arrives home?’ However, the younger son’s hesitant and anxious journey towards home was enough to release his father’s deep love for him. At best, the son had hoped to be taken back as a hired servant, but he was welcomed back as an honoured son, with appropriate dress and a village meal to celebrate his homecoming. He was welcomed back not for what he had done or failed to do, but for who he was. The story suggests that this is the way God relates to us all. Regardless of what we have done or failed to do, we remain God’s beloved sons and daughters. Any effort on our part to return home to God will be responded to with love beyond all telling.

Just as the younger son insulted his father by demanding his share of the inheritance, the elder son insulted his father by refusing to join in the celebration for his younger brother. For the second time in the story the father has to go out to an estranged son, leaving the feast at which he was the host and which required his presence. The older son’s speech, so full of anger towards his father and contempt for his brother, revealed a king of loveless fidelity. He has spent his life doing what the father wanted but had never learnt to love either his father or his brother. Yet, there was no doubting the father’s love for his eldest son, ‘My son, you are always with me and all I have is yours’. The lost younger son allowed himself to be embraced by the father’s love. We are left wondering if the lost older son will also allow himself to be caught up in the father’s boundless love for him. Through this story, Jesus was revealing a God who loves all his sons and daughters equally and who is always seeking out the lost. The question the story raises is, ‘Will we allow ourselves to be found by the God who keeps seeking us out in love?’

And/Or

(ii) Fourth Sunday of Lent

Many people have worked hard over the years to reconcile the two traditions in Northern Ireland. Their efforts have borne some significant success. There are other parts of the world where the work of reconcilers has been equally effective. The case of South Africa comes to mind. Then there are parts of the world where the work of reconciliation is still waiting to be done, such as in the Middle East.

In the second reading this morning, Paul declares that God’s work is primarily the work of reconciliation: ‘God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself’. In working to reconcile people to himself, God was at the same time working to reconcile people to each other. Because we are called to share in God’s work, this work of reconciliation is our work too. Paul was very conscious that God’s reconciling work needed human agents. He states in that reading, ‘God gave us the work of handing on his reconciliation’. We have all been entrusted with God’s reconciling work. Most of us will have an opportunity from time to time to work for reconciliation between individuals who are estranged. Our own families will often provide us with such an opportunity.

The parable we heard this morning is drawn from family life. One way of hearing that story is as a call to share in God’s work of reconciliation. The father is portrayed as someone who did his utmost to bring about reconciliation between himself and his sons, and between the sons themselves. Through no fault of his own, the father found himself estranged from his younger son. The younger son wasn’t prepared to wait for his father to die to gain access to his inheritance; he wanted it immediately. He then proceeded to waste it on self-indulgent living. From the moment the younger son headed off on his reckless journey into personal chaos and break-down, the father was alert to every opportunity for reconciliation. He kept scanning the horizon for an opening no matter how small. The younger son had to hit rock bottom before he could acknowledge the painful truth of his own failings, ‘I have sinned against heaven and against you’. That was the beginning of his journey home. When the father spotted his son on the distant horizon one day, he took his chance with abandon. He ran to embrace his son and showered him with kisses. When someone runs out to meet us like that, the journey home is always shorter. The opening the son gave his father was all he needed to bring about the reconciliation he desperately desired.

While he was hosting the feast to celebrate his younger son’s return, the father was made aware that his older son was now estranged from him. For a second time, he headed out from his house to a lost son. Perhaps the father had taken his older son’s fidelity for granted. He now had more work to do to reconcile his older son to himself. In response to the older son’s angry speech, the father addressed him tenderly as ‘my son’ and spoke the language of communion, ‘you are with me always and all I have is yours’. He was determined to build a bridge to his estranged older son. He also tried to build a bridge between his older son and his younger son. Although the older son had referred to his brother as ‘this son of yours’, the father gently reminds his older son that the one whom he disdained was his brother, ‘your brother here was dead and has come to life’. We are given a picture of a man working hard to hold his family together. He is a reconciler, an image of the God who in Christ was reconciling people to himself and to each other.

That kind of person is not totally unfamiliar to us. Many a parent has worked hard to hold a family together. We can probably identify such people in our own experience, people who kept lines of communication open to those who were intent on cutting themselves off from everyone. If lines of communication are kept open long enough, it often happens that those who are estranged eventually travel down them. In the parable Jesus is portraying God’s way of relating to us, and he is calling on us to relate to each other in the same way. We give thanks to God today for those people in our families, our communities, our country who are relating in this way - the reconcilers, the bridge builders, those who are prepared to move from where they are to make the journey shorter for others. We also know all too well that there are other people who are intent on dividing. This is why we each need to seize whatever opportunity the Lord gives us to share in his reconciling work. Like the father in the parable, we are called to scan the horizon, to go out to those who, like the younger son, are slowly struggling towards us and those who, like the older son, are immobilized by their anger. Whenever we respond to that call, God’s reconciling work in Christ is being brought to completion through us.

And/Or

(iii)  Fourth Sunday of Lent

There was a programme on the T.V. last Tuesday night about our President, Mary McAleese. One on the aspects of the programme that struck me was the work that her husband Martin has been doing to build bridges with the leaders of militant loyalism. In the early years of the troubles, Martin’s own family had been driven out of their home in East Belfast. His contacts in recent years with the loyalist leaders helped to create a context in which it was possible for them to visit Aras an Uachtaran, and for the President herself to visit a museum in Belfast dedicated to the loyalist tradition. I felt that here was a very concrete expression of the work of reconciliation.

In the second reading this morning, Paul declares that God’s work is primarily the work of reconciliation: ‘God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself’. In working to reconcile people to himself, God was at the same time working to reconcile people to each other. Our journey to God can only be in community with others. If the work of God is the work of reconciliation, it is also the case that the work of reconciliation is always the work of God. To be engaged in the work of reconciliation is to be doing God’s work. Paul was very conscious that God’s reconciling work needed human agents if it was to become effective. He states in that reading, ‘God gave us the work of handing on his reconciliation’. We have all been entrusted with God’s reconciling work. God wants to work through us to accomplish the task of reconciliation.

Today’s readings invite us to ask ourselves, ‘To what extent am I engaged in God’s work of reconciliation’. Not many of us may find ourselves in a situation where we can engage in the work of reconciling whole communities that have been estranged from each other, the kind of work that Martin McAleese and many others are constantly engaged in. However, I suspect that most of us will have an opportunity from time to time to work for reconciliation between individuals who are estranged. Our own families will often provide us with such an opportunity.

The parable we heard this morning is drawn from family life. It can be heard in many ways. One way of hearing that story is as a call to share in God’s work of reconciliation. The main character in the story, the father, is someone who worked hard to bring about reconciliation between his sons and himself, and between the sons themselves. In that sense he is truly a godly figure, a Christ-like figure. Through no fault of his own, the father found himself estranged from his younger son. From the moment the younger son headed off on his reckless journey into personal chaos and break-down, the father was alert to every opportunity for reconciliation. He scanned the horizon for an opening no matter how small. When he spotted his son on the distant horizon one day, the father took his chance with abandon. He ran to embrace his son. When someone comes out to meet us, the journey home is always shorter and easier. The opening that the son gave his father was all that the father needed. Almost immediately, again through no fault of his own, the father found himself estranged from his elder son. For a second time, he headed out from his house to an estranged son. In spite of the elder son’s insulting speech, the father addressed him tenderly as ‘my son’ and spoke the language of communion to him, ‘you are with me always’. He was determined to build a bridge to his estranged son. He also tried to build a bridge between his elder son and that son’s younger brother, ‘your brother here was dead and has come to life’. We are given a picture of a man working hard to hold the family together. The father in this family is indeed a reconciler, an image of the God who in Christ was reconciling people to himself and to each other.

The portrait of the father in this family may be considered exceptional. Yet, that kind of person is not totally unfamiliar to us either. Many a parent has worked hard to hold a family together. We can probably identify such people in our own experience, people who kept lines of communication open to those who were intent on cutting themselves off from everyone. If lines of communication are kept open long enough, it often happens that those who are estranged eventually travel down them. In the parable Jesus portrays God’s way of relating, and challenges us to relate to each other in the same way. We give thanks to God today for those people in our families, our communities, our country who are relating in this way - the reconcilers, the bridge builders, those who are prepared to move from where they are to make the journey shorter for others. We also know all too well that there are other people who are intent on dividing, whose aim it is to set people at each other’s throats, who delight in fanning the fires of racism and sectarianism. This is all the more reason why we each need to seize whatever opportunity the Lord gives us to share in his reconciling work.

Like the father in the parable, we are called to scan the horizon, to be on the look out for those who, like the younger son, are slowly struggling towards us. Like that father we are called to go out to those who, like the elder son, are frozen with anger and appear to be going nowhere. Whenever we respond to that call, God’s reconciling work in Christ is being brought to completion through us.

And/Or

(iv) Fourth Sunday of Lent

In the world in which we live we often work on the principle that for someone to win, someone else has to loose. This is evidently true in some areas of life, such as sport. If two teams are playing, only one team can win. The winners and losers syndrome operates into other areas of life as well. If one child in a family gets a gift, it can often create something of a crisis for other children who can easily feel neglected. As a result, when one child celebrates his or her birthday and gets presents, parents often see to it that the other children get something small as well. It is not only children who can feel hard done by if others seem to benefit. One of the difficulties of negotiating an agreement between the parties in the North in recent years has been the sense that a gain for one political tradition must automatically mean a loss for the other tradition. Sometimes within an organization, if someone is honoured in a particular way, others can feel slighted, even though no one set out to do this.  

We find this same dynamic at work in the parable that Jesus tells in today’s gospel reading. The fuss that the father made over his younger son, who had returned home after making a fool of himself abroad, left the older son feeling that he was being neglected. His father’s lavish welcome of his younger brother made the elder son very angry and in his anger he refused to join in the welcome home festivities. The words he speaks to his father are seething with resentment. He speaks of himself as a slave who has never been properly rewarded. He clearly believes that his father loves him less than his younger brother. The reality, however, was very different. There are no winners and losers in this story. The father loved his elder son as much as his younger son. Whereas the elder son addressed the father in sharp and angry tones, the father replies to him in tones of great tenderness, ‘My son, you are always with me and all I have is yours’. Just as he had tenderly embraced the younger son, so now, in a different way, the father tenderly embraces his older son. His lost younger son had been found, the one who had been as good as dead had come back to life, and that was a good reason for everyone to celebrate. The father is saying to his elder son, ‘Come and celebrate with us’. The story ends with that invitation; we are not told whether the elder son joined in the celebration or stayed outside, nursing his sense of grievance. In reality, Jesus was addressing this invitation to the Pharisees and scribes who have been standing aloof from Jesus’ unconventional ministry, complaining that he was eating with tax collectors and sinners.

Jesus paints a picture of a father who was incapable of showing favouritism, because he loved all of his children equally. There were no winners and losers in his family; all were winners; all were equally graced by the father’s tender and forgiving love. The father loved the rule breaker and the rule keeper equally, the rebel son as much as the dutiful son. In painting such a picture of a human father, Jesus was really painting a self-portrait, and he was also painting a portrait of the God whom he was sent into the world to reveal. Jesus is saying to us that God’s love does not discriminate between people, and because it does not discriminate, it can appear extravagant and, even, foolhardy by human standards. Such a God has no favourite children; all of God’s children are equally favoured. The discrimination is not on God’s side but on the human side; some, like the younger son, allow themselves to be embraced by God’s love; others, like the elder son, hold themselves aloof from such love. Jesus was saying through this story: Here is a God who can be trusted, in whose presence we can feel confident. Here is a God who accepts us as we are and who welcomes us whenever we turn towards him, even when we behave selfishly and foolishly, even when, in our anger, we stand aloof from God and others. This is the good news that Jesus came to preach, and that many of his contemporaries found so scandalous.

This remains good news for all of us today. We need a God that we can trust, whose love is reliable, not a God who is capricious or moody or unpredictable. There is something very reassuring about the father in the story that Jesus tells. He can take all the negativity that is thrown at him from within his own family, and it does not change him. He is the same person at the end of the story as he was at the beginning. Here indeed is someone who can be relied on. God is like that, Jesus is saying. God is the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow, the one who was, who is and who is to come. We are the ones who change. Sometimes we can be more like the younger son, insisting on what we want without much thought for the consequences for others. At other times we can be like the older son, full of resentment and self-pity. Wherever we are, whoever we are, Jesus tells us that God comes out to meet us, to embrace us and, thereby, to transform us, so that we end up more like the father and less like either of his sons. It is the father in the story that, at the end of the day, we are all called to become.

And/Or

(v) Fourth Sunday of Lent

When we go to a film or to a play that has a range of different characters, we can sometimes find ourselves identifying with one of the character more than with any other character. Something about that particular character speaks to us; it might be the situation in which they find themselves, or their reaction to that situation. Identifying with one of the characters allows us to enter into the story more fully.

The parable that Jesus tells in this morning’s gospel reading is one of the best known of the parables that Jesus told. It is a story that has spoken to believers down through the centuries. It has also inspired some of the greatest artists. We only have to think of Rembrandt’s depiction of the welcome given by the father in the story to his younger son who arrives home a broken man from the distant country towards which he had earlier set out with such great expectation and enthusiasm. It is above all that particular moment in the story which has captured the imagination of artists like Rembrandt. In many ways, that moment of encounter between the loving father and his rebellious son is the high point of the story.

Yet, many people on hearing this story find themselves drawn to the third character in the story, the elder son. He is the character in the story that many people identify with. He is the one through whom many find themselves entering the story. We can easily feel some sympathy for this dutiful, hard-working son who resents all the fuss that is being made over his younger brother, who had walked away from his duties and responsibilities to indulge his own desires without any regard for others in the family. We sense that justice is not being done here because the waster is getting what he does not deserve and the person of exemplary character is getting a raw deal. Many of those who first heard the parable from Jesus’ own lips may well have responded to it in just this way. It is that last part of the story, the meeting between the elder brother and his father which often engages us more powerfully, which is why the traditional title of this story, ‘the parable of the prodigal son’ does not really do it justice. It is not just a story about one son, but a story about two sons and their father.

Anger is the emotion that characterizes the older son. ‘He was angry and refused to go in’; he refused to have anything to do with the welcome home celebrations that his father had ordered for his younger son. The elder son had more anger towards his father than towards his younger brother. The anger of the older son towards his father in the story was a mirror image of the anger of the Pharisees and the scribes towards Jesus. ‘This man’, they said of Jesus, ‘welcomes sinners and eats with them’. Like the older brother in the story, they too were asking why those who had not kept the rules were now being showered with such grace and favour.

To some extent, in speaking this parable, Jesus was really saying that his ways, God’s ways, are not our ways. The attitude of the older brother towards his younger brother corresponds more to our ways; that is why we find it so easy to identify with him. The attitude of the father towards his younger son corresponds more to God’s ways. The story suggests that God’s sense of justice and our sense of justice are not quite the same. There is a generosity of spirit about the father in the story which explodes the rather strict sense of justice that characterizes the older brother. The same generosity of spirit characterized Jesus, and the God whom Jesus revealed. In reading and reflecting on this story, I find it helpful to ask myself the question, ‘If I were the younger son returning home, which of the two would I prefer to be there on the doorstep waiting to receive me - my father or my brother?’ Or to put the question in more general terms, ‘If I were the younger son, whose sense of justice would I  be more at home with, that of the father or that of the elder son?’

The parable could be heard as inviting us to move more in the direction of God’s ways, to become more like the father and less like the older brother. If anger characterized the older son, compassion was the hallmark of the father. In the words of the gospel reading, ‘While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion’. The parable calls on us to make the journey from anger to compassion whenever those who have done wrong take steps to put things right and to make a new beginning. The older son who stood in judgement over his father and his younger brother was not as virtuous as he made himself out to be. Like his younger brother, he too needed to come home, to come in from the cold. We all have a journey to make; none of us have arrived. That realization can help create a space for the generous spirit of the father and of Jesus to grow more fully within us.

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

Email: sjtbclontarf@eircom.net or  frmartinhogan@gmail.com

Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ie  Please join us via our webcam.

Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC.

Facebook: St John the Baptist RC Parish, Clontarf.

Tumblr: Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin.

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Sun Yang and Swimming Descend Into a Battle Over Doping

GWANGJU, South Korea — A doping cloud has long hung over this sport and one of the world’s best swimmers, and at the world championships this week, it finally burst, submerging the event in silent and sullen protests directed at Sun Yang of China, a six-time Olympic medalist.

Sun collected his 11th world championship title Tuesday after the apparent winner, Danas Rapsys of Lithuania, was disqualified for moving on the blocks at the start of the 200-meter freestyle. Every sport needs a villain, and in swimming, a sneering Sun seems content to be that person. After each win, the swimming world directs its anger at him as the symbol of everything that is wrong with the sport.

Sun, 27, who seven years ago in London became the first man from China to win an Olympic swimming title, has brought much of this anger upon himself, beginning in 2014, when he served a three-month suspension after testing positive for trimetazidine. He could have obtained a therapeutic use exemption to use the stimulant legally to treat a heart condition. Ever since, his record-breaking career has stirred resentment, which was on full display on Tuesday at a competition that is second in prestige only to the Olympics.

On Sunday, the Australian Mack Horton refused to join Sun on the medals podium and dignify Sun’s victory in the 400-meter freestyle. The reigning Olympic champion, Horton, 23, finished second, then stood silently behind the podium, an act that earned him a public reprimand from FINA, the sport’s international governing body. Sun’s fans choked Horton’s social media feed with vitriol, including death threats.

That didn’t stop Duncan Scott of Britain from entering the fray Tuesday during the medals ceremony for the 200-meter freestyle. Scott, who tied for third, refused to shake Sun’s hand or pose for photographs with the winner after the medal ceremony.

Sun, a 6-foot-6 behemoth, pointed at Scott’s chest as they left the pool area and appeared to shout, “You loser, I’m winning, yes!”

Sun then continued goading Scott, who smiled and kept walking.

Sun was not made available for a news conference because he was stuck in a routine, postrace drug test. If there was any doubt, it seems clear now that he will continue serving as the star whose history illuminates the complications of cleaning up the sport, in part because of his own behavior. Sun, whom Horton described as a “drug cheat” during the 2016 Olympics, invited more scrutiny in September when he smashed a vial of blood with a hammer to prevent antidoping test collectors from leaving his home with a sample.

While warming up for her victory in the 100-meter breaststroke, the American Lilly King happened to look up at a giant video screen in time to watch the medal ceremony unfold in all its glory. King has been outspoken in her disdain for drug cheats and FINA, whose efforts to clean up the sport she finds severely lacking, and she expressed admiration for Scott.

“What he did was incredibly brave,” she said, noting that Scott surely will face consequences.

“FINA has currently done more to reprimand Mack Horton than they have to reprimand Sun Yang,” she said.

Whether that is true no longer seems to matter to many top swimmers, especially those from the United States, Australia and Britain. Sun was just a toddler in 1994 when 10 Chinese swimmers tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. China was subsequently barred from the 1995 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, and the incident created a lingering veil of suspicion in the West.

While Sun’s method of rendering the test null and void was extreme, it is not unheard-of for athletes to express discomfort with some aspect of the testing process.

Travis Tygart, chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said athletes sometimes balked at providing a sample for various reasons, and when that happens they are encouraged to contact a doping official to talk through their concerns. In an email exchange, Tygart said: “I’ve probably talked to 12 to 24 over the past 10 years to explain the process and answer any questions. Never have we had a sample being given and then destroyed by the athlete.”

Athletes tend to approach drug tests with the same attention to detail as pilots carrying out their preflight plane inspections, and for good reason: A positive result can ground careers and ruin reputations.

Nathan Adrian, an eight-time Olympic medalist, said there have been times when he has reached out to USADA officials for clarification about some aspect of the testing procedure. And if he was still discomfited by the collection process?

“I would follow the doping control officer and not let that sample out of my sight until it was at the FedEx station and gone,” Adrian said. “And on the way I would call USADA and find out if the paperwork was legitimate.”

In Sun’s case, an independent panel heard arguments from both sides and then ruled in his favor. Sun’s refusal to provide a sample did not violate antidoping rules, it said, because the collectors failed to provide the proper validation papers required to draw blood under the International Standard for Testing and Investigations.

“It was probably a very tough call and the tie went to the athlete,” Tygart said.

The World Anti-Doping Agency is pursuing a more severe punishment for Sun from the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the sports world’s ultimate judicial body, but the hearing isn’t until September.

Horton, angered that Sun’s case wasn’t resolved before this competition, carried out his podium protest with trepidation because of the consequences he knew would be coming.

“I was aware that the Australian athlete had dissatisfaction and personal feelings toward me,” Sun said, through an interpreter, after his 400 freestyle victory. “Disrespecting me is O.K., but disrespecting China was very unfortunate and I feel sorry about that.”

King said she watched athletes from all over the world applaud Horton when he entered the dining hall Sunday night. But Horton drew criticism in other quarters. Richard Ings, the former chief executive of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency, said in a tweet that Horton deserved to be fined for his behavior.

In a radio interview Monday with the Melbourne-based Sports Entertainment Network 1116, Ings described himself as “no great fan of Sun Yang,” but said, “I do believe that athletes are treading a very treacherous path if they are making allegations against other individuals that they cannot substantiate.”

Swimming’s international governing body also censured Horton, releasing a statement saying that FINA events are no place “to make personal statements or gestures.”

Message received. After his preliminary swim Tuesday in the 800-meter freestyle, Horton sidestepped questions about his protest. “The focus now is the team’s performances and making sure we get through the week,” he said.

Six thousand miles away, in Southern California, Shirley Babashoff expressed her appreciation for Horton’s stand. In 1976, after competing against a doped-up East German team, she asked her American coaches if she could skip her final individual Olympic medals ceremony. They told her she could not, even though she had broken the record for the 800-meter freestyle but finished second to a swimmer the world now knows was part of a government-sponsored doping program.

“When you’re not being heard,” she said, “that’s the way to go.”

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Sun Yang and Swimming Descend Into a Battle Over Doping

GWANGJU, South Korea — A doping cloud has long hung over this sport and one of the world’s best swimmers, and at the world championships this week, it finally burst, submerging the event in silent and sullen protests directed at Sun Yang of China, a six-time Olympic medalist.

Sun collected his 11th world championship title Tuesday after the apparent winner, Danas Rapsys of Lithuania, was disqualified for moving on the blocks at the start of the 200-meter freestyle. Every sport needs a villain, and in swimming, a sneering Sun seems content to be that person. After each win, the swimming world directs its anger at him as the symbol of everything that is wrong with the sport.

Sun, 27, who seven years ago in London became the first man from China to win an Olympic swimming title, has brought much of this anger upon himself, beginning in 2014, when he served a three-month suspension after testing positive for trimetazidine. He could have obtained a therapeutic use exemption to use the stimulant legally to treat a heart condition. Ever since, his record-breaking career has stirred resentment, which was on full display on Tuesday at a competition that is second in prestige only to the Olympics.

On Sunday, the Australian Mack Horton refused to join Sun on the medals podium and dignify Sun’s victory in the 400-meter freestyle. The reigning Olympic champion, Horton, 23, finished second, then stood silently behind the podium, an act that earned him a public reprimand from FINA, the sport’s international governing body. Sun’s fans choked Horton’s social media feed with vitriol, including death threats.

That didn’t stop Duncan Scott of Britain from entering the fray Tuesday during the medals ceremony for the 200-meter freestyle. Scott, who tied for third, refused to shake Sun’s hand or pose for photographs with the winner after the medal ceremony.

Sun, a 6-foot-6 behemoth, pointed at Scott’s chest as they left the pool area and appeared to shout, “You loser, I’m winning, yes!”

Sun then continued goading Scott, who smiled and kept walking.

Sun was not made available for a news conference because he was stuck in a routine, postrace drug test. If there was any doubt, it seems clear now that he will continue serving as the star whose history illuminates the complications of cleaning up the sport, in part because of his own behavior. Sun, whom Horton described as a “drug cheat” during the 2016 Olympics, invited more scrutiny in September when he smashed a vial of blood with a hammer to prevent antidoping test collectors from leaving his home with a sample.

While warming up for her victory in the 100-meter breaststroke, the American Lilly King happened to look up at a giant video screen in time to watch the medal ceremony unfold in all its glory. King has been outspoken in her disdain for drug cheats and FINA, whose efforts to clean up the sport she finds severely lacking, and she expressed admiration for Scott.

“What he did was incredibly brave,” she said, noting that Scott surely will face consequences.

“FINA has currently done more to reprimand Mack Horton than they have to reprimand Sun Yang,” she said.

Whether that is true no longer seems to matter to many top swimmers, especially those from the United States, Australia and Britain. Sun was just a toddler in 1994 when 10 Chinese swimmers tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. China was subsequently barred from the 1995 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, and the incident created a lingering veil of suspicion in the West.

While Sun’s method of rendering the test null and void was extreme, it is not unheard-of for athletes to express discomfort with some aspect of the testing process.

Travis Tygart, chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said athletes sometimes balked at providing a sample for various reasons, and when that happens they are encouraged to contact a doping official to talk through their concerns. In an email exchange, Tygart said: “I’ve probably talked to 12 to 24 over the past 10 years to explain the process and answer any questions. Never have we had a sample being given and then destroyed by the athlete.”

Athletes tend to approach drug tests with the same attention to detail as pilots carrying out their preflight plane inspections, and for good reason: A positive result can ground careers and ruin reputations.

Nathan Adrian, an eight-time Olympic medalist, said there have been times when he has reached out to USADA officials for clarification about some aspect of the testing procedure. And if he was still discomfited by the collection process?

“I would follow the doping control officer and not let that sample out of my sight until it was at the FedEx station and gone,” Adrian said. “And on the way I would call USADA and find out if the paperwork was legitimate.”

In Sun’s case, an independent panel heard arguments from both sides and then ruled in his favor. Sun’s refusal to provide a sample did not violate antidoping rules, it said, because the collectors failed to provide the proper validation papers required to draw blood under the International Standard for Testing and Investigations.

“It was probably a very tough call and the tie went to the athlete,” Tygart said.

The World Anti-Doping Agency is pursuing a more severe punishment for Sun from the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the sports world’s ultimate judicial body, but the hearing isn’t until September.

Horton, angered that Sun’s case wasn’t resolved before this competition, carried out his podium protest with trepidation because of the consequences he knew would be coming.

“I was aware that the Australian athlete had dissatisfaction and personal feelings toward me,” Sun said, through an interpreter, after his 400 freestyle victory. “Disrespecting me is O.K., but disrespecting China was very unfortunate and I feel sorry about that.”

King said she watched athletes from all over the world applaud Horton when he entered the dining hall Sunday night. But Horton drew criticism in other quarters. Richard Ings, the former chief executive of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency, said in a tweet that Horton deserved to be fined for his behavior.

In a radio interview Monday with the Melbourne-based Sports Entertainment Network 1116, Ings described himself as “no great fan of Sun Yang,” but said, “I do believe that athletes are treading a very treacherous path if they are making allegations against other individuals that they cannot substantiate.”

Swimming’s international governing body also censured Horton, releasing a statement saying that FINA events are no place “to make personal statements or gestures.”

Message received. After his preliminary swim Tuesday in the 800-meter freestyle, Horton sidestepped questions about his protest. “The focus now is the team’s performances and making sure we get through the week,” he said.

Six thousand miles away, in Southern California, Shirley Babashoff expressed her appreciation for Horton’s stand. In 1976, after competing against a doped-up East German team, she asked her American coaches if she could skip her final individual Olympic medals ceremony. They told her she could not, even though she had broken the record for the 800-meter freestyle but finished second to a swimmer the world now knows was part of a government-sponsored doping program.

“When you’re not being heard,” she said, “that’s the way to go.”

Credit: Source link

The post Sun Yang and Swimming Descend Into a Battle Over Doping appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/sun-yang-and-swimming-descend-into-a-battle-over-doping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sun-yang-and-swimming-descend-into-a-battle-over-doping from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186496887847

[weeklyreviewer]

Sun Yang and Swimming Descend Into a Battle Over Doping

GWANGJU, South Korea — A doping cloud has long hung over this sport and one of the world’s best swimmers, and at the world championships this week, it finally burst, submerging the event in silent and sullen protests directed at Sun Yang of China, a six-time Olympic medalist.

Sun collected his 11th world championship title Tuesday after the apparent winner, Danas Rapsys of Lithuania, was disqualified for moving on the blocks at the start of the 200-meter freestyle. Every sport needs a villain, and in swimming, a sneering Sun seems content to be that person. After each win, the swimming world directs its anger at him as the symbol of everything that is wrong with the sport.

Sun, 27, who seven years ago in London became the first man from China to win an Olympic swimming title, has brought much of this anger upon himself, beginning in 2014, when he served a three-month suspension after testing positive for trimetazidine. He could have obtained a therapeutic use exemption to use the stimulant legally to treat a heart condition. Ever since, his record-breaking career has stirred resentment, which was on full display on Tuesday at a competition that is second in prestige only to the Olympics.

On Sunday, the Australian Mack Horton refused to join Sun on the medals podium and dignify Sun’s victory in the 400-meter freestyle. The reigning Olympic champion, Horton, 23, finished second, then stood silently behind the podium, an act that earned him a public reprimand from FINA, the sport’s international governing body. Sun’s fans choked Horton’s social media feed with vitriol, including death threats.

That didn’t stop Duncan Scott of Britain from entering the fray Tuesday during the medals ceremony for the 200-meter freestyle. Scott, who tied for third, refused to shake Sun’s hand or pose for photographs with the winner after the medal ceremony.

Sun, a 6-foot-6 behemoth, pointed at Scott’s chest as they left the pool area and appeared to shout, “You loser, I’m winning, yes!”

Sun then continued goading Scott, who smiled and kept walking.

Sun was not made available for a news conference because he was stuck in a routine, postrace drug test. If there was any doubt, it seems clear now that he will continue serving as the star whose history illuminates the complications of cleaning up the sport, in part because of his own behavior. Sun, whom Horton described as a “drug cheat” during the 2016 Olympics, invited more scrutiny in September when he smashed a vial of blood with a hammer to prevent antidoping test collectors from leaving his home with a sample.

While warming up for her victory in the 100-meter breaststroke, the American Lilly King happened to look up at a giant video screen in time to watch the medal ceremony unfold in all its glory. King has been outspoken in her disdain for drug cheats and FINA, whose efforts to clean up the sport she finds severely lacking, and she expressed admiration for Scott.

“What he did was incredibly brave,” she said, noting that Scott surely will face consequences.

“FINA has currently done more to reprimand Mack Horton than they have to reprimand Sun Yang,” she said.

Whether that is true no longer seems to matter to many top swimmers, especially those from the United States, Australia and Britain. Sun was just a toddler in 1994 when 10 Chinese swimmers tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. China was subsequently barred from the 1995 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, and the incident created a lingering veil of suspicion in the West.

While Sun’s method of rendering the test null and void was extreme, it is not unheard-of for athletes to express discomfort with some aspect of the testing process.

Travis Tygart, chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said athletes sometimes balked at providing a sample for various reasons, and when that happens they are encouraged to contact a doping official to talk through their concerns. In an email exchange, Tygart said: “I’ve probably talked to 12 to 24 over the past 10 years to explain the process and answer any questions. Never have we had a sample being given and then destroyed by the athlete.”

Athletes tend to approach drug tests with the same attention to detail as pilots carrying out their preflight plane inspections, and for good reason: A positive result can ground careers and ruin reputations.

Nathan Adrian, an eight-time Olympic medalist, said there have been times when he has reached out to USADA officials for clarification about some aspect of the testing procedure. And if he was still discomfited by the collection process?

“I would follow the doping control officer and not let that sample out of my sight until it was at the FedEx station and gone,” Adrian said. “And on the way I would call USADA and find out if the paperwork was legitimate.”

In Sun’s case, an independent panel heard arguments from both sides and then ruled in his favor. Sun’s refusal to provide a sample did not violate antidoping rules, it said, because the collectors failed to provide the proper validation papers required to draw blood under the International Standard for Testing and Investigations.

“It was probably a very tough call and the tie went to the athlete,” Tygart said.

The World Anti-Doping Agency is pursuing a more severe punishment for Sun from the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the sports world’s ultimate judicial body, but the hearing isn’t until September.

Horton, angered that Sun’s case wasn’t resolved before this competition, carried out his podium protest with trepidation because of the consequences he knew would be coming.

“I was aware that the Australian athlete had dissatisfaction and personal feelings toward me,” Sun said, through an interpreter, after his 400 freestyle victory. “Disrespecting me is O.K., but disrespecting China was very unfortunate and I feel sorry about that.”

King said she watched athletes from all over the world applaud Horton when he entered the dining hall Sunday night. But Horton drew criticism in other quarters. Richard Ings, the former chief executive of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency, said in a tweet that Horton deserved to be fined for his behavior.

In a radio interview Monday with the Melbourne-based Sports Entertainment Network 1116, Ings described himself as “no great fan of Sun Yang,” but said, “I do believe that athletes are treading a very treacherous path if they are making allegations against other individuals that they cannot substantiate.”

Swimming’s international governing body also censured Horton, releasing a statement saying that FINA events are no place “to make personal statements or gestures.”

Message received. After his preliminary swim Tuesday in the 800-meter freestyle, Horton sidestepped questions about his protest. “The focus now is the team’s performances and making sure we get through the week,” he said.

Six thousand miles away, in Southern California, Shirley Babashoff expressed her appreciation for Horton’s stand. In 1976, after competing against a doped-up East German team, she asked her American coaches if she could skip her final individual Olympic medals ceremony. They told her she could not, even though she had broken the record for the 800-meter freestyle but finished second to a swimmer the world now knows was part of a government-sponsored doping program.

“When you’re not being heard,” she said, “that’s the way to go.”

Credit: Source link

The post Sun Yang and Swimming Descend Into a Battle Over Doping appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/sun-yang-and-swimming-descend-into-a-battle-over-doping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sun-yang-and-swimming-descend-into-a-battle-over-doping

[ongames]

He Treated The Very First Ebola Cases 40 Years Ago. Then He Watched The World Forget.

This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them.

KINSHASA, Congo ― In early 2014, few people worried that the Ebola virus, which is up to 90 percent fatal, would pose a global threat. So the World Health Organization sent shockwaves around the world when it announced that Ebola was spreading out of control in West Africa.

Before the epidemic was over two years later, it had killed thousands of people. They died in terrifying and painful ways, often passing the disease on to family members before and even after death. Doctors and aid workers died, people who should have been able to stay safe while offering care.

But not everyone who is exposed to the Ebola virus, which spreads through contact with blood or other bodily fluids, falls ill. Such is the case of Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum, who in 1976 became the first scientist to come into contact with Ebola and survive.

The Congolese virologist, now 74, placed himself square in the path of the disease as he worked in harrowing and hazardous conditions to identify what was killing some of its earliest victims.

“I am like Johnnie Walker,” he quipped, referencing the well-known Scotch whisky slogan, “Born 1820 ― Still going strong.” Muyembe giggled as he strode around his office imitating the brand’s iconic “Striding Man.”

It’s a joke in service of a very serious message from a doctor who has spent years battling the worst viruses. Don’t make the same mistake, he warns, that the world made with Ebola when it first arose. Don’t ignore the threat because it seems far away.

Muyembe, who now leads the Democratic Republic of Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research, had been home from studying in Europe just a few years when he received a phone call in 1976 that would change his life forever.

“The minister of health rang and said, ‘There’s a mysterious disease that’s killing people at the Catholic mission in Yambuku in Equateur province. I’m going to send you there to find out the cause.’ I was the country’s only virologist,” Muyembe recalled.

The mission hospital was more than 600 miles northeast of the capital city of Kinshasa, deep in thick forest. Muyembe set off overland in a jeep with a military colonel who was also an epidemiologist. It was “a real adventure,” he said. All they were told was that there was a suspected outbreak of yellow or typhoid fever.

But when they arrived in Yambuku, the hospital was deserted. They went to sleep at the mission and woke to a very different scene.

Three nurses and one woman had died at home overnight, and the hospital was now full of patients ― some pushed there on bicycles, many feverish ― after word had gone round that doctors had arrived from Kinshasa.

Muyembe examined and drew blood from the sick and dissected the dead to take tissue samples ― all with bare hands. Later, he would shudder at the thought of how much contact he’d had with feverish patients, many of whom didn’t stop bleeding after he withdrew the needle or scalpel.

“The blood would pour out all day. My hands were covered in blood. I didn’t have gloves,” he said.

Muyembe thinks that what saved him from death that day, and the many others when he handled infected samples with no protection, was his speedy request for soap and water. But luck must have played a role too.

The blood would pour out all day. My hands were covered in blood. I didn’t have gloves. Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum

When a nun fell ill ― with fever and red marks on her body ― Muyembe and his colleague told the mother superior that they wanted to take the samples they’d collected and the sick nun back to Kinshasa. The nun initially refused to go ― she didn’t want the community to think she was running away ― but she relented after Muyembe insisted. Another sister accompanied her on the journey to Kinshasa, so they were a group of four squeezing together in various planes and cars.

“I was always next to her,” Muyembe remembered, still looking relieved decades later at the thought of his close brush with death.

The samples from Yambuku, including the nun’s, were sent from Kinshasa to a lab in Belgium, where scientists initially thought they showed the Marburg virus, which causes another hemorrhagic fever found in Congo and neighboring Uganda.

Meanwhile, when the nun, her traveling companion and a nurse who had treated her in Kinshasa all died from the same sickness, and the epidemiologist who had gone with him to Yambuku developed a fever, Muyembe panicked. He quarantined himself in the garage at his home so as not to infect his wife and children. He couldn’t stop thinking about the test tubes full of blood samples that he had brought home briefly after returning from Yambuku.

“It was terrible because the assistant medic who had come with me sent me a message saying, ‘Ah, I am sick,’ and then poof! He was dead. The nun we brought with us had died and had contaminated another nun and a nurse. I was very afraid,” Muyembe said.

He finally got a call from Belgium that the virus wasn’t Marburg but a previously unknown hemorrhagic fever. Researchers later named it Ebola, for the river that runs through Yambuku. It was after this call ― and the death of his fellow scientist ― that Muyembe destroyed the lab samples, terrified of further contamination.

Nearly 40 years later, when Ebola hit West Africa, Muyembe was surprised by the lack of research into the virus and the poorly coordinated global and local response.

“It really was chaos,” he said. “People thought it was just something that affected East and Central Africa, so they hadn’t even studied it and weren’t prepared.”

Muyembe had worked on research into a possible vaccine nearly two decades earlier, but it was only when Ebola briefly touched Europe and the United States in 2014 that he finally saw scientists start to take this killer seriously.

During Congo’s third Ebola outbreak in 1995, the experienced virologist had transfused blood from people who had recovered from Ebola to a group of patients infected with the virus. Of the eight patients who received the transfusions, seven survived ― a result that Muyembe quickly passed on to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S.

“We kept saying, ‘Antibodies do protect.’ But for 20 years, this virus, and its treatment, was neglected,” he said. In late 2016, an experimental vaccine – developed principally in response to fears of Ebola being used as a bioterrorism agent – was shown to provide 100 percent protection against the virus. It arrived too late for the 11,000 people who died in the 2014 outbreak.

More recently, Muyembe has watched scientists scramble to stop the Zika virus once it began affecting wealthier countries. The virus is named for a forest in Uganda, where it was first found in 1947.

“Because it was an African disease, we neglected it. But with climate change and modern transport, the insects will travel to Brazil, to Europe,” he said.

There are other diseases that could devastate whole cities, countries or regions of the world, Muyembe warns.

I wish I could say that onchocerciasis would make everyone in the world blind, because then we’d have a vaccine. Dr. Muyembe

So-called neglected tropical diseases affect over 1 billion people worldwide, mainly in poor parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Some of these diseases ― echinococcosis, dengue and Chagas, for example ― have already infected people in the U.S. in small numbers. But they attract very little attention in Western media and garner limited research funding.

“I wish I could say that onchocerciasis would make everyone in the world blind, because then we’d have a vaccine,” said Muyembe of a disease otherwise known as river blindness, which threatens up to 14 million people in Congo.

“We call them neglected diseases because they come from underdeveloped countries,” he said. “But these neglected diseases can become a threat to developed countries. With travel and everything we have now, the world has become a village.”

Our world needs better research and monitoring aimed at African countries, Muyembe warned, because that’s where many diseases start. And if they’re allowed to develop, “they will be like Ebola, which came from Central Africa, went to West Africa and then suddenly was threatening the U.S. and Europe.”

Muyembe is also determined to raise up the next generation of Congolese researchers to continue his legacy. “We must train the young people,” he said, slapping two young researchers on the back. Like him, they earned their Ph.D.s in Europe and then returned home to help.

Despite cheating one of the world’s most deadly diseases and plenty of other rare illnesses since, he too plans to keep fighting. “The most important thing in dealing with a lot of these diseases is washing your hands,” he said with a fatalistic shrug.

What frightens the doctor more than staring death in the face is retiring and dying of boredom.

“I must continue working,” Muyembe said, straightening his white coat and rushing off to his next appointment at the lab.

This series is supported, in part, by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. All content is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the foundation.

If you’d like to contribute a post to the series, send an email to ProjectZero@huffingtonpost.com. And follow the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #ProjectZero.

More stories like this:

This Man Went Abroad And Brought Back A Disease Doctors Had Never Seen

Rabies Kills 189 People Every Day. Here’s Why You Never Hear About It.

A Parasite Attacked This Dad’s Brain And Destroyed His Family

Volunteers With No Medical Training Are Fighting Diseases The World Ignores

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He Treated The Very First Ebola Cases 40 Years Ago. Then He Watched The World Forget. published first on http://ift.tt/2lnpciY

[yes-dal456]

He Treated The Very First Ebola Cases 40 Years Ago. Then He Watched The World Forget.

This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them.

KINSHASA, Congo ― In early 2014, few people worried that the Ebola virus, which is up to 90 percent fatal, would pose a global threat. So the World Health Organization sent shockwaves around the world when it announced that Ebola was spreading out of control in West Africa.

Before the epidemic was over two years later, it had killed thousands of people. They died in terrifying and painful ways, often passing the disease on to family members before and even after death. Doctors and aid workers died, people who should have been able to stay safe while offering care.

But not everyone who is exposed to the Ebola virus, which spreads through contact with blood or other bodily fluids, falls ill. Such is the case of Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum, who in 1976 became the first scientist to come into contact with Ebola and survive.

The Congolese virologist, now 74, placed himself square in the path of the disease as he worked in harrowing and hazardous conditions to identify what was killing some of its earliest victims.

“I am like Johnnie Walker,” he quipped, referencing the well-known Scotch whisky slogan, “Born 1820 ― Still going strong.” Muyembe giggled as he strode around his office imitating the brand’s iconic “Striding Man.”

It’s a joke in service of a very serious message from a doctor who has spent years battling the worst viruses. Don’t make the same mistake, he warns, that the world made with Ebola when it first arose. Don’t ignore the threat because it seems far away.

Muyembe, who now leads the Democratic Republic of Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research, had been home from studying in Europe just a few years when he received a phone call in 1976 that would change his life forever.

“The minister of health rang and said, ‘There’s a mysterious disease that’s killing people at the Catholic mission in Yambuku in Equateur province. I’m going to send you there to find out the cause.’ I was the country’s only virologist,” Muyembe recalled.

The mission hospital was more than 600 miles northeast of the capital city of Kinshasa, deep in thick forest. Muyembe set off overland in a jeep with a military colonel who was also an epidemiologist. It was “a real adventure,” he said. All they were told was that there was a suspected outbreak of yellow or typhoid fever.

But when they arrived in Yambuku, the hospital was deserted. They went to sleep at the mission and woke to a very different scene.

Three nurses and one woman had died at home overnight, and the hospital was now full of patients ― some pushed there on bicycles, many feverish ― after word had gone round that doctors had arrived from Kinshasa.

Muyembe examined and drew blood from the sick and dissected the dead to take tissue samples ― all with bare hands. Later, he would shudder at the thought of how much contact he’d had with feverish patients, many of whom didn’t stop bleeding after he withdrew the needle or scalpel.

“The blood would pour out all day. My hands were covered in blood. I didn’t have gloves,” he said.

Muyembe thinks that what saved him from death that day, and the many others when he handled infected samples with no protection, was his speedy request for soap and water. But luck must have played a role too.

The blood would pour out all day. My hands were covered in blood. I didn’t have gloves. Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum

When a nun fell ill ― with fever and red marks on her body ― Muyembe and his colleague told the mother superior that they wanted to take the samples they’d collected and the sick nun back to Kinshasa. The nun initially refused to go ― she didn’t want the community to think she was running away ― but she relented after Muyembe insisted. Another sister accompanied her on the journey to Kinshasa, so they were a group of four squeezing together in various planes and cars.

“I was always next to her,” Muyembe remembered, still looking relieved decades later at the thought of his close brush with death.

The samples from Yambuku, including the nun’s, were sent from Kinshasa to a lab in Belgium, where scientists initially thought they showed the Marburg virus, which causes another hemorrhagic fever found in Congo and neighboring Uganda.

Meanwhile, when the nun, her traveling companion and a nurse who had treated her in Kinshasa all died from the same sickness, and the epidemiologist who had gone with him to Yambuku developed a fever, Muyembe panicked. He quarantined himself in the garage at his home so as not to infect his wife and children. He couldn’t stop thinking about the test tubes full of blood samples that he had brought home briefly after returning from Yambuku.

“It was terrible because the assistant medic who had come with me sent me a message saying, ‘Ah, I am sick,’ and then poof! He was dead. The nun we brought with us had died and had contaminated another nun and a nurse. I was very afraid,” Muyembe said.

He finally got a call from Belgium that the virus wasn’t Marburg but a previously unknown hemorrhagic fever. Researchers later named it Ebola, for the river that runs through Yambuku. It was after this call ― and the death of his fellow scientist ― that Muyembe destroyed the lab samples, terrified of further contamination.

Nearly 40 years later, when Ebola hit West Africa, Muyembe was surprised by the lack of research into the virus and the poorly coordinated global and local response.

“It really was chaos,” he said. “People thought it was just something that affected East and Central Africa, so they hadn’t even studied it and weren’t prepared.”

Muyembe had worked on research into a possible vaccine nearly two decades earlier, but it was only when Ebola briefly touched Europe and the United States in 2014 that he finally saw scientists start to take this killer seriously.

During Congo’s third Ebola outbreak in 1995, the experienced virologist had transfused blood from people who had recovered from Ebola to a group of patients infected with the virus. Of the eight patients who received the transfusions, seven survived ― a result that Muyembe quickly passed on to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S.

“We kept saying, ‘Antibodies do protect.’ But for 20 years, this virus, and its treatment, was neglected,” he said. In late 2016, an experimental vaccine – developed principally in response to fears of Ebola being used as a bioterrorism agent – was shown to provide 100 percent protection against the virus. It arrived too late for the 11,000 people who died in the 2014 outbreak.

More recently, Muyembe has watched scientists scramble to stop the Zika virus once it began affecting wealthier countries. The virus is named for a forest in Uganda, where it was first found in 1947.

“Because it was an African disease, we neglected it. But with climate change and modern transport, the insects will travel to Brazil, to Europe,” he said.

There are other diseases that could devastate whole cities, countries or regions of the world, Muyembe warns.

I wish I could say that onchocerciasis would make everyone in the world blind, because then we’d have a vaccine. Dr. Muyembe

So-called neglected tropical diseases affect over 1 billion people worldwide, mainly in poor parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Some of these diseases ― echinococcosis, dengue and Chagas, for example ― have already infected people in the U.S. in small numbers. But they attract very little attention in Western media and garner limited research funding.

“I wish I could say that onchocerciasis would make everyone in the world blind, because then we’d have a vaccine,” said Muyembe of a disease otherwise known as river blindness, which threatens up to 14 million people in Congo.

“We call them neglected diseases because they come from underdeveloped countries,” he said. “But these neglected diseases can become a threat to developed countries. With travel and everything we have now, the world has become a village.”

Our world needs better research and monitoring aimed at African countries, Muyembe warned, because that’s where many diseases start. And if they’re allowed to develop, “they will be like Ebola, which came from Central Africa, went to West Africa and then suddenly was threatening the U.S. and Europe.”

Muyembe is also determined to raise up the next generation of Congolese researchers to continue his legacy. “We must train the young people,” he said, slapping two young researchers on the back. Like him, they earned their Ph.D.s in Europe and then returned home to help.

Despite cheating one of the world’s most deadly diseases and plenty of other rare illnesses since, he too plans to keep fighting. “The most important thing in dealing with a lot of these diseases is washing your hands,” he said with a fatalistic shrug.

What frightens the doctor more than staring death in the face is retiring and dying of boredom.

“I must continue working,” Muyembe said, straightening his white coat and rushing off to his next appointment at the lab.

This series is supported, in part, by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. All content is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the foundation.

If you’d like to contribute a post to the series, send an email to ProjectZero@huffingtonpost.com. And follow the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #ProjectZero.

More stories like this:

This Man Went Abroad And Brought Back A Disease Doctors Had Never Seen

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He Treated The Very First Ebola Cases 40 Years Ago. Then He Watched The World Forget.

This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them.

KINSHASA, Congo ― In early 2014, few people worried that the Ebola virus, which is up to 90 percent fatal, would pose a global threat. So the World Health Organization sent shockwaves around the world when it announced that Ebola was spreading out of control in West Africa.

Before the epidemic was over two years later, it had killed thousands of people. They died in terrifying and painful ways, often passing the disease on to family members before and even after death. Doctors and aid workers died, people who should have been able to stay safe while offering care.

But not everyone who is exposed to the Ebola virus, which spreads through contact with blood or other bodily fluids, falls ill. Such is the case of Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum, who in 1976 became the first scientist to come into contact with Ebola and survive.

The Congolese virologist, now 74, placed himself square in the path of the disease as he worked in harrowing and hazardous conditions to identify what was killing some of its earliest victims.

“I am like Johnnie Walker,” he quipped, referencing the well-known Scotch whisky slogan, “Born 1820 ― Still going strong.” Muyembe giggled as he strode around his office imitating the brand’s iconic “Striding Man.”

It’s a joke in service of a very serious message from a doctor who has spent years battling the worst viruses. Don’t make the same mistake, he warns, that the world made with Ebola when it first arose. Don’t ignore the threat because it seems far away.

Muyembe, who now leads the Democratic Republic of Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research, had been home from studying in Europe just a few years when he received a phone call in 1976 that would change his life forever.

“The minister of health rang and said, ‘There’s a mysterious disease that’s killing people at the Catholic mission in Yambuku in Equateur province. I’m going to send you there to find out the cause.’ I was the country’s only virologist,” Muyembe recalled.

The mission hospital was more than 600 miles northeast of the capital city of Kinshasa, deep in thick forest. Muyembe set off overland in a jeep with a military colonel who was also an epidemiologist. It was “a real adventure,” he said. All they were told was that there was a suspected outbreak of yellow or typhoid fever.

But when they arrived in Yambuku, the hospital was deserted. They went to sleep at the mission and woke to a very different scene.

Three nurses and one woman had died at home overnight, and the hospital was now full of patients ― some pushed there on bicycles, many feverish ― after word had gone round that doctors had arrived from Kinshasa.

Muyembe examined and drew blood from the sick and dissected the dead to take tissue samples ― all with bare hands. Later, he would shudder at the thought of how much contact he’d had with feverish patients, many of whom didn’t stop bleeding after he withdrew the needle or scalpel.

“The blood would pour out all day. My hands were covered in blood. I didn’t have gloves,” he said.

Muyembe thinks that what saved him from death that day, and the many others when he handled infected samples with no protection, was his speedy request for soap and water. But luck must have played a role too.

The blood would pour out all day. My hands were covered in blood. I didn’t have gloves. Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum

When a nun fell ill ― with fever and red marks on her body ― Muyembe and his colleague told the mother superior that they wanted to take the samples they’d collected and the sick nun back to Kinshasa. The nun initially refused to go ― she didn’t want the community to think she was running away ― but she relented after Muyembe insisted. Another sister accompanied her on the journey to Kinshasa, so they were a group of four squeezing together in various planes and cars.

“I was always next to her,” Muyembe remembered, still looking relieved decades later at the thought of his close brush with death.

The samples from Yambuku, including the nun’s, were sent from Kinshasa to a lab in Belgium, where scientists initially thought they showed the Marburg virus, which causes another hemorrhagic fever found in Congo and neighboring Uganda.

Meanwhile, when the nun, her traveling companion and a nurse who had treated her in Kinshasa all died from the same sickness, and the epidemiologist who had gone with him to Yambuku developed a fever, Muyembe panicked. He quarantined himself in the garage at his home so as not to infect his wife and children. He couldn’t stop thinking about the test tubes full of blood samples that he had brought home briefly after returning from Yambuku.

“It was terrible because the assistant medic who had come with me sent me a message saying, ‘Ah, I am sick,’ and then poof! He was dead. The nun we brought with us had died and had contaminated another nun and a nurse. I was very afraid,” Muyembe said.

He finally got a call from Belgium that the virus wasn’t Marburg but a previously unknown hemorrhagic fever. Researchers later named it Ebola, for the river that runs through Yambuku. It was after this call ― and the death of his fellow scientist ― that Muyembe destroyed the lab samples, terrified of further contamination.

Nearly 40 years later, when Ebola hit West Africa, Muyembe was surprised by the lack of research into the virus and the poorly coordinated global and local response.

“It really was chaos,” he said. “People thought it was just something that affected East and Central Africa, so they hadn’t even studied it and weren’t prepared.”

Muyembe had worked on research into a possible vaccine nearly two decades earlier, but it was only when Ebola briefly touched Europe and the United States in 2014 that he finally saw scientists start to take this killer seriously.

During Congo’s third Ebola outbreak in 1995, the experienced virologist had transfused blood from people who had recovered from Ebola to a group of patients infected with the virus. Of the eight patients who received the transfusions, seven survived ― a result that Muyembe quickly passed on to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S.

“We kept saying, ‘Antibodies do protect.’ But for 20 years, this virus, and its treatment, was neglected,” he said. In late 2016, an experimental vaccine – developed principally in response to fears of Ebola being used as a bioterrorism agent – was shown to provide 100 percent protection against the virus. It arrived too late for the 11,000 people who died in the 2014 outbreak.

More recently, Muyembe has watched scientists scramble to stop the Zika virus once it began affecting wealthier countries. The virus is named for a forest in Uganda, where it was first found in 1947.

“Because it was an African disease, we neglected it. But with climate change and modern transport, the insects will travel to Brazil, to Europe,” he said.

There are other diseases that could devastate whole cities, countries or regions of the world, Muyembe warns.

I wish I could say that onchocerciasis would make everyone in the world blind, because then we’d have a vaccine. Dr. Muyembe

So-called neglected tropical diseases affect over 1 billion people worldwide, mainly in poor parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Some of these diseases ― echinococcosis, dengue and Chagas, for example ― have already infected people in the U.S. in small numbers. But they attract very little attention in Western media and garner limited research funding.

“I wish I could say that onchocerciasis would make everyone in the world blind, because then we’d have a vaccine,” said Muyembe of a disease otherwise known as river blindness, which threatens up to 14 million people in Congo.

“We call them neglected diseases because they come from underdeveloped countries,” he said. “But these neglected diseases can become a threat to developed countries. With travel and everything we have now, the world has become a village.”

Our world needs better research and monitoring aimed at African countries, Muyembe warned, because that’s where many diseases start. And if they’re allowed to develop, “they will be like Ebola, which came from Central Africa, went to West Africa and then suddenly was threatening the U.S. and Europe.”

Muyembe is also determined to raise up the next generation of Congolese researchers to continue his legacy. “We must train the young people,” he said, slapping two young researchers on the back. Like him, they earned their Ph.D.s in Europe and then returned home to help.

Despite cheating one of the world’s most deadly diseases and plenty of other rare illnesses since, he too plans to keep fighting. “The most important thing in dealing with a lot of these diseases is washing your hands,” he said with a fatalistic shrug.

What frightens the doctor more than staring death in the face is retiring and dying of boredom.

“I must continue working,” Muyembe said, straightening his white coat and rushing off to his next appointment at the lab.

This series is supported, in part, by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. All content is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the foundation.

If you’d like to contribute a post to the series, send an email to ProjectZero@huffingtonpost.com. And follow the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #ProjectZero.

More stories like this:

This Man Went Abroad And Brought Back A Disease Doctors Had Never Seen

Rabies Kills 189 People Every Day. Here’s Why You Never Hear About It.

A Parasite Attacked This Dad’s Brain And Destroyed His Family

Volunteers With No Medical Training Are Fighting Diseases The World Ignores

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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