#tumblr/empire and slavery

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - Take me to the RA now!

[tmarshconnors]

What US Would Be Like if America Lost the Revolution

Imagining an alternate reality where the American Revolution was lost and the United States did not gain independence is a fascinating exercise in historical speculation. While it is impossible to predict with certainty how events would have unfolded, we can explore some possible scenarios.

Continued British Rule: If the American Revolution failed, the American colonies would have remained under British rule. This would have meant that the British Crown would have continued to govern the American territories, and the American colonists would have been subject to British laws, taxes, and regulations.

Limited Autonomy: It is possible that the British government, recognizing the discontent among the colonists, might have granted them some limited autonomy or representation in the British Parliament. However, it is unlikely that the colonies would have enjoyed the same degree of self-governance as they eventually achieved through independence.

Economic Implications: Without independence, the American colonies would have remained part of the British mercantile system. This system placed restrictions on colonial trade and favored British interests. As a result, the American economy may have been more dependent on British trade, limiting opportunities for domestic industrialization and economic growth.

Slavery: The issue of slavery, which played a significant role in the lead-up to the American Revolution, would have likely continued. The British Empire abolished slavery in 1833, so it is possible that slavery may have been abolished earlier in the American colonies under British rule. However, this would have varied depending on the specific circumstances and pressures within each colony.

Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion: The idea of Manifest Destiny, which drove westward expansion and the growth of the United States throughout the 19th century, would not have emerged in the same way. The British Empire had a different approach to territorial expansion, and it is uncertain how it would have shaped the development of the American territories.

International Relations: The geopolitical landscape would have been vastly different. Without the United States as a separate nation, the balance of power in North America and the world would have shifted. Other European powers, such as France and Spain, may have had a greater influence in the American territories.

Alternative Paths: It is important to note that the desire for independence was not limited to the American colonies alone. Other regions of the world, inspired by the American Revolution, also sought self-governance and independence. The success or failure of the American Revolution may have influenced these movements in different ways.

Remember, these scenarios are purely speculative, and countless factors could have shaped the course of history in the absence of an American victory in the Revolution. The development of the United States and the world as we know it today would have been dramatically different.

[teresawymore]

My first explicit fanfic.

This story is explicit with some violence off-page and dubious consent. It's Rome, after all...but Late Rome, so even the Church has slaves. 😉

Here's the Intro:

The Angel could remember an immaculate love, and he had known God in all Her glory. But he found himself tethered to one who made his way among the nations of Man. The world --even choked by hate and war-- offered something more valuable to the Fallen than God herself.

Freedom.

Heaven sent an Angel to determine if the Fallen was redeemable. The Starmaker, a gentle and diligent creature, swore to do whatever it took to save the fierce and valiant soldier he had known since the beginning of time.

Here's an excerpt:

Aziraphale’s cool green eyes flickered as he glanced sideways.

Crowley’s gaze darted away. His body tensed, but silence followed. After a moment, he glanced up to see Aziraphale had returned to his contemplation. Questions filled Crowley’s thoughts, but no answers were worth provoking anger. 

Anger invariably stimulated his master’s licentious disposition.

The twitching jaw and preoccupation of his usually fearless master made Crowley uneasy. Aziraphale wasn’t a worrier. He was prideful and abrasive but not timid. He enjoyed a good fight and had the wits to make any man appear a fool.

In fact, Aziraphale hadn’t changed much from his first corporeal existence. Crowley still adored the soft angelic features that contrasted with discerning eyes. Over the millennia, his gaze had grown more piercing and his appreciation for the world’s delicacies had made him a bit plump. He kept his white curls, bright teeth, and charming smile, though Crowley had seen his geniality vanish like a flash of lightning before a storm of rage.

[dutty-lingo]

💥Poet and campaigner Benjamin Zephaniah dies aged 65💥

[whencyclopedia]

Slavery in the Roman World

Slavery was an ever-present feature of the Roman world. Slaves served in households, agriculture, mines, the military, workshops, construction and many services. As many as 1 in 3 of the population in Italy or 1 in 5 across the empire were slaves and upon this foundation of forced labour was built the entire edifice of the Roman state.

Slavery as An Accepted Reality

Slavery, that is complete mastery (dominium) of one individual over another, was so imbedded in Roman culture that slaves became almost invisible and there was certainly no feeling of injustice in this situation on the part of the rulers. Inequality in power, freedom and the control of resources was an accepted part of life and went right back to the mythology of Jupiter overthrowing Saturn. As K.Bradley eloquently puts it, 'freedom...was not a general right but a select privilege' (Potter, 627). Further, it was believed that the freedom of some was only possible because others were enslaved. Slavery, was, therefore, not considered an evil but a necessity by Roman citizens. The fact that slaves were taken from the losers in battle (and their subsequent offspring) was also a helpful justification and confirmation of Rome's (perceived) cultural superiority and divine right to rule over others and exploit those persons for absolutely any purpose whatsoever.

Aside from the huge numbers of slaves taken as war captives (e.g. 75,000 from the First Punic War alone) slaves were also acquired via piracy, trade, brigandage and, of course, as the offspring of slaves as a child born to a slave mother (vernae) automatically became a slave irrespective of who the father was. Slave markets proliferated, perhaps one of the most notorious being the market on Delos, which was continuously supplied by the Cilician pirates. Slave markets existed in most large towns, though, and here, in a public square, slaves were paraded with signs around their necks advertising their virtues for prospective buyers. Traders specialised in the commodity, for example, one A. Kapreilius Timotheus traded throughout the Mediterranean.

Continue reading...

[localcuttlefish]

A Theoretical Lore Bible of Caesar’s Legion as a Nation

Hello good citizens of Tumblr! I’ve been on a Fallout: New Vegas kick lately, and I recently graduated college with a bachelors degree (major illustration, minor history of art and western civilization). So now that I’m certified to draw dick AND talk about Ancient Rome, I have things to yap about.

Have you ever looked at Caesar’s Legion and wondered how the more intricate aspects of their society model after the Roman Empire? Because I have! And because of those very musings, I have come up with a little dumb idiot theoretical lore Bible on how The Legion might function as a more developed nation, using my back knowledge of western civ and Roman art and culture. Nomenclature, societal structure, industries, imports and exports, the whole nine yards!

DISCLAIMERS: I have not looked through the writers’/directors’ social media accounts thoroughly enough yet to confirm if any of the information I’m bringing to the table is already solidly canonical or solidly non-canonical in the lore of Fallout: New Vegas. There is a nonzero chance I may say something that someone in charge has already said, or something that’s already been disproven or denied. If you catch something I don’t, let me know! I like worldbuilding for fun like this, and I want to keep everything as lore-cohesive as possible to challenge myself. I’ll come back to edit this every now and then if I come up with more cohesive lore pieces, or if you guys have any suggestions that would tie in the lore better. In addition, Caesar’s Legion is an inherently totalitarian nation that supports itself on some pretty sexist and bigoted social structures. There is no universe in which I support, condone, or otherwise encourage any of the ideologies of Caesar’s Legion in real life. Don’t become a tyrant dictator of a military slave nation, kids!

CONTENT WARNINGS: Discussion of slavery, sexism, physical and verbal violence, unsafe medical practices, brainwashing/psychological abuse, and death.

Without further ado, the absolute wall of text that is the theoretical lore Bible of Caesar’s Legion. Enjoyyyyy!!

CHAPTERS:

I: Citizenship

- How To Become a Citizen

- Social Castes

- Names

II: Everyday Life

- Common Social Customs

- Household Structure

- Settlement/Town Structure

- Clothing, Hair, and Accessories

- Languages

III: Industry

- Jobs

- Imports and Exports

IV: Politics, Education, and Religion

- What Senate?

- In The Unlikely Event of a Transfer of Power

- Common Political Beliefs

- Male vs Female Education Standards

Walk and talk with me about the ways The Legion mirrors, juxtaposes, and takes inspiration from Ancient Roman society in a post-apocalyptic setting.

The first time I encountered Caesar’s Legion in game, my initial thought was “What about the American West makes these people think this is the perfect spot to reinvent Italy?” it’s a barren, land-locked desert with only one or two significant water access points. Italy is a peninsula in a temperate climate with high mountain ranges and verdant forests. Most of this was a jokey thought, but then it struck me that a phalanx would actually be an insanely powerful force in a flat landscape. It all started coming together from there in a most dreadful shape

I: Citizenship

- How to Become a Citizen

Caesar’s Legion is a colonialist nation. They gain land through conquest, typically, and have a tendency to try and homogenize the culture to their liking. Generally speaking, after a town has been conquered, people who willingly surrender or submit to The Legion are given an opportunity for citizenship. Any survivors of conquest that aren’t willing to surrender are either executed or sold into slavery. Slaves are not considered citizens, because the rights and freedoms of a slave do not reflect the rights and freedoms that The Legion offers to those who can be put to better use or are complacent with the mission of The Legion.

Once one is offered a chance for citizenship, the highest ranking general in whatever battalion just took over that person’s land will evaluate if the person can be put to work, put on the battlefield, or is generally useless. Remember, an offer isn’t a guarantee. There is a chance someone who is offered citizenship may be evaluated as useless and sold into slavery regardless of their complacency. Protesting the verdict typically increases the chance of spontaneously being executed, or, if one doesn’t like their proposed role of worker or soldier, being demoted from potential citizen to slave.

If the general regards one as fit to work or fit for the battlefield, these “half-citizens” (media populi for plural, and media persona for singular) will be assigned a new legal name after a record of all new media populi is sent from the general to the regional Vilicus (overseer ;) we’ll elaborate more on this in chapter II), and given the task of minimum 400 hours of what we would understand as “community service” before the Vilicus confirms their citizenship. This “community service” is called pentimento, or repentance. It’s a form of brainwashing in which The Legion is in a position to repeatedly reaffirm that the media persona has more value here helping The Legion than they ever did as a free settler in New Vegas before, and instills dynamics that empower and encourage violence against people of “lower status” (slaves and women, usually). Kinda like a Stanford Prison Experiment that’s purposely designed to cause power dynamics instead of accidentally stumbling to the conclusion. Pentimento may include anything from helping re-pave and clear trade routes in Legion territory, to catching runaway slaves. Each media persona is given a number of tasks to complete per month, and each failed task results in more hours being added onto the total pentimento before citizenship is granted. The number of initial hours of pentimento a media persona needs to do may vary depending on the whims of the Vilicus, how much they resisted Legion control in the past, how many tasks of pentimento they leave incomplete per month, and whether they are masculine or feminine presenting, but is never less than 400 to start. Most media populi end up with starting numbers in the 600s or 700s.

Once the pentimento hours are complete and approved by the Vilicus, the media persona becomes a citizen and is expected to continue the service to the growing empire through either the trade they work in, or through service in the army. However, there is a several-month-long window of time in which spies occasionally visit the new citizens’ homes to monitor them for suspicious activity. In this window of time, spies may be looking for signs that indicate the new citizen is an agent from a rival faction sent to infiltrate The Legion. Only high-ranking officials know about this window. One can lose their citizenship and be returned back to status of media persona if they show suspicious behavior during this time, or worse, be demoted from citizen to slave. In cases where there is undeniable evidence that a new citizen is an agent for a rival faction, the citizen is immediately put to death, and their citizenship is revoked (though revoking the citizenship of someone being put to death is a little redundant).

A baby born into a family of two Legion citizens is automatically also a citizen, and must be given a name in line with Legion naming conventions (which will be discussed next segment). A baby born into a family in which the mother is not a citizen and the father is a citizen will also be considered a citizen. A baby born into a family in which the mother is a citizen and the father is not a citizen will not be considered a citizen at birth. A baby born to a family of two media populi or two slaves will not be considered a citizen at birth.

A person who willingly enters Legion territory and requests citizenship will follow the same steps as how a person from a conquered land would be evaluated for citizenship.

- Social Castes

Social Castes in Caesar’s Legion are determined by how useful one is to the empire, and whether one is male or female. The more sexist aspects of the caste system stem from the fact that women in The Legion can’t serve in the military, and the military is a notably higher status than most other castes since Caesar’s Legion is a military state.

Of course, Caesar is the highest on the social pyramid, followed by his chosen officials (take Lanius for example), then chosen guards (praetorian guard). The military comes next, with the social hierarchy of the military following that which was established in the Roman Empire in the early establishment of Caligula’s reign. After that, religious officials (which act as pseudo-indoctrinators into The Legion, and therefore are pretty essential to brainwashing the next generation of Legionnaires). Then, the Vilici, the overseers of each region/settlement. Next, the average male citizen and then, the average female citizen. Media populi come next, and following that social caste is performers (which serve very little purpose in the eyes of Caesar and the goal of conquest), with male performers having marginally more respect among the populous than female performers. Second to last is slaves, once again with males being just a little more respected than females, but what does that matter when both are going to be abused by the upper castes anyways. At the very bottom of the social ladder is outsiders and criminals, which need to be broken before earning even a sliver of humanity in the eyes of The Legion.

Caesar > Chosen Officials > Chosen Guard > Military (with sub-hierarchy of Ancient Roman military) > Religious Officials > Vilici > Average Citizen > Media Populi > Performers > Slaves > Outsiders and Criminals

- Names

The average citizen in Legion territory wouldn’t need to immediately use their new assigned name (since there’s not enough force immediately available to actually push that, the nation is still growing), but The Legion will give them a “legal” name that they’ll be addressed by formally, and in the best case scenario, the original name will be effectively waned out because it simply doesn’t matter in comparison to the new one.

A praenomen acts effectively as a first name one uses around close friends and family, while a nomen (while acting as a last name) becomes what one is more commonly known by in public. The average citizen will usually have a nomen at least, and a male citizen will have a praenomen and nomen.

- MASCULINE: A classical Latin praenomen will be assigned equivalent to the meaning or phonetics of the new citizen’s first name. The nomen will be determined based on either phonetic/meaning equivalent of the last name, or based on the new citizen’s occupation.

- FEMININE: No praenomen will be assigned. The citizen’s title will be a feminized variation of their father’s nomen, differentiated in generation by number nomenclature (Major, Minor, Tertia, etc). If they have no father, they will assume the feminized nomen of a living male partner that is already a Legion citizen. If they have no living Legion family, they will be assigned the name “Romana” and likely be either sold into slavery or auctioned to a bachelor to gain a proper nomen.

For example: Marcus Gaius has two daughters. The eldest daughter is Gaia Major. The youngest daughter is Gaia Minor. Gaia Minor meets Decimus Junius, and they get married. Now Gaia Minor is named Junia. Gaia Major remains unchanged.

Legion soldiers have more dignity in society, and therefore have all the previous conventions, plus a cognomen. Since all Legion soldiers are masculine, differentiation between masc and fem naming conventions is irrelevant from this point forward. The nomen of a soldier may be akin to the structure of how an average citizen’s would be given, or if the soldier shows exceptional prestige and has no remaining male family, a nomen referencing warfare or combat will be assigned to them (Marcus, Augustus, Drusus, etc.).

A Legion cognomen acts effectively as a Roman military callsign. Cognomens follow classical Roman conventions. The cognomen will be used most frequently in a military setting.

II: Everyday Life

- Common Social Customs

Many Roman social customs are adopted into Legion life. For example, the entertainment at the colosseum is mimicked in the tourneys in the various arenas scattered throughout Legion territory. However, because of the key difference in that The Legion isn’t even pretending not to be a totalitarian dictatorship, there are a number of drastic differences between Roman social customs and Legion social customs.

Because of how respected the military is in Legion society, it is commonplace to show soldiers with utmost reverence. It’s customary to allow soldiers to stay in a citizen’s place of residence if the soldier requests it, and it’s customary to refer to the soldier by their military rank, not their nomen or cognomen (especially if the soldier in question is on duty). It’s considered rude or inappropriate to question the motives of a soldier, or prevent a soldier from accessing areas of a citizen’s property. Such transgressions can potentially be met with violence.

One may frequently see slaves struggling to keep up with workloads. It’s taboo, but not punishable to help them, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the productivity of one’s own work. After all, The Legion gains nothing from incomplete work. If helping a slave means increasing efficiency, then it’s appropriate, but a citizen may get strange looks from others for doing so.

Utilitarianism is the ideal philosophy under which everyone should function in an ideal Legion society, but this is clearly not the case nor the environment to foster it. Social norms are based strongly on class, and in most cases, selfishness prevails because selflessness can be seen as weak (or worse, suspicious) by trigger-happy soldiers and spies.

But hey, at least sex isn’t considered a super taboo topic or activity in Legion society. Got that much going for them. Granted, it’s seen more like a conquest, but at least it’s not seen as a sin. Woohoo? Lets go? Kinda? One step forward two steps back.

- Household Structure

A household in Legion territory for a citizen of average means will likely be similar to any other household in New Vegas (with the addition of slaves in wealthier households). Where things start to get confusing is the aforementioned situation of soldiers being allowed to invade households at will. Psychologically, these soldiers are deprived of a lot of comforts the average citizen may have. There is a decidedly nonzero chance that soldiers can show up like stray cats and keep coming back in the event that a citizen is interesting enough to them. Soldiers sometimes “claim” houses or small patches of territory they frequent as a substitute for the emotional interaction they lack. Humans are social creatures. The soldiers might not know why they want to keep coming back, but they do keep coming back. Parasocial.

Generally, a woman’s domain is the household in Legion territory. While the society is by no means matriarchal, it’s customary for a woman to maintain control over most happenings within a household. This often means a woman will need to interact with stray soldiers more frequently. Among female citizens in Legion territory, these soldiers are called catuli (singular catulus) for their presence and tendencies, though this is always in secret due to the harsh punishment of misrepresenting a soldier’s status to his face. A household can sometimes have up to three catuli claim it before fights start to break out among them about perceived territory.

It is expected for a couple in a household to have children. Cultivating multiple generations of soldiers is part of how The Legion grows most efficiently, because children are impressionable enough to instill Legion values without struggle. If a household does not have a child after several years of partnership, it is considered suspicious and the male of the partnership is encouraged to be unfaithful or open the relationship. While there are no consequences for not having children, there is intense pressure to do so.

- Settlement/Town Structure

As mentioned before, the equivalent of a mayor in each region is called a Vilicus, or an overseer. The Vilicus is responsible for tallying the census, assigning names to media populi, approving the pentimento of media populi, keeping track of production rates of resources from citizens, keeping a lookout for disease outbreak so a region can be quarantined if needed, and monitoring the citizens in each region for minor suspicious activity to report to those higher in status. Each town is also occupied by a heavy military presence, to intimidate citizens into productivity and complacency.

Most of the time, Legion towns are made of the previously conquered settlements now added to Legion territories. Building more houses is an avoidable expenditure if they just repurpose the structures already there with a few modifications. Despite the multiple depictions in-game of Caesar’s Legion showing little to no care about what damage they cause, it would make sense that the depictions in the gameplay are actually the outliers in the situation, since it’s far more efficient to leave the settlements intact and just gut and reconfigure the purpose.

There are also multitudes of mobile scout settlements, mostly made of fabric, tarp, and hide tents that can be easily condensed and moved in the event that the camp is compromised. In many cases, these camps are set up as a base to return to in order to stage an invasion of new territories. If possible, The Legion sets them up close to large landmasses like plateaus or mountains for additional cover in the event of an ambush. If that’s not available, The Legion makes settlements like this close to preexisting towns in order to make the wordless threat of “push us back, and innocents die”. Generally, very few citizens are taken on these excursions, but if the plan is to stay out longer, citizens who are medics may be involuntarily drafted into going with the scout team.

- Clothing, Hair, and Accessories

The Legion isn’t a necessarily materialistic society that allows a lot of room for personal expression. Since the goal is to create a homogenous society and culture, self expression through visual cues is often muted at best and absent at normal. Makeup, perfumes, and hair styling products are prohibited if they have any synthetic qualities or materials. In many cases, beauty products are exclusively reserved for performers, and even still, only natural pigments and materials would be permitted. Think the same pigments Ancient Egyptians would make for their makeup.

Protective updo hairstyles are common for long hair, both for practical purposes and for purposes of keeping hair out of reach and harder to pull. Efficiency is key, so in the event of a raid or a threat, everyone is expected to be able to hold their own to some extent. Part of that standard is remaining on guard, so keeping hair up while out of the house is customary.

In the military, hair is expected to be cut short, again, for efficiency. Any soldiers with long hair are expected to keep it in tight braids or cornrows to maintain the same level of efficiency. As long as it stays out of the face.

Most clothing is dull, salvaged from the wastelands. The only exception is clothing reserved for high ranking officials and Caesar, which is quite literally dyed in blood of enemies. Because blood fades to a blackish-red hue over time, high ranking officials will often appear to be wearing darker colors, when in actuality they’re wearing clothes that were soaked in blood as a symbol of power and debt paid to the gods (namely Mars).

Widows are permitted to wear part of their fallen husband’s bloodsoaked clothes through the mourning process, if The Legion can recover and identity the body. With this in mind, as soon as the widow finds a new husband, the bloodsoaked garment piece is burned.

Slaves are deprived of all aspects of individuality, given rags or scraps to wear and marked with red paint. A citizen may give finer clothes to a slave voluntarily, but those clothes must also be marked with red paint.

Jewelry, while rare, is often made of scrap metal salvaged and re-forged from battlefields or old weapons without any further use. Which is why jewelry is so rare. There is seldom ever an instance in which metal can’t become a weapon, so making jewelry is a waste of time and energy.

- Languages

Basically any language can be spoken in Legion territory as it stands, because as The Legion is currently, it doesn’t have enough power or force to totally instill a whole new language system. With that in mind, the groundwork is being laid for an eventual push to make Latin the official language of Caesar’s Legion. Between the commonly used Latin terminology to address people and the Roman theming of The Legion, it’s primed to eventually enforce Latin as the primary language. Highly educated citizens may be fluent in Latin, and most soldiers know commands and codes in Latin.

III: Industry

- Jobs

There are two types of jobs in The Legion, excluding military and slavery. One can either be a worker or a performer. Medics and nurses are highly valued, both on the battlefield and off, since chemical substances are prohibited in The Legion. Carpenters, metalworkers and blacksmiths, engineers, and tanners are some of the more important standard worker jobs, since all of them play directly into expanding the empire more efficiently, making more weapons and armor, or repurposing old material to make new. Tailors, glassworkers, weavers, technicians, and chemists are less valuable to The Legion to some extent because they either involve industries less geared towards conquest, or involve industries beyond the scope of what The Legion finds socially acceptable. Despite the amount of emphasis Roman polytheism puts on naturalistic sculpture, The Legion actually doesn’t find the arts very useful in the immediate future of the empire. What’s most important is conquest, not expression.

On the topic of the arts, performers were seen in a very poor light in The Legion, often oversexualized into objectification or framed as clowns. Most performance art is often seen as a waste of time or an avoidable expense, but it does keep soldier morale up since it gives them something to target that isn’t their fellow man. Being a performer in The Legion is marginally better than slavery, because one can at least have a house as a performer, but the physical and verbal abuse is often daily and unrelenting.

- Imports and Exports

The Legion is definitely not known for being friendly to neighboring factions, so any concept of import and export is often very loosely based in barter (namely, The Legion demanding tithe to barter for leaving a region alone, similar to how some mafias demand payment in exchange for protection from themselves). The Legion has a semi-steady stream of imports from their commonwealths which they pressure into helping them in trade for leaving their towns unburned and their people free from enslavement. However, this is decidedly not a permanent arrangement. This is a way to bide time to grow the nation a bit more before making moves on settlements and regions with more useful resources.

They export nothing unless it’s a strategic play. They pressure neighboring regions into paying them, even though they honestly don’t need it as much as they want the general population of other factions to think they do. Middle school bully nation.

IV: Politics, Education, and Religion

- What Senate?

The big difference between Rome and The Legion is that The Legion doesn’t try to pretend it’s not a dictatorship. There is no senate, there is no board of people to vote, no forum. The only voice that matters is Caesar’s, and it shows in every aspect of how the society is structured, from the strict rules on self expression, to the patriarchal hierarchy of Legion society. Ultimately, this makes the nation weaker, because in the event of Caesar’s death, it creates a power vacuum. No, I don’t think there’s a secret senate. No, I don’t think there is a solid backup plan. I think the closest thing there was to a senate was the two-man power-team that was Edward Sallow and Joshua Graham. We all know how well that worked out. And I think Caesar’s been running on fumes ever since that point, taking this as a sign to expand the nation faster before anyone sees him bleed. Hubristic in nature.

The closest thing there is to a senate are higher officials (such as Lanius) that Caesar hand-picked from Legion ranks to be his personal cabinet that all agrees with him. There is a distinct instability of power when recreating Rome without a senate, and there is the distinct air of trying to hide that open wound.

- In the Unlikely Event of a Transfer of Power

Let’s say, hypothetically, Caesar, the praetorian guard, and all his higher officials suddenly died. The role of Caesar would be up for grabs. In the event that there is no clear successor to Caesar, there is no real backup plan aside from an arena battle between the generals that could potentially succeed Caesar. A simple solution that will clearly show who can spill the most blood for Mars without hesitation or question.

With this in mind, there is one thing distinctly Roman about the potential of a transfer of power. There is always a nonzero chance that Caesar’s killer, be they foreigner or Legion, could become the next emperor. All that matters is who can devote themself to Mars in a way that would honor the fallen Caesar.

- Common Political Beliefs

Politics and religion go hand in hand for Caesar’s Legion because of the cultish way Caesar built the nation. The idea of Mars being the patron deity of The Legion instills a level of gratuitous and overzealous love of warfare among the people. Military expenditures are met with great support, and very little infrastructure on public service is supported as adamantly because of the instilled value of “we are all independent cogs working in a well oiled machine, we don’t need help”. Then again, it’s not like any other voice mattered anyways, since Caesar is the be all end all of political power.

There is a generally nationwide extremism when it comes to dealing with criminals, however. Criminal activity in The Legion is more often than not punished by torture and death, and nobody seems to really protest it to the degree that other factions do. As many of the travelers and traders in Fallout: New Vegas have said, the roads in Legion territories are incredibly safe. There is a level of patriotism in The Legion specifically regarding how safe their lands are, but in exchange, those lands also have an active military presence.

Conquest is also a pretty intrinsic pillar of Legion political beliefs, since the motivation to create a homogeneous society and usher in a new era of perceived piece may make some people accept the totalitarian power for what it is and hope it pans out right.

- Male vs Female Education Standards

Due to the intrinsic divide between male and female Legion citizens, the education of male and female Legion children is vastly different with the only exception being the uniform brainwashing. Male and female children are not only educated on different topics, they are also educated in different locations.

Similar to Spartan men, most male children (even including orphans from freshly raided towns) are give combat training just about as soon as they can hold a stick and swing it. The male children that show combat proficiency continue to become soldiers, and the male children who aren’t strong, but are intelligent are instead divided into training as either spies or medics, depending on the specifics of their skill sets. Male children who aren’t good at any of that end up becoming armigeri (singular armiger), the people who sharpen weapons and tend to the needs of more proficient soldiers. It’s a social tragedy to become what is essentially a pathetic sidekick to some far better soldier. Thankfully, since most of these children are trained from an incredibly young age to be strong, cunning, fast, and durable, very few people end up becoming armigeri. Generally speaking, no boy in The Legion goes without military training. The Legion can capture their blacksmiths and carpenters, there’s no need to train them in-house.

Female Legion children are not given formal education. They are expected to grow up to be housekeepers and produce the next generation of warlords. However, a family still has the liberty to educate a daughter at home with a tutor so long as it doesn’t interfere with the family’s productivity. Usually, female children are given medical teachings more oriented towards patching the injuries of their future husbands. However, girls aren’t left entirely defenseless. Girls are taught how to use ranged weapons and how to escape grapples in the event of an emergency. In addition, girls are given more of an education on finances and practical skills that tie into long-term survival, such as how to use every part of a killed animal for resources, how to patch clothes, and how to cultivate plants.

A Thank You And Some Concluding Comments

Hello hello to anyone who’s made it this far through my ludicrous ramblings! Thank you for reading! This is really just me throwing nonsense in the air and seeing what floats, and most of what I’ve written here will probably be subject to edits every now and then to keep building up what I’ve already put down.

Feel free to use this lore for any fan fictions, fan art, original characters, or whatever else! Please keep building on it!

I hope y’all enjoyed my insane chattering!

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

Is there anything good (positive achievement) about the Valyrian/ghiscarian empires? I feel GRRM didn't bother giving them nuanced and interesting history beside mass slavery, rape and genocide, esp the ghiscarians they are mash up of the all the racist oriental tropes you can think of

Hi anon, this is a really good question. I think you can look at it two ways.

On the one hand, if we're analyzing the books from a literary perspective, GRRM's portrayal of the entire continent of Essos is pretty Orientalist and doesn't hold up that well. And we can blame this to some extent on GRRM being a white boomer who clearly did not think all that deeply about the stereotypes he was playing into when he created his "exotic" eastern continent. 90s fantasy was rife with this stuff (even my beloved Robin Hobb is not completely immune-- I'm looking at you, Chalcedeans), and at the time Orientalism was, much like critical race theory or decolonization, a grad school level concept, unless you ran in activist circles. You didn't have Tumblr and Twitter and TikTok and Youtube generating Discourse, you had to actively seek out different perspectives. And ex-hippie liberal white boomers often assumed that they already had the right perspectives, that they knew what traps to avoid, and so you'd get 90s SFF authors thinking they were very cleverly subverting these tropes by going, "I know, I'll have an intensely misogynistic culture of desert dwelling nomads who have harems and slaves but I'll make them white." It was pretty bleak. Luckily for all of us, fantasy has come a long way since then.

And yeah, once you see the Orientalism in ASOIAF, you can't unsee it. Lys is basically the fantasy version of the "pleasure planet" trope, the Dothraki are a stereotype of the Mongol armies without any of the many positive contributions the Molgols made, Qarth is like the Coleridge poem come to life with people riding camels with jeweled saddles and wearing tiger skins, with its women baring one breast and it's sophisticated assassin's guild, and Mereen has its pyramids. The entire continent is brimming with spices and jewels and pleasure houses and people saying "Your Magnificence." It is also a place of blood magic and dragons and Red Gods and shadowlands. It is everything exciting and "exotic," juxtaposed against what appears to most readers to be very mundane--septas and pseudocatholicism and maesters in the citadel. So yeah, it's an Orientalist's fantasy world, and the point of all this is not necessarily to cast it as evil per se, but to cast it as "Other" (and to be clear, Orientalism is harmful and GRRM deserves the criticism he gets for leaning into stereotypes). Valyria and the Valyrians are certainly included in that-- they are explicitly Other as foreign born ruling family in Westeros, and they are treated that way both in-world and by the narrative.

The question then becomes, although GRRM's depictions of Essos lean heavily and inelegantly into Orientalist tropes, why did he create these worlds the way he did? Why is Valyria an "Other" and what significance does it have to the story? And I think that some of this is GRRM's shorthand for something magical that is lost and forgotten and fading away, just like Valyria itself is in the memories of the Targaryen family. It is the Xanadu of Coleridge's Kubla Khan, not just the East viewed from the West, but the past viewed from the present, a nostalgic yearning for a place that only ever existed in the imagination. When the narrative does visit these places in person, rather than telling us about them secondhand, they become ugly and brutal, the jeweled facade hiding a rot underneath. In ASOIAF we have Dany ripping that facade off of Meereen and Yunkai, but she idealizes her own Targaryen heritage, and that is not insignificant, and as readers, we are invited to idealize it right along with her, in spite of plenty of hints that perhaps we should not (like the aforementioned slavery). We even hear Astapori and Yunkish slavers speaking to Dany echo sentiments about the even older Ghiscari empire, also lost, "Ours is the blood of ancient Ghis, whose empire was old when Valyria was yet a squalling child." Old Ghis and the Valyrians who conquered them are both long gone at this point, and yet their descendants are clinging to the legacies of cultures that would be wholly foreign to both of them. Because if Valyria is Xanadu, the Old Valyrians and Old Ghiscari are also Ozymandias, the mighty who have fallen, their once grand civilizations nothing but forgotten ruins. The Targaryens don't yet realize that they are that "half-sunk shattered visage," that they are yearning for something that is gone and never returning, something they never really knew in the first place.

Westeros is not immune to this either. I think it's a consistent theme that GRRM plays with is the ways which the past is glorified and distorted and romanticized. Even in a meta-sense, his entire medieval world is, in many ways, a half-remembered medieval fantasy, the medieval world as imagined by people who read Ivanhoe, rather than a medieval world as actually was. And GRRM simultaneously presents this romanticized world alongside the brutality of the past (and to drive that point home, George's medieval world is much more brutal than the real medieval world was), and so he asks us, just like Dany must ask herself at some point, is the past really all that romantic? Or are we simply yearning for something unnamable and Other? And if we yearn for that, why?

On the other hand, from an in-world perspective, if you are Westerosi, are there any redeeming qualities to Valyrian culture? And I think we can answer that question by asking ourselves, is there anything salvageable from the past, even if the past was terrible? Even if what we perceive of Old Valyria wavers between a horrific empire based on conquest and slavery, and an idealized homeland full of magical dragonriders, depending on who is doing the telling, if we accept it as a fully fleshed out world, then I think we can remember no cultures are monoliths. Old Valyria had art, architecture, fashion, music, literature, and I like to imagine that there were good freeholders, perhaps even Valyrian versions of the Roman Stoics and the Cynics, who raised moral objections to slavery. Certainly the Valyrian "freeholder" government itself, a kind of proto-democracy, similar to that of Athens, was innovative for its particular time and place, even if it was not as democratic as our modern democracies are, and that model of government is replicated throughout Essos, where strict hereditary monarchy seems to be relatively uncommon. Valyria also had a great deal of religious freedom, which persists throughout Essos as well. And as with any empire, it's important to keep in mind that the ruling class made up only a small percentage of actual Valyria, and we know there were Valyrians who were not dragonlords but just normal people, going about their lives who had nothing to do with the atrocities committed, and those people were telling stories, creating art, writing songs, and producing culture too. So I think, tying back into how GRRM uses Valyria and Essos in his narrative, we do not have to discard the past entirely, nor do in-world Targaryens, but it's the romanticization that's the problem, and I think that's something that both in-world characters and readers are cautioned against.

[mandos-mind-trick]

The Phantom of Pabu - Part 1

Summary: After being rescued from the Empire, Crosshair spends his days miserably existing on Pabu. Haunted by the past, he's slowly drowning in his thoughts, until he spots you. You pique his interest from the start, a person who might just be more broken than he is.

Pairing: Crosshair x reader

Warnings: Angst, PTSD, suicide attempt, alcohol abuse, nightmares, sleep deprivation and its side effects, stalking-like behaviors, depression, descriptions of war and its aftermath, sleepwalking, brief mention of slavery, brief allusion to trafficking, trauma bonding, possessive and protective Crosshair, a bit of a savior complex

A/N: This is so different from anything I've written before, in a different style than I usually write. It evolved into something way more than it was supposed to be, and honestly I'm a little scared to share it. It's a testament of where my mind has been these last few weeks and really just a lot of feelings and emotions pouring out onto the page. Please heed the warnings as this is a pretty heavy story, especially this part in particular.

Next > | MASTERLIST

(Gif found on Google since Tumblr's gif search sucks)

At least they managed to settle somewhere warm. 

Crosshair is grateful for that one thing as he reclines on a bench, shielded from the unrelenting sun by a tree. The island is hot today, drawing his brothers to the beach in an attempt to stay cool. As uncomfortable as it is, it is much preferable to somewhere cold. 

He hates the cold. 

The beach bustles with the sound of the inhabitants of the island, all of them seeking the cool water in relief from the heat of the day. It’s loud, sights and sounds threatening to overwhelm him. He hasn’t been here long, not long enough to feel comfortable with the freedom he’s been allotted. 

No one knows.

No one cares. 

He knows. He cares. He can’t forget. 

He might have left, he might have suffered in the heat in favor of somewhere quiet had he not had somewhere to focus his attention. A distraction from the screaming of children, the endless movement of the crowd on the beach. 

It hadn’t taken him long to spot his distraction, the grounding scene to keep him from losing his mind. You’re seated in the sand, as far from the crowd as you can be. Your shoes are off, placed neatly beside you. Your legs are pulled against your chest, your arms wrapped around them as you stare out at the cerulean water. 

You haven’t been on Pabu long. He’d glimpsed you during your arrival with a few others, quickly lost in the crowd he was trying to avoid. Hunter had dragged him along, repeating the endless mantra that socialization is good for him. 

Crosshair disagrees. 

Hunter was persistent in forcing him into social situations, knowing well Crosshair would simply observe and refuse to participate. He preferred watching from a distance, becoming nothing more than a figure in the shadows. He knows the corners of Pabu well; that was where he made himself at home. 

You have made this outing less unbearable, at least. 

You’ve hardly moved since he spotted you, shifting only slightly to alleviate an ache in your joints. You don’t seem bothered by the sun or the heat, your skin glowing under the bright radiance from above. 

Crosshair wonders what you’re thinking about. He rolls his toothpick between his lips, mind wandering as he considers you. He refuses to believe your head is empty as you stare out at the horizon. You’re far too fascinating to be reduced to a brainless shell. He had never been one to consider the thoughts of others, but staring at you has made him curious. 

Not curious enough to approach, not curious enough to ask. 

Curious enough to disregard the crowd and its maddening dissonance. He’s always alert, always ready, but your mysterious presence is enough to quiet the ruckus to a bearable level. 

He gazes at you as the sun tracks a path across the sky, the crowd beginning to thin as evening settles in, turning the sky shades of orange and pink. You remain sitting there, still as a statue, when Hunter calls his name. He’s almost hesitant to leave, hesitant to walk away before you do. For a moment, the absurd idea passes through his mind that you might actually be a statue, but he knows that’s not true. He’d seen the small movements as you adjusted yourself, the small flinch as two children got too close to you while playing. 

You’re still there as he rises, turning his back to you as he leaves his bench. His curiosity has been piqued. 

Perhaps this place isn’t so unbearable after all. 

***

You’ve invaded his thoughts, controlling his mind even as he sits alone in his room. He’d memorized every small detail of your being that day; you’ve been plaguing him since. He doesn’t know your name, he doesn’t know where you live. He doesn’t know a single thing about you, other than when you’d arrived on this island refuge, disappearing into the crowd of welcoming inhabitants like a phantom. 

He’s become existential in his thoughts. Are you even real? Are you a figment of his imagination as he fights the guilt and shame threatening to devour him every time he gets even just a brief moment of reprieve? 

He needs to see you again, even if just to prove you’re more than a figment of his imagination. 

A ghost sent to haunt him for his sins. 

Maybe Hunter is right. Maybe he has been alone for too long. 

He can’t stand the considerate, generous, welcoming inhabitants of the island. He doesn’t deserve such kindness, such compassion after the things he’s done. If they knew the blood that stained his hands, the oppression he’d doled out simply because that’s what good soldiers do, they wouldn’t be so amiable. 

He’s become almost nocturnal to avoid them. 

Sleep evades him, and when exhaustion overcomes him, the nightmares begin. His brothers are gracious enough not to mention it, but he can see it. The worry, the concern in their gazes as he blearily stumbles out the door, choking on smoke and frigid air and rain. Endless rain. 

Muscles tense and tight from the frozen air, clothes soaked through, half delirious from the cold and hunger. He’s weak, barely able to get his legs under him as he races for the door, desperate to escape, desperate to forget. 

He walks in the warm air, when the sky is black and dotted with stars, when the world is quiet and asleep. No one around to try and engage him in conversation, no one to give him pity-filled looks as he passes. No one to ask after him, the disgusting shine of sympathy in their gaze. The few who pass on rare occasions don’t look at him, avoiding his gaze fearfully as if he’s some wraith slinking through the blackness ready to feast on the unfortunate soul who looks him in the eye. 

A ghost haunting the island, lost and wandering for all eternity until the ocean washes away the last remains of the rock where the city stands. 

His hands are still trembling, clenched into fists at his sides when you appear out of the darkness like a phantom. You’re ahead of him, far enough you haven’t noticed him yet. Even his enhanced vision has trouble making you out, but it’s you unmistakably. 

Dressed in black, whether it’s on purpose or simply chance, you blend into the shadows of the night, slipping in and out of the light at each doorstep. You truly appear like a ghost, steps slow enough to make you seem as if you’re floating. You’re barefoot, nearly silent as you slip through the darkness. 

Crosshair follows, encaptured by your mysterious presence. His mind draws forth the stories Omega had heard from Phee and recounted to them. Stories of seafarers seeing ghosts in the waves on stormy nights, sailors hearing the voices of women calling out to them, drawing them into the waves to be lost forever. 

You walk the streets, nearly making one full circle around the island before you stop, freezing in the spot between lights. Crosshair blinks as he comes to a stop, as if he’s suddenly waking from a dream. He’s closer than he wanted to be, three houses separating the space between you.

You suddenly turn, his body stilling in the darkness. Can you see him? Had he made a sound in his distraction and alerted you to his presence?  

There’s fear in your eyes. Your shoulders lift, squaring as you tense, almost like you’re preparing for a fight. Hands balled into fists, your chest heaves as you glance around, almost as if you don’t realize where you are. You take half a step back, eyes glancing over him but there’s no sign of recognition, no realization that he’s there. 

You’re running. He’s half tempted to follow, half tempted to finally learn where you live, if only so he can remind himself you are, in fact, real. He stays planted where he is, watching your retreating form meld into the darkness until you’ve disappeared from his sight. 

He stays where he is, playing over the scene in his mind. Did you notice him somehow? If he had been the cause of your fearful reaction, you hadn’t confronted him. Perhaps you felt his stare, some primal instinct recognizing something was behind you, something was following you in the dark. 

Whatever had happened, it startled you. He likens you to a wild animal, feeling a bit like the predator that had been stalking his prey. You were easy prey. 

It would have been so effortless. 

He’s shaking by the time he returns to the house, the stars beginning to disappear as morning arrives. He slips into bed, drawing the covers over his head as though he can hide from his very thoughts. 

***

The next time he sees you, it’s during the day. 

You had been absent from his nightly walks, his eyes tracing every inch of the darkness he could see, waiting for your form to appear like a ghostly apparition. You had been missing, however. Perhaps he startled you more than he first imagined. 

You appear at one of Shep’s parties, towed in behind Phee rather reluctantly. He’s in his corner, surveying the party from a distance like he preferred. Most left him alone, having learned he was a bore in conversation and those who hadn’t realized it had felt the bite of his words. Hunter had scolded him like a naughty child, but if it kept them away, he would face the reprimanding of his abrasive nature. 

His interest is piqued when you appear, looking like the phantom he pictured you as. The glow that your skin had radiated under the sun is gone. You’re pallored and gaunt, even in the orange glow of the setting sun, looking every bit like the ghouls in the stories Omega enjoyed so much. The wispy blue dress that hung from your form was no help, limp strands of hair rustling in the breeze off the sea. Your eyes are swollen and dark as they pass over the party, eventually meeting his. 

He should draw his gaze away and pretend he was simply doing the same, observing the milling party-goers. Yet he can’t seem to draw his gaze from you, locked in under your stare. There’s no recognition there, no sign you had seen him that night, no threat you were going to make a scene, expose him for following you for an hour as you wandered around in the middle of the night. 

You break first, drawn away as Phee introduces you to Tech. You look displeased to be forced into conversation, Tech oblivious to your dismay as he prattles off some senseless facts about something Phee had said. At least with Tech, you could avoid having to partake in the conversation. He could talk enough for everyone involved. 

He continues to watch you through dinner. You’re seated across the table and two seats down from him. The tenseness in your body speaking to your discomfort has not lessened any. You’re still again, aside from the slow lift and lower of the fork in your hand. You avoid everyone’s gaze, as if trying to ward away any attention that may be brought upon you. 

You luck out, most of the guests seem to forget you’re even there. Crosshair doesn’t; his gaze is coaxed back to you constantly throughout the evening. He can’t look away, feeling as if he’s watching a tragedy unfold in front of him. 

He’s witnessed enough of those.

None have affected him like this. 

You disappear before dark, slipping away without a sound. No one seems to notice. No one but Crosshair. He casts a glance over the throng before he slips away, catching up to you. He stays a good distance behind you, not wanting to reveal himself yet. He’s reminded of that night he followed you, except he doesn’t have darkness to use to his advantage. 

You look no less like a phantom in the red light of sunset. If anything, it makes you look more like a ghost. A ghoul painted in bloody light, a visage of pain and suffering. 

He’s lost in his thoughts once more as he follows you, distracted by your haunting image. His heel drags across the stone, loud in the quiet peacefulness of the evening. You pause upon hearing the sound, shoulders squaring once more. 

He moves instinctually, dipping behind a wall as you turn on your heel, eyes scanning the street behind you. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for someone to be following you at this hour, even if they only happened to be going the same direction as you. Yet, your reaction says differently. Had you been lost in your thoughts as well, distracted by whatever raced through your mind?

“I know you’re there.” You say, voice low and soft. He’s never heard you speak before. Your voice is just as haunting as he imagined. There’s no accusation in your tone. It’s not a shout to draw attention. “You’ve been following me.” 

He stays behind the wall, fighting the war within himself. He should stay hidden, he should keep himself at a distance. If he reveals himself, you may realize he had been there that night. What answer would he give if you asked why? He hadn’t meant to follow you, at least not for so long. You had lured him behind you like a fish caught on a line. 

Would you run again if he spoke the truth? Despite his dislike of practically everyone, you’ve caught his attention in a way he’s not sure he wants to lose. It frightens him, and it worries him all at once. He needs no one. He’s happy in solitude. 

That’s not true, is it. 

He slowly steps out from behind the wall, keeping a safe distance from you. Your eyes widen a bit, as if you had been doubting yourself, as if it would be the same as the night he followed you. Had you thought you were going mad? 

You shift your weight as he reveals himself, the tenseness of your shoulders not easing any. Why should it? He’s a stranger to you. You’ve never spoken before now. He’s not even sure if you’ve seen him before tonight. You had caught him staring upon your arrival. Would you assume he’s been the culprit the entire time? 

“You left the party early.” He says, trying to come up with an explanation before you can ask. You may not take to the truth as openly as he could hope. 

You shift again, hands curling around the wispy edges of your dress. “I don’t like parties.” You say it with such bluntness he can’t help the smirk that lifts his lips. 

“I don’t either.” He says. “Too many people.” 

“Too much noise.” You say, nodding in agreement. “You’re...one of Tech’s brothers.” He gives you a questioning glance. You seem to know of him, despite this being the first time you’ve spoken. “Phee likes to talk about Tech.” You quickly explain.

Of course. You had arrived at the party with Phee, meaning she had likely invaded your life as much as she invaded his brothers’. She and Tech were very much infatuated. While he’s not heartless enough not to feel happy for his brother, Phee’s personality was grating to his introverted nature. Omega likes her too, and so she spends ample time with them. 

It appears she has gotten to you as well. 

“The name’s Crosshair.” He says, slipping a toothpick into his mouth. 

You tell him your name, his mind replaying it over and over to commit it to memory. It wasn’t likely he’d forget, but he doesn’t want to run the risk. 

“Are you going the same way?” You ask, taking half a step backwards. You’re anxious to get home. He can tell by your body language. You want to get there before others start leaving the party. “You could walk with me. I promise I won’t talk your ear off. I could not talk at all, if that’s what you prefer.” 

“I’m not one for talking.” He says, his body already moving forward. He’s not entirely sure if you’re even going in the same direction he is, but he’s not going to complain. 

A smile tugs at your lips as you fall in step beside him. “I was raised in a culture where you don’t speak unless you have something meaningful to say.”

“Sounds like an ideal place.” He says. 

“It was, until it was wiped out by the war.” You respond.

So that was it. The war had been what ultimately led you here. He doesn’t press any further. He can tell you don’t want to speak more on the subject. Instead he falls into silence as he walks with you, letting you lead the way to your tiny hovel. 

It’s not far from where you stopped that night he followed you. 

“This is me.” You say, stepping up onto the small porch. “Thank you for walking with me. Solitude is nice, but sometimes silent company is better.” 

Wise words. You may be right in that regard. He didn’t hate walking with you, and he certainly didn’t regret his decision. The silence had felt natural, not forced like the time he spent with those who believed conversation was necessary and silence was some form of disease. 

Perhaps he was capable of enjoying others' company after all. 

***

Despite your formal introduction, Crosshair finds little time to interact with you alone. The next time he sees you after the party is in passing. 

Phee is the one that draws the attention to you, having spotted you leaving the beach as they were arriving. You don’t seem to have settled well into your new life. The dark, puffy circles under your eyes have worsened, and it seems you only continue to liken the ghost he once thought you were. 

You were doing more than sitting this time. Your pants are damp almost to the knees, sand sticking to the fabric. Despite your time in the sun, there’s still a pallor to your skin, making you seem almost sickly in the bright sunlight. 

He’s not the only one who’s noticed. 

“Are you feeling alright, sweetcheeks?” Phee asks, pressing a hand to your forehead. 

He watches the squaring of your shoulders, the subtle twitch of your muscles as her hand makes contact with your skin. You’re ready to flinch away, bracing yourself for whatever horrid thought passed through your mind as her hand lifted towards you. Perhaps you may have even tried to duck, had social convention not frowned upon such extreme reactions. It would have brought up questions, questions he knows you are desperately trying to avoid.

Instead you freeze, staying far too still as Phee feels your forehead. Reacting strangely would only heighten her concern. Brushing her off will save you at least this time, though she will be paying closer attention to you now. Perhaps the more extreme reaction would have been the better choice.

“I’m still trying to settle into a new place. That’s always been hard for me.” You speak slowly, and though it might only be a half truth, he can tell it’s worked. 

Phee lets her hand drop back to her side. “Well, if you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to ask. I mean it. Anything at all.” 

You nod slowly, something flashing across your gaze too fast for even him to decipher it. “Right. I-I will.” You begin to step away slowly, almost as if you were waiting for someone to stop you. “I’m going to go rest now.” 

You turn without waiting for a reply, hastily retreating up the path from the beach back onto the streets of Pabu. Crosshair is half tempted to follow you, to slip away from the others, but Omega takes hold of his hand, leading him out into the sand. He allows it, having more patience for the kid than anyone else. 

The increase in interactions with you has only heightened his curiosity. Even now that he’s heard you speak and knows your name, you’re still a phantom in his mind. You appear so hollow, so empty and yet he knows the depths inside your soul are so vast the entire ocean could fill them and still not reach the top. You seem to float past those around you, even the very air seeming to cut right through you. 

You appear so fragile, and yet the walls around you are so steep, even the most experienced climber would shake their head in prospect of climbing them. 

Curiosity would not be enough for him to wish to climb those walls, to see what devastation lies on the other side. Curiosity is not a strong enough word to drive him to seek you out, to yearn for your voice, your story, your very being. 

He wants to see the devastation inside you because he knows it is a mirror of his own. 

Only you could understand him in the way he yearns for. His brothers try, but they can’t know, they can’t possibly understand him. Not in the way he needs. No amount of sympathetic looks and words could possibly begin to chip away at the thick walls that protect him.

He wants to tear down your walls, he wants to see your ugly insides, if only to vindicate the ugliness that resides behind his carefully crafted exterior. You are not so good at hiding it, at least not to those who know. Crosshair knows you will shatter eventually, just as he did. 

He’d had his brothers to catch him. 

Who do you have?

***

Crosshair sees little of you over the next few weeks. He catches glimpses in passing, often being herded somewhere by Hunter or Omega. You simply seem to exist, floating past the crowd, or sitting on your porch with a cup of caf. You don’t look any better than you had before, still pallored and gaunt, all the life seeming to have been sapped from your body. 

He finds himself pausing his nightly walks in front of your small house. He hasn’t seen you walking since that night, but occasionally he spots movement in the windows of your hovel, shadows moving in the light through the curtains. 

The most he sees of you is in passing on the landing pad on their way to do a supply run. You were speaking with Phee, pushing a bag of credits into her hands. He could see the desperation in your eyes, practically pleading with her.

Whatever it is you wanted, you were desperate to get it. 

It plagued his mind the entire trip. What could you be so desperate to get? A relic from your home world? Something from your past to bring back fond memories before war stole everything from you? Or perhaps something else. It could be anything. 

It could be anyone. 

The thought stirs something inside of him, something that makes him feel sick. It burns through his veins, heating his skin. He pushes the thought aside, hating how it makes him feel. 

You disappear once more after your discussion with Phee, fulfilling your role as the ghost in his life. He continues his walks, pausing in front of your home but you never grace him with your presence, even unknowingly. 

It’s a week later when he finally sees you once more. 

It’s late. The moon is full, bathing the island in cool light. There’s not many places to hide tonight, not many shadows to conceal him, yet he hadn’t been able to shake the need to walk. His mind had been restless, and the images behind his eyes when he closed them were too much to bear so he slipped from the house, stalking along the quiet streets. 

He passes your house, pausing in his usual spot. His brow furrows as he takes in the scene in front of him. 

Your front door is wide open, the lights on inside. He pauses there for a moment, waiting for any sign you may be moving around in there, but it’s quiet. Still. Your shoes are on the porch, haphazardly laying with the toes facing the street, like you had left with them on, then decided against it and tossed them back onto the porch. 

Either that, or you had left in a hurry. He scans the area but there’s no sign of you, his stomach twisting nervously. He’s not sure why. The scene in front of him has put him on edge. For someone so closed off, leaving your door open was not what he would have expected. Even if you had ventured for a short walk, leaving your private space wide open for anyone to see was out of character. 

He continues his walk, more alert than he had been. He moves slowly, waiting for a sound, a sign, anything that may lead him to you. 

It doesn’t take him long. 

He spots you first, stumbling lazily down the street. He can hear you mumbling as he gets closer, cursing with slurred words. There’s a bottle in your hand, glowing faint blue in the light of the moon. 

You’re drunk, a nearly empty bottle of spotchka clutched in your hand. So that was what you had sent Phee after. 

He wonders if that’s the only bottle you’ve had tonight. 

He debates the best course of action. You may react if he startles you, possibly waking the neighbors. He does not want to have to face them, to try and explain. He knows it’ll only bring more unwanted attention to you as well. They’ll want to help, they’ll check on you, they’ll worry about you. 

You’d hate him forever. 

You freeze in your stumbling walk, his body stopping as well. He’s pulled into the memories of that first night he followed you. There’s nowhere to hide tonight, though if you spot him on your own perhaps your reaction will be more desirable. You slowly turn, swaying a bit on your feet like you’re trying to stand in a stiff breeze. You squint at him, mouth hanging open as you take him in. He wonders what it is you see. Can you even recognize him in this state? Or is he a shadow, a ghostly figure your alcohol-riddled mind is trying to piece together. 

He says your name quietly, your eyes widening as they focus on him. He steps closer, moving slowly, carefully. You’re unpredictable in this state. He pauses just past an arm distance away, worried about getting too close. You might run again.

“Crosshair!” You shout, bringing the bottle to your lips, draining the rest. “What’re ya doin out so late?” 

He can smell the alcohol on you at this proximity, the scent burning his nose. You look a mess, beyond just your drunken demeanor. Dark, swollen circles rim your red eyes, your clothes wrinkled and worn like you haven’t changed them in a few days. Strands of hair stick to your sweaty forehead, your face looking sunken and gaunt. Your feet are bare again, though whether that was a conscious choice or a consequence of your inebriation, he’s unsure. The haphazardly placed shoes suddenly make sense. 

“You’re drunk.” He says, looking you over. You don’t seem hurt, not physically at least. 

You sniffle, staring at the empty bottle in your hand. “Guess I am.” 

You throw the bottle with a force he didn’t know you were capable of, the glass shattering loudly on the stone street. You stumble backwards from the force of your throw.

“It’s fucking stupid.” You say, wheeling away from him. “Those motherfuckers took everything from me!” You brace your hands on the wall overhanging the cliff. You push yourself up, kneeling on the edge. It’s a long drop to the houses below. The fall might kill you, if you landed wrong. 

He suddenly feels nervous. Would you jump? He wouldn’t have pitted you for someone who would do such a thing sober. You’re not sober, though. You’re not in your right mind. 

“They’re coming back.” You whisper, staring down at the moonlit city below. 

“Who’s coming back?” He asks, watching you carefully. He can’t imagine anyone on the island so much as threatening you, much less attempting anything uncouth. 

“They’re coming. They’re coming.” You’re starting to get frantic. Whatever it is you think you’re seeing, it’s driving you mad. “We have to go before they get here. We have to go!” 

He moves purely on instinct. His years of training have saved many lives before, but none of them felt like this. 

His arm is around your middle before your knees leave the ledge, body falling forward into his arm. He uses his weight to pull you backwards, turning mid-fall so he takes the brunt of it, his back hitting the stone street. You fall on top of him, stunned long enough for him to secure his hold around you. 

His heart is pounding in his chest, adrenaline coursing through him. He holds you tightly, half to keep you restrained and half for his brain to process that he did catch you, he did make it in time. You’re still here, you’re secure in his arms. 

He hasn’t felt this way in a while. 

He hasn’t felt this way since Barton IV, since the avalanche, since he had to keep Mayday and himself alive through a blizzard only to watch him die. He had lost Mayday after trying everything he could to save him. He feels like he didn’t do enough. He feels responsible. 

He won’t let the same thing happen to you. 

You scream, the sound muffled by his shirt as he forces your face against his chest. You try to fight him, but all the strength with which you threw the bottle is gone. You’re no match for him. Not in this state. He sits himself up, keeping you restrained against his body. 

“They’re coming back.” You sob against his chest, beginning to hyperventilate. “They’re coming back, we have to go!” You continue to struggle, but your fight is waning, getting weaker and weaker. “We have to go before they come back!” 

“Stop.” He grabs your face, pulling you away from his chest enough that you can see him. Tears and snot slide down your skin, wetting his fingers. You’re sobbing, breaths hitching as your body tries to regulate itself. “Stop.” He shakes you, nothing more than an attempt to snap you out of this delusion. “No one is coming.” 

You stare up at him with those haunted eyes, the moonlight making the dark circles under them seem more intense. “I can’t sleep.” You whisper, shockingly alert compared to what he had just seen. He can feel you folding, your body getting heavier until it’s only his grip on you holding you up. “Maybe if I get drunk enough, I’ll pass out before I remember.” 

He lets you fall limp against his chest, keeping his arms locked around you to prevent you from trying something stupid again. His heart is still racing, the adrenaline making his hands shake. He had been designed for extreme stress. He had been designed to run straight into battle and not bat an eye. 

The thought of losing you so easily has rattled him. 

He needs to get you back home, somewhere he can keep a closer eye on you until you inevitably pass out from the alcohol in your system. He shifts you in his arms, pushing himself to stand. You’re light, far too light. He wonders if you’ve been eating, or if your sleep deprivation has taken over your entire life. Tech had spewed the detriments of sleep deprivation several times during the course of the war. They were designed to go without sleep for extended periods, but even they were not immune. They would begin to degrade to the point of delusion, and death would follow soon after. 

He wonders how long it’s been, how long you’ve suffered without sleep. 

You truly are a ghost. 

It’s a surprise the inhabitants of the nearby houses haven’t been roused by the commotion. Or perhaps it’s just luck. The last thing he needed was someone else making this worse in an attempt to help. He has you under control now. If someone were to intervene, he’s unsure of how you would react.  

He carries you back to your house, the door still open and the lights still on. It feels strange, invading your space. He feels as if he’s breaking some unspoken rule, infringing upon a sacred space as he steps in the door. 

It’s a mess. Clothes and blankets are strewn around the small living area. Dirty dishes sit like landmines, half eaten food spread across the stone floor. How long it’s been there, he’s not sure he wants to know. He follows the trail into the bedroom, that space not much better off. Clothes everywhere, full and empty bottles of alcohol on the floor, the bed stripped completely of sheets and blankets. 

He can’t let you stay here like this. 

He finds the ‘fresher, stepping inside. It’s at least cleaner than he expected, damp clothes and towels piled on the floor, used containers of shampoo and soap littering the sink. He clears a spot, swiping the containers onto the floor. He sits you on the counter, your eyes closed. For a moment he thinks you might have passed out, but you crack your eyes open, staring at him. 

He leans you back against the mirror, making sure you’re steady as he digs to find a clean rag. He finds a semi-clean one, running it under the cold water before gently wiping down your face. He cleans every inch of exposed skin, checking the bottoms of your feet. Dirty, but thankfully uninjured. 

He can’t leave you here. It’s too risky. Not that he’d want to leave you in this mess anyway. He sighs through his nose, staring at your half asleep form. You’ll hate him, but he has no other choice. He can’t risk it. 

He can’t risk you. 

He picks you back up, carrying you out of the ‘fresher. Something shatters under his boot as he crosses the living room, but he’s too focused to care. He leaves your house, grabbing your shoes before making the short journey back up the hill to his own home.

It’s dark and quiet inside, just as he’d left it. His steps are near silent as he heads back to his room, his own small sacred space. He lays you on the bed, your body curling in on itself as soon as it hits the mattress, as if you’re trying to revert to some early form, back when the world was safe, when you were unable to comprehend the horrors that were soon to cross your path. 

You’re asleep, or past the point of being able to control your own body as you take little notice of anything around you. He tucks the blanket around your shoulders. The stench of alcohol is going to sink into his sheets, permeate the air in his room. He can wash them later. 

He settles himself on the floor at the end of the bed, leaning against the door. You’d have to move him to get out. Even with the exhaustion settling into his mind, the likelihood of you slipping out unnoticed is very small. Hunter already knows someone else is in the house, and if by some chance he doesn’t, he’d know as soon as he heard your footsteps. 

The likelihood you’ll remember any of the events from tonight are slim. You’re far too drunk. He’ll have to come up with something, a reason for bringing you here. 

He’ll worry about that when the time comes. 

You’re going to be angry when you wake, but if it keeps you safe, he’ll face your wrath happily.

***

Crosshair’s pulled from sleep, straightening up from where he’d been leaning to the side as you groan quietly. He blinks the sleep from his eyes, stretching out his legs. His joints pop uncomfortably, forced into one position for too long. He glances at the bed, watching the lump under the blankets shift. Your arm lifts above the blanket, rubbing across your forehead as you groan once more. He can imagine the severity of the hangover pulsing behind your eyes. 

He pushes himself to stand, approaching the bed slowly. You blink blearily up at him, squinting slightly as if you’re trying to see him better. Your sleep-addled brain is still trying to focus, trying to process everything you’re seeing. The chronometer on the wall tells him you haven’t been asleep longer than a couple hours, and it’s entirely likely you’re still a bit drunk. 

You slowly push yourself up to sit, glancing around the room, looking anywhere but at him. He can practically see the shame burning on your face. “I’m sorry you had to see me like that.” Your voice is rough with sleep or drink, or perhaps both. “It was stupid of me to think alcohol would solve my problems.” Your gaze drops to your hands like a guilty child waiting to be reprimanded. “You shouldn’t have had to go out of your way to help me.” 

So you do remember. It takes him by surprise. Some parts, perhaps, he thought you might remember, hazily at most. 

“I don’t want to die.” You say, taking his silence as an invitation to continue. “But can you really call this living?” 

He narrows his eyes at your words. You are right. He can see the suffering in your very existence. The exhaustion that plagues you endlessly, that makes you the phantom he sees you as. 

“I-I should get home.” You swing your legs over the bed but he grabs your arm before you can move too far. 

You feel so frail under his touch, and he’s afraid you’ll crumble like a stone statue if he squeezes too hard. “Don’t.” He says, your body pinned in place by the harshness of his gaze. He releases your arm, turning to grab clean clothes from his dresser. He tosses them to you, your body barely reacting in time to catch them. “Clean yourself up, then have something to eat before you go.”

You blink at him for a moment, hand clutching the clothes he’d tossed at you to your chest where you’d caught them. Your head turns slightly towards the door as the sound of the others moving around in the kitchen draws your attention. You had been introduced to them by Phee, so they weren’t entirely unknown to you. They knew very little about you, though, and certainly wouldn’t be expecting you to be here. 

“‘Fresher’s down the hall.” He says.

You stand on shaky legs, your eyes pinching shut as your hangover makes itself known once more. He’s worried for half a moment you may collapse, his body ready to catch you. You let out a long breath before you’re moving, stepping out the door. He waits until you’re gone before he’s changing, ridding himself of his alcohol-saturated clothes. He leaves his room, stepping into the living area. 

All eyes are focused on him instantly. He’s immune to it now after years, and there’s no desire for him to react, not in this safe space. Not when it’s his squad. His brothers. They’re all wondering, they all want to know. Phee rarely spent the night here. Tech was more likely to be absent from their morning routine than to have it disrupted by the appearance of someone from the outside. For him to have brought someone in, have them here in the morning...he’s the one breaking routine. 

Crosshair pours himself a cup of caf, Hunter staring at him from across the kitchen. Crosshair meets his gaze unwaveringly, giving him a telling look. He’ll explain later. He doesn’t want them to know while you’re still here. The last thing you need is for them to make a deal of it, to cause a scene, to give you those ridiculous pitiful looks, to shower you in sympathy. He knows the wrong kind of attention could drive you back to the place you were last night. 

He can’t risk that. 

You emerge from the ‘fresher nearly half an hour later. Crosshair knows much of that time had to be you working up the bravery to come out and face his brothers. Your hair is damp, cleaner than he’s seen it in a while. You’re swimming in his clothes, making you seem even more fragile than you already appeared. 

They’re all staring at you, and he can see the heistance, the nervousness of having all the attention on you. You step up next to him, standing close enough you could duck behind him if you felt the need. He’s surprised you aren’t hiding behind him, facing his brothers bravely. 

Omega is the first to greet you, breaking the silence. She greets you by name, despite the limited interactions she’s had with you. She’s always so perceptive, remembering names and details from conversations and interactions that even Crosshair missed. 

"You're welcome to stay for breakfast." Hunter says. "If you'd like."

"That would be nice, thank you." You say, Crosshair noticing the waver in your voice. Hunter likely did as well, but he draws no attention to it. 

Not that he would. 

"Come on, you can watch holovids with me while we wait." Omega says, taking your hand to pull you to the couch. 

And so their normal morning routine was back to normal. Wrecker joins you and Omega on the couch, Echo going back to working on breakfast. Hunter steps closer to Crosshair, giving him a look. 

"She needed help last night." Crosshair says quietly, reading the question on his brother’s face. "It wasn't safe for her to be alone."

Hunter nods slowly in understanding. He'll get the full story later, but for now that's appeased him. He only worried about the safety of his family, not that you posed much of a threat. 

Crosshair sits you next to him at the table as they eat, partially for a sense of comfort and security on your part and also so he could make sure you actually ate something. He doesn’t have to worry much, though. You seem perfectly happy to eat. 

Conversation flows as it usually does around the table. You don’t partake much, not that he really expected you to, but he can tell you’re listening intently. So observant, so aware. Wrecker’s bellowing laugh makes you jump, but Crosshair is the only one that notices. 

“How did you get here?” Omega asks, turning to you as she changes the subject. 

The table falls silent, suddenly all eyes on you. You pause in your chewing, hand closing around your fork just a little tighter. He can practically see your thoughts racing, the nervous tension beginning to square your shoulders once more. 

“Omega.” Hunter scolds, casting a sideways glance at the girl before turning back to you. “You don’t have to answer that.” 

You swallow the food you had been chewing, obviously not expecting to be given the option. Most people wanted to know, and they asked without hesitation, without considering what they’re asking the other person to relive. 

Crosshair can’t help but be a bit curious too. He’s not a nosy person. He doesn't care about others enough to bother knowing their secrets. The only people he cares about are his brothers, and he’s spent his entire life with them. There wasn’t room for many secrets among them, not even after his return. They knew about his excursions, and they were perceptive enough to decipher his curiosity towards you. Bringing you here likely only answered the question of just how close he’s gotten to you, even if they weren’t aware of the full story. 

They would be. He would tell them. Not to earn you more pity, but in hopes they will share his desire to look after you. 

You, however, he wants to know. He wants to peel back the layers like the skin of a fruit. He wants to know. He wants the answers to why you’re so broken. 

Why you’re so like him. 

He would never force you to share. He knows the pain of having to relive those moments. It’s enough having to see them every time you close your eyes. Having to speak them aloud only feels like a threat, like you may breathe life into them once more. Like they may happen to you all over again. 

“No, that’s alright.” You say, putting your fork down. “No one’s really asked me before. Not that they’ve really had a chance to.” You shrug, the corner of your lips almost lifting into a smile but it drops from your face as quickly as it appears. “I, uh, I was from Devoth.” 

Wrecker gasps dramatically, Hunter’s face falling in understanding. Crosshair’s chest clenches, things beginning to fall into place. So that was it. Devoth had been one of the worst battles in the last year of the war, no, the entirety of the war. They hadn’t been part of it, but he remembered hearing of it.

“What does that mean?” Omega asks, looking around at the sullen faces at the table. 

“Devoth was a planet in the Muno system located in the inner rim.” Tech says. “It was a mostly peaceful planet under the Republic government. It was used as a mining colony for centuries due to the deposits of rare minerals under the planet’s surface.”

“During the last year of the war, there was a Separatist invasion.” Hunter says, cutting off Tech’s ramble of facts about your home planet. “The battle that took place there was one of the most severe in terms of losses. The Republic won the battle, but it came at the expense of most of the battalion and the planet.” 

Omega looks at you, a horrified look on her face. You’re staring down at your plate, eyelashes fluttering like you’re trying not to cry. Your hand’s closed in a fist where it rests on the table, your entire body wound tightly. 

“Most of the planet’s surface was destroyed.” You finally say, voice wavering just slightly. “I was home alone when it happened, when the Separatists invaded. My parents had gone to the city center that morning. We had no warning. It was just a normal day then suddenly there’s a droid army marching through our neighborhood. They pulled us all out of our homes. Marched us through the streets with blasters at our backs. They were trying to gather us all in one place.” You shrug. “I couldn’t tell you what they were planning to do, but it couldn’t have been worse than what happened.”

“What happened?” Omega asks, everyone at the table leaning closer subconsciously. They had only heard the stories from those few who survived, those who fought. They’d never heard it from the side of someone on the surface. Someone entirely neutral to the war. 

You turn your gaze to Hunter, almost as if you’re asking permission to share the horror of what happened with a child. You won’t give all the details, he knows already. That’s far too intimate for your first real conversation with them. Perhaps you were trying to save Omega from experiencing the same trauma you had. 

“The Republic arrived not long after the Separatists did.” You continue. “As soon as the gunships entered the atmosphere the droids started shooting at the gunships and at civilians. I think they were trying to get the Republic to call off the invasion by executing innocent civilians, but there was so much confusion, it didn’t work.” 

“How did you survive?” Omega asks. 

“Someone grabbed my hand in the confusion.” You say. “I don’t know who she was, but we ran for it. There were underground shelters built out of old mining tunnels all over the city. Devoth was known for sudden, intense storms during the rainy season, so they were built to offer shelter when the storms blew through the city. We made it into one of the shelters with a few others.” You shake your head. “I couldn’t even recognize where we were when we finally came out a couple days later. Everything was gone. It was like a storm blew in and wiped the entire planet clean. There weren’t even bodies left.” You hastily wipe the tear that falls, sniffling. “Sorry.” 

“I’m sorry you lost your home and your family.” Omega says, speaking with such compassion it stirs even Crosshair. “I’m glad you made it. You can be part of our family now.” 

A small smile tugs at your lips, but it doesn’t quite reach your eyes. “Thank you. I am lucky that I made it out.” 

Hunter quickly changes the topic of conversation, sensing your distress. He won’t push you to continue, won’t push for more details. They’re capable of understanding the loss that comes with war, and the desire to leave it in the past. Crosshair knows there’s more to the story, however.

The rest of breakfast passes quickly, and despite Omega’s insistence that you stay longer, Crosshair knows you’re tired and overwhelmed. He escorts you from the house, the tension in your shoulders easing just a bit as soon as you’re outside. The streets are busy and bustling already, but you don’t seem as tense walking beside him. 

You almost seem human. 

“That wasn’t the end of the story.” He says as you approach your house, slowing his pace. The Battle of Devoth had happened well over a year ago. A lot can happen in a year. 

“No. It wasn’t.” You say, slowing your pace as well. 

Silence reigns between you until you reach your porch, sinking down onto the steps. He stays standing, hovering over you. He stares at the top of your head as you look out into the street, past the inhabitants milling about their day and out into the distant cerulean ocean. 

“We were in that shelter for almost three days.” You say, tugging at the cuffed hem of your borrowed pants. “The battle happened fast, but we were scared of what we would find above. We had no clue what had happened, who had won. When we finally got out, the planet was unrecognizable. We looked for anything we could find, but it had all been reduced to dust and rubble. There were a few other survivors, others that were lucky and made it into other shelters.” 

He stays quiet, not wanting to give you any reason to stop. He wants to know. He needs to know. It’s like a sick fascination, a need to know just how broken you are. 

“We tried to contact someone, anyone, but none of the comms were working. We all thought we would die there, but the pirates arrived not long after. They were looking for anything they could pilfer but there was nothing but us.” You finally look up at him, tears still sliding down your cheeks. “We didn’t have any choice. What else could we do? Stay there and starve or hope the Republic showed back up to look for survivors? We willingly walked ourselves into slavery.” You sniffle, wiping the tears from your face. 

There’s a pain in his stomach that has grown as he listens to your story. He had never stopped to think of the horrors that the civilians, the citizens of the planets they fought on, faced too. It wasn’t their job. Their job was to fight and try to survive to the next battle. They didn’t think about the homes they destroyed or the lives they upended trying to prevent the droid army from accomplishing the same end. 

He’d done horrible things under the Empire. Worse things. He remembers it all, even when he hadn’t been the one in control. He’d destroyed lives, enslaved others, killed innocent people. All for what? 

“Don’t make me tell you what happened after.” You shake your head, the tears still falling despite your best efforts to wipe them away. 

He doesn’t need to know. He knows enough about the galaxy to be able to guess what happened to you. He’s curious how you made it here, but he won’t push you further than you have been today. You’ve been dragged through enough in the last few hours. He doesn’t want to risk pushing you to repeat what happened last night.

“That’s why I can’t sleep.” You say, staring off out the window. “I can still hear them marching down the street. I close my eyes and they’re kicking in the door, dragging me out into the chaos. I can still hear the ships, the blasters, the bombs. Sometimes I don’t make it. Sometimes I can see my parents. Sometimes I’m back with the pirates. Sometimes I never escaped at all.” 

Understanding washes over him like a wave from the sea. You’re beginning to make sense now. The rapid decline you had been steadily sliding down since your arrival here. Your struggle sleeping, the nightmares both awake and asleep. Crosshair feels the bite of loneliness in his house full of his brothers and Omega, but he’s never truly alone. 

You’re entirely alone. 

You had been alone when your life was destroyed, when everything changed. It was lucky that you survived at all. No matter how many times you were assured you were safe here, you were alone. Being alone was not safe for you. Being alone left you vulnerable to the horrors of your past, left you vulnerable to the horrors that may come through your door when you’re least expecting them. 

He begins to formulate an idea, a plan taking shape in his mind. He won’t leave you to suffer alone. You had already proven you wouldn’t survive that. You don’t have to be alone here, but he’s well aware you won’t willingly accept help. You’re too stubborn for that, too ashamed of your own brokenness. 

He’s not going to give up on you, leave you to suffer a cruel fate that could be avoided. You were so much like him, even if your experiences were different. He understands you, and you have the capacity to understand him. He can help you. He desires to help you. 

Little do you know, you are capable of helping him as well. 

Taglist:

@rosechi @bobaprint @star-trekker-0013 @wolffegirlsunite @jedi-hawkins @sinfulsalutations @freesia-writes @littlemissmanga @clio3kantarella @eris-k @thorsterstrudle @idontgetanysleep @anxiouspineapple99 @clonemedickix @moonlightwarriorqueen @sleepingsun501 @dystopicjumpsuit @wings-and-beskar @blueink-bluesoul @starrylothcat @523rdrebel

[allovesthings]

Arya X of a Clash of Kings really is my Roman empire.

It's my favorite chapter of all the books with one of my favorite quote, it's such a great way to mix magic and politics with some horror elements and some humor and I got chills every time I read it...

But the way nobody but the Tumblr girlies (gender neutral) acknowledge it as a pretty big magic chapter (a dead person is actually talking through the Weirwood, you would think that would be significant) and the way some people in the fandom decided this was the moment she was too far gone even though she is killing someone who is keeping them from escaping slavery and the narrative goes out of its way to tell us later on that they would all have died horrible deaths if they stayed makes me so mad.

[hurricanek8art]

Okay, I don't know what's going on with Tumblr and everything has been absolute chaos with my life the past few months, so y'know what, screw it. I think I'm actually brave enough to share some of my art. At least it won't just be sitting on my tablet that way.

This is my Sith Inquisitor turned Force-sensitive Outcast from SWTOR, Roodaka Greatstorm-Kallig. I haven't really plotted everything out with her regarding her story, but she's not my Outlander. She leaves the Empire right after Ziost, after losing all of the family she'd used her Dark Council connections to find and save from slavery, and Lana recruits her to help Sana-Rae run the Enclave about two years before the Outlander (my Knight Aja Verdona) is rescued. She's prickly and petty and spiteful but I love her dearly. And because I've never posted art before, art process and a little bit of character lore ramble under the cut, I guess?

I usually work with lined art/sketches that are admittedly very messy, but when I did the first one back in May I was experimenting with actually rendering/painting, and I saw a fashion post thing that looked like something Roo would wear, so I was mostly just playing around, it's not a solid outfit design for her. It's janky and wonky and oh Lord please don't look closely at the anatomy or face it is not up to my usual standards, but I was so proud of myself for the lighting on this one, as well as how I managed to render the muscle. Like, the lighting! I have no idea what I'm doing but I think it looks so flipping good! And I was happy with how the crackly lightsaber blade turned out—it is supposed to be Aloysius Kallig's lightsaber, meaning it's at least over a thousand years old, right? It should be a little janky with age!

The second one is supposed to be post Fallen Empire, after she's left the Sith and become sort of a wandering Force-user—think Ahsoka as of, well... Ahsoka, but more on the side of Ventress if she'd survived TCW (don't get me started on that choice 🙄🙄🙄). I came into it knowing a little more of what I was doing, but I kinda got in over my head and gave up on the 100% lineless thing, you can definitely tell with the sword/clothes. 🥴 The second piece has been sitting unfinished in my WIP folder for months, so I just said screw it, finished up some details and called it because I am SO PROUD of her face and hands (I DREW A GOOD HAND WITHOUT LINEART WHO AM I?!?!) and how I rendered her skin, I don't want it to live in WIP purgatory forever. You can actually tell that's muscle! And a neck!

I'm proud of how her tattoos turned out, too. I played around with Cham Syndulla's tattoo pattern, turning it at different angles. It felt like a good way to root her in Twi'lek culture despite the Kallig bloodline having been separated from it for so long. She gets the first one to cover up a slave tattoo, and the rest after Ziost to further reclaim her identity and culture, leaving the Sith behind.

I have no idea how to close this post. Um... thanks for reading all this, if you have? I've never posted art before, I'm kinda terrified. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[justagalwhowrites]

Beskar Doll - Ch. 39: Threat

Your bounty takes you to Kessel and comes with challenges of its own. A continuation of Beskar Doll Ch. 1-38 found on Tumblr here.

Pairing: The Mandalorian/Din Djarin x Female Reader

Warnings: SMUT! Smutty smutty smut. Smutttttttt! Canon-typical violence. No use of Y/N. Minors DNI, 18+ only.

Length: 7k

“You’re in position?” 

Din’s voice was crackly through the com link. You didn’t like it. You loved his voice, the com should at least try to do him justice. 

“I’m set,” you replied. “You?” 

“In position,” he replied. “Let you know when the target approaches.” 

The cantina was a nice one, all things considered. Clean, comfortable. You liked it well enough, there had been worse places you’d waited for a bounty or a contact. 

But you didn’t like Kessel. 

The Mandalorian had been here before - back before the fall of the Empire, when things were apparently a bit more stable - but you’d never visited this world. It wasn’t too high on the list of diplomatic missions given that its main export was a drug. Now you knew that you hadn’t missed much. 

Din had made you promise to not kill someone unprovoked when you landed - and clarified that unprovoked also meant that you couldn’t kill someone just because they were a slaver. Because everyone here was either a slave or a slaver and making it off world and through the Kessel run with your bounty, yourselves and your ship intact was more important. 

“Can’t believe you won’t let me just kill slavers,” you grumbled as you settled into the room you were renting. 

“Doll,” he sighed. “We’re here to handle other problems. We aren’t equipped to end slavery on Kessel.” 

The child was toddling around, peeking around corners, exploring the room. You just watched him, your heart warm. It hurt that there were other children who were going to suffer and you couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“We are here to help keep children on Canto Bight safe,” he said. You went and looked out the window to the street below. It was strange, knowing that damn near anyone in the town and not at the mines were slavers. If it weren’t for the handful of slaves working here, you’d set some thermal detonators, blow the whole place. 

Din stood behind you, his body large and broad. His hand went to your shoulder, slipping down and over you, between your breasts, splaying wide against your stomach before tugging you back against him. Your head was against his chest, you could feel him breathing. 

“I’m sorry we cannot do more,” he said quietly. “I know you are used to… more power.” 

You sighed. 

“I like when we do what we can,” you said, holding onto his arm. “And I knew what I’d be trading when I did what I did during the war. If I made it to the other side, I probably wouldn’t be in the same position after. But it was worth it. If the Empire had won, things would be worse everywhere.” 

Grogu fell asleep not long after you finished the meditative exercises Ahsoka had given you to do with him, drifting off against your chest until you put him in his pod. Din was sitting on the bed, legs stretched out in front of him. You watched him for a moment. It felt like you’d been under threat for so long, the constant stress of looking over your shoulder, the fear of losing him or the child eating at you. For a moment, you wanted nothing more than to forget, to get lost in him. 

You went and straddled him, putting your forehead against the cool metal of his. His hands went to your waist and you could feel him starting to harden below you. 

“Cyare,” he said, voice heavy. “Tell me, what do you want?” 

You took a deep, shaky breath. 

“I wanted to ask you for something,” you said, biting your lip. One hand left your waist and he pulled your lip free from your teeth with his thumb before tracing it gently. Your heart was beating in a hard and heavy rhythm against your ribs. He just nodded once, his hand returning to your waist. 

“The time in the shower,” you said hesitantly. “And in the cockpit, with the binders…” 

You took a shaky breath, stomach tight, and you sat back away from him. 

“Yes?” He asked when you didn’t continue. 

“I was wondering if you’d do something like that to me again,” you had to consciously try to not bite your lip, your cheeks hot. You’d never asked for something like this, never wanted to ask for something like this. 

He paused. You could feel his eyes ranging over you, his cock growing harder against your center, a disappointing amount of fabric separating the two of you. 

“You like when I’m in control,” He asked without asking. You nodded. “Want me to make it so you don’t have to think, make it so all you have to do is feel?” 

You swallowed, hard, before nodding again. Nothing felt quite so good - so freeing, so safe - as when he had control. You trusted him completely, more than you’d ever trusted another person - even Sosha. Trusted him to take care of you, to give you what you wanted, to keep you safe enough that you could let yourself be consumed. 

He slipped his hands lower, tugging your shirt up and over you before depositing it on the floor. He cupped your breasts below the band before he pulled that off and discarded it, too. Din then reached for his belt and took his binders out, nodding to your hands. You took a shaky breath and put your wrists together in front of him. He slipped the binders over you, latching them tight before sliding his hands around you, up your back, holding you against the cool armor of him for a moment before lifting you from the bed and laying you beneath him. 

He took something from his belt, lifted your hands over your head, and fastened you to the bed. Your heart sped up. 

Din got up and your eyes followed him as he went to turn out the light, plunging the room into not quite total darkness. You heard the sound of beskar being put down and then his clear, unmodulated voice. 

“If I do anything you can’t handle,” he said. “Say the name of your home world. I don’t plan to give in to your begging.” 

You swallowed past the knot in your throat and took a shaky breath before nodding in the darkness. He got on the bed, you could feel the mattress sink below his weight. His hands went to your knees and he spread them wide before settling between your legs, his skin everywhere, almost overwhelming. His nose ran up and down your own, his lips brushing yours but not quite kissing you. When you lifted your head enough to try to kiss him - really kiss him - he pulled back every so slightly. You whimpered. 

“So eager,” he said, voice low and soft. “You need to learn to be patient.” 

He didn’t kiss you. Instead, his mouth trailed over your skin, the heat of his breath making the rest of your body feel shockingly cool by comparison. His lips ghosted over your breast bone, over to your nipple. His tongue lightly grazed it before he took it in his teeth, sharp and harsh, making you gasp and your back arch against him. He sucked the stiffened peak, teasing you with his tongue, until you were panting for breath. You went slack below him and he moved to your other breast, keeping his mouth far enough away that when he darted forward and bit you, it came as a shock that made you gasp. He sucked your nipple into his mouth, cradling your breasts, pressing his stomach down into your throbbing, aching core. 

When he released you, he brushed his lips lower, down your body, before pressing a kiss into your stomach, over your womb. 

“Don’t cum without permission, Cyare,” he said. You whimpered again. “Need to learn how to be patient.” 

The next thing you felt was his tongue lightly pressing into your clit, almost making you jump you were so sensitive. He kissed the top of your slit before taking your clit into his mouth, sucking you gently.

“Din,” you panted, your hips pressing into him. His hands wrapped around your thighs, holding you still. He took his mouth from you and you groaned. 

“No rushing things,” he said before licking a lazy path from your hole to your clit. “You have to take what I give you, Cyare.” 

You whimpered but didn’t argue. He hitched your legs over his shoulders before he released your thighs and, for a moment, that was all of him you could feel - his broad body between your legs, is hot breath on your slit. It was shocking, then, when his mouth covered your clit at the same time one of his fingers thrust into your entrance. The movement was sudden, fast, hard, his finger sinking deep into you, curving up into the soft, spongy place inside you that made you fall apart. 

He sucked and licked you, his finger thrusting in and out in perfect time, your body tightening around him. You were getting close, not sure how to stop the orgasm that was bearing down on you when he pulled away from you. 

“Why…” you began, voice heavy with pleasure. 

“Told you not to cum until I gave you permission,” he said, still between your legs. “Did I give you permission?” 

“No,” you whimpered. 

“Then you can’t cum,” he replied, running his nose up and down your slit. You groaned, the tightness in your body easing but not vanishing, the ache inside you growing. 

“Din,” you groaned. “Please…” 

“Please what?” He asked. 

“Please let me cum,” you whimpered. 

“Not yet,” he said, pulling back from you again. 

His tongue slipped into you next, pressing deep, forcing your tight, aching walls apart until he was buried in you, his nose against your clit. You gasped and fought to not grind against him, a finger from one of his hands pressing into you below his tongue, the thumb from his other hand pressing against your clit. 

You couldn’t help it, your hips ground against him, chasing the orgasm that was growing in you again. Your muscles clenched, the heat in you clutching tighter, burning brighter as he worked you. You were inches, seconds, breaths away from exploding when he took his mouth and hands away again. It damn near made you cry, the tightness in you barely easing this time, the aching longing building so much that it was starting to hurt. 

“Didn’t give you permission,” he said. His voice was thick, hot. Your heart was pounding. “Who does your pleasure belong to, Cyare?” 

“You,” you whimpered. 

“And would you take what’s mine without permission?” 

“No,” you felt like you might break in two if you didn’t find release soon. 

“Then you will take what I give you,” he said, returning to your overwrought slit once more. 

The pattern continued again and again, Din using his mouth and fingers to bring you to the brink of orgasm only to pull back just before you found it. You couldn’t remember your body ever feeling so tight, so wanting. It was like you were a spring that had been coiled past its breaking point but had somehow not snapped, you knew that - at any second - you would shatter and it would overwhelm you. You were soaking wet, you could feel the sheet below you clinging to your skin with your slick. Your entrance was starting to throb and flutter, grasping for something to grip as Din slipped your legs from his shoulders, rising up in front of you, his broad body silhouetted in the slips of light coming through the window. 

“What do you need, Cyare,” he asked, ghosting the dripping head of his cock over your slit. 

“You,” you were panting, all but writhing, desperate. “I need you, I just need you, I need you to let me cum, please just let me cum, it hurts, I can’t….” 

He thrust into you in one swift movement, forcing your tightened channel open, folding his large body over yours, his forehead meeting your own. His lips - still wet with you - brushed your own when he spoke. 

“Cum for me,” he said, holding himself so deep inside you that he was pressed fully against the entrance to your womb. He pulled back and thrust into you again once, twice. “Cum around me, want to feel you…” 

You didn’t need to be told again, his head catching on the place inside you that pushed you over the edge, his body pressing deliciously into your clit. Your walls clamped so tightly around him that it almost hurt, the throbbing so intense that your whole body trembled with it, the heat that had built into an inferno in your stomach exploding out of you in every direction. 

“That’s it,” he panted over you, fucking into you harder, faster, your body still fluttering around him. “Let go for me, I have you, I’ll take care of you. Doing so well, taking me so fucking well…” 

You strained against the binders but they held fast to the bed so you laced your legs with his, holding him close as you rode out what was starting to seem like an endless orgasm, like every one he’d nearly given you was crashing through you over and over. 

After what felt like an eternity, your body went lax and Din slowed his pace. He reached up and freed your hands and you quickly clutched onto him, his skin almost shockingly smooth and soft below your touch after being so deprived. His fingers traced your face, down to your breasts, his thumbs brushing over your nipples. 

“If you can cum again,: he said softly. “Do it. Want to give you everything, want to feel everything inside you…” 

You nodded and he pushed into you slow and deep, your body gently building to another orgasm as he took you. You weren’t sure how long you were tangled up together like that, the aching, gentle rhythm of him deep within you, his lips on your own or on your throat or on your chest. You traced his face in the dark, memorizing how he felt below your fingers. It was like nothing existed outside of him - not time or space or sorrow or wanting. You couldn’t comprehend something beyond him, it was overwhelming to even consider anything else. You were drawn taught like a bowstring again, panting below him. 

“Going to cum,” you whispered. “Want you… want to feel you…” 

“Cum for me,” he said, taking your face in his large hand and kissing you, his tongue dipping into your mouth as pressed so deep inside you the stretch of him burned. You came around him, gasping into him as you did and you felt him come apart within you, spilling into you for what felt like forever until he went slack on top of you. 

He pulled you against him and rolled so that he was on his back and you were sprawled on top of him, his hands splayed wide over your skin as he panted for breath, his cock still deep within you. You lay like that for a while, feeling like he was everywhere, before he started running his hands over your hair, down your back. 

“Did I give you what you wanted, Cyare?” He asked softly. You nodded into his chest, not sure you could speak quite yet. He pressed a kiss into your forehead. “Good. I love you. Want to take care of you, want to give you everything.”

You’d started hunting the next morning, the two of you splitting up to see what information you could find about the source of the spice. 

After a few days, you had a bead on the right hand man of the operation. He frequented the main cantina in town, one that was directly across the street from the inn - a savvy move on Din’s part when picking where to stay. It was easy to monitor the comings and goings from your room. Once you knew who you were looking for, it was easy to find the man in a crowd, get an idea of his habits. Know when to place you inside the cantina to help get him to a quiet place outside it. 

You’d set yourself at the end of the bar, a few empty seats around you, and ordered a cocktail that you were taking slow sips of so you didn’t lose your focus. If he stuck to his usual schedule, he’d be in soon. There were no other women alone in the bar at this time - turns out, spice mining and the slaving that went with it was mostly a male profession - so it was likely he’d sit by you. You’d dressed to encourage it, worn clothes that would fit on Kessel but that also exposed more of your chest than you would if you weren’t trying to catch someone’s eye. Your pants fit well, you’d done just enough makeup to highlight your features without looking like you’d done anything at all. Bait in a snare. 

“Target on site,” Din said a few minutes later. 

“Going quiet,” you replied, pocketing the com. 

The man entered and you were once again relieved that you had the Mandalorian as backup. Not that you couldn’t handle him if you needed to but he was large, grizzled enough that you knew it would be a challenge, especially if he had friends and you were trying to leave him alive. He was taller even than Din was, broader, too, his body all aging muscle covered in signs of survived conflict. He was close to your father’s age, you thought, but, given the life he led, you doubted his age would make him any easier to kill if you had to. 

Not that killing him was the goal. Yet, anyway. 

You glanced coyly in his direction, letting your lips curve into a small smile before looking back down at your drink, leaving your body tilted so he could see it better. 

He took the bait, sliding into the seat beside you. 

“Spotchka,” he said to the bartender with no other form of greeting. You turned your delicate glass in one hand, watching the liquid swirl as you did, your other hand sliding down your thigh, fingers lightly dipping into your flesh. 

“Haven’t seen you in here before,” the man said. You tried to not smile. Maker, men were predictable. 

“Just made it on world last week,” you turned a bit in your seat so you were more facing him than just tilted toward him. You took a small sip of your drink. “Still getting to know the area.” 

“Always good when we get a little…” he looked you up and down. “Fresh meat.” 

“Someone has to mix things up,” you quirked a brow at him. “Seems like you know your way around. Anything a Kessel virgin should know? Assuming you’re willing to give me what I want, of course.” 

“Oh I could give you plenty,” he smirked. So fucking predictable. “Who are you with?” 

“Pyke,” you replied. “Brought me in from Tatooine to help keep things running smoothly. I’ve got some experience in taming some…” you let your eyes drift to the man’s hips and back up to his face. “Harder things.” 

He took a drink, shifting in his chair. 

“Pyke is a good enough way to get on world,” he said. “But what you want is someone who can make you some real money, someone who’s doing something different. Need to find someone whose product is a bit more in demand…” 

“Didn’t know there was something more in demand than spice,” your eyes drifted down again. “Well, at least something that’s exported anyway.” 

He downed the rest of the spotchka. 

“Where you stayin’?” 

You smiled and hoped it looked more flirtatious instead of smug. 

“Across the street.” 

“Show me,” he said. “I’ll let you handle some harder things.” 

You slipped off the barstool and brushed your body against the front of his before you took his hand and led him out the door. You glanced up at the window to your room, where you knew Din was watching. You could feel his eyes on you, even though you couldn’t see him. 

You led the man upstairs and to your room, letting him inside. He was so ready to start getting your clothes off, it took him a moment to notice the almost two meters of beskar standing in the corner. 

“What the…” he began. You didn’t let him get further, taking the hand that was in yours and twisting it, bending his arm unnaturally back and pulling it behind him before you hit him at the knee, sending him to the ground. Din pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against, binders in hand. You smiled a little at those now.

“Good work, Cyare,” he said, cuffing the man before he stalked around to the front of him. You followed closely, the man nearly reaching your chin from his place on his knees. “Seemed quick.” 

“It was,” you smiled. “Didn’t take much.” 

“He touch you?” He asked. 

“Kept his hands to himself,” you replied. “I was impressed.” 

Din nodded slowly. 

“What the fuck is this?” The man demanded, pulling uselessly at the binders. “You clearly don’t know who you’re fucking with…” 

“Agur Gall?” You asked, brows raised. “Right hand of the Oska Syndicate?” The man’s eyes narrowed. “No, I think we know exactly who we’re fucking with…” 

He shoved himself forward, going to slam into you but Din stepped in front of you and the man’s head smacked into his beskar chest plate, sending him slumping to the floor. 

“Trying to hurt her is the worst thing you could do,” Din said, rolling the giant man over with a boot to the shoulder. “Right now, I have no reason to kill you. Don’t change that.” 

“What the fuck do you want with me?” He spat, lying on his back. 

“Access,” you replied. “To the leader of the syndicate. We have a bounty on his head, like to cash in.” 

“What would you give me for it?” He asked. 

“Your life,” Din said. 

“You’d think that would be enough…” you looked up at Din. 

“Right,” Gall laughed. “I give you Oska, I’m fucked. There’s a target on my back the size of the maelstrom, I’m out of a job, what good’s my life?” 

“Alright,” you replied. “What do you want?” 

“Come with me to meet with Oska,” he said. “It’ll be small but he’ll still have guards, I’ll need help to take them down. Once I defeat him and take control of the syndicate, you can have Oska.” 

“You have to stop selling the concentrated spice,” you replied. “That’s the only reason we’re here, it’s killing the children who are stuck running it if they come in contact with it, not to mention what it’s doing to the users.” 

He frowned. 

“Shouldn’t be capable of that,” he said. 

“It is,” you shrugged. “And our bounty holder claims your boss knows it.” 

“Not good business to kill off your clientele,” he said. “I’ll look at the purification and distillation process, won’t send it out again until it’s fixed.” 

You looked at Din and felt him looking back at you through the helmet. He gave you a single nod. 

“You’ll set the meeting?” You asked. 

“Should only take a day or two,” he said. 

“Turn on us, try to run, and we kill you,” Din said. “Understood?” 

Gall just nodded and Din pulled him to his feet, freeing him from the binders. He stood between you and the man, almost daring him to try anything. 

“Meet you at the cantina, tomorrow night,” he said. “I’ll tell you when we’re seeing Oska.” 

“I’ll be there,” you replied. Gall nodded once before he left.

“That was…” you paused. “Suspiciously easy.” 

“Doesn’t feel right,” Din said, going to the fresher to fetch Grogu from where he’d stashed him for the meeting. The baby stretched and reached for you and you smiled and took him, pulling him against you. He cooed happily and started twisting his fingers in your hair. 

“I know I don’t wear it down like this much,” you smiled at him. “So much more fun when you can get at all of it!” 

“Patu!” 

You kissed his little forehead before you turned your attention back to Din. 

“Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t exactly feel like running an interrogation today,” you said. “But I don’t trust this.” 

“We’ll meet with him tomorrow,” Din said. “Make a plan from there.” 

Din came with you for that one, Grogu safely in his pod in the corner of the booth. But the meeting went by without incident, Gall directing you to an old spice mine on the other side of the planet. 

“Should move in tonight,” Din said the second you were back in your room at the inn, Grogu sitting on your lap as he gnawed on some frog-like creature you’d gotten him at the market. “Set up surveillance.” 

“Agreed,” you said, glancing at the bed for a moment. Having one that was a decent size - far bigger than the one in Din’s quarters on the Crest - had been nice. You weren’t quite ready to say goodbye to it yet. But the mission was king. 

Din set the Crest down a few clicks away from the mine, tucked away behind what must be rubble from mines being dug out. He locked down the ship and you took the bare minimum with you to a spot with a good vantage point, settling in to wait, Grogu asleep in his pod. 

The Mandalorian watched in one direction while you monitored the other, the night still and cool and quiet. 

“Where do you want to go after this job?” You asked after a while, still peering through the binocs. 

“You’re asking because you don’t want to go back to Canto Bight,” he asked without asking. You shrugged, knowing he’d feel it with your back leaning against his own. He sighed. “Doll…” 

“I know,” you cut him off. “We need to lie low. But we’re both not happy working on that world. I think we should return this quarry and find somewhere else to go for a bit. We could even try Coruscant, with billions of people even you don’t stand out all that much. Or maybe enough time has passed that it’s safe for us to try to contact Karga again, take some guild work…” 

“I’ll consider it,” he said. “But I’d rather take jobs I don’t like on Canto Bight than risk you and the kid.” 

A few hours passed before there was some movement, a group of men - heavily armed - heading into the mine. 

“You need to wear something from Naboo,” Din said, watching the men go into the mine. “We’re outnumbered, you need something that will soak a shot.” 

“Good idea,” you replied. “Thermal detonators wouldn’t be bad, either. We get pinned down, we can just set them, run and bring the mine down behind us.” 

You weren’t sure what the usual contingent was at a meeting place for Oska. Without context, you couldn’t know if it was a trap. Just that it didn’t look great. The two of you kept watching the mine until sunrise. You walked back to the Crest and changed into what you’d packed when you’d left Naboo - intended for guarding the queen when going into battle. It fit, the muscle you’d lost rebuilt, like you had become yourself again. Your hair had grown out since you’d been back with Din, long enough now that you could braid it in a Naboo style. You sat in front of the reflective crate, Grogu on your lap with one of his toys as he watched your reflection, enchanted, as you worked. You reached out for him with your mind, getting a glimpse of his thoughts when you did. He was endlessly curious, trying to absorb everything. You tried to think through what you were doing as you did it, explaining how it worked. You thought he understood, glimmers of satisfaction coming through the mental bond. 

You tried to think of how long it had been since you’d last done your hair like this. Maybe your wedding day? You’d cut it not long after at Kann’s request and had refrained from styling it that way in the interim, not wanting to look like an off worlder. But it felt wrong to do anything different for your wedding day, even if it had been a wedding in title only. You glanced at Din in the reflection of the crate as he gathered the last of the things you’d need to deal with Oska. 

You hadn’t thought about your wedding day much. At the time it had been… not quite happy but optimistic. Some sign that things would eventually be OK. That you could have a normal life, find satisfaction in something. Of course, that’s not what happened. But it made you wonder what it would be like to marry someone because you wanted to. Because you loved them, wanted to spend your life with them, wanted to belong to them and they to you. 

Your mind was stuck on it, the idea of something permanent because you wanted it, not out of necessity or duty. 

Curiosity got the better of you as you walked back to your vantage point to wait for your meeting time. 

“Do Mandalorians get married?” You asked. Din’s stride stuttered for a moment and you tried to cover yourself quickly. “I just mean… I’m not asking if… I just wasn’t sure if you did. How that worked.” 

“We do,” he said after a moment. “It’s… simple. Just a few words spoken to each other. It can be private, no one needs to witness it. It can even be over com link.” 

You nodded slowly. 

“What was it like for you?” He asked after a moment of quiet. “Getting married.” 

“Simple but not that simple,” you replied. “Aidla and Tam were witnesses, as well as two friends of Kann’s. Aidla let me borrow her wedding dress so I got to wear something from Naboo… We said the usual things, I suppose. None of it was true, which was harder than I expected. I never envisioned love but mutual respect… Anyway. I just… I wasn’t sure how that worked for you.” 

“Not so different from other cultures,” he paused for a moment. “Is that… something you would want?” 

You thought for a moment. 

“I don’t know,” you said eventually. “I never really thought about it, it wasn’t something I ever thought I’d have, at least not really.” 

He nodded slowly, looking straight ahead. 

“What about you?” You asked after a moment. “Is it… Do you want that?” 

“With the right person,” he said eventually. “With you, if the time was right…” 

You smiled a little at that. The time could be right. At least for you. When it came to Din, the time always seemed to feel right.

***

This whole deal had Din on edge. Gall had been too quick, too eager. He doubted he’d been biding his time to stage a coup, just waiting for the right opportunity. It was too convenient. But it was the way he had to find Oska, so he was following through on it. 

At dusk, you descended from your perch to meet Gall at the mouth of the mine, Grogu tucked safely inside his pod. 

Gall was waiting where he promised, standing there alone. 

“Deal is, you get Oska,” he said. “I get the syndicate. Still good?” 

Din glanced at you before looking back to him. 

“Agreed,” Din said. 

“Good,” Gall said. “I told Oska I’m bringing you in as potential distributors. Some of the men inside are loyal to me, try not to kill them.” 

The man had too many things in place. Din was playing into his hand, he could feel it. He only hoped he could protect you and the child if it got out of control. 

“Gall!” The man who must be Oska greeted him in a cavernous space inside the mine, flanked by at least three dozen men. “I’ve been thinking all day about your proposition to move our product coreward. I take it these are the distributors?” 

“A smuggling team,” Gall positioned himself closer. “Willing to run the product to Hosnian Prime to start. We can see about expansion from there.” 

Oska looked you and Din over, nodding in approval. 

“Didn’t know there were Mandalorians left,” he said, sounding almost amused. As though Din were a novelty, something on display. His fist clenched. “I’ve always admired men with a strong sense of duty.” 

He turned his attention to you. 

“Something tells me you’re a deceptive little thing,” he smiled. “A handy skill with smuggling.” 

“I’ve found it useful,” you replied, your fingers close to the blaster strapped to your thigh. 

“Let’s discuss the numbers,” he said. “Gall, why don’t you wait…” 

“Why don’t I what?” The large man drew himself up even taller. Din glanced to you. You looked ready. “Why am I the one seeking out new opportunities while you reap the benefits? Seems like you shouldn’t be the one negotiating. Seems like it should be me.” 

“Gall,” Oska cautioned, about 25 of the men at his back adjusting the grip on their weapons. “You’re on dangerous ground.” 

“No,” Gall drew his blaster. “I think you are.” 

Someone at Oska’s back shot first, a blaster bolt barely missing Gall’s shoulder. There was a split second of quiet after, the moment feeling long and drawn out to the Mandalorian. They often did, the moments before a situation burst into violence. 

The moment passed quickly and a hail of blaster fire began. Din sent the child’s pod to a sheltered alcove he’d spotted when they’d entered and tried to not focus on you, tried to trust you to handle yourself. He knew you could, knew that smart and strong and immensely capable. He knew there was a better chance of both of you getting out of here unscathed if he let you take care of yourself and he focused on doing what he had to do. 

But looking out for you felt like the keenest form of self defense now. Damn near every inch of him was covered in beskar, every inch that wasn’t you. Because it seemed like you’d become an extension of him, something vital and important to protect, something that mattered even more than a limb or an organ and you were outside his armor and control. He’d become even more aware of the risk when you’d brought up marriage that afternoon. 

He wasn’t sure what had made you think of it, why you’d brought it up when you did. Maybe you’d sensed that it had been on his mind with your Jedi-like power. Maybe you’d heard inside his mind that, when he thought of you, he thought of you as his riduur, as his wife. Maybe you’d noticed how tempted he’d become to just… let you see him. Something he never thought he would want. He hadn’t felt that keeping his face hidden was lacking until you. 

He’d become less stringent with his helmet since Tatooine, frequently removing it when you would be able to get a sense of the shape of his brow or the curve of his nose. It was a fine line, not quite breaking the rules, not quite hiding from you. But he wanted you to see him the way he saw you. He wanted to be yours and you to be his. And the need to protect you was strong. 

He resisted the drive to throw you behind him, to shield your smaller, more delicate being with his own. Instead, he fired the whistling birds, taking out a dozen of the men shooting towards them. 

Din caught a glimpse of you out of the corner of his eye as you ducked behind a boulder and fired over it, the infighting breaking out among the ranks. He turned is attention to Oska, the man already moving deeper into the mine. He took off after him, four of his men moving with him. Din started taking them out from behind, forcing them to stop and try to defend against him. But they weren’t good enough shots to hit anything but beskar and he made quick work of them, grabbing Oska before he could make it far. He cuffed the man. 

“There’s a bounty on your head,” Din said. “Your spice has been killing people, including the children running it. I can bring you in warm or I can bring you in cold. If you make it easy for me, it will be warm.” 

“Killing…” the man frowned. “No, no ours is medical grade, it shouldn’t…” 

Din took him by the collar and dragged him back toward the main chamber, where you were standing beside Gall. It didn’t make sense, none of it made sense. You were finishing off the last of Oska’s men, Gall and the handful loyal to him nearby. 

“Gall!” Oska yelled from Din’s grip. “What did the Mandalorian mean, that the product is killing the people running it?” 

Gall sighed, lowering his blaster and shaking his head. 

“Really wish you hadn’t told him why there was a price on his head,” the large man said before grabbing you and pulling you back into his chest, pressing his blaster to your skull. Din dropped Oska and pulled his blaster, leveling it at the man. “Sometimes, the best product comes at a price. One that Oska just wasn’t willing to pay. I am. Now now Mando, do you really count yourself to be a fast enough shot to take me down before I kill your partner?” 

The blood was pounding in Din’s ears, his chest tight. This man had you, he wanted to hurt you, to kill you. He couldn’t let him, he’d die before he let him. 

“If you want to leave here alive,” Din said, his voice a forced calm. “You’ll release her.” 

Gall’s large hand went around your throat and you met Din’s eyes, gave him an almost imperceptible shake of your head. He tried to swallow the terror in him, the drive to rip you away from him all but overwhelming. 

“Gall,” you managed, your arms lowering slowly until they were pointed down at the floor. “You don’t want to do this.” 

“I think I do,” he said. 

“Last chance,” you said, fidgeting with a hand. Din knew what you were doing, he’d seen it on Bakura. It still made him nervous. Gall’s hand tightened on your throat and you flicked the knife open, bringing it down into the man’s leg. He lurched, the blaster moving away from your head and his hand letting you go as he went to the wound on his thigh. 

You quickly ducked behind him and Din shot him, sending him to the ground, dead. You looked at the body for a moment, your knife in your hand, before looking up at Din. He shrugged. 

“He chose cold.” 

***

The bounty handoff was surprisingly simple, given that it wasn’t who you’d been initially hired to capture. But the official who hired you was thankful for results, including Oska’s assurance that the problematic product was coming out of circulation. 

“If there’s any more trouble, use these coordinates to start having someone hunt down Oska,” you said, handing her back her data pad. She frowned. 

“Are you getting out of the game?” She asked. 

“Something like that,” you shrugged. “Moving on to another world for a while. Hopefully you won’t need the information.” 

“Well, I appreciate your help,” she smiled. “Good luck, wherever you end up.” 

You were getting ready to leave the room you’d rented out once a week for six months - an oddly nostalgic sort of goodbye - when someone appeared in the doorway. 

He was small, mousey, young - younger than you. He looked scared. 

“Can I help you?” You asked. You shouldn’t have asked, you were leaving, you weren’t taking anymore jobs. But he seemed vulnerable. You wanted to help. 

“I have…” he swallowed, edging into the room with a holographic com link in his hands. “I have someone who is looking for a bounty hunter. He asked me to bring this here, to meet with you.” 

“Sorry,” you shrugged, something suddenly feeling off about him. Your stomach twisted. There was no way this man was a threat to you. You doubted he’d even be a threat to Grogu - even if the kid wasn’t a Jedi. But something about him was a threat. He wasn’t safe. “Not taking on any more jobs right now…” 

“Please,” the man pleaded, his eyes the size of dinner plates. You frowned. “Please, at least… at least talk with him, I’m begging you…” 

You looked at him for a moment. He wasn’t lying. He was fucking terrified. You stood up straighter, your fingers pressing into the table in front of you to try to put the tension in you somewhere. 

“Fine,” you said. “But I make no promises on taking the job. Just that I’ll hear him out.” 

“Thank you,” he looked like he was about to cry he was so relieved. “Thank you so much…” 

He set the com link down on the table in front of you and activated it. 

Standing in front of you, glowing and terrible, was Moff Gideon. 

“Hello, Handmaid.” 

[talesfromaurea]

[Image ID: The front and back of an aged-looking book cover. The front features two dragons, one white and one black, forming a vertical infinity symbol and the title "Tales from Aurea". The back has the following summary: "It's the end of an era and the land of Calthia is descending into ruin... Amidst a backdrop of crumbling empires and dwindling magic, four unlikely companions come together with a shared goal: helping a mysterious young girl named Kaja stay hidden and find her way home. But when it comes to light that Kaja's elusive people are the only ones with the power to destroy the demonic forces dragging Calthia into darkness, suddenly all eyes-friend and foe-are turned their way." /.End ID]

We're back!!

After a long hiatus, I'm coming back with a new and improved draft of Tales from Aurea that you'll be able to read for free. Come join the Pathfinder party 🥳

Genres: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Supernatural

Themes: Coming of age; justice and revenge; duality and balance; facing fears; free will versus determinism; dealing with trauma, loss, and grief

Sources of inspiration: Slavic mythology, Pathfinder/DnD, The Elder Scrolls, the Zelda series

Features: Largely LGBTQ+ cast, focus on platonic relationships, found family, a fantasy setting based on ancient Rome and surrounding kingdoms

Content warnings: violence and blood (no gore), character death, discussion of topics including imperialism, genocide, and slavery

Where can I read?

Chapters will be serialized on Royal Road (link), with an excerpt and announcement shared here on tumblr! Haven't worked out what kind of schedule yet but you can follow on Royal Road and/or request to be on the tumblr tag list to keep up with news 😊

Where can I learn more about the characters, story, etc?

I think this "what to expect" tag provides a good overview. You can also check out my "pathfinder talk" tag here for everything I've posted including drawings, excerpts, and general rambles.

I read the last draft, should I read this from the beginning?

Yes! As well as writing improvements, this draft contains more character development and new details. I'm also planning on carrying this into future arcs that were never posted to tumblr before.

Ask to be added to the tag list and thank you for reading!

One time tag for a few folks who've shown interest in the past: @aroyalpaininthecass, @drippingmoon, @harps-for-days, @splashinkling, @ashen-crest, @star-soupp

[damnhitsuzen]

Once I thought that "serious nazi problem" was a scarecrow exaggeration that made a easy manipulation for population.

I mean, all the progressive folk calling anyone that mildly disagrees with them "nazi" was a part of a problem. Overuse makes the term less serious.

Also I could clearly see that world believed russian propaganda about "scary Ukrainian nazi cult". There was obviously none, this shit is so marginalised in Ukraine, there was no actual far-right sufficient representation in government or parliament.

I knew that nobody cared for us and that's tough and not right, but I never expected to be celebrated, you know.

But then, in 2022, I suddenly discovered thousands of people, living in safe, "progressive" countries, actually cheering for genocide of Ukrainians. Tons of American and European teens of all colours saying that we deserved every genocide and oppression we faced. Students and academia folk knowing zero, null, NOTHING about Eastern European history that blamed us in settler imperialism and colonisation. My dudes, most of us are descendants of literal slaves (slavery was a thing up to the mid 19 century in russian empire, but hey you're too busy wanking to tolstoy to learn how horribly he abused his slaves).

Along with it, I saw endless self-importance that made faithful liberals or socialists believe it is THEIR right to decide: whose suffering is like a thing this month and whose is so last season. Loud whining about islamophopia that always failed to include Syrians, Nokhchiy, Crimean Tatars, hell, even Iranians and Yemen people who oppose their government (or rather horrible factions in civil war). So I started to wonder if what I saw was allies of Muslims people, or allies of their dictators?

(who am I kidding, you won't fucking believe how different all the activism will be, when russia stops pumping money in most destabilising movements)

So I came to a very painful conclusion.

Nazism is a very big problem. Just not in Ukraine.

It made its way into the heads of young, carefree people of the Western world, that never seen wars and never bothered with history. It has long been poisoning communism, but hey, it's not like all the cool tumblr kids ever bother listening to actual witnesses of communist regimes? It has made its way into weak, polarised liberalism that went into solving every little specific problem, ignoring the global danger of undemocratic ideologies.

But hey, new global war is coming, so people will probably catch up at some point. Probably.

[plottingalong]

Lesbians in Space Masterpost:

Happy Valentines! My favourite genre by far is one I like to call Lesbians In Space. This is the pinnacle of all human creation in my opinion. The only rules of Lesbians in Space is that there MUST be actual, real sapphics (at least one), and that space has to be somewhat incorporated. That's it. If you have more examples of this PLEASE tell me.

*there's also a list of honorable mentions for things that fit the vibe in my opinion but aren't as explicitly Lesbians In Space.

Books/Novellas

The Locked Tomb series (arguably THE lesbians in space series) by Tamsyn Muir. If you're on Tumblr you've probably heard of these but the first book is a murder mystery in a creepy space mansion.

The Teixcalaan series (A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace) by Arkady Martine. A poetry-obsessed ambassador from a space station subject to the whims of the Teixcalaan empire needs to unravel a plot and figure out wtf her predecessor was up to, while being assisted by a government agent.

The Serpent Gates Duology (The Unspoken Name and The Thousand Eyes) by AK Larkwood. Csorwe, an orc who was raised as a sacrifice to a god, is rescued by a shady sorcerer and pulled into his plot regarding world dominantion, abd then falls hard for a math nerd.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon (with a non-binary/trans/gnc and sapphic mc). This book is a lot heavier in terms of trauma than the other things on this list, esp regarding slavery+neurodiversity+transphobia so yeah maybe check a list of CW but it's good!

The Necessity of Stars by E. Catherine Tobler (novella). Former UN diplomat deals with memory loss and aliens. Technically not as space-y as the rest of this list.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (novella). Two spies on two sides of a time-and-space war test each other's wits.

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (trans girl MC, side characters that are lesbians, technically it's not ALL in space but it's pretty dang space-y.) Evil lady teaches a young violinist in order to collect her soul, hijinks ensue.

Podcasts:

The Strange Case of Starship Iris. A doctor accidentally joins a group of space smugglers while uncovering a government conspiracy. Also has a trans guy and two nb characters.

The Pasithea Powder. After a war between two planets, two old friends, one an honoured war hero and the other a disgraced scientist, are pulled back together due to a government plot.

TV shows:

She-Ra (for kids). You know what this show is about. Cadet of the evil forces who's good at everything turns out to be the chosen one that fights for good against her former bestie.

Doctor Who s10- the Doctor's companion falls in love with a puddle that's a girl.

Honorary mentions:

Winter's Orbit- romance sci-fi, gay arranged marriage in space.

The Murderbot Diaries - series of novellas. queer side characters aside, Murderbot isn't human but definitely has an interesting concept of romance and gender that I find pretty dang queer.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin. The blueprint!!!! Local male ambassador (deragatory) goes to covertly visit a very cold planet where people are sex-less most of the time (and very interesting genders). The discussion of gender is fascinating in my opinion.

Wolf 359 (podcast). Pissed off crew of a wreck of a ship do their best to survive space and each other. (there's a canonical gay character but also Isabel Lovelace is a lesbian in my heart)

Among the Stars and Bones (podcast) a group of xenopaleantologists go dig up an ancient alien site. there's an important nonbinary main character.

[whencyclopedia]

Slavery in the Roman World

Slavery was an ever-present feature of the Roman world. Slaves served in households, agriculture, mines, the military, workshops, construction and many services. As many as 1 in 3 of the population in Italy or 1 in 5 across the empire were slaves and upon this foundation of forced labour was built the entire edifice of the Roman state.

Slavery as An Accepted Reality

Slavery, that is complete mastery (dominium) of one individual over another, was so imbedded in Roman culture that slaves became almost invisible and there was certainly no feeling of injustice in this situation on the part of the rulers. Inequality in power, freedom and the control of resources was an accepted part of life and went right back to the mythology of Jupiter overthrowing Saturn. As K.Bradley eloquently puts it, 'freedom...was not a general right but a select privilege' (Potter, 627). Further, it was believed that the freedom of some was only possible because others were enslaved. Slavery, was, therefore, not considered an evil but a necessity by Roman citizens. The fact that slaves were taken from the losers in battle (and their subsequent offspring) was also a helpful justification and confirmation of Rome's (perceived) cultural superiority and divine right to rule over others and exploit those persons for absolutely any purpose whatsoever.

Aside from the huge numbers of slaves taken as war captives (e.g. 75,000 from the First Punic War alone) slaves were also acquired via piracy, trade, brigandage and, of course, as the offspring of slaves as a child born to a slave mother (vernae) automatically became a slave irrespective of who the father was. Slave markets proliferated, perhaps one of the most notorious being the market on Delos, which was continuously supplied by the Cilician pirates. Slave markets existed in most large towns, though, and here, in a public square, slaves were paraded with signs around their necks advertising their virtues for prospective buyers. Traders specialised in the commodity, for example, one A. Kapreilius Timotheus traded throughout the Mediterranean.

Continue reading...

[mmkin]

Get You Some Arlong - update!

Chapter 10 of GYSA is now up... whooooooooo! Link to AO3

If you prefer to read it here on Tumblr, the chapter is under the yummy pics and cut. Trigger warnings - none that have not been used before in this story. A bit of racism/slavery. Some smutty action.

X

o0o0o0o

All you can do is lie there and stare at him for several moments as you absorb his words, wondering if you heard him correctly. Did he just ask you to have a baby with him?

You were no stranger to contraceptives. The last thing you needed in your wanderings across the South and East Blue was a brat to take care of, so you'd taken care of yourself and continued to do so with Arlong. It's something he's aware of – with all the fucking he's given you there would be a kid or two crawling around Arlong Park by now if not for your diligence.

“That's what you want?" you finally venture in a small tone. It's genuinely surprising to you that Arlong might want a child. He never seemed to want one before and let's be real, the pirate lifestyle isn't very conducive to child-rearing.

He looks down at you with a soft gaze behind his half-lidded eyes. “Why not, Y/n? It’s safe here.”

You can not deny that. Some of the escaped slaves that came here had owners looking for them. Arlong is swift – and brutal – in his persecution of the agents and bounty hunters who act on behalf of said owners. Arlong's territory was large enough, his tribe plentiful enough that threats could usually be handled before any would-be transgressors made their way to the Conomi Islands, unless it's one of the times Arlong chooses to lure someone into a trap.

And as whispers of the Arlong Empire rumble through the sea, it attracts attention from the Marines and other humans, to be sure, but it also has the effect of bringing in more seafolk to support Arlong and his empire where seafolk can move freely on land or in the waters around them without persecution. The citizens of Arlong Village are nearby, ready to fight for their leader even if they're not part of his pirate crew.

“Yes. You’ve created a magnificent place here. I’m so proud of you.” You caress his face as you look up at him, feeling his hand still on you, gently touching and rubbing you. “It’s just… a lot to think about.” You place your hand on your stomach, trying to imagine what it would be like to be bred by Arlong and carry his child. Physically and genetically, he would be an excellent sire. But siring is so simple compared to raising the product of that siring.

“I have done a fair amount of thinking as of late. The Arlong Empire has made much progress in the last couple of years, as you know since you were part of that."

You smile at that, gratified to know that the work you have done has been so beneficial to the mighty Arlong the Saw. His hand moves from your womanhood, sliding up your hip, and you thrill at the feeling of his large and strong hand encasing the curve.

“But this is not just for me or my friends and fellow fishmen. Our work here also benefits the ones that will come after us.”

“Mmm.” You give out a thoughtful hum as you ponder his words.

“Think about it, little squid,” he urges you gently. You nod, giving him a firm gaze. Oh, you’ll think plenty about it.

o0o0o0o

While you ponder Arlong's request, there are plenty of other things to think about. Since you are now confined to the island and the waters around it, you turn your focus to Arlong Village, using the skills you have to help in one way or another. As the mate of Arlong, you're suitable to receive important guests, although you also meet and greet escaped slaves and the variety of people in between who come to Arlong Park or the village.

Arlong does not call himself king, but he is respected as such, and this means you're his queen. You wear no crown, but as the Big Three and other fishmen know, you wield a great deal of power even though, unlike Arlong, you don't flaunt it. You choose to exercise your influence in more subtle ways.

“Think about it,” you urge quietly one day as Nami stands before Arlong. “If you allow Nami to go beyond the Grand Line, consider how much information she can gather for you. You don’t give a shit about the One Piece, and neither do I, but Nami can exploit those looking for it to your benefit. And as we’ve seen, it doesn’t hurt to have a few human pirates on your side. Look at how well Buggy’s doing!” Personally, considering what happened to Nami’s mother, you feel that she has more than earned true freedom. It’s her dream, and though ultimately Arlong is her – and your – captain, you will happily nudge Arlong in her favor, and that includes using whatever argument will appeal to your mate the most. “Think of what Nami can do out there with a crew backing her up. And you can sit here and reap the benefits while focusing on your empire.”

Being the Saw’s mate does have its advantages. You rest your hand on his shoulder as Nami stands there, watching the two of you. You and Nami keep your faces controlled as Arlong ponders what to do with his prized cartographer. Finally, he nods slowly.

“You have proven that you have talent beyond making maps. You may join up with these Straw Hats, but always make sure that your interests do not come in conflict with mine.”

Of course, Arlong can not help but remind Nami that he is granting her a favor. It won't be easy for Nami to balance that, but she is a smart girl and you are confident she will manage it. Arlong has plenty to be occupied with anyway. And you've heard whispers about the Revolutionary Army in the past, but it seems nowadays you are hearing more of them. The world is changing, and Arlong must change if he is to survive. Fortunately, he has made some progress. Which is better than none, you suppose, but you're hardly one to judge because you can see that you've come a way since you were a teenager.

“Any time you decide to return to the Conomi Islands, I don’t doubt your sister will be happy to see you. I bet she’ll be thrilled for you!” you say. It seems like banter on the surface but it also signals that you’ll be keeping an eye on Nami’s village to make sure Arlong doesn’t take a long absence from Nami as an opportunity to fuck around. You’re not entirely sure if he will, and despite the personal growth he’s had, he’s still an asshole sometimes.

o0o0o0o

Although you haven’t given him an answer to his big question yet and he knows you’re still taking the herbs, he will insert breeding into his dirty talk when he is in an especially rough mood.

Yes, that’s it be a good breeding slut and take my cocks… fill you up with so much cum… put my shark pups in your belly… He gets very dominant and aggressive at these times like he's acting on pure instinct, and you figure he is, just as you do when you go in heat. When you think about it, you're fairly certain that seeing you seriously injured triggered his deep-seated protective instinct into overdrive. Mix that up with his possessiveness and assholery, and fuck, he can be so damn overwhelming. It almost gets too much for you sometimes, especially when he'll roll you over onto your back and pull your legs apart so he can admire the creampie he's made of your quivering and well-fucked pussy, looking pleased as fuck with himself. He's also more likely to bite when he's in rut.

At least he lets you sleep as late as you like the next day after such intense sessions, so you’re content to curl up in the blankets, sore from Arlong’s attentions but nonetheless happy and pleased as he sends Hatchan or another fishman to you with breakfast whenever you want it.

o0o0o0o

As fierce as Arlong can get with you, you do find occasion to turn the tables on him.

“Is my little squid in an aggressive mood tonight?” he asks with a soft chuckle as you slide into his lap while he’s at his desk and start to nibble along his ear. You growl quietly in response, pressing your lips to the spot just below his ear. A strong arm wraps around your middle, trapping you in his lap as he sits back, allowing you to nuzzle and rub yourself against him, tentacles sliding along him as you paw at him. “Are you in a slutty mood? Yes? That needy little hole of yours needs a good pounding, hm? Why don’t we see what we can do about that, shahaha!”

You bite the side of his neck and feel him shudder in response, his cocks straining against his shorts as he bares his teeth at you in a playful snarl.

“I want you in the bed, on your back,” you say in a commanding tone as you try to slide off his lap, but his arm holds you in place. His gaze fixes upon you when he realizes you’re not just feeling aggressive, you want to dominate him. His lips stretch into a lecherous smirk.

“You think to give your captain orders?” he mock challenges you.

“Out there, you are the captain. In here, you are my sharkman stud.”

“Is that so…” he replies in a soft purr. “Well, I can not deny that I am yours.”

With these words, he goes over and pulls out the spare comforters you keep in a chest. Since his dorsal fin prevents him from lying on his back, the two of you have figured out a creative workaround. With a carefully rolled and folded comforter on either side of his dorsal fin and a couple of pillows, Arlong can recline back on his bed, his fin slotting in place between the two thick blankets. He wiggles around a bit as he settles in, now completely naked and waiting for you.

The sight of a gorgeous sharkman lying in bed, waiting for you, looking at you expectantly with his manhood in full arousal… it’s not something you’ll ever forget.

You slide into his lap, facing his cocks while pinning his arms to the bed with your tentacles. “Look at you, so hard and ready to be fucked,” you purr at him, echoing some of the filthy talk he’s uttered to you in the past. “Do your cocks ache? Such a good stud,” you growl at him, and he smirks as he recognizes some of his language. “I bet you’re ready to shoot your load, you dirty slut. You want to put all that cum somewhere hot and tight, hmmm?”

His eyes glint and he chuckles in amusement at that. “You’re the one begging for it, little squid,” he challenges you.

“You’re the one bound and at my mercy,” you shoot back.

“Are you sure about that?” he grins, flexing his arms around your tentacles.

“You dare disobey me?” you scold him. “You will pay for that, stud!”

You make him wait for his orgasms, bringing him to the edge several times as he writhes against you. You have to admit, his self-control is impressive as his cocks quiver against your light and teasing touch, weeping precum. On occasion he’ll make a defiant noise, snapping or growling at you, but it’s all in good fun. He wiggles his hips, his cocks bouncing and swaying as he groans in frustration as you wrap a tentacle around the base of his cocks.

“You’re mine,” you growl at Arlong. He growls louder at you, a happy glint in his eyes.

o0o0o0o

“There will be a need for more fishman towns. You've done a fantastic job of expanding your territory, and we've been having an influx of new fishmen as you know. Arlong Village is getting quite sizeable, and my opinion is we have enough fishmen in our civilian ranks to establish a new village now, here…" You point to one of the larger islands on the map. It's still a good distance from the Grand Line but has a few more trade routes and traffic. It is a recent acquisition, a real prize compared to the Conomi Islands, and that speaks of the expanding numbers of Arlong's supporters and his strength.

Not only that, but the city on that island brings even more tribute than Cocoyasi Village did back when it was under Arlong's control. Even though Nami's been gone for a while, you've kept an eye on the village, ensuring Arlong doesn't fuck with it. And he hasn't, partly because he's had plenty enough to distract him. He might not be lord of the entire East Blue, but he still controls much of it and has earned the respect and fear of various humans.

You’ve learned more about the history of Arlong’s presence here from various sources, including Hatchan and Nami. You understand that Arlong was in a lot of pain before, and he still carries a great deal of it, but he’s mellowed a bit. Part of that is because of you and your influence. He’s learned how to channel some of that energy into venues that will serve his empire better in the long run rather than using violence as a first response.

“I agree. As pleasant as Arlong Park is, given the reach of my territory, I know there will need to be more bases for the empire, and can be used as a trading hub to enrich our coffers." He grins to himself with pleasure as he looks at the map (it's one of Nami's), tracing his fingers along the paper. He looks like the shark he is, hungry, ready to devour the opportunities that come his way, eyes glinting as he assesses the map, the islands that belong to him marked off.

The island you’d been talking about is the southernmost of his territory, closer to the Grand Line than any of the others under his control, so it will need to be handled with care. More access to trade routes and the like means more potential for pirate or Marine interference.

“If I may humbly suggest, as you recently acquired this island, you put a pause to your expansion efforts?” you gesture to the swath of islands under his control. “We’ve had more issues with outsiders lately, so I think at this time we should focus all our efforts on defense rather than offense.”

He stares at you. “You think I should stop my expansion efforts?”

“Not forever, no. But I do believe that for the next few years, we should focus on strengthening what we do have and bringing more of our kind here. Moving a bunch of fishmen to the new island would stretch us thin in other places. You know we've been dealing with more intrusions, and that's a drain on our resources."

“Hmm." He frowns thoughtfully. You say nothing more – there is no need, for the seed has been planted – and rise from your seat to move behind him, rubbing his shoulders. He gives out a groan of satisfaction, head lolling back as you minister to him. You've learned that after times like this – meetings, going over correspondence, where Arlong has a lot to ponder – a good back rub often aids his mood and thinking process.

After a while, he tugs your arm, guiding you to his lap where he holds you, basking in the comfortable silence as you curl up into his lap, burying your face against his chest.

o0o0o0o

A clutch of fishmen – mostly escaped slaves – has recently arrived at Arlong Village. It's nothing you haven't dealt with before but for one thing. One of the fishmen has a human woman with him, and is refusing to let her go, and shows defensiveness at the snide comments a few local fishmen make in regards to the human, who you learn is also an escaped slave.

Plenty of humans are assholes, as you well know, but this poor woman, clinging to her fishman partner, certainly doesn’t seem like one. It’s clear from the fear in her eyes that she knows how precarious her situation is.

“I’m sure you must be hungry,” you say as you look at the haggard-looking group before you. “Please, enjoy the hospitality of the mighty Arlong the Saw,” you say, shifting into hostess mode. Once they’re settled and eating, you look back at Arlong. Before he can say anything, you speak.

“I know how you feel about humans, and I understand why. But as you’ve seen, humans have their uses...” You pause and stroke your chin. Even if cooperative humans can go by relatively unmolested by Arlong or his crew, their status is pretty low in the Arlong Empire. Arlong does not call them slaves, but they are not much more than. And as long as that goes on, that’s going to be an issue, and one that can weaken the emerging Arlong Empire from the inside. Humans can only be browbeaten so much before something snaps. History has shown that often enough, not just with humans, but with fishmen or other races as well.

“Look at them,” you say, gesturing to the couple. “They’re not the first, nor will they be the last mixed couple. And I do not think we should fight that. You’ve been here for a decade, and I’ve not even been here for two years. This is your empire and your crew. You set up in this place and did all this work before I came here. And as a fellow fishman, you know my loyalty.”

He looks at you with a measuring gaze. “I suppose you want me to give that human girl some sort of… leeway?”

“Why not? Look…" You are careful about what you say about his tribute system. "She didn't choose to be a human or a slave. But she chose to be with him, and he with her." Even as you say this, the fishman is sitting close to her, protective of her. And she welcomes that closeness, placing her hand on his knee "Look at him and her, don't their body language remind you of another couple…" There is no denying that Arlong and you are well acquainted with the comfort of simply being close to one another.

He grumbles at that, but you notice he doesn’t disagree. “Some countries grant citizenship to an outsider who marries one of their citizens,” you point out. “It could be a good way to foster friendly relations. Not everything has to be a fight.” Your hand slides up his arm.

“I will take it into consideration, little squid.”

You have to hold back a grin. That’s as good as a yes. “That is all I ask for,” you say, resting your head against his shoulder as the two of you sit there, looking at the people before you.