#yeah yeah its eric sorry for a new number again

[moeblob]

Warning for: The (spider) legs showing below!

Under the hoodie/layers, she tends to wrap her legs around her kinda like a hug! And so in the first part that's the weird bumps under the hoodie. They're starting to unravel a bit. She hates being called a monkey cause it's NOT her fault she's short and has to climb on things and up things and includes people in "things" category.

[getawayaccount]

Chicago Med: Post Mortem (halloween special)

Note: Moodboard inspired by holdendadcliffe & kitthekazoo works. I'm more of a video maker myself but I don't have access to an editor rn so, yeah. *sigh*

Jamaica was the best they had had in a really long time. The small town was perfect, lost in the middle of nowhere, Vermont, and hidden behind ten feet tall walls. It wasn’t on most maps and its name itself confused people enough so they hardly ever got unwanted visitors despite the signs they had made and dropped off all over the northern part of the country. ‘Contact Channel 11 for any medical emergency’. It wasn’t to say their community wasn’t growing. Jamaica Free Teaching Clinic, as they had decided to name it, had already gained a fair number of students in the past few months, and the occasions to learn were numerous as the EMTs kept coming in with more and more patients.

“Doctor Halstead, incoming,” called Taylor, one of their first nursing students.

Will got up from behind his desk to follow Taylor to one of the makeshift trauma rooms.

“Negative, gunshot, no exit wound,” started Jessie, one of their paramedics, when she caught sight of Will in the corridor. “Another guy was already on the scene when we arrived.”

“What guy?” Will asked frowning.

“Says he is a doctor but didn’t give us a name,” Jessie answered.

Something about those words triggered a memory in Will’s mind but he pushed it away.

“You brought him here?” he asked.

“Didn’t really have a choice, he didn’t want to let us take over,” Jessie said.

She shrugged and Will sighed as they reached the room where a nurse and a med student were already running around to try and do their job, while another man was doing chest compression on their patient, his back to Will.

“Okay Doc, I’m Doctor Halstead, Chief of Emergencies,” he said. “And I’m gonna need you to get off the gurney and let me do my job, alright?”

“Well, Doctor Halstead,” the man started. Will’s heart quite literally missed a beat, one of his gloves falling to the ground as the other threw him a look over his shoulder. “Think of me as your new trauma fellow.”

That smile. Will didn’t think he would ever see that smile ever again. Even before the World fell apart...

“Doctor Halstead?” called Taylor. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yes,” he said.

Will started moving again and soon all their attention was back on the matter at hand. It wasn’t before they somehow managed to stabilize the guy, Will allowed himself to do what he had wanted to do since he had recognized the man, Jessie had brought in. One second he was checking the cuffs on the guy’s wrist - a precaution - the next, he was throwing his arms around the newcomer and confusing the hell out of everybody else in the room.

He felt Connor - Connor freaking Rhodes - chuckled against his skin and only held him tighter as his ex-colleague and friend hugged him back.

“Do you give all the new guys the same speech or?” Connor joked.

“Shut up,” Will mumbled.

“I miss you too,” Connor answered without missing a beat.

They stood there, locked in an embrace until someone else in the room cleared their throat.

“Hm, Doctor Halstead?” tried Taylor. “Do you need us to do anything else or…”

“No, sorry, no,” Will said. He obliged himself to let go of Connor but couldn’t bring himself to take a step back and put even more distance between them. “Connor, this is Taylor and Eric, two of our nursing students, and Jada here is one of our med students. And Jessie, you have already met, I believe. Guys, meet Doctor Rhodes, one of the best trauma and ct surgeons on this side of the country.”

“One of?” Connor repeated, not without humor. “Not the best?”

“Well, depends, do you know if all the other ones are dead?” Will shot back on the same tone.

“Ah-ah, how long have you been waiting to make that joke?” Connor asked.

“Three years, more or less,” Will said.

Connor snorted and shook his head. And Will couldn’t help himself and brought his arms around the other man again, as the three students and Jessie took it as their cue to leave the room.

[the-hidden-writer]

And Into The Fire

Chapter 1: A Phone Call

Summary:  Months after the Mitchells saved the world, Linda gets a phone call asking if she's seen two defective Pal MAX bots. Powerful people are after Eric and Deborabot 5000, and it's up to the Mitchells to protect them.

Check reblogs for AO3 link!

A Phone Call

It all started with a phone call.

6 months had passed since the “robot apocalypse”, and the world had fallen back into normality. In fact, since the robot apocalypse was so brief, it was now nothing more than a memory and a conversation topic to use as small talk. Things like “Where were you when the robots took you?” or “What did you do inside the fun pods?”. All in all, life had gone back to normal.

But not for the Mitchells. No, their lives were probably changed for good.

Katie had settled well into college. Now that she finally had her Dad’s approval, she felt free to have as much fun as she wanted without the burden of letting down her family. She regularly sent them updates of her work, and it made her insanely happy when she heard that Dad had made an effort to watch them fully, even if he didn’t quite understand them. That was okay though. It’s the thought that counts.

Back at home, things weren’t the same without Katie. Every time one of them stared too long at the empty chair at the table, it felt like a little stab to the heart. The Mitchells were a team, despite their differences, and one missing member was enough to knock their whole household off-kilter.

But they’d still managed to form a similar routine to their old one, just with one less Mitchell. Just Rick, Linda, Aaron, Monchi… and Eric and Deborahbot 5000.

The addition of the two childlike defective androids to their family was the biggest change of all. Once Pal was defeated and everyone was free, the pair had simply stood and looked confused in the midst of it all. The Mitchells (still high on adrenaline) had turned to leave when Eric called out:

“Mother! Wait!”

When he had the family’s attention, he continued. “Are you… satisfied?”

“Huh?” Rick voiced all of their confusion.

“Are you satisfied?” Eric repeated in the same, dry (but strangely uncertain) tone.

When nobody replied, Deborahbot had attempted to clarify. “Are you satisfied... with our performance?”

It was at that moment that a feeling of dread began brewing in Linda’s gut. She knew little to nothing about robots, and less about computer language, but something about the way the bots were speaking resonated with her. Katie had gone through a stage a few years earlier where she needed validation to stay confident but was too anxious to directly ask for it. She wasn't even sure if robots could have anxiety, but...

The fact that this seemingly unrelated memory had sprung to mind was enough for Linda to make her decision.

“They’re coming with us.” She stated firmly, and that was that. Rick had tried to protest but his argument was weak and, after taking one look at the bots that helped save the world, he couldn’t say no to their wobbly faces.

So Eric and Deborahbot came home with them and unofficially joined the Mitchell family. Luckily for the Mitchells themselves, the bots’ shenanigans were enough to help fill in the void left by Katie. The family had found their routine, they weren’t being hounded by the press anymore, and they’d found their new normal.

And then one ordinary day, the house phone rang.

Before Linda (the only human in the house at that moment) had time to react, two identical shouts of “Unknown number!” came in from the living room.

Eric and Deborahbot announcing the caller had been endearing at first. Each time any phone rang, they would happily shout the caller’s name straight away.

However after a few months of it, as much as Linda hated to admit it, it had gotten old and more than a little annoying. But the boys couldn’t help it and it brought them pleasure, so Linda had decided to let it slide for the time being.

Then when the phone rang after a particularly exhausting day and the bots had called out the name of a work colleague, Rick snapped. He yelled at the bots in what Linda thought was a very harsh way- so harsh that she was certain that they would be crying if they could display human emotions.

Rick had felt extremely guilty later that night and apologised (due to Linda’s nagging) in the morning. The bots immediately forgave him, but Linda noticed during the following week they would fall silent whenever Rick passed them or when the phone rang. To try and make up for it, she promised them that they could shout the caller’s name whenever Rick wasn’t home. They’d hugged her when she said that, and Linda felt like she’d done something right. It was a nice feeling.

“Mother! The phone is ringing!” Deborahbot called, snapping Linda back to the present. She’d been lost in her memories for a moment, so she quickly ran to answer the house phone.

(The bots weren’t allowed to answer the phone for obvious reasons.)

“Hello?” She answered, smiling when she noticed Eric and Deborahbot peeking their heads around the door to watch her.

“Hi, uh, is this the Mitchells?”

The voice on the other end was familiar, but Linda couldn’t quite put a name to it. Was it a parent from one of her school’s kids? No, because then why would they have her house number. Then who?

“Yes, this is Linda Mitchell. Sorry, who is this?”

“Uh, hey, it’s Mark Bowman.” So that’s where she recognised the voice. It belonged to the man whose face had been plastered all over the news and had narrowly avoided jail time for causing the robot apocalypse.

“What can I do for you, Dr Bowman?” She asked, trying not to let the sneer into her voice. She also tried not to notice the way Eric and Deborahbot visibly stiffened (an accomplishment for them) at the sound of the name.

“Right, um,” the man sounded oddly hesitant, “as you probably know, I’ve been going through a lot of official checks, to prove that the robots no longer pose a threat and stuff.”

His hesitance made sense then. He was probably being held at gunpoint by the CIA.

“Mhmm.” Linda nodded while simultaneously using her free hand to shoo her boys away. She didn’t know whether they could listen in to phone calls or not, but her instincts were telling her that they would not want to listen to whatever their creator was about to say.

“Well one of those checks includes making sure that all the Pal Max bots are permanently offline, you get what I’m saying?”

Linda wishes she didn’t. “Yeah.”

“Let’s just say that one took a while. Each bot has a unique serial number and was designed to send out a notification to Pal Labs if they got completely broken. And since there are like, millions of these things it took ages to sort them out, haha.”

“Understandable.” Said Linda pleasantly, although her motherly instincts were firing off the charts.

“So, uh, long story short there are two of these Pal MAX bots still missing. The rest have all been accounted for from these distress signals, but these ones seemed to have disconnected from Pal servers before the mass shutdown. Since they’re still online I’m guessing they’re defective.”

Linda felt a sudden, impulsive urge to kill Mark Bowman. This was not a first-time occurrence.

“So this is basically a super long way of asking if you’ve seen any rogue Pal MAX bots still online anywhere? Maybe back when you were saving the world?”

She had to resist the urge to hang up right then and there. Instead, she put on her sweetest teacher voice. There was truly no better way to mask her emotions.

“Hmm, no, sorry I don’t think we did.” She paused. “Even if we did, if the robots are defective then surely they can’t be that dangerous?”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Bowman exclaimed suddenly before clearing his throat and composing himself. “But uh… these people wanna be thorough. Can’t risk another apocalypse, y’know?”

Linda was about to respond when she heard a strange beeping sound on the other end, accompanied by shuffling.

“Uh, thanks Mrs Mitchell sorry again about the apocalypse bye-”

She’d been hung up on before she had time to react to Dr Bowman’s words.

On the inside, she was glad that he hadn’t pressed further about the missing defective robots. She’d been half-expecting him to already know their whereabouts and for there to be a confrontation.

But there hadn’t, and he’d hung up, and something about the whole thing seemed off.

She began to formulate a plan in her mind. Firstly, her robo-boys’ safety was the top priority of the situation. Once Rick came home she could tell him about the phone call and they could think of protection methods more clearly.

All she knew for certain for the time being was that the bots wouldn’t be leaving the house for a while.

~-.-~

*Beep* *Beep* *Beep*

If the beeping wasn’t startling enough, the aggressive hand signals the agents were sending him caused him to panic.

He decided to hang up quickly. “Uh, thanks Mrs Mitchell sorry again about the apocalypse bye!” It probably sounded rude, but he really couldn’t care at this point.

“So…” he nervously began, looking up from the phone screen but not wanting to make eye contact with any of the agents. “Did you find anything?”

“The call was intercepted by two separate individuals.” One of the younger agents seated at a computer piped up.

Mark gulped.

“It seems as though we were right, Dr Bowman.” Said Agent Ward, the CIA woman who had first initiated the search for the missing Pal MAX bots. “They’re targeting the Mitchells.”

Taking a deep breath, Mark tried to calm his nerves. He’d lost almost everything in the span of a few months- a good chunk of his self-confidence included.

“Now what?" He asked. "You’re gonna warn them, right?”

“Find them yet, Travis?” Agent Ward asked another of the agents, ignoring Mark completely.

“Hey! You didn’t answer me!”

“We’ve managed to trace the interception to its sources, Ma’am.” The other agent replied, also ignoring Mark. “The coding here does look like Pal MAX, but we can’t actually access it. Since they’re online, the defences are strong. It would take a few days to get through the firewall even with Pal Labs resources, let alone commence a rewrite.”

The agents only turned their attention back to Mark when he snorted when trying to hold in a laugh.

“Of course it’d take ages,” he scoffed, “these are Pal bots. They’re designed to be pretty much impossible to be hacked by humans.”

“Well then,” Agent Ward towered over him intimidatingly, “you’d better get to work.”

Comments make my day! :)

[biggirllifestyle]

Over the Rails: Cold Floors and Sparks

Summary: After Peter posts, a video of him and his friends at the roller rink on the Avengers group chat Bucky can’t seem to get his mind off Peter’s friend who stole the show, and after getting goaded into going skating with the other avengers (Natasha’s conniving planning) where Peter’s friend works at Bucky can’t help but feel that there’s something more to look forward to.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Plus-Sized Reader

Word Count: 3k+

Warnings: Swearing, Physical harm (from Roller Skating), Future Confrontational Violence, Creepers making woman uncomfortable, .

A/N: It’s long. Sorry. Enjoy.

Friday seemed to be getting closer and closer and Bucky couldn’t help the growing anxiety that he felt as the day grew closer. He didn’t have any issues with hanging out with the Avengers or even being around other people, he had worked through those issues with Xavier on one of his sessions so he knew he could get through it.

Bucky knew that choosing to call his therapist at three in the morning on a weekday would be an excessive thing to do but he thought that maybe dealing with it upfront would be so much better, as he huddled by the couch the rooms only illumination from the muted tv. Bucky heard the line ringing for a few minutes and growing anxiety grew as it kept ringing, as he was about to end the call the line picked and a disgruntled voice answered,

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Bucky stopped short the voice on the other line was not his therapist, pulling the phone away looking to see if he had accidentally dialed the wrong number, bucky pulled the phone back an apology at the tip of his tongue before he heard another gruff voice but this time with the hint of a British accent underneath,

“Eric, What’s going on? Who is that?”

Bucky heard a grumble from the man who answered before there was a shift of sheets and finally Xavier was on the line, there was an extra shift and an audible click before everything quieted again.

“James is everything alright?”

“Doctor I apologize for calling you so early in the morning but I-,” Bucky stopped short. He didn't know how to say what was wrong, he felt like his fear was inconsequential that did not deem a call at three in the morning. “I apologize for calling so early in the morning but I don’t know what’s wrong and I need your help.”

He heard Xavier humm, “James, we have talked about this, you do not have to apologize for seeking help. This is an improvement for you since never before did you seek help so I feel like this is a step forward, now tell me what can I do for you?”

“Doc, I know that our session is set for Saturday but something changed this week and I feel like if I don’t address it now it might become an issue for when it finally comes up.” Bucky didn’t know if he was making any sense; he couldn’t even say that he understood his words very clearly, so he was hoping that Xavier was able to understand him enough.

“Does this have anything to do with the video you had talked about from our last session, the one you were caught watching by Natasha?” Bucky made a small noise of confirmation, Xavier hummed as he seemed to write down what was being told to him, Bucky could hear the scratch of paper through the phone.

“Did something happen, James, I know from our last session you mentioned how you were looking forward to your outing with the others, so what is it about it now that's making you so anxious?” Bucky couldn't help the noise of shock that he let out, Xavier had a way of always knowing what Bucky was feeling and thinking and almost as if he was reading his mind, if it wasn’t for the fact that he survived the fall and Steve become ten times taller then he would say that Xavier was a mutant person with powers, well he still believes that no matter how much Xavier denies it.

“There is just so much that may go wrong that makes me nervous,” Bucky paused running a hand through his long hair, “ I just don’t want to disappoint, Nat had told me that this girl, Bibi, was a History major and according to Peter she did a paper the impact of Steve and I’s missions and how the war would have gone differently if we hadn’t been involved and that all that dedication she put into it-”

Bucky paused taking a small breath before continuing, “I just don’t want her to meet me and decide that I am a disappointment, that the person she spent such a long time researching, the person who I used to be, would make her disappointed because I am not him anymore.”

“James, you are and you will always be James Buchanan Barnes no matter the alias that was set for you or not, what HYDRA stole from you, your freedom, does not define who you were before or after the Winter Soldier, don’t let them take your future just because you are worried that people will still see you like the Winter Soldier, you have to understand that not everything revolves around that persona, okay? You are capable of going beyond if you just allow yourself to do it.”

Bucky was silent letting Xavier's words sink in, he was feeling much better now that he was hearing a word of reason at this time, Steve had been sent out on a quick mission overnight and he wouldn’t be back until later in the afternoon, he heard Xavier clear his throat before snapping him out of his mind.

“Now I am very curious about this girl you were mentioning, it seems that this person is the reason why you are feeling like this, and I can assume since you did show me the video that she is the one who fell at the end was it not?”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

“Well James, it’s currently too early in the morning you need your rest and it seems that this is something we will have to talk about when we are in the right state of mind, so let’s leave this conversation for our session on Saturday?”

“That sounds like a good idea Doc.”

“Great then it’s set,” Bucky heard a snap that could only be Xavier's notebook, “ And James I would like to apologize in regards to my husband Eric’s behavior earlier he just got back from a job and the jet lag wasn’t the best for him.”

“It’s alright Doc don’t worry I understand I mean I would have reacted the same way if someone would have called me at that time as well.”

“Well then goodnight James, or should I say morning instead”

“Night Doc, thanks again,” Bucky said before he hanged up, on the tv, there was a show going, one of Steve’s favorite that Sam and he would usually watch together constantly when off-mission, a sitcom of sorts of a man and women living in the suburbs as they try to hide their identity from their neighbors, Bucky shut it off enveloping the room in darkness.

Bucky knew that whatever happened on Friday, he would do whatever it took to prove that he was and could be James Buchanan Barnes again.

*

“When you told me you were going to buy me some Ice-Cream, I didn’t realize it came with the price of you dragging me to go shopping with you.” You said as you watched MJ browse around the bottoms section, it was hot outside the hottest it has been in New York since the first time you had arrived here, but not as hot as how Texas got in the summer that’s for sure.

After what had happened with Trevor, Ned and Peter had taken upon themselves to become your own personal escorts walking you to class and anywhere they could, at first you thought it was sweet being very grateful for friends who would gladly give you support but now all you could think about was a way to get rid of them for even just a second so you could breathe.

Finally the time cam when Peter was summoned by Mr. Stark for an experiment and Betty had taken one for the team and forced Ned to take her on a date keeping him away from you as long as she could, so here you were with MJ following her around as she looked for an outfit for the school banquet coming up. Searching through the plus size racks a shimmering material caught your eye and you couldn't help the trill that went through your body thinking that you had found something that you like , taking it off the rack you pulled it up to look at the size letting out a huff you put the shirt back into the rack your mood soured overtly being fooled that something so nice cold be offered to someone your size, starting to walk away you turned back tacking the shirt off and depositing it on another much similar sizes at its own not wanting someone to feel the disappointment just like you.

MJ had her arms covered in clothes and you couldn’t help the small ball of jealousy that went through you before squashing it down, giving up on finding anything for yourself in this store. “Hey MJ,” you called to her as she headed towards the dressing rooms, she turned towards you the clothes seeming to weigh her down, so you ignored that looking only at her face, “I’m gonna head over to the thrift shop two doors down, head over there when you’re done choosing something.”

MJ gave a nod of acknowledgement before turning back to the dressing rooms, stepping out of the air conditioned store you put on your sunglasses blocking out the sun as much as you could before beginning your trek down the sidewalk, sidestepping busy pedestrian you couldn't help thinking about the upcoming event would some very special guest. The Avengers were not a group that you would have thought to meet, yet here you were just mere hours before you finally had the chance to interact with the most powerful and out-of-ordinary individuals out there.

Dodging a skateboarder as he zoomed past you finally arrived at your destination ushering into the air-conditioned building, you could practically hear your mother telling you that what you were doing rushing in and out of the heat was not good for your health. The other reason for accepting MJ’s offer to go shopping, besides the free ice cream, was because you were still looking for an outfit to wear you knew you would be working but at the same time interacting with them was a big part of it so you wanted to look your best, and maybe it also had to do with a certain sargeant who had set everything in motion, even though of course he saw you fall on your face.

You blushed at the memory going towards the plus size isle seeing a variety of clothing awaiting you and you couldn't help the calm feeling that went over you when you realised there was no reason for you to feel in any way of disappointment for what you found. As you continue browsing from the corner of your eye you saw two extremely fit and thin women come onto your section beginning to browse where you had left off. The clenching of your stomach was unintentional almost as if you were sucking it in trying to make it less noticeable you shifted around adjust your shirt away from your body trying to stretch it out as much as you could wishing it wasn't sticking so close to your body, you heard one of the girls laugh at something the other had said and your thoughts began to go crazy.

“They’re laughing at you, they can see you for what you are a fat and l-”

“Excuse me, Miss?” you snapped out of your thoughts a tremor going through you as you turned towards one of the girls who was close to you, she had a bright smile on her face as she looked at you.

“Oh my!” she exclaimed, “It is you, it’s so nice to meet you I’m a huge fan of your videos, Are you out here looking for something? Do you happen to have your skates with you?” Shaking your head you realise what she was saying, your videos those videos of you skating around New York and campus, you looked down at your beat up sneakers dreading the fact tht you didn't have your skates feeling naked without them you looked at the girl shaking your head at her, “Sorry left them at home.”

You hoped she would go away feeling uncomfortable as she stood next to you, your anxiety rising as you realised that she was tiny and well compared to her you were just too much. Her friend said something too low for you to hear but the girl laughed looking at you from the corner of her eye and your throat began to feel as if it was closing up feeling squeamish you began to shift back trying to get away without being rude, just as you were about to step away you heard another voice and you froze completely.

You knew that voice it had been mocking at you for the past weeks, his words at a constant repeat as you avoided your reflection in the mirror. Trevor rounded the corner coming to stand behind the two girls before he noticed you standing there, he looked shocked before he shook himself out of it turning to the girl had been speaking to you, “Meg, baby lets go I still have to pick up my order on the way home and I don’t want to be late.”

He looked back at you dragging his gaze down your body, staring straight at your exposed legs and you couldn't help but shift at how uncomfortable that look in his eyes felt. You grabbed your bag placing it in front of you trying to. hide yourself from his look hoping that anything could come and save you in that moment, looking over their shoulders you found MJ stalking towards you murder in her eyes and it was all focused on Trevor, he turned trying to see what had caught your eyes when he saw MJ he paled before he practically draged his girlfriend and her friend away trying to get out before MJ could get to him.

You couldn’t help the breath you let out sinking on the floor letting your heated skin cool with the cold floor, trying to calm yourself as you sucked in deep and controlled breaths looking up at MJ who kept her distance knowing that you would ask for her help if you needed it. Finally after what felt like a lifetime you rose up MJ looked like she wanted to pull you in but she stopped herself knowing that you hated being touched after you had an episode, “Come on she said let’s go and buy that ice cream.”

MJ walked towards the exit calm as she could be you shuffled behind her trying to hide yourself away after what had happened, you gave yourself a sardonic smile, who knew that the day you shoo away your bodyguards would be the day you met your nightmare. As you both walked through the streets you couldn’t help your thoughts from going wild, how could this have happened on such a day, you thought about calling your therapist but thought against it last time you had talked to Xavier he mentioned Eric coming into town so you didn’t want to bother them at the moment.

When you finally arrived MJ opened the door letting you go in first, she was typing so fast her focus solely on her phone that she almost ran into a customer as we maneuvered around trying to find an empty seat, you pulled her aside dragging her along as you shimmied her into a booth you turned to your side and squeezed yourself in the table moving trying to accommodate to your size, the blush that rose to your face showed your embarrassment but looking around you noticed nobody had payed attention to you, so you calmed down at that.

MJ finally put her phone down with a satisfied look in her eyes and you couldn’t help but feel bad for the poor bastard who her anger was directed to, the first person you thought of was Trevor and you couldn’t help the small giggle you let out. MJ realized the cause of your giggles and gave you a huge grin before her phone began to blow up as she ignored it.

“So I bought you something,” she said as she pulled up a bag from the floor holding it out, you grabbed it gingerly as you opened it up and saw the shirt you had picked up earlier at the store, you closed the bag afraid of taking it out, “I saw you look at it earlier and I asked one of the workers to see if they had one in your size and they did it was their very last one actually and I just knew I had to get it for you.”

You looked at MJ not believing her words as you opened the bag again taking out the shirt and looking at its size, you couldn’t help the tears that came to your eyes at the sheer luck you had in having friends like MJ and the others who went above and beyond for you.

“MJ this is amazing thank you so much for this. I love it.” You gave her a watery smile beyond happy at it, she beamed up at you happy that she was able to give you something to smile for.

“Yeah I think it will look lovely on you, and hey,” She said as she got up, “Maybe you’ll even be able to catch the attention of a certain Sergeant at the party.”

*

Bucky stood outside the rink with the others as they waited for Peter to show up, earlier that day Steve and Bucky had gone out to eat a diner close to their apartment when Natasha had shown up raging about how excited she was about tonight’s event. She talked about how Tony and her had made a bet to see who of all the avengers was most likely to fall first and who would be the first one to give up.

Now here they were late in the evening waiting for Peter to join them so they would be able to get inside. Peter’s other friends were by the door, but Bucky couldn’t see Bibi anywhere and he didn’t know if to be nervous or not. After a few minutes Peter finally arrived swinging down from a building close by he landed close to his friends bumping fist with one and kissing the other on the cheek before finally turning towards them.

“Right, okay are you guys ready Bibi is in there waiting in on us so if you wanna follow me,” He turned back to the door making a series of knocks that sounded like a passcode when in fact they were just random noises being produced, the door opened and a head popped out a look of annoyance clear on her face and Bucky couldn’t help but think of it as adorable, Natasha had sneaked close to him as Peter and Bibi exchanged banter at door elbowed him in the stomach making a big gesture towards bibi a huge grin plastered onto her face, Bucky gave her an annoyed look as he moved away from her to Steve’s side.

Peter and Bibi must have finished their little fight since she finally pushed the door open and spread out her arms in a grand gesture, “Welcome Avengers to our humble, ummm” She paused glaring back at a grinning Peter, the girl next to him elbowed him but the smile never left his face, “Right, Welcome to our humble rink where I will take you for the ride of your lives.”

Peter smirked at the end of the speech before sauntering in as the other Avengers snickered at your words as they followed you inside the building, Bucky took a deep breath trying to calm his rising heartbeat before following. The building was lit up when they walked in most of the group had spread out from either talking to Peter’s friends or getting some skates from Bibi who was manning the counter, Natasha headed his way again before grabbing his arm to drag him to the counter, “Take charge, Sarge” she said before depositing him in front of her.

Outside he hadn’t gotten an actual look at her outfit but he couldn’t help but to admire her now, a nice sparkly top complemented her he could see now that she was wearing some sparkly skates a mid length skirt flared out around her legs and Bucky fought hard to look away. When he finally looked at her she was giving him a shy smile that made Bucky’s heart give a stutter.

“What’ll be Sarge?”

Prt.4

[sapphire374]

A Pleasant but Spontaneous Encounter

"I know we're supposed to be just roommates but you just look too damn cute in the morning and now I can't seem to get you out of my mind."

Wattpad Link 

Nina strongly grasped the paper that had written her room number for the year. Even Though, she arrived early meaning she had yet to find out who she was rooming with. Her nerves were truly at its peak when she discovered while walking into campus that the council decided to pair the girls rooms with the boys rooms. Boys… in the same dorm hallway. She already felt scared starting the new year at Oxford but now she feels uncomfortable knowing there was going to be adult males too. She wondered “what if it’s the guys who host those massive overnight parties. How on earth would I be able to study if people next door are partying all night long.” Nina had jumped into a spiral of thoughts by just overthinking everything. 

Once she arrived at her room she had the pleasure of choosing which bed she wanted since her roommate hadn’t arrived yet. She unclasped her luggage after setting it on top of the trunk and began to store her belongings in drawers, shelves and any other kind of available space in her side of the room. 

Knock-knock. Nina heard as she was hanging up her shirts in the closet. Must be her new roommate. “I’m coming,” Nina hurried as she went to the door. She’s been waiting, wanting to anxiously know who she was going to spend all year with. She grasped the door knob, turned it, and opened the door to a revealing surprise. “Gaston?!”

Both, Gaston and Nina stood there in shock looking at one another. “Nina!… Well it’s nice to see you again but how were you able to find my room and enter it. Don’t get me wrong it’s a pleasure to see you again but this feels a little creepy even though I know I’m hard to forget.”

Nina let out a small frown at his words and replied with “Gaston you really think I would do something like that. I don’t know if this is another one of your jokes but this is my room. Even though they have combined girl rooms with boy rooms in the same hallway  doesn’t mean they get to share the same rooms. Girls with girls, boys with boys.”

Gaston scratches his head and glances at his paper again. “But Nina this is my room, 2774.” 

Nina walks to her dresser, grabs her yellow slip and reads out loud “2774, how odd that’s the same number I got. We need to go speak to the director, this must be a mistake.”

Gaston is now smirking in front of Nina while she wears a questionable look towards his expressions. “Maybe we don’t have to fix this mistake. Maybe we can stay roommates and catch up on what we’ve missed. Maybe this is fate that has brought us here Nina.” 

Nina now choking on her words says, “No no no Gaston, we can’t. We would get in big trouble if I don’t say anything about this and I cannot get in trouble on my first day already. Plus it would seem fishy if they saw a boy in a year after me in the same dorm room as I am. We can always hang out and even catch up outside of the dorm but I don’t want to get in trouble.”

Gaston now making a sullen look replies with “You’re right. We should go.”

“Sorry if I seem like a buzzkill. I’m happy we met but I wasn’t expecting it to be like this.”

“Yeah me neither.”

~~~

“What do you mean we’re going to be roommates for the week. Isn’t that against the rules?” Gaston asked. “Yes it is but we’ve already implemented a system for the roommates which means all of the other rooms are taken. We’re now going to have to wait for when a spot opens up. My deepest apologies for the whole mixup by the way. Don’t worry too much though, this problem should be fixed by the end of the week,” the dean of the campus reassured them. But what if Gaston didn’t want the issue to be fixed anytime soon, what if he does want to be Nina’s roommate. Gaston’s already imagining all of the possibilities of him being able to rekindle his romance with Nina.

Wait a second. A doubt, a fearful thought entered his brain and now it can’t get out. What if Nina is still with Eric? Could that be why she didn’t want to be his roommate, could that be why she tried to brush him off and didn’t seem so excited to see him at her doorstep. Heck she didn’t even give him a hug. 

Throughout the whole meeting he couldn’t help but stare at Nina a few times. Oh how he missed her so much. The way she shuffled her feet when the room was quiet, the way how she tightly held her book in her hand whenever she was nervous, and the way how she barely spoke in conversations, overthinking what to say next. 

Seeing her reaction to the news was a scary delight to see. Gaston saw Nina’s face easily turn red when she glanced at Gaston for a few seconds. Did she hate the idea of rooming with Gaston because she doesn’t like him anymore? Gaston would just love to be a mind reader right now.

They both got up from their chairs and left the office. “So I guess I have to unpack my bags…. In our room,” Gaston breaking the five minute long silence whilst scratching his head in the awkward environment.

“I guess so. I will say though that I call dibs on an extra drawer just so I can have space for my books.”

Gaston couldn’t help but chuckle at Nina’s statement, at how Nina hasn’t changed who she was. 

“Gaston it’s not funny, you know I like to keep my books organized into different categories. Ones I haven’t read, ones I want to reread, and ones I’ve already finished but not planning to reread them anytime soon.” Nina couldn't help but giggle as well. Now Nina and Gaston were both giggling.

~~~

All day Nina tried avoiding Gaston. When she was in the library, she tried to fixate her focus into her textbooks and ignore the not so subtle glances Gaston would throw. Oh how she wishes she can have long conversations and tell him exactly how she feels, but that’s the thing she can’t. Whenever she just thinks of the idea, she chokes. Chokes and not a single word can come out afterward. She thought she has finally grown to be more confident and speak to others but with Gaston around, all of the development feels like it never happened. Before she used to feel very comfortable talking to him and now it feels like the first day she met him, scary and nerve-wracking.

While he wasn’t looking, she couldn’t help but stare and wonder how lucky fate has been to her this very moment. She finally got to see him like she has always hoped. Deep down inside, she’s never stopped loving Gaston no matter what. Just about five months ago, she finalized her decision to break up with Eric. She told him the truth, how she’s still not over Gaston. She thought she had feelings for Eric and she did but only as a friend. She pushed herself to date him thinking it would erase the pain she would feel thinking she would never see Gaston again but not even a sliver of that feeling went away.

Now she’s here. Sitting in a vintage, brown chair while reading her newest textbook in the dull lighting of this library. Great, now she can’t stop thinking about him and has lost all concentration in her homework. She puts her hand on her face in frustration. “Why do you have to take over mind Gaston,” she thinks to herself. Honestly, when she applied to Oxford she wasn’t expecting her first encounter with Gaston to be like this. She assumed she would have some time to put herself together and have the guts to have an actual conversation with him. But instead she barely spoke to him today as if she wanted to ignore him and even gave out signs of being uptight. That’s the thing though, she isn’t like that at all. Her shyness and the spontaneous encounter of him took her by surprise. While already having first day of university stress, she now has past love stress. 

She wonders what he must be thinking now. “Does he hate me? Does he not love me anymore? Am I everything he wasn’t expecting me to be? Does he want to be friends? Does he want to be more than just friends? Is he even single” She face palms herself again and is getting really annoyed now at her overthinking and spiral of thoughts getting out of control.

Gaston notices at the other end of the library Nina’s frustration. Automatically he’s worried and is about to step out of his chair till another doubt reaches his mind. “Wait maybe this isn’t a good idea. I don’t want to force her to like me again or seem clingy,” he assumes. He sits back down onto his chair. 

A group of guys head over to Gaston. Only one of them seems to be carrying books in their hand while the others are carrying backpacks.

 “Hey Gaston. Have you heard of the party that Sara is hosting today. It’s going to be sick,” the guy with the letterman jacket said.

“That seems nice,” Gaston replied

“Are you coming? I heard a lot of people are going to be there.”

“No, I don’t think I’ll go today. It’s the first day and I don’t want to ruin my already messed up sleeping schedule.”

“Oh but c’mon it’ll be the first one of the year. You can’t just miss the first one. Plus I heard a lot of girls will be there too,” the guy then gave Gaston a wink after this statement. 

Gaston then looks over to Nina. She immediately dropped her head down to her books. He noticed and couldn’t help but fall in love at how that reminds him of the looks they would share to each other when they were at the Jam and Roller together. 

“Sorry but I can’t today, maybe some other time,” Gaston stated.

“Ok, your loss dude.” The group of guys then headed straight out the door. 

Nina grew a little worried. She liked knowing now that he is single but she wonders whether he even wants to be with her again. All day it has felt like a battle of who can ignore each other better. She picks up her textbooks, slides them into her open backpack, zips it, and gets out of her chair to leave the library. She can’t concentrate having Gaston very far but also very close to her in one large room. 

When Nina heads straight to the door, Gaston does too. He runs over her and says, “No, Nina, wait.” She turns over. Now Gaston is tongue tied and didn’t think through exactly what he was going to say to her. “Uhh… see you later..” Nina waves a bye to him back and leaves with a confused look on her face. Gaston can’t help but feel stupid, creating a huge fuss all to just tell her in the end “see you later.” 

Gaston hurriedly grabs his backpack and exits the building too. He thinks of the best idea he possibly can at a time like this, and that’s to call Matteo. He takes his phone out of his pocket, types the name and places it near his ear. “Hi Gaston. I wasn’t expecting you to call me today. What’s the matter?” Matteo asks.

“Nina is here. I’m happy that she is but everytime I try to talk to her I forget the words and how to speak.”

Matteo laughs on the other end. “Oh wow no hi Matteo. Good afternoon to you too.Well anyways, you both truly are made for each other. Just be honest with her, plus she probably feels the same way you do.”

“I have tried but I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to come on strong but I don’t want to sound annoying either.”

“You’re overthinking this too much, this is Nina we’re talking here. She already knows you and wouldn’t think of you like that.” 

Gaston thought about it for a second and answered, “Yeah I guess but we hadn’t seen each other in a long time and things can change you know.”

“True but from what I’ve seen the last time I met her she’s still the same Nina you fell in love with before. Maybe this time less afraid to speak her mind, cause of what happened with Gary.”

“Tonight I shall try to talk to her. Maybe we can start out being friends and go from there. I just really miss her laugh, our conversations together, and her smile. This whole day I’ve barely seen her smile. I miss it.”

“That’s a good start. Don’t forget to tell me how it goes ok. Good luck hermano.”

“Bye Matteo. Don’t worry I will.”

~~~

It was 9pm and Nina was already in her pajamas sitting all cozy in her bed while reading a book. Today she was wearing a black and beige nightgown. Gaston had just gotten out of the bathroom from brushing his teeth. He headed towards his bed as well whilst stealing glances towards Nina. He went under the covers and positioned his pillow to fall asleep. Before he laid down, he decided to tell Nina something. He would try to have the conversation he told Matteo about but sadly he can’t seem to think of anything to say. Nonetheless the convo ended quickly and barely went out as planned. “Goodnight Nina. Uh I hope you had a nice day today.”

Nina took her focus away from her book and said, “Yes I did. Thanks for asking. How did your day go?”

“It went decent I guess.”

“That’s nice. Goodnight to you too.”

Gaston then tried to fall asleep. Nina held her book but hasn’t read a sentence after their short lived conversation. She stared at the way Gaston slept. It was so peaceful, as if all the stars were aligned with each other. A portrait she would never want to forget. “What am I thinking. I still can't be in love with Gaston. He barely notices me or even talks to me. I have to forget about him,” Nina overthinks again. She places her book on top of her nightstand with her glasses and tries to fall asleep through the night.

After two hours have passed, Nina seems to be having a nightmare. She tosses and turns consistently in her bed. Gaston slowly opens his eyes. The noise of the sheets moving rapidly woke him up. He sees Nina scared with almost tears in her eyes. He rushes over to Nina and gently wakes her up sitting at the side of her bed. “Nina it’s ok, it’s ok I’m here.” Nina’s eyes begin to flutter and she uncontrollably takes a hold of Gaston’s hand. An electric shock rushed over both of their spines. They touched. 

“It’s ok Nina. You were having a bad dream. You’re going to be fine. I’m here and I’m not going to leave ok.” Gaston’s voice of reassurance made Nina feel much better. They couldn’t stop looking into each other’s eyes. She breaks the stare by rushing into a hug. He softly strokes his hand on her back. She then lays her head on his shoulders. 

“Look Nina there’s something I need to tell you.”

Nina breaks out of his warm embrace. “Gaston there’s something I still need to tell you too.”

“I’ve missed you so much Nina. More than you can possibly think. I thought us breaking up would be the best so that you wouldn’t feel tied to me and have to suffer having a boyfriend who was far away and can rarely visit. Also, especially with starting out school and having to frequently study, barely having time for you, which was not what you deserved, I thought at the time it was the right decision to make.”

“Gaston I’ve missed you so much too. More than you could think of. I remember there were even days where I cried just looking at a trinket from our past. Like that book you lent me that was your favorite. It has all of the notes of the lines that you said reminded you of me. I even take it everywhere I go no matter what. I was so hurt from the breakup, I thought dating somebody else would help erase the pain and make me even forget about it. Not about us since I will always remember you but make me feel better. In the beginning it did till I realized that the relationship I had with you could never be recreated with some other guy. And when I noticed my feelings for you were still existent and even stronger I knew I had to break up with him. I wasn’t ready to have another boyfriend yet.”

Gaston couldn’t help but smile at the fact that Nina is single…. And still potentially loves him. “Nina I still till this day have feelings for you. Whenever I felt stressed or depressed I would always look back into your Felicity account and read your posts. They always gave me that extra dose of strength I needed for the day. I always kept track of whenever you posted for Amigos De Patin. Reading your incredible entries made me feel so lucky to have met you and have had a wonderful girlfriend like you. I always carry around with me too that red bracelet that kept us united like the sea. Remember that ribbon I sent you and how I told you it reminded me of us being like the sea. How far we may be but someday it’s waves will meet up again. How our love lives in the ocean. I never got rid of it. I always wear it on my wrist.”

Nina cupped her mouth with shock. “Gaston I do too. I still keep that ribbon and take it everywhere I go. In fact I keep it in a special place.” She grabs her book off her nightstand and takes out a bookmark. In the clear plastic is the red ribbon. “I always take it with me wherever I go too.”

“Nina don’t you get it. This is maybe destiny. Like the poem of the sea how someday we would meet up again if our love is meant to be. Nina I never stopped loving you.”

Nina then had a tear slide down her cheek. “Gaston I never stopped loving you too.”

Gaston wipes the tear off Nina’s face and has his lips meet with hers. He caressed her cheek while she held his arms. This felt surreal to the both of them. They couldn’t believe they got to meet each other again. Their love was held by the big body of water between them and chose now to bring them back together. Gaston and Nina knew deep down inside that they were meant to be.

[leclerc-xo]

2, 5 and 15 😊

2. What is your favorite snippet of dialogue? Sorry that this is such a long excerpt but this whole bit:

“Do you when I was younger I used to think the moon followed me? I’d be walking home from being out with my mates and I’d challenge myself to outrun it, like I could make it disappear for just one second if I ran fast enough. Have I told you that before?” 

Dele’s voice had wavered on the question and Eric shook his head. “No I don’t think you have,” he answered and Dele nodded, his face so open that it made Eric’s chest squeeze. 

“It’s funny really, I hated that I couldn’t do it for ages. But then when I started having to spend more time out of the house, I actually became quite glad it was there.” Dele stopped, his voice wavering again and Eric wrapped an arm around Dele’s waist, pulling him to his chest. In the early days, at the Euros, Dele had been so closed off from him sometimes that this was the only way he could get him to open up. He’d known Dele was struggling so he’d invented this game, where they shared pointless bits of information about themselves when they were lying in the dark. Gradually Eric had started to interweave bits about himself that were more serious, in the hope it would make Dele do the same, make Dele realise he could trust Eric. It had worked and he’d learnt a lot about Dele whilst lying in the dark in a hotel room in France, more than most other people knew, he was sure of it. 

And now here they were again two years later, with so much more between them and he was doing it again, making sure Dele knew he was there, that he had him. 

“Yeah?” he said prompting Dele to continue. 

“Yeah. It became like this constant thing in the dark y’know? Like it was something I could rely on. I became obsessed with it, the solar system, all of it but especially the moon. The idea that it’s always there even when you can’t see it.”

Dele had become so animated as he spoke, his face pointed up at the moon and Eric had been captivated by the way he shone in its light. The glow bouncing off his skin and casting him in a pale light, highlighting the slope of his cheekbones, the bow of his lips. Whenever they had these conversations it was like Eric tapped into some sort of well, like he unlocked something in Dele and he couldn’t get the words out fast enough. It was part of the reason he’d carried on the little game, framed it in such a way that it was something he did to pass the time. But really it was because he loved that Dele opened up to him the way he did, loved that he had trusted him over the years with things he’d never told anyone else. 

“It’s nice. I guess it used to centre me sometimes, still does I guess. Do you ever get that feeling? From anything?,” Dele turned to face him again as he asked the question, his eyes big and round as he caught Eric staring at him. 

5. What’s your favorite headcanon you use in fics? Like I said in the answer to Laura’s ask, their whole relationship for me is based on the fact that they find each other when they can’t sleep. After a win, after a loss, when they are going through a tough time, when they just want to chill, it’s just something they have always done. In my head it really started at the Euros, with them sharing a hotel room and going through their first tournament together. The idea that they fit to know each other whilst lying in different hotels room in that first season as well. It’s like a microcosm of the idea that they always find each other. Nearly lost my mind when Eric talked about them staying up all night after the CL final in the live.

Give us a snippet of something from your WiPs! I don’t have anything massively recent but this is a snippet from the start of a fic about Dele having a testimonial:

Dele felt like he’d walked into a time warp when he’d entered the dressing room. The usual numbers were up on the screens above the lockers but the names underneath were like something out of a scrapbook. Players that Dele had spent years within the four walls of the room with, celebrating, commiserating even sometimes fighting. It had been years since he’d seen some of them next to each other and something like melancholy settled over him as he walked over to his seat. He’d had the same place since the stadium opened in 2019. He’d felt a lot of different emotions whilst sat there, been through everything a football player possibly could and every single time he’d processed it all sat in this exact spot. A cacophony of noise dragged him away from his thoughts and he lifted his head in time to see three people walk through the door, hands gesticulating wildly. They were clearly debating something and Dele let out a little laugh, some things obviously never changed.

“Dele, could you please explain to this bonehead for the twenty millionth time that it was not me who drenched his stuff that time?” Jan asked as he jabbed a finger into the person standing next to him shoulder. Dele laughed again as he watched Toby roll his eyes and walk over to the locker underneath his name, stopping to peer up at it before he sat down. He turned his attention back to the other two and heat rose in his cheeks as his gaze met a pair of blue eyes.

It had been a while since he’d seen Eric wearing a full football kit and the sight of him wearing lilywhite once again made him feel a bit lightheaded. He’d let his hair grow out, there was a dusting over facial hair framing his jawline and seeing him standing next to Jan, grinning from ear to ear made Dele feel like he really had travelled back in time. Eric laughed at something Jan said, his eyebrows raised in question and Dele suddenly felt like he had to sit down. The movement caught Eric’s attention and he turned to face Dele, a warm smile on his lips.

Dele looked up at him at the same time as Eric looked away, responding to someone shouting his name and he began talking back, throwing quick glances back to Dele as he did so. Even now, five years after leaving Spurs, two years after retiring he still commanded the dressing room. When he spoke everyone's eyes still drifted towards him and Dele’s stomach flipped as he thought back to all those times Eric had been the one to rally them, to build them up when they needed it. He’d never been the official captain but he had been one of the leaders.

“Ah Eric, have you met the new guy? He’s a little bit weedy, apparently a bit of a show off. I think you need to take him down a peg or two,” Kyle joked, slapping him on the shoulder as he sat down next to him. Dele shoved his elbow into Kyle’s ribs and he let out a yelp. “Oi Delboy watch what you’re doing I’m an old man now you know!” Dele rolled his eyes and Kyle sniggered. “No I don’t think I have Walks mate, been told I’ve got to babysit him for the day though, best introduce myself hadn’t I?” Eric extended a hand out, wiggling it, daring Dele to carry on the charade. Dele looked up at him, his heart beating in his chest. There was a glint in Eric’s eyes and Dele realised he knew exactly what he was doing.

“I’m Eric, by the way, Eric Dier.”

And just like that it was 2015 again and Dele was a young, naive teenager who’d been waiting in a random meeting room for what felt like an eternity when this tall, stupidly tanned, quite obviously annoyed guy had walked in and turned his life upside down forever.

“I’m Dele. You here to show me around?”

[freshstartbaby]

Un

🎧 Body - Syd

I watched my house, cardbord on the ground, like me, leg crossed. White walls, a little smell of vinegar. Thats what I used to finally clean up everything.

Why do I feel like shit ? I mean one part of me cant wait to be in my new place. But the other ? I really feel like I kind of failed here. I got a job, two to be exact, I can provide for myself. I got few friends and thats it. I was wondering if my mum will ever know if I left the town. Maaaan I got to stop overthinking.

It was 8pm and I was waiting for Theo's call. Thanks to god he told me he will help me wih the moving. His help was so precious. Like always. My phone rang with « Theo 🤍 » on my screen . I picked up

« Sup mister T » I said softly « Hi Rob, you good ? » he answered « I am actually, and you ? » « Good. So you really goin to leave me, you know you can still change your mind » « No way, but you know you will still be in my mind » « And in your heart. Who do you think you are ? » he started to joke « Man where are you ? » I said rolling my eyes with a smile on face « There is a litlle bit of traffic. I be there in 10 minutes. But I think the man who will help us is already there. I fowarded him your number. Did he call ? »

I checked my phone, no missed call

« Nah he didn't » « Ok, get ready I be there soon » « Thank tou Theo » « Everything for you » he hang up

I shook my head slowley left to right. He was so kind to me. He can't be real. Me and Theo knew ourself since 8 years now. He was there to help and provide when no one could. He always was very protective and he is actually the one who gave me my first job: dancer in a club. It wasn't my goal job but I could dance and it will help me paying my bills. Few years later he also refered me in company to work as a personnal assistant. I managed myself to then become a communication assistant. When you look clother, without him, I probably will end up as a cracked or worse.

When we met I was 16 and he was 22. It was a very protective relationship. But the older we get, the akward it became. I mean physically he turned to a man as i turned to a young women. And even if he always shows me mad respect, the way he was watching and talking to me changed. Not in a bad way, but I could feel there was more. I aint gon lie, he is good looking, got money and got pure heart. But i couldnt wiling to lost him if we turned into a relationship. He was one of few people around me. Aint ready to loose one of them.

When I told him that I decided to move in LA, maaaan, he wasn't down for it. But as always, he helped me. He got fews relations so we find a cute flat quickly than I thought. The place was smooth and warm. We flew to LA to visit it, and i actually loved it. So now here I am waiting for a friend of his to move my stuff to LA. Let me get it straight. I aint no baby. I can take care of myself. But when it comes to Theo, he always wants to help. And I aint gonna lie, it feel good to be take care of.

The ring belled, I stood up to open the door. He looked at me, I looked at him.

« Can I help you ? » rising an eyebrow acting like I didn't know him « Stop playing » he said moving in my place « Hi » I said to the man following Theo « Robyn this is Eric, Eric this The New York leaver »

I rolled my eyes and shook my head slowly. Eric and Theo helped me to put my stuff in the truck. It was quickly made thanks to them. Also even if I hadnt much things I droped a lot. Eric told me that they will arrive the next monday in my new place. I thanked him as he left when I felt someone behind me. I turned around found Theo on his phone.

« First of all you didn't say hi »

I pulled him softly in a hug. His hands wrapped my shoulder as he kissed my cheek softly

« Then tell me where do I drop you ? » he said « Alex's place » « Lets go »

He put my suitcase in his trunck and we headed to Alexendra's place. I sold my car few weeks before so he proposed me to drop me where I needed yesterday.

Alexandra is one of my best friend. She's like a sister to be honest. We know each other for like forever and she always be down for me. Im stayin at her place tonight so I can catch my flight tommorow.

The road was silent but confortable. Theo and I like to be quiet sometines. We're the type of people who arent afraid of silence. As we arrived to Alexendra's place we stayed a little in the car.

« You need help with the suit case ? » « Na Im good, but thank you. Thank you for everything. It means a lot» I look at him « Stop saying this like its a goodbye » « Im not » « You better »

We pulled into a thight hug «You know I'm always be around and if you need to come back my door is open» « I hope it will be fine dont say that »

He look at me kiss my cheek and said

« Take care » « You too Theo »

I got off the car, took my suitcase and watched him leave. As we disapear on the corner I called Alex.

« Yes baby » « Im here, remind me your code » « You still dont remember it, you do it on purpose » « Guuuurl what is it ?» « 7110 » « Thank youuuuuu »

I taped the code and got to her place

« Sup baby » « Wassup baby, how you doin ?» « Good and you ? » « Everything is alright, I mean my best friend is leaving in an another town but Im good » « Guuuurl, it is for the better » « I know that, Im just getting emotional » « Dont do that » « Im trying, I swear ! How did you came ? You took a uber ? » « Nah, Theo droped me »

She set down on her large cozy couch eying me with a small smile

« What ? » I asked « Noooothing ! » she tapped the place next to her so I can take place « You just goin to sit down and tell me what's popin between you and this white daddy, finally» she said swith a smirk « Nothing is popin, I already told you that » i said sitting next to her « But you got to admit he is good lookin » « I never said he isnt » « Maybe a little bit skinny but he is still handsome » « He is. » « So he never try to own that » she said pointing at myself « And dont try to tell me no, I saw him plenty time trying to get you. » « Alex, it is not goin to hape- « «  Whyyyyyyyy » « Because I dont want to » I said laughin « GURL IS YOU GAY ?» « Oh my god. Alexendra. » «  No because if you are it is ok. But you need to tell me, so I can introduce him to friend of mine. Its such a waste » « Whatever » I said looking at her smiling

This girl is so crazy. Full of good vibe. Always pushing me to my best. She is fam yall. Our phones started buzzing at the same time. It was a whatsap phone call from our conversation « Mexico 🥵 ».

With some friends we decided to go on a trip to Mexico. For the big part, I knew them from school or club. As we grew older all of us took different ways but still got mad love for eachother. This week trip was the way to link up. I didnt knew some people like David, Florian and Veronica but everything went well during the organisation so I wasnt « afraid » that they were annoying.

The trip is next Monday so we schedule this video chat to make a last check. With all the stuff with my moving I almost forget about this call. Alex and I were together so I decided not to answer from my phone and step clother to her so we can both be on her screen

« Hi » « Wassup beauties » Alexander says

We all said hi to each other and waited to see if someone was missing.

« Who is missing » I asked « Flo is not here » Betty said « Damn this sleeping guy, let me text him » Alexander answered

As he decided to text him, a new window poped in our screen revealing a big white man shirtless, it seems like he was in his bed.

« My bad, sorry for my lateness, wassup guys » he said in a low voice

I looked at the screen, then at Alex, then the screen again and falled into the catch moving my hand to show to Alex that this man was foooine

We giggle few seconds before getting back to our serious faces.

« Florian that is it ? » Alex asked « Yup » « Time is money you owe us all a drink when we get to the mexico » « Maaaan dont play me like that, I was taking a nap, gym killed me today» he said

Of course he was goin to the gym, look at this chest. I tried to fix my self when we all talked for like an hour about last informations, who will arrive when, who shares room, what type of activites we wanted to do. I cant wait for this trip to be honest. I dont travel that much. I could release the stress from my moving, my new job and the new town I will be living in.

« Rob you still in New York ?» Michael asked « Yeees, my fligt is tomorrow » « Where you goin ? » Betty asked « Moving to LA » I said softly « LA GANG MY MAN ! » Florian shouted « Thats great, really big move » Alexander said « Finger crossed » Veronica « Dont worry, as wherever it will be ok if you work hard enough » Florian said « Oh dont worry she is a hard worker » Alex said miming a blow job

I snaped her head as everyone shared an hard laugh. Few minutes later we hang up. I went to the bathroom, washed myself, my tooth and changed myself in something more confortable. I went back to the living room and find Alexandra on the phone. By the way she was smiling and laughing I could tell it was Alexander. Yeah. This gurl find a boyfriend with the same name. That's kind of cute but it's also so corny. She hanged up, stood uo and went to the kitchen

« Sooooo » « What do you want again ? » i said a smirk in my face « I was wondering » she looked at me with a vicious smile « What is it Alex ? » « Are you down for some dick in Mexico » « You are something else you know that » « Im just asking ! There will be latino guys, foreigner and gurl this man Florian, he is free like the wind » «How do you know that ? » « I asked Alexander » « Mmmmh » « Mmmmh ? Gurl when is the lastime you had a man making you feel right ? I aint talking about relationship because that is another level and I know you trying to put yourself first since...» « Yea no. I'm not ready but let me think » « The fact that you have to think is not ok, you know that if the sexual frustration is not evacueted it can damaged you » « I got toys dont worry » I said putting my finger in a peace sign while im leaving the kitchen

I went to her guest bedroom, sitted on the bed and put my durag on. After sliding under the sheets I did my breath exercise so I could fall asleep faster but I couldn't. It was these exercises or sleeping pills. But I try to use them less and less since few month. They knocked me hard to hard man. After 30 minutes of try, I took my phone and opened Instagram. I scrolled my screen without being focused at all, laugh at fews memes and double tap some post. I tought about what Alex told me. It's true. It been a while since I havent give a man his chance. It didn't went well the last time. Ok here we go overthinking. I shook my hand thinking of how dumb I was when I tought about Florian. He was fine its true but you know men are trash. At least men I have a crush on 😭. I tapped « florian » in the research bar to see if I could find him. I didn't. Im defenatly not a FBI member. I will ask to Alex tomorrow, or not, it's not a good idea.

——-

I was hugging Alexandra thighly at the airport. The voice called the passagers of my flight to get ready.

« I'm goin to miss you crazy ass » I whispered « I'm goin to miss you more Robyn, but stop being weak before I start crying » « Come on aint nobody goin to cry » I push her shoulder « we're tough girls remember ? » « Yea but I wrote you a letter » she gave me a letter as I look at her ready to make fun of her « You wrote me a letter, you must be in love with me » « Of course I am, yo you're my friend soulmate » « Ok you gon make me cry now » « Go get your flight »

I tried to open the letter when she took my hand

« The fuck is you doin, you have to read it in your flight, or when you arrive to your new place but not now » « Okaaaaaaay mrs emotional »

I kissed her cheek and grabed my suit case before leaving

« See you in Tulum baby ! »

I put a peace sign above my head a went take my flight.

As I settled in my seat, I leaned my head back to the couch. Here we go baby. You can do this. You got this. It's goin to be fine. I was motivated myself when my phone buzzed. I watched my phone screen and see that Theo sent me a vocal. I put my AirPods on tap on my screen to listen his whatsap vocal message.

James. Theo James. : « You're in the plane ? »

I send him a quick answer

Robyn ✨: Yup 🛫

James. Theo James. : Ok

I watched the screen as I saw « James. Theo James is writing » when a big as message droped. Oh my god. He is goin to make me cry. Or worse. I rubbed my forehead before start reading.

James. Theo James. :

« Robyn. My baby. I know your flight is getting ready to take off. So I'm writing this to you so you can be ready for this new page.

Im goin to tell you this, and ear me out when I say: You got this.

You're smart, kind, open minded,fierce, talented, reliable, honest and a fighter. I know life ain't did good to you lately, and it's destroying me to see you leave but baby it's a fresh start. Leave all the madness, the pain and the self doubt where you at because LA is goin to be fire baby. No more drama, no more pathetic boyfriend, no more struggling. Put yourself above everything, because you deserve it. Keep your mental healthy. Communicate more, talk free and never be afraid to make people to ear your voice.

As I always say to you, even if the blood don't link us, you mean the world to me. Whenever you need anything blow my phone. I will always have an eye on you even if I know you are and you are becoming a boss a bitch woman every single day.

I know you are goin to kill it.

Text me when you arrive to your new home

I will come visit you in few months

Theo 🤍 »

I closed my eyes, bitted my lips and hold my phone on my chest. Don't cry, don't cr- too late. Tears were all over my face as I try to mute myself. Even I tried to hide it, I was feeling shitty. And those words just gave me the feeling of being discovered. I don't know how it was possible. Even if Theo and I were closed I have difficulties to talk out when I'm not feeling myself. And with this message I knew that all this time he knew how I felt but give me my space.

LA be good to me please.

—-

🎧 1 pound - Brymo

The sunlight woke me this morning. I really need to buy curtains. I mean in the rest of the place it's not that important, but wake this way is so uncomfortable. I like the darkness in my bedroom you know ? And all this light, god chill out 🤣

I stood up and head ou to the bathroom and then to the kitchen. I watched the board where I wrote my to do list yesterday night. Yeaaaa i'm trying to be more disciplined woman. I mean organized but sometimes I get too lazy. Like if I invented the word lazy myself.

End the bathroom Shopping at the supermarket Look for a car End the suitcase Work out (you can do this)

I laugh at myself knowing that I will probably not doing the last one. I washed my dishes and turn on the speaker to get in a better mood. I clean a little some stuff since there was still some cardboard here and there. I find myself dancing in front the big mirror in one of the corridor when my phone rang. I didn't know the number so I turned of the music and clear my throat.

« Robyn Matthew, how can I help you » « Hi Robyn this is William. I am with Olivia, you're on speaker. How are you ? » « Hello Robyn »

Ow my new bosses.

« Oh hello to both of you, I'm great thank you to ask. How about you two ? » « We're good ourself thank you. Have you settled yet ? » « Mmh there is still few unopened cardboards but I'm good » « Good to ear that » « You will love LA » Olivia said « I hope so, how can I help you ? » « Well Robyn we were wondering, sorry to ask again but weren't you supposed to start today ?»

My eyes grew wide as my eyebrow start dancing. I wasn't supposed to start today hell no

« I don't think so, I mean I asked to the RH department to postponed my arrival since I have a trip planned » « Oh my baaaaaaaaaad » Olivia shooted « What is it » he asked to Olivia I think « I totally forgot to tell you, Cindy told me few weeks ago but it disappeared from my mind »

My heart stoped racing fast when I told them

« You scared me ! » « I'm so sorry Robyn, William I'm sorry too » « Oh it's ok, you owe us a coffe when she arrives » « Deal » she said laughing « You better note that, or you will forget it too » « Very funny » « Anyway sorry to have bothered you Robyn » William said « It's fine » « Where are you going ? » Olivia asked « Sorry ? » « You said you are goin on a trip, where is it ? »

I twisted my face. How is that suppposed to concern them ? Robyn stay open, be nice, they're just trying to be nice.

« Tulum » « Oh Mexico, well lucky you » « Oh my god, I wish I could have holidays to a place like this » « Anyway Robyn, enjoy you're trip and come back to us resourced. You can't wait to work with you » « Thank you, see you soon » « Bye »

I hang up, a weird feeling in my guts. I mean they were nice. But I'm not really use to have this kind of conversation with my bosses. I tought that they were a good duo both of them. I find myself a little anxious about having two bosses but it's goin to be fine.

Im goin to tell you this, and ear me out when I say: You got this.

I got this. I wanted to turn back on the music. So I scrolled my screen when I saw an Instagram notification.

@bignasty wants to follow you

My face twisted again. Big nasty ? What the hell is that. I'm sure this is a porn count, or a pervet who will try to slide in my Dm. So many weird people on social medias. Thanks god the private button exists so I can control borders 😂 I clicked on it when I saw his face.

Wow.

I took few step back to my couch as my hand was on my chest. Jesus Christ. I found myself put my hand on my mouth so I don't scream and laugh akwardly. God. It was Florian. I mean I think. No no no it was him. How can you forget a face like this. I hold my breath as scrolled down his feed. This man was... l have no word. I rubbed my eyes trying to get back to earth, with a big dumb smile on my face when my phone rang

Xandra 💍 is calling

I picked up and put her on the speaker. I said hi to her in a low voice, I was feeling like I'm out of breath

« GUUUUUUUURL » she screamed « Wassup » « Did Florian asked you on Ig ? » « He did. » « GIRRRL DID YOU SAW THESE PICTURES ?!!!! » « Alexandra, i was checking him when you called » « GURRRRRRL IF YOU DONT EAT HIM ON THIS TRIP I'M KILLING YOU »

I start rubbing my eye again. He was something else. God. Why do I feel this. Then I found myself playing with my finger, where my engagement ring used to be.

It gave me a quick reminder.

« Ok he is super hot, but don't count on me for that » « You're such a child when you act like that. You know what, I'm sure you pantie is already soaking looking at his pic, so just wait. When he is goin in front of you there will be no « don't count on me for that » » « shut up » « Have you end your suite case ? » « Not yet, I think it will be handle this evening» « Ok look listen to me wisely. I don't know what you choose but switch it all up with sexiest stuff » « I'm tired of you »

We stayed on the phone for like an hour. You know how it is when besties are on the phone. All the day she kept teasing me with Florian but I didn't give attention. But I wanted to make her laugh a little so I teased her with a screen and a meme

She hit me back with a message 

« gurl this is too much, you really goin to miss this chance »

What chance ? He just followed me on Instagram. I didn't even accept him yet. He must have a girlfriend, or be a fuck boy. Maybe is he gay. Ok Robyn overthinking AGAIN. It's goin to be cute holidays. I don't want to mess this up.

—— 3836 words

Wassup guys ?

How do you feel about this beginning ?

Is everything understable ? I'm French so you know you girl is struggling a little 🙈

Do not hesitate to give me feedbacks, react, and all that stuff

Next step, Tulum baby 🥵

Take care

NEXT PART

[smallestclowninthecircus]

Season 4 notes

Ep 121: mmmm tape recorder turning on without them knowing goes brrr. AAAhjhdsjfhjdf "do you mind if i call you jon" its like "can i call you elias?" is this the dream guy with the tendrils? who wants to bet the boat is captained by peter lukas? big man if it killed yall how are you still here. oh boy the tape is doin that thing. who do we think it is? did he wake up? hmm. ep 122: lol jon. 6 months!?!? bruh quit movin big man. he just Knows things sometimes you know how it is. nah b/c i can relate to feeling like other ppl/ things arent real, thats the biggest mood BUT i think it is kinda pretentious to entertain the idea that youre the only Real person. If you dont see a body dont believe it. i'll hold out hope for a bit. theres not a new archivist is there? surely i wouldve heard about that. oh god peter what changes did you make. ep 123: web development. hope its about spiders. she blames him. bruh why. if they hadnt done anything the world would've ended piss off melanie. why are ppl acting like he chose to be in a coma for 6 months. we know this they just appear. no longer "head archivist of the magnus institute, london" now he's just "the archivist" covered in spiders? cuz ik the spider has to do with controlling what youre doing and all this stuff but i cant think of how this connects to that. ep 124: ugh vertigo. is michael crew an old man? oooh. fairchild. how did he know it was martin? hmm. GRR I LOST MY NOTES AGAIN. FROM EPISODE 125 - part of 131. ep 131: bruh he's so hard to understand big man ur voice is so low. Jared Hotworth. the boneturner. "the ones i helped find their proper bodies" name a better top surgeon? our favorite trans ally? ep 132: woo field trip into the coffin! static lol. he says "chill out im just poppin in for a quick recall mission" is the rib thing actually gonna work? bruh it feels so odd and contrived but he's an odd man with some odd powers so idk. rip that archivist ayyy statement time. voices? recordings? are those tape recorders? was it the tape recorders? did they pull him back? i hope so b/c if the rib thing actually worked im gonna be so disappointed. ep 133: predicting the lonely? tundra. like the lukases. hmm. sanikova! like sanikov land. so its the hunt? i suppose? yeah. so daisy's clearly rejecting the hunt, which makes sense cuz she doesnt seem to like the entities that much. wait so are we just not gonna talk abt all the tapes playing on the ground?? no? ep 134: not an archival assistant anymore? Adelard Decker (or however you spell it) i recognize that name. 15th power. i was right there are 15. the extinction? im trying to remember what ive heard. oooh spooky. no i gotta be real i dont understand this fear but i'll believe you that its a thing. ew lukas is so squealy. lukas can turn invisible? oh boy. oooh martin put the tape recorders there. lol lukas is worried he's gonna be an avatar of the eye. ep 135: yoo its the third Daedalus statement! maxwell rayner (reiner? reigner?) i dont know who that is but ik its somebody. is he the cult leader guy? church of the divine host? 4 people?? what? did they kidnap somebody and keep them up there?? oh dear jon are you dying? did he try to See or Know or whatever? why does everyone call basira detective lol. ep 136: he was the one from the spider movie that ate ppl right? the special effects artist? is it annabelle cane? "its a joke jon" lol. hmm they wanted to record the therapy session with melanie? i wonder who that is. i almost wanna guess annabelle cane but im not sure. ep 137: this is the one! he went to the other place and read the war statement but it wasnt the one she took. not the music again. sounds like the slaughter. who the heck is eric lol. "the watcher's crown" like the crown of eyes we saw in the piccrew ep 138: oh boy Robert Smirk time. is that elias? as unhelpful as usual. if new powers can be "born" can others die out? did jonah magnus wear the watchers crown? maybe they were born from our fear or maybe our fears were born from them. ceaseless watcher does ceaselessly watch so. idk what you want

big man. yeah jonah for sure did something. ep 139: agnes!! lol that one dude threw off all their plans thats so funny. BUT this does tell us something. the tree in the backyard of the hilltop house? not made by her. it going down didnt kill agnes. im guessing gertrude tied agnes to the house using the tree? u good jon? cuz every time you try to Know smth intentionally it seems like it causes you great pain. how come he can do it accidentally with no problem but the second he wants to know smth of plot relevance he gets a headache or whatever ep 140: lol pagan exultation. classic. "oh thats my rib" lmaoo. ppl are always so mad at jon and his Eye powers except when it benefits them. they're like "oh you shouldnt do that its not right" and then all of a sudden they want to know something and its all "oh cmon jon its the only way" ep 142: oh god jon what did you do. its interesting she's giving her statement in the way that they do when jon Asks. did he see her in the Coffin? and so he's following her? ok cmon jon you're supposed to let them come to you. lmao ikr martin. "start to hear the blood" "suure." lmao ep 143: lol that awkward moment when gertrude is already dead. big J if you die im gonna kill you. bruh. ayo helen? i guess it worked? ep 144: lol this reminds me of that one edgar allan poe story where he kills the old dude with the weird eye. spooky music stuff. lol thats my favorite symptom of a heart attack its hilarious. so its smth abt the location probably? bro i feel like you should write down the numbers idk. 162830165049 564846474827. seems like the distortion? like the kinda thing that causes you to go crazy because of the numbers. oh boy is it the extinction again. bro what?? im?? his dad just died and he's like eh. martin dont be mean. he's being all lonely again. big man ur pushing ppl away. oh god its fucking squealy boy. ep 145: that almost sounds like breekon/hope... Arthur? agnes. aah was he from the lightless flame cult. a tree. lol he's just ranting rn. hehehe fuck landlords amirite. yay someone tells jon outright to go to therapy. now do it big man. ep 146: oh great! the distortion! i'm making a spiral themed building in mc right now! jon maybe accept you did a bad? nah this goes back to what i said before. they're fine with him compelling ppl when its convenient for them but otherwise its "no jon you cant, youre a monster jon" the tapes didnt turn on. i spose that means its not important? i agree with daisy, this seems unecessarily dangerous. ep 147: is that a tape? the first tape? well that went better than i expected tbh. BAHAKJASHDJKF she did the "can i call you jon" like nikola says "elias, can i call you elias?" damn annabelle is such a girlboss. oh! the one thing from the picrew. its been a while since ive connected smth to that. lol all the other avatars always talk abt their patron so lovingly and the jon just. absolutely hates the eye. ep 148: lol thats the most elias thing. "i just like the way it sounds" ep 149: did he disappear? bruhh. ur lonely powers are popping off i guess. oops i accidentally deleted my notes for 150 - 152 ep 153: thats the cult right? yeah. it doesnt sound like the church of the divine host? idk. if it is the church of the divine host then they worship the dark right? so is the eleventh the dark star or wtvr? it almost sounds like the corruption b/c of the oil or grease or whatever. oh dear what happened. oh its the hunters. theyre so annyoing. not an "it" he has a name. he's a person. is this a page from the skin book? ep 154: oh shit this is gerry's dad! oh shit he quit! oh dear god. jon don't you do it. haha martin. yeahhhh... is he gonna tell the others? cuz you know theyre gonna get mad if he doesnt. oh also picrew connection! the bandages over the eyes? yeah thats this im guessing. ep 155: oh good he told them. oh my god what did you do. lol i have no mouth and i must scream. nah you get none of my sympathy you're straight up murdering ppl. its like the desolation, destroying lives to sustain your own. ok but taking their statements doesnt

kill them. oh... bye melanie. ep 156: lmao imagine if the tape recorder spoke back. oh boy decker! i swear we got a statement from him already. oh god mirrors scary. They're gonna eat the body arent they. Yup... sounds like the flesh or the slaughter, but I'm not sure. Could be the extinction for sure. Smth at the center! Like Helen mentioned. God Peter you dick. Ep 157: peter's just so :/ another decker statement i see. a statement about the corruption? hmm. maybe its not abt the corruption. the extinction. lol pandemics. topical. John Amherst. helen? lol i can hear admiral purring in the background. oh cmon helen dont be like that. im trying real hard to like you but you make it so difficult. ep 158: did they fucking free the stranger? im gonna lose it. you absolute dumbass. im sorry who is that? jonah magnus? my guy. peter. you absolute dickhead. that's elias. (im p sure i had this spoiled for me that elias is jonah) oh dear this is her death. god peter you prick. i hope this is a pop off martin moment and not a "martin you idiot" moment. i hope the hunters kill the stranger entity. or she kills them. furry daisy pop off! yeah fuck you peter martin can make his own decisions. you know that clip from Twisted where jafar says "ok what the fuck was that" martin D: ok like i know its gonna work but still D: D: ep 159: peter you bitchboy. because if im alone i cant hurt anyone else. imnotgonnacryimnotgonnacryimnotgonnacry do it do it do it do it. pop off jon. ok its a pretty good idea for a ritual i gotta be honest. she didnt even have to blow it up lol. oh dear that was certainly a noise. "he gets you" did he not have jon already? he's back! our boy is back! awwww thats so cute. ep 160: oh right this is the thing in the safe house. i love him. "obviously im going to tell you if i see any good cows" martin my beloved <3 :)) oh boy who is this. fuckin. people. jonah you dick. gahh. you can tell he's trying to resist so hard lol. ohh. hehe keep an *eye* on him. altho if the extinction is a real thing he needs to be marked by that right? lol he sounds so intense im sorry- i want martin to just burst in and be like "look at this cow i saw!" its so dramatic and for why.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Eccentricity [Chapter 2: You Can Run Around Infinite In My Head]

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. 

Potentially a better love story than Twilight (we’ll let @killer-queen-xo​ decide when it’s all said and done 😉).

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: Rome by Dermot Kennedy.

Chapter Warnings: Language, mentions of violence. 

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Tagging: @queen-turtle-boiii​ @bramblesforbreakfast​​  @killer-queen-xo​​ @maggieroseevans​​ @culturefiendtrashqueen​​ @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark​​ @escabell​​ @im-an-adult-ish​​ ​ @queenlover05​​ @someforeigntragedy​​ @imtheinvisiblequeen​​ ​ @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye​​ @deacyblues​​ ​ @tensecondvacation​​ ​ @brianssixpence​​ 

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! 💜

Missing In Action

I wish she would stop staring at me.

Lucille sat at the Lees’ usual table and apathetically picked through a heaping salad. (Friday was salad bar day, which I appreciated considerably more than the chicken finger obsession that marred Mondays at Calawah University.) Every once in a while, Rami nudged her and Lucille would spear a cherry tomato with her fork and bite it in half with perfectly even, white teeth. But her large blue-green eyes—they reminded me of webs of seaweed tumbling in the cold, frothing La Push waves—always found their way back to me, strangely focused, inquisitive, perhaps accusatory.

Ben probably told them how much he hates me for whatever nebulous reason and now they all hate me too and I’m going to spend the next two years being death-glared by five ridiculously attractive and somewhat incestuous foster kids.

Chemistry was a three times a week class. Ben hadn’t shown on Wednesday, and I was 99% sure he would skip again today. I spotted him around campus periodically, always from a distance: dropping quarters into a vending machine, clandestinely vaping behind dorm buildings (what self-respecting pre-med student VAPES?!!), browsing YouTube videos in the library next to a tower of unopened textbooks, biology and chem and physics and calculus. He wasn’t home, he wasn’t sick; there was no attempt made to construct any sort of pretext. He was patently avoiding me.

I stabbed moodily at the serrated disks of cucumber in my salad. Jessica was blathering away about the latest season of The Bachelor and ranking the contestants’ eyebrows from best to worst. “...Like seriously, has she never heard of microblading?!”

“For real,” Angela offered, not especially invested but forever a good sport.

Lucille’s eyes settled on me again as she sipped a cup of steaming tea, staring until her forehead crinkled with the effort, staring hard, almost leering.

“What’s her problem?” I muttered.

Jessica shot a glance towards the Lee table and slurped her Sprite. The great mystery surrounding her potential Mormon-ness persisted. “Who? Lucy?”

Only Lucille’s friends called her Lucy. Jessica, a shameless aspiring socialite, presumed she was everybody’s friend unless they explicitly informed her otherwise, which of course no one ever did.

“Yeah,” I answered glumly.

“Maybe it’s your dress.”

“My dress? What’s wrong with my dress?”

Jessica wrinkled her nose and surveyed me as if I were a bug, and not a cute bug like a roly-poly bug or The Very Hungry Caterpillar or whatever. Like a really hideous bug. Like one of those spider-cricket hybrid things that hopped straight out of a hell dimension and into the dark, drippy corners of your basement. “It’s, like, very 1960s. But not in a sexy Woodstock way. In a ‘I’m about to join a hippie murder cult’ way.”

“I got it at TJ Maxx. It was on sale.”

Jessica snorted. “Probably for a reason.”

“That’s it. I’m giving all the hippies in my new murder cult your address.”

She and Angela laughed. Mike and Eric, the missing pieces of our daily lunch puzzle, were preoccupied with a campus protest to convert fried fish day (Thursdays) into tacos day. I sympathized with their efforts, but didn’t feel that my one-week tenure as a Calawah University student gave me much right to go around overhauling the dining hall schedule.

“I doubt she’s actually offended by a dress,” Angela said, nibbling on French fries that shed grains of salt like snowflakes.

Jessica sighed dreamily. “But Lucy’s just so fashionable...and that accent...” She drifted off into some daydream which began—I could only assume—with Lucy’s invitation to go shopping together and concluded with marrying Ben on some lush tropical island in the South Pacific.

Lucille was definitely fashionable, especially today: short black dress with sheer sleeves that ran to her fragile wrists, black polka dot tights, black heeled oxfords, dangling ruby earrings like beads of blood. She would have blended in perfectly at Paris Fashion Week. Rami was wearing a cardigan and khakis, per usual; Joe was in dark fitted jeans and a roomy U Chicago hoodie despite the fact that Forks was at minimum a thirty-four hour drive from the Windy City. What did Angela say his major was? Finance? No, Mathematical Economics. So he’s probably aiming at Chicago for an MBA or Econ PhD someday. Angela had told me that Joe was wicked smart. He better be if he’s entertaining fantasies of grad school at the University of Chicago.

Scarlett had come straight from Fencing Club and was wearing bright pink yoga pants and a t-shirt with the sleeves cut out, sprinkling Hot Cheetos into her open mouth, her blonde hair secured in a tight French braid. You know those girls who are so irrationally, gluttonously, unfairly beautiful that it doesn’t seem possible the genetic lottery could spit out so many winning numbers at once, and you comfort yourself with the certainty that there must be some set of circumstances that would level the playing field—I bet she looks like anyone else without all that makeup, she just has a really good sense of style and knows how to maximize her assets, there are definitely some goofy oversized ears hiding beneath that hair and that’s why she always wears it down—and then one day you run into them wearing sweatpants and a ponytail in the tampon aisle at Walmart and they’re still so perfect it stings you, baffles you, makes you feel like there must have been some divergence in the evolutionary chain because there’s no freaking way you’re the same species? Yeah, Scarlett was one of those girls. Scarlett was the queen of those girls.  

Ben was conspicuously absent from the table.

Scarlett’s pink leopard-print iPhone rang and she answered. “Hello?” She turned to Joe. “Dad says you left your phone at home. Do you need it?”

Joe was gnawing his way through his third slice of pepperoni pizza. “No, I’m good, thanks though.”

Scarlett relayed the message. “Dad says he’s going to bring it by just in case.”

“Oh my god, ScarJo, I’m fine! Tell him not to!”

“Dad says he doesn’t trust you and he’s going to be here in fifteen minutes. He’s also bringing the Game Theory homework you left by the hot tub.”

Joe groaned and rolled his lively dark eyes as Rami grinned at him; Lucille was still watching me and entirely oblivious.

“Isn’t it weird that Ben and Lucille have accents?” I asked Jessica. “That they’re from the U.K.? I didn’t think fostering kids was an international thing.”

“It’s not that weird. Dr. Lee is British too. Maybe there’s some kind of exchange system, I don’t know. But you know what I do know?”

“What?” Now my interest was piqued.

She smiled. “That the British accents are hot.”

“Ugh,” I exhaled involuntarily.

“Please get a hobby,” Angela begged Jessica. “Start a YouTube channel. Make care packages for orphans. Grow marijuana. Adopt a cat. I have a shift at the animal shelter this Sunday morning, you want to come with me?”

“Sorry, can’t. I have a temple thing.”

Temple on Sunday. The mystery is solved. She’s a Mormon for sure. I mentally resolved not to let her set me up with anyone unless I was still single on Valentine’s Day. Which, obviously, assuming I’m not dead in a ditch somewhere, I will be.

I gathered up my trash and slung my backpack over my shoulder. “Okay, well this has been a bizarre lunch to be completely honest, and now I have to go to Chemistry so I’ll see you later and hopefully we can brainstorm some more alternatives to Jessica’s current life trajectory on Monday. Because I am not looking forward to being a bridesmaid in these impending Lee nuptials.”

“Oh please!” Jessica lamented. “He doesn’t even know I exist. You, on the other hand...”

I scoffed. “Yeah, he wants to kill me. I truly have a gift.”

They waved as I left. I could feel Lucille’s eyes on me until I reached the door.

Sure enough, Ben wasn’t in Chemistry. I tried not to notice. I drew my atoms, wrote my equations, took my notes diligently and in my favorite sky blue ink. But I felt the emptiness in the chair next to me like a black hole, like an immense and dragging weight, like a snag in the fabric of all those interwoven strands of physics that orchestrate the universe like an immortal puppeteer. Why can’t I forget this guy? Why do I still feel like I’ve met him before?

Halfway through class, I hauled my emergency sweatshirt out of my backpack and pulled it on over my dress, floral and flowing and golden yellow like the sun, the sun that never shines here in Forks. I had liked it plenty under the florescent lights of the fitting room at TJ Maxx, and I had still liked it this morning; but Jessica’s words hummed around in my skull like wasps. The zipper of the sweatshirt was broken, but it accomplished the task of obscuring my dress well enough.

After Chemistry, I journeyed to the campus library to find a book I was supposed to read and present for a different class. I looked it up in the computer catalogue, spent an embarrassingly long time trying to figure out how the Dewey Decimal System works, eventually wound up finding the book on the highest floor of the library...and, to add a little extra peril to the mission, on the highest shelf. The book mocked me from its lofty, unattainable stronghold. The title was embossed in gold letters down the crimson spine. The Walruses And Me: A Transformative Experience. Idiotic title, I’m aware. It’s about some marine biologist who spent months alone in the Arctic studying the lifecycles of walruses. A noble pursuit, sure, but still a terrible title.

There wasn’t a chair or stepstool in sight. I tested my weight by stepping up onto the second-lowest shelf. The metal immediately squealed and shifted in protest. I retreated back down to the carpet, defeated by gravity. I scowled up at the book and sighed melodramatically. Ugh.

“Need something?”  

I spun around to see Joe in his University of Chicago hoodie and pale flawless skin and intangible magnetism, that bewildering trademark Lee ethereality. I instinctively crossed my arms, clutching the sleeves of my sweatshirt, shrinking inwards like a startled armadillo in the Arizona desert.

“Are you, uh, anemic...?” he ventured.

“Oh no, I’m not cold. I’m just trying to hide my dress. My friend said it was too hippie-murder-cult 1960s.”

I figured he’d laugh, make a snide comment, maybe just blink in confusion. Instead, he glimpsed down at my dress—what could still be seen of it, anyway—and shook his head. “The neckline isn’t right for the 60s. And you seem like you’ve showered at least once in the past two weeks, so definitely not a hippie.”

I smiled, completely unexpectedly. “I didn’t realize Econ majors knew anything about leftist counterculture.”

“Disparaging it is our favorite pastime. Are you trying to get a book or are you just disrespecting university property for entertainment?”

I pointed. “The big red one.”

“The Walruses And Me...?”

“I know, it’s a horrible title. Not my personal preference. It’s for a class.”

“Bestiality 101?”

“Good guess. Marine Mammals.”

“Ahhh.” He glanced up and down the aisle, tapped his chin with agile fingers, pondered something I wasn’t privy to. “Turn around for a second.”

“What? Why?”

He waved his hand mysteriously in front of his grinning face. “It’s a magic trick. I’m going to make your problem disappear.”

“You can’t climb that,” I warned. “You’ll fall and break your neck. Or you’ll knock the whole shelf over and cause a tragic domino effect and the university will withhold your diploma until you pay them restitution.”

“I’m extremely athletic.”

“Are you sure?” I appraised him with exaggerated skepticism for comedic effect. “My dad refers to you only as the spindly annoying Lee.”

Oh my god, WHY did I say that?

Now he would definitely hate me. Now I’d have two mortal enemies on one campus. I mentally calculated how humiliating it would be to transfer to some Florida college, any Florida college, after only one week at Calawah. Hi mom, yeah I’m coming to live with you and Paul, a gang of hot pasty foster kids wants to slaughter me.

Instead, Joe threw back his head and cackled wildly. A librarian—mid-fifties, angry red hair from out of a box, fuzzy cat sweater—glared into the aisle and shushed him.

“Chief Swan...he actually...he calls me that? Really?!” Joe managed, wiping his leaking eyes. “That’s hilarious. I’m so glad my life is in his hands. Okay seriously, turn around.”

“Why would you help me?” I asked suspiciously.

“That’s just what I do. I’m a friendly guy.”

“This friendliness must not run in the family.”

Again, Joe’s cheerful demeanor didn’t falter. “You mean Ben? Forget about Ben, he hates everyone. Don’t take it personally.” Then he added: “Plus, as I’m sure you know, we’re not biologically related. No overlapping genetic material whatsoever. I didn’t get the male supermodel gene, he didn’t get the irresistibly charming gene, life’s not fair but the world keeps spinning.”

“It sure does,” I agreed softly. Unexpected wisdom from my new favorite Lee. I turned away from him. “Fine, I’m not looking, go ahead and dazzle me with your supernatural friendliness—”

“Done.”

“What?” I whirled around. Joe held The Walruses And Me in his hand. “How...did you...?!”

He passed me the book as I sputtered incoherently. “I told you. Magic trick.”

“I don’t....?!” I gawked up at the top shelf, at Joe, back to the top shelf. Sure enough, the space where The Walruses And Me once lived was now just a vacant slit in the row of dusty books. How could he have climbed up there that quickly? How could I not have heard anything? “The shelves didn’t even creak,” I murmured shakily.

“Yes, well, that’s due to my conveniently spindly physique.” Joe winked. “Any other problems I can help you solve at the moment, Baby Swan?”

“No. And don’t call me Baby Swan, or I’ll push this whole bookshelf over and tell the feisty librarian lady you did it.”

“That’s cold, ma’am.”

I liked that Joe didn’t make me feel like Ben did: unworthy, unloved, infuriating. Joe made me feel something else, something lighthearted, casual, buoyant; like the world didn’t have anything in it worth worrying about, regretting, agonizing over. Like unadulteratedly myself was all I ever needed to be.

I heard a muted buzz and Joe slid his iPhone out of his jeans pocket. Dr. Lee must have successfully delivered it. “Whoops, I forgot that Ordinary Differential Equations existed. Got to go. See ya.”

“Bye,” I replied. And then Joseph Lee was gone, very quickly, a little too quickly, the same way that Ben had vanished on that first afternoon after Chemistry.

Forks is weird. Calawah University is weird. And the Lee kids are super fucking weird.

Long Walks On The Beach

“Can I ask you a random question?”

“You just paid me $100 for an oil change that took fifteen minutes. You can ask me anything you want.” He grinned, flashing bright teeth and deep dimples.

It was Saturday afternoon. I had shoveled down a Chipotle veggie bowl as Archer changed the 1999 Accord’s oil in a small garage with a cracked concrete floor and the searing pungency of gasoline fumes thick in the air. He had apprenticed all through high school and rented his own shop after graduation. Archer now had a loyal clientele that encompassed virtually the entire Quileute reservation and a growing chunk of Forks...including Charlie and me, of course. Archer was the only child of Larry Foxchild—Charlie’s best friend since they worked together at Dairy Queen as teenagers—and the closest thing to a son my dad would ever have. I guess that made him like a brother to me, something that seemed intuitive now that I’d thought of it.

After the Accord was serviced we drove it down to La Push to walk on the beach, climb the salt-lashed rocks, toss pebbles into the roiling surf, reprise our childhood enthusiasm for poking dead washed-up marine creatures with shards of driftwood.

“Do you know anything about the Lees?” I asked Archer, investigating a deceased green shore crab.

His brow furrowed. He looked so serious like that, suddenly so much like Larry: the same tan skin, jet black hair, umbral eyes like oil wells, strong jaw overlaid with the stubbled shadow of a beard. We really aren’t kids anymore, are we? “The doctor and his kids?”

“Yeah. The foster kids. They’re really pale and strange and half of them are British.”

Archer chuckled. “I know who you mean. They’re hard to miss.”

“Are they...” Just eccentric rich people? Traumatized from abusive childhoods? Government experiments? CIA agents? Secret murderers? The image of Ben in that first Chemistry class came roaring back to me, including the adjective that had flashed red behind my eyes like an emergency exit sign: fierce. Finally, I decided: “Dangerous?”

Now Archer full-on laughed, gripping his belly, shaking his head. Drops of saltwater flew from his short hair. “Seriously?!” he exclaimed. “Come on, they’re freaks but they’re not, like...that kind of freaks.”

“Are you sure?” I was starting to feel better already. Of course they’re not actual demons, you fucking idiot. This is Washington, not The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror. Not goddamn American Horror Story.

“Yeah.” Archer skipped a grey pebble over the water, something I’d never been able to do. “I’ll be honest, I don’t know them all that well. They usually keep to themselves. But I’ve never heard anything bad about any of the kids. And everyone respects Dr. Lee and appreciates him for taking the pay cut to come to some bumblefuck town like Forks. He’s insanely highly credentialed, has degrees from Harvard or Yale or somewhere like that. Super impressive. We’re lucky to have him. I definitely sleep better at night knowing he’ll be the one to fix me up if I ever get a few fingers ripped off on the job.”

“Don’t even say that. Then who would I grossly overpay for oil changes?”

Archer smiled, then sobered as he peered out over the Pacific Ocean.

“What?” I asked, feeling a plummeting in my guts like primal fear.

“Well...okay, so there is one thing that’s always bothered me. You remember Grandpa Foxchild?”

“Yeah, of course.” He had been an impossibly ancient man with long grey braided hair, a low rumbly voice, gnarled arthritic hands, ceaseless wrinkles. I remembered Charlie calling me when he passed away last spring. Renee and I had picked out a flower arrangement to send to the funeral.

“So,” Archer said slowly, like he was still puzzling it out himself. “Grandpa used to say things like ‘That Dr. Lee has been around a long time.’ Which of course makes no sense, the Lees moved here like two years ago. And I’d tell Grandpa that, but he completely ignored me. He would just keep repeating it. ‘That Dr. Lee shouldn’t still be here.’ ‘That Dr. Lee should go on home to where he came from.’ ‘That Dr. Lee isn’t right.’ Creepy shit like that. My dad and I always assumed it was the dementia talking, but...I don’t know. It just bothered me. Because Grandpa...he wasn’t just being gossipy or suspicious. He was angry. And he was afraid. Grandpa was at Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima and he would talk about that no problem, mention landmines or flesh melting off a soldier’s face like it was nothing. He was a tough guy. Immeasurably tough, I’ll never be half the man he was. But if you mentioned the Lees, Grandpa got scared. Why the hell would he be so scared of them?”

I didn’t have an answer for him, not a single word. I just stared at Archer, my eyes growing huge, my heart sprinting, blood pounding in my ears. He knew. Grandpa Foxchild knew there was something off about them, and now I know it too. I don’t know how I know, but I do.

Archer tittered nervously. “Anyway, that was genuinely disturbing. But like I said. It was probably just the dementia.”

“What if it wasn’t?”

“It had to be,” he insisted. “There’s no other logical explanation.”

“I guess,” I agreed, scooping up the green shore crab corpse with my bare hands. I hurled it out into the waves, imagined it sinking through murky water and suspended grains of sand, the body settling into prehistoric silt, the scavengers descending upon it, the inescapable wheel of birth and death and resurrection through those who unwittingly carry our atoms with them into the next generation, into the perpetual future.

That night my dreams were full of pale skin and scorching eyes, Ben and Joe and Rami, Lucille and Scarlett, crashing waves, cold water and bleached bones; and Grandpa Foxchild’s mistrustful refrain: That Dr. Lee has been around a long time.

Benjamin

I soared down the staircase and through the dining room. Gwil was working late at the hospital, Mercy outside tending the animals, everyone else presumably scattered throughout the house. I had to get out before anyone noticed me. I had to get out without Rami or Lucy knowing.

I yanked open the door to the back porch. Rami was waiting there.

“Good evening,” he greeted me in that slow, thoughtful drawl.

“Stay the fuck out of my head.”

“You know how it works, Benny Boy. I can’t ignore the loud thoughts. And you’ve been having some very loud thoughts lately.”

I stared down at my shoes, all black Adidas. Black is good. It doesn’t show stains. For example, purely hypothetically, splatters of human blood and organs. “I can make it quick. I can make it painless.”

Rami’s aura flared maroon; not enraged, no, not quite that, but certainly revolted. I was always finding new and horrifying ways to revolt them, whether I was trying to or not. “She has a family, Ben. A father. You know Chief Swan, you’ve seen him around town. He’s a good person. She’s a good person. You really want to do this? You really want to relapse like this?”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t have to. Hearing thoughts is a tricky thing, and not a gift that I would ever want; unspoken words are rarely a steam and usually a storm, disjointed and twisting, interrupting each other, bottomless layers of whispers and screams. But I was sure Rami could catch the important parts: that I didn’t know the difference between good and bad people, that I didn’t know what to think of people at all, that for me her blood was not a desire but a compulsion. I couldn’t stop envisioning it spilling over my tongue and teeth, down my throat, hot and pulsing erratically and fading. “Why can’t you hear her? Why can’t I see what she’s feeling?”

Rami shrugged, characteristically placid and restrained. It was maddening. “There are seven and a half billion people on this planet. So maybe every once in a while you get one that lives in our blind spots, there’s something chromosomal or psychological that puts them on a different frequency. I don’t know. How the hell should I know? All I know is that you definitely shouldn’t be seriously considering...well. What you’re considering.”  

“Have you ever met someone whose thoughts you couldn’t hear before?”

“No,” Rami admitted; and was that a ghost of unease that crossed his face?

“Please, Rami. Let me go. Pretend you never saw me.” My words come out strained, hushed, like a spilled secret, like a confession. I’ve never wanted anyone’s blood like I want hers.

He heard that; I could see the dismay in his eyes. Now his aura is dark grey, almost black. Disappointment. Resignation. Mourning. “I told you what Lucy saw.”

“What she saw is impossible and you know it.”

Again, Rami shrugged. That blind, mindless faith. I wished I knew what it felt like. “She’s never wrong.”

“Have you told him?”

“Who, Joe?! Of course I haven’t told Joe. He...”

“He wouldn’t believe it either?” I snapped, like it was a victory.

“No,” Rami amended carefully. “No, he would believe anything Lucy saw.” Lucy had visions: flashes of the future, the past, the present. They were rare and unpredictable, often fragmented, snapshots rather than arcs. But they were always true. Or, rather, the other Lees claimed they were. The real Lees. “I don’t know what he would do about it,” Rami said finally. “So I’m waiting it out. And killing one of the primary participants is definitely not waiting it out.”

I seethed as I glared at him, hating him in that moment, hating myself only slightly more; and he heard that too. But then that wispy, fleeting haze around him was a pink like the last threads of sunlight sinking into the Western horizon. Forgiveness. Attachment. Love.

“Come with me, Ben,” Rami said gently, opening the door. “Come back inside. You can beat this. You’re better than this. You’re a good soul. You wouldn’t be with us if you weren’t.”

I tried to laugh. It came out like a snarl. “I haven’t had a soul in a long time.”

[meetveronicablack]

Keep your Lamps trimmed and Burning

Today, I ask all of you to burn a candle. Set the wick on fire and say prayers or whatever you do to connect with God or the universe. Yesterday, the Wright family lost their son. A baby boy lost his father. Siblings lost their brother. Friends lost a friend.

I need you all to find the will and energy to understand the situations at hand. A young man, lost his life at a traffic stop. Daunte Wright was pulled over for having an air freshener dangling from his review mirror. Everyone will argue that he shouldn’t have resisted. Well, let me ask you this: are you going to step out of the car when police officers tell you “you’re under arrest and we’ll tell you when you get out?” How is that professional?

Are you actually going to step out of the car when law enforcement doesn’t give you ANY reason or explanation as to why you are being arrested?! I’m pretty sure you all will say no. I’m pretty sure you all will ask for a reason until it’s “acceptable” but even then. Do you know how many people are placed in jail for crime they didn’t commit? But that’s another point for another day.

A study made by NYC and the Stanford Open Policing Project that black drivers were about 20% were more likely to be stopped than white drivers “relative to their share of the residential population.” It was also discovered that once black drivers were stopped, they were also searched 1.5 to 2 times as often as white drivers.

Numbers never lie. Unless you change them. So you tell me in light of the events of yesterday, how isn’t this a systemic problem?

I come to the conclusion that media will always lie to make the victims look like criminals. I watched a video of Daunte Wright’s mother explaining her experience of when he was pulled over. It was heart breaking to hear his parents talk about the LAST time they saw their son. Mind you, all of this happening during the trial of George Floyd. Do you see the red wound opening up again for the black community?

How can we can sit here and watch these wounds bleed, when we have the power and resources to make change possible. Yes, change and progress take time. But THIS is history. Black HISTORY has always been sidelined so that white history can prevail and be the “prosperous people of the future”.

They didn’t do shit but rape and pillage land. All Europeans SHOULD acknowledge and repair the damage done on history. Do you think anything has changed over the last few generations? No. It hasn’t changed because people, especially white racist people don’t want to take responsibility. They don’t want to acknowledge the past because they’re scared of losing power and not being in control. Racist white folk want to keep on being the powerhouses. And that’s just not it.

It’s all an illusion. White lies. To pretend that history is behind us. Yeah, tell that to Daunte Wright, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Abrery, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Tamar Rice, Atatiana Jefferson, Rekia Boyd and the countless others. How many lives could still be breathing today if the system wasn’t against them.

Do you know or understand the deep mistrust with law enforcement and the black community. It wasn’t long ago, during the Jim Crow Laws, towns claimed themselves to be “sundown towns”. This meant that towns could use any means necessary to intimidate and harass black people who stayed in their town after sunset. Most of the time it ended in the death of black civilians. Half these harassments and intimidation tactics were made by white police officers. Killing for sport.

Black lives aren’t animals to be hunted. Yet, that is what history did. There are articles and archives with this documentation. You can look it up or learn about it in Lovecraft Country. So don’t sit here and tell me that racism doesn’t exist.

You have all the tools available for you. Books, documents, archives, movies, music, shows and people’s experiences to tell you about black life in America. So don’t say you didn’t know, because you do, but you choose to see what information is good enough for you.

No, this shit is rough. It’s beyond upsetting. It’s infuriating. It even makes you feel powerless at times. BUT ITS FUCKING IMPORTANT because black lives are at stake. Their lives matter! You use them and abuse them and them kill them without question or thought. White America is nothing but white lies and bloodshed.

America Strived to be the “land of the free” and advertised this to the WHOLE world. This land was never yours. And yet, you expect the rest of the world to bow and kiss your stinky gross white ass feet. No. Don’t get mad because you so called claim to be the all mighty. This is your consequence. People will make it clear how wrong you are, White America.

People aren’t stealing your jobs. You’re lazy and entitled and can’t do absolutely NOTHING for yourself without help. You complain about every foreigner and culture and yet YOU TAKE ASPECTS of all these cultures and say you did it.

Yeah, and what about the Native Americans? What about every population you forced out with diseases and religious conversion? Huh? You still have outcasted indigenous folk. You’ve done absolutely nothing but take from them and black people.

LIARS and MURDERS that’s what history is and it’s people. You can get away with murder and rape. You can storm through the capital without a scratch or bullet. YET all you do is cry like a child when you don’t get your way.

Don’t expect compassion for your sad attempts of understanding. YOU have the resources. DO THE WORK. If it actually fucking matters to you, THEN DO IT. Stop asking your friends in the black community about what to do or how they feel. Pay attention to yourself and make this place better.

As for the Wright Family: I am so very sorry you didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to your son. I am so sorry you had hear your son last words through the phone. I am so sorry that no matter how hard you try to live a happy life, the system continues to be against you.

Your son deserves to be alive. He deserves to be with his son. He deserves joy and happiness and it was taken from him far too quickly. I know that words are never enough to take away your pain. But my heart is with you. My prayers are with you. I will send you all my forces and strength for this difficult time. I will continue to fight for every black life. I will continue to stand against hate. I will make sure people are educated and learn about the racism against black life.

To every black souls lost due racism and violence, may you find ever lasting peace above. 🕊

Links:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town

https://www.gofundme.com/f/dauntewright

https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2020/may/black-drivers-more-likely-to-be-stopped-by-police.htm

[soybeeftacos]

A Long Rant and Mediocre Analysis of the Future of My Beloved Jinteki Faction, by scd.

I have been thinking about Jinteki and the impending rotation of a lot of Jinteki cards...

As many have, I eagerly anticipate the upcoming System Update and System Gateway releases from NISEI. I’ve not been the hugest fan of Ashes, to put it mildly, especially their ID design. As someone on the Green Level Clearance Discord said the other day (I forget who, sorry), it’s almost as if they made every Runner a different kind of Shaper. And the Corps are, by and large, uncompetitive and overly fiddly for my tastes — oh, how I wish Hyoubu Institute was any good! I’m dipping my toes back into Standard after a few years away, and have lately been trying to get my head around what’s coming around the corner, especially since beyond Engram Flush and LaCosta Grid, I don’t see a ton to be excited about in recent Jinteki cards.

Then it dawned on me, with the upcoming replacement of SC2019, Honor & Profit, and the SanSan Cycle, we are actually losing a lot of Jinteki cards. This hit me most the most at the level of identities. On the potential chopping block are: Jinteki: Personal Evolution, Jinteki: Replication Perfection, Harmony Medtech, Nisei Division, Tennin Institute, Jinteki Biotech, and Chronos Protocol. Add in that Mti Mwekundu and Jinteki: Potential Unleashed are currently banned, this leaves the competitive pool as of System Gateway/System Update: one of the above identities (if the rumors that System Update will have only one Corp ID per faction are true), the new Jinteki ID in System Gateway, then Pālanā Foods, AgInfusion, and Saraswati. No other legal Jinteki IDs. I understand that the first two are solid glacier choices, and I actually quite like Saraswati, but I want more and more variety.

So it’s a bit of a bummer for my favorite faction, which has had goofy FA Tennin decks, Punitive Medtech techs, Complete Image Chronos Protocol kill decks, lots and lots of different PE decks. Will we see the death of the Jinteki I loved? Or will it rise again from the proverbial coffin of rotation? (Yes, this was all an elaborate justification for using the old GIF above that I think Eric Caoili made many years ago).

I’m basically just sick of Jinteki glacier. It’s never been fun for me, nor does it feel like what the faction should be primarily “about.” Jinteki’s current state as a glacier faction primarily has as much to do with what’s been banned as much as what’s been printed (LaCosta, for instance). If there are enough net damage cards in the pool, someone will make yet another new version of the caustic “Potatoes” deck and then NISEI will ban a bunch of the most troublesome cards again. Ignoring currents, there are five Jinteki cards on the current banlist, which is tied with Weyland for the most — followed by four NBN cards, two HB cards, and four neutrals.

If System Update has only one Corp ID per faction, as the recent rumor has stated, then I’ll be bummed out. If it’s true, I fully expect that Personal Evolution will be the one to stick around. It’s always been at least marginally playable, it does something different (a net damage tax), and it’s intelligible for new players. But what other cards stick around? What else should stick around? I thought I’d look and see what cards are actually going to rotate and which ones I was most upset about. What I found was actually a little surprising to me — while I claim I love this faction, I’m, uh, not going to miss many of these! I’ve gone through below and identified from SC2019, Honor & Profit, and the SanSan Cycle all of the cards that I suspect just can’t go and/or I’d be real sad if they did.

From the pool of SC2019 Cards, here’s what I’d hold onto:

Jinteki: Personal Evolution Nisei Mk II Fetal AI Philotic Entanglement Project Junebug Ronin Snare! Neural EMP

All of these are such key cards to me, I just can’t see Jinteki without nearly all of them. Fetal AI, Philotic and Ronin are possibly marginal, but I think NISEI really made the right call bringing Fetal back (t’s a beautiful card on a number of levels); Philotic being limited to 1-per-deck has always made it a fun surprise and/or a welcome 3/2 in the faction; and without Ronin or a suitable combo-kill replacement, I don’t see the faction moving beyond just glacier decks. Can you imagine Netrunner without Snare!? Or NISEI getting rid of Nisei Mk II? Personal Evolution, Neural EMP, Junebug — these have always been faction-defining cards to me, and I don’t see NISEI being foolish enough to mess with that.

So, what would I lose from SC2019?

Jinteki: Replicating Perfection Sundew Hokusai Grid Celebrity Gift Trick of Light Himitsu-Bako Wall of Thorns Lotus Field Yagura Neural Katana Swordsman Tsurugi

A lot of great cards here, but push come to shove, I could lose any of them. I’ll miss all of these if they all go, and I won’t be sad if any are kept (other than maybe RP, as I think there are better options, if NISEI has more than one core Jinteki ID in System Update; see below).

Onward and on to the Honor & Profit Cards:

Psychic Field Mushin No Shin Komainu

This genuinely surprised me! I had expected that there would be many, many more Honor & Profit cards I’d want to keep. As a Jinteki lover, I’ve played with all of the cards in this box (with the possible exception of NeoTokyo Grid), but only Psychic Field, Mushin, and Komainu seemed obvious keepers to me. Now, now, I’m sure there’s some group of people out there who think Mushin is "bad” and I understand that, but without Mushin there needs to be something I want there to be something that has a similar effect — Saraswati is kinda it, but it’s also the ID itself and Mushin as an ID is not the same. I think Mushin needs to be kept to help facilitate the shell game Jinteki that has been a staple since Hinkes’ Cambridge PE. In the online play world of Jinteki.net, many people would love to see mind games and traps leave the game entirely, but I don’t think NISEI does (given that they kept Cerebral Overwriter in Uprising). Psychic Field, I’d keep, partially to facilitate this but also as a necessary, hard 419 counter — a counter on a mechanical vector that is not just about money and math. Komainu is a beautiful piece of ice, and one I’d love to see stay in the game.

So, what are we losing if I ruled NISEI?

Harmony Medtech Nisei Division Tennin Institute House of Knives Medical Breakthrough The Future Perfect Chairman Hiro Mental Health Clinic Shi.Kyū Tenma Line Cerebral Cast Medical Research Fundraiser Inazuma Pup Shiro Susanoo-no-Mikoto NeoTokyo Grid Tori Hanzō

Ouch. There are a lot of almost-keepers here. House of Knives, TFP, Tennin, Pup, and Susanoo, are all cards I’d love to see stick around but frankly, I don’t think they really need to. TFP is a great defensive agenda but we already have some fantastic defensive agendas in the faction (and I’d love to see what NISEI cooks up for other defensive Jinteki 5/3s). House of Knives is a great card and maybe it should stick around, I dunno, but perhaps there’s more interesting space to explore in net-damaging 3/1s (plus, we just got Sting! somewhat recently). These remaining ice don’t get a lot of play, even if they once did (like Pup); I’d be happy to see any of them stick around, but I’d also like to see new ideas. So, they can all go.

What about the SanSan Cycle? I’d keep:

Jinteki Biotech: Life Imagined Crick Cortex Lock Marcus Batty An Offer You Can’t Refuse

Okay, whoa, there’s actually an ID in here! Yeah, I love Biotech, even if I haven’t played it in a long time. I feel like Biotech needed just another couple of cards to make the other non-Brewery flip sides workable. I’d love to see NISEI attempt to fix an ID rather than just rotate it. Crick and Cortex Lock seem like such solid, interesting ice that I wouldn’t want to lose either — Cortex Lock is of course a wonderful facechecking ice, good early game ice that was only really ever a problem during the Mti meta. I’ve always loved the positional ice of that cycle, and Crick is lovely. Batty is too fun to ignore and is versatile for multiple decks, and is not stifling like other defensive upgrades. And An Offer You Can’t Refuse — clearly the weirdest, least-played card of this entire post — I just want to keep it around, for the novelty of forcing a run on the Corp’s turn and its related rules confusions. And for the memes.

What would we lose?

Genetic Resequencing Ancestral Imager Allele Repression Genetics Pavilion Lockdown It’s a Trap! Clairvoyant Monitor Chronos Protocol: Selective Mind-Mapping Recruiting Trip Valley Grid

Not a lot here that I really care about, I guess? Genetics Pavilion is probably the one I’d miss the most, not that it’s had much play since Wyldside rotated. And Chronos Protocol — I’m glad it got a brief moment to shine in the sun of Complete Image, but I’m not going to miss it otherwise. Maybe Allele Repression, but frankly, Genotyping, Preemptive Action, etc. have shown that Operation-based card recycling is the best way to go post-Jackson. The rest of these cards were, I think, pretty mediocre design; I’m surprised at how little wheat to chaff there was in SanSan for Jinteki, as my memory is quite different!

And, of course, with the release of System Update, we’ll presumably get some other old cards resurfacing that we haven’t seen in a while. I certainly hope NISEI gets aggressive and interesting with these choices, as I think they did a pretty good job with SC2019 (even if I found Core Experience to be a slog of a format). I’m excited at the options of what from the original core, Genesis, Spin, and Lunar might resurface. If it were up to me, here are the four cards that I would bring back:

Hostile Infrastructure Shock! Edge of World Industrial Genomics

Okay, okay, Hostile Infrastructure won’t be popular, but I love it. It’s expensive to rez and with SanSan gone there won’t be the old Breaker Bay Grid cheese to get it rezzed for free. It’s been back in the meta with Salvaged Memories for a bit now and doesn’t appear to be the scourge of the meta, so why not just keep it? More importantly, I’d love to see Shock! come back — it felt infinitely more fair than Breached Dome with a similar (albeit costlier to trash) effect. Edge of World was a jank-enabler that I would love to see again (perhaps because I’m currently playing Retrunner with these old cards again), and then there’s ... Industrial Genomics.

Okay, okay, okay, I hear you, “IG bad.” It’s a mean, mean, Bad People Play It™ identity that made you cry real bad that one time. It did the same to me once, too! I get that perspective, but if we are going to choose a Jinteki ID that is very functionally different than Personal Evolution to complement it in System Update, I’d like one that facilitates the kinds of play IG does. Biotech fits that bill, but frankly, Biotech unless it gets the card support will just be another Brewery kill ID, and I’m not sure NISEI are thinking that’s worth keeping. I’m being hopelessly optimistic that we’ll be getting three Jinteki IDs when System Gateway and Update drop rather than just two, and if I had to choose between Biotech and IG, I’m going IG every time.

Now, with Kakurenbo in the cardpool, a return of IG just can’t happen; so... ban Kakurenbo! It is a ridiculous card that was, seemingly, mainly designed for IG to play in Eternal. I can’t see any other good use for it, at least. Bring back the old IG from before Bio-Ethics prison. Bring back Shock! Hell, even go ahead and ban Bio-Ethics — gasp, I can’t believe I’m typing such blashemy — and give us something that can open up new kinds of play with this interesting, classic, and overly-maligned ID. Industrial Genomics was a weird thing of beauty, and it deserves another run. Laugh at me all you want, you know I’m right.

One more thing — what about Caprice Nisei? Shouldn’t she be discussed? Nah, she gets no love from me, simply because of the playstyle she empowers. Caprice is of course a great and meta-defining card — for glacier! But haven’t we had enough of glacier by now? Like, two years of mainly glacier Jinteki? And I’m the lord of my own barely-read blog fiefdom; I decree that if you really want a psi game to protect your agenda, you should just go play Hyoubu Precog Manifold.

Anyway, just some thoughts by someone who doesn’t play any Standard but wants to do more. I started writing this thinking it was about the dire state of Jinteki, but I’m now left thinking there’s actually a much smaller set of must-keep Jinteki cards than I initially thought. Granted, most of them are non-ice cards, and that’s a problem here — only a handful of ice here seem really necessary to keep. And maybe that’s what this is about; encouraging more deckbuilding that has little to do with building remotes.

I’m most concerned about IDs. Keeping PE and either Biotech or IG would make me personally happy, and Tennin would be an acceptable “sure, why not.” There’s a lot of potential for Jinteki to move into more forms of play that aren’t so glacier-heavy, and I’m hopeful about that. I do think what they do in System Gateway and System Update will need to address the loss of Jinteki cards, but perhaps not as seriously as I had feared when I started writing this.

Anyway, I’d love to hear any reactions to this. Long Live Chairman Hiro!

[quintessence-sentimentalist]

Hey, thanks for answering my Hay LinxEric question. Now, how would you fix IrmaxJoel?

Sorry for the delay on this—I haven’t been in quite the right mindset for the in-depth analyses as of late, and the question of how to fix this couple is a tricky one.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a very good one. Compared to a number of the other relationship fix-its I’ve considered (CxC, Nigel x Taranee) where I haven’t had a particular attachment to the couples, I actually have a lot of feelings about and adoration for Irma and Joel. And while that can also be said about HLxE, my perspective on Irma x Joel is a bit different.

Namely, the fact that I love their platonic relationship as it was presented in canon, and would actually have been pretty aligned if they were kept that way for the rest of the series.

(But of course, we couldn’t even have that, as any sort of acknowledgement of their relationship was wiped out of existence, and then referenced out of nowhere and without explanation many, many issues later with Joel thinking on how “Aw, we used to be friends, but not anymore.”)

I’m not saying I don’t ship them romantically (I do, and we’ll get into my fix-it of that later on in this ramble), but it wouldn’t have necessarily been a deal-breaker if they didn’t end up together. Admittedly, I’d probably be eating those words if Irma and Joel were still hanging out by the time Stephen (or, really, any brand-new love interest) came into the story, if only because throwing Irma into a romantic relationship without any real on-page emotional buildup doesn’t sit right with me no matter how I slice it. To be fair, that’s also just a me thing, because I prefer my ships to have a strong personal foundation over having the characters be drawn together primarily because of looks, etc., so there’s definitely room for different views. 

For me personally, though, the only way I’d really be behind a non-IxJ endgame is if a) Irma didn’t end up with anyone (which could have been great! The other girls were single at various times in the series, but having Irma be the one who’d never been in any sort of relationship would have been good to show that it’s more than okay to not have a significant other at that age), or b) Irma ended up in a relationship with someone else with whom she already has a long-established emotional connection (i.e. I’m not counting an old summer camp crush that we’ve only just learned of when it’s convenient to the in-story events). Seeing as that second option pretty much leaves us with either the other girls (which is fair) or Martin (not as sold on this one, but it’s a little bit better than their animated series counterparts), that would potentially have to be a fix-it as well.

Regardless of Irma’s relationship status—in a similarly meaningful one or not in one at all—let’s look at a fix for platonic Irma x Joel. Honestly, this one can just be summed up as LET THEM REMAIN CLOSE FRIENDS.

Really, it’s… it’s not that hard. Kandrakar knows that I love these girls and their bond, but I also like to see their lives outside of Guardianship, and that means that they can have other friends beyond each other. (Which they did try to do with Taranee and having Luke and Sheila, and I appreciate the effort, even if it wasn’t really executed in the best way.) Irma and Joel were something special, with their shared adoration for Karmilla and complementary senses of humor and, frankly, the fact that neither of them initially considered each other in a different sort of light. They had so much in common, their personalities resounded with each other so beautifully—all these qualities building up to what I’d dare call soulmate material—and all either of them can think is, “Hey, this is an awesome friendship!” And I adore that.

Which is why I can’t fathom why they’d suddenly do away with a relationship that had been lovingly (and largely platonically) tended to on the side for a number of story arcs.

I’m going to caveat that I have only read New Power and beyond but once in my life so far, and a good number of years ago, to boot. I have no actual recollection of whether or not there was any sort of explanation for why the two of them stopped hanging out (besides that offhand comment that they just don’t anymore, which was given to us… oh, three or four arcs later?). No idea if there was any sort of confrontation between Joel and Stephen and Joel out-of-character gets jealous—I wouldn’t put it past them to have done this (which is awful), but given the notoriousness of vanishing things without any warning that inspired this whole damn fix-it series, there’s a fighting chance for it to have gone either way. 

Regardless of what actually happened in canon, there is no concrete reason why Irma having a healthy, happy friendship with someone of the same gender as her new significant other had to be done away with. Even if it could be argued that Irma and Joel had romantic chemistry and ooooooohhhh that could be a threat to her new relationship (um, no.), the two of them had already dealt with those potential feelings back at the end of the Book of Elements/beginning of the Ragorlang arc, and while they didn’t deny that the potential was there, there was unspoken agreement that both were more comfortable as friends at the moment. If we were to use that attraction as a justification against keeping their friendship around while one or both were in other relationships, it just wouldn’t—in a very apt turn-of-phrase—hold water. And there isn’t a reason at all to drop it if there’s no romantic relationship(s) happening whatsoever.

So yeah. Base-level fix-it for Irma and Joel is keep their friendship.

But let’s take it a step further and look at a fix-it for an IxJ romance. I’ll admit that I volleyed around a couple different thoughts about this, even going so far as being sold on an end-of-series-payoff slow-burn like I originally thought we got with Cornelia and Peter (back when I thought the series ended at issue #74 like the Philippines comics did). And while that could have worked for them, I thought back and realized that so many of the canon ships had big moments like that. Will and Matt have their Big Damn Kiss after facing off against Cedric and Matt discovering the truth. Hay Lin and Eric have their joyful spur-of-the-moment kiss when Hay gives him the CD he wanted. As mentioned, Cornelia and Peter have their supposedly-final issue culmination of long-brewing chemistry. And of course, let’s not forget Cornelia and Caleb’s fairytale romance in the early days.

Really, all the relationships—except Taranee and Nigel, although the tradeoff for that was long, drawn-out conflict—officially kick off with a fireworks-level big bang. It’s a Moment when the couples come together, something to be remembered. And with Irma being Irma, loveable loudmouth as she is, it’d make sense for her to have something like that as well—a blurted confession, maybe, or a deep, passionate first kiss.

That’s why I’m of the camp that would have a quiet, but no less meaningful resolution to Irma and Joel’s romantic feelings.

We all know Irma’s the outgoing type—natural comedian always on-hand, outspoken to a fault, passionate and unabashedly loud. But a number of times over the series, we’ve seen her have to get introspective or at least a bit more low-key (oftentimes in the wake of an outburst that hurts someone else). These quieter moments usually offer some great character studies and development for Irma, and I’d like to think that, if given the chance to accept and want to act on her deeper feelings for Joel, it would happen in a similar way.

Just give me the two of them hanging out like usual, but maybe with not as much chatter. Joel is playing his guitar, Irma’s kicked back with a magazine that she’s only half-paying attention to as she listens. Eventually, the magazine drops further and further from her face as her gaze drifts fully to Joel and that goofy face he makes whenever he hits that one chord and that warm fond feeling she gets…

Her thoughts skitter to a sudden stop, but she tries not to let it show outwardly. It’s been a long time since Irma’s thought of Joel in any more-than-friendly terms, probably not since the mix-up with the note to Karmilla that first brought the idea to her mind. It had been an accident, and maybe she hadn’t fully realized—or at the very least hadn’t been ready—to confront those feelings by that point, but the inklings were there. And they’re still here, and maybe a little bit more than just inklings, and maybe she’s actually ready to admit them.

So Irma sets down the magazine altogether, and carefully slides a little closer to Joel’s side. The movement doesn’t go unnoticed, but he looks up only in faint curiosity—not at all startled or displeased. Irma just returns with a small smile, maybe a little nervous (is this too much too fast? Does he even feel the same way anymore?). But there’s no need for worry—or even words, for that matter—as the two of them have always been so in-sync, and are in perfect alignment on this in particular. That’s clearly proven when Joel grins back and carefully shifts his body and guitar so Irma can comfortably settle in right next to him.

(There are words later, of course, if only to make absolutely certain they’re both on the same page, and just because hearing it out loud makes it feel so real. And really, things don’t change that much in their relationship—they still laugh and crack jokes and tease each other to no end, just with a bit more cuddling and kisses and comfy quiet between them, where neither feels the need to fill the silence just because.

And because I’m predictable, a situation wherein Joel gets clued in to the Guardian Secret would involve Joel being very understanding and patient… and also terrifyingly aware that he is never again going to win in a water fight against his girlfriend.)

So. Apparently I had more thoughts on Irma and Joel fix-its than I thought, but I also have zero regrets and too damn many feelings.

[brokasteltranslations]

Fate/Requiem: Chapter 1

Once upon a time, there was a great war. It happened long ago, before I was born. And then it ended, and the world entered an age of peace.

–

In the modern era, each and every person held within their heart a tiny Holy Grail, which was nothing more or less than that person's preordained destiny. And each and every person was capable of summoning a Servant allotted them by fate, in accordance with the guidance of the Grail.

Servants were an information resource by nature, accumulated throughout human history. Their souls were enshrined in the Throne of Heroes, a place which transcended the bounds of space and time. By 'downloading' them from this Throne, it was possible to manifest them in our world.

–

The shape of the world changed greatly after the war. This town was born anew - reorganised into city units, known collectively as Mosaic City. Among them was Akihabara, the Maritime City, which I called home. Sea levels had risen dramatically as a result of global warming, and now the city quite literally bordered on the ocean. The Kanda river's name was nothing more than a vestige of the pre-war era; in reality, it was nothing more than a canal through which sea water flowed.

–

This town was watched over by the Holy Grail, and not a day went by when its citizens did not partake of its bounties. Those survivors from before the war had been given the opportunity to obtain a Grail upon its conclusion, while those young enough to have been born after the war, like Karin, possessed one within their hearts from birth.

The Grail had brought immortality to the masses. The principal causes of death in the old world – biological factors such as ageing, genetic degradation, infectious diseases, viruses and malignant cancers – had all been conquered. By expending Command Seals, one could even manipulate their biological age. In this city, one of humanity's oldest, dearest wishes – eternal youth – had been realised.

–

But I was different. I alone stood apart. I was the only citizen of this city who had not been granted a Holy Grail. I had been born into this new world, but I would age naturally – and, eventually, die – with all the senselessness characteristic of the old. An irregularity, born outside of the sight of the Grail. That was what I was – me, Utsumi Erice.

With no Holy Grail, I had no Servant to contract with as my partner. Every once in a while, someone would be unable to stifle the urge to ask me how that felt. If it were up to me, I would laugh at them, and tell them that they'd never understand even if I tried to explain – but I'd been chided no small number of times by my master for that. You would be remiss to be callous in your interaction with your social environment, if you wish to live peacefully in this new world.

So, for lack of anything else to say, I answered them like this:

“Imagine you were incredibly short-sighted, to the point where you could hardly see, but you were told you weren't allowed to wear glasses.”

“Imagine being told you had to travel somewhere on foot, while everyone else was allowed to use trains and buses.”

“Imagine going somewhere you've never been before, only to find that the navigation app on your smartphone was an unusable piece of junk.”

The question I had by far the most trouble with was the question of how I survived day-to-day life without Command Seals, which were one of the bounties of the Grail. On that point, no matter how thoroughly I tried to explain, most other people seemed to struggle to understand my situation any more than vaguely, and ultimately had no interest anyway. That was the ideal response, as far as I was concerned. I could find no fault with that.

There were also those who genuinely understood, and responded with exaggerated surprise and sympathy. Some would offer me the usage of their own Command Seals, assuring me with fawning pity that I could come to them if there was ever anything they could do for me. There were even a few so selflessly empathetic that they claimed to truly want to trade places with me – although always with some condition attached, by which they could return things to normal if they so pleased.

Every such encounter reminded me anew that I was nothing more than an amusement to them. A means of flattering their own altruistic sensibilities, and of relieving their boredom for a little while.

Akihabara was a labyrinth in three dimensions, not just two. In a block nestled a comfortable distance from the downtown area on the middle stratum, bordering a natural public park, stood a multi-storey building housing a collection of public service facilities. Contained on one floor of this building was the classroom I frequented.

I had arrived slightly late for the start time, and hurriedly took my seat. The wide, fan-shaped room was almost devoid of students. This was decidedly not a facility for compulsory education; it was offered the people at large educational lecture courses aimed at fostering lifelong learning. Citizens of all ages took the course, and attending every single lecture was virtually unheard-of. Consequently, I was known as something of an eccentric.

The people here knew nothing of the battle of immortals that occurred last night. Those kinds of incidents never made the news.

–

Well then – it was time for Pre-War Human History.

That was the name of the course I was taking. Unfortunately, it could hardly have been called the most popular subject. The content of the lectures was much closer to trivia than education. The main goal of Pre-War Human History comprised learning about the human race's greatest triumphs and blunders in the world of the past. It was...well, to put it bluntly, dry.

In the first place, Akihabara was Mosaic City's premier resort. Students who were sincerely striving to learn, or families concerned with the proper education of their children, would simply up and leave for another district. I had an inclination that this space only really existed to entertain the interests of the lecturer at the front of the hall – my master, Ms. Fujimura.

–

Oh, it looks like that girl's here again.

I cast a quick glance out over the lecture theatre from my usual perch at the back. A small, familiar figure was sat in the very front row, concentrating intently on the lecture. She had come again today. As a rule, I never saw students younger than myself attending these lectures, so she had stuck in my memory. She was a pale child, short in stature, and perhaps old enough to be at the upper end of elementary school. Her voice and attitude during the occasions that she posed questions to the lecturer had given me the impression that she was female, but there was no guarantee. All kinds of people lived in this city.

Her had was invariably pulled down low over her head, and her eyes were covered by her bangs, so I hadn't ever seen her face clearly. I had never engaged her in conversation, and I didn't even know her name. She appeared in lectures once a month or so; I felt a distinct disconnect between her keen attitude in lectures and her abysmal attendance rate.

Today, her standing record for youngest lecture attendee had been broken. The new champion was none other than my companion: the stray Servant I had taken in last night, the golden-haired child. He was at least sitting in his seat for now without making a fuss, but he was fidgeting constantly - rocking his body to and fro, and sometimes lying down as though trying to savour the feeling of the cool wood of the chair. Or so I was thinking, before he suddenly turned to peer into my face, obstructing my view of my tablet.

“You think you're a cat or something?”

“...Ca-...cat?”

“Maybe you're more of a dog, huh. Your hair's all floofy.”

“Dog?”

“Yeah, a dog. You know, woof-woof.”

“I know dogs.”

“Oh, really? Well, I'm glad for y- what the hell do you think you're doing!?”

He had scrambled up onto the seat of his chair, planted both hands on the desk and begun to howl, loud and proud.

Awooooo! Ow-ow-owooo! Awoooooo!

He finished his surprisingly accurate rendition, flashing a beaming smile. I sat for a moment in silent astonishment – and might perhaps have thought for a moment that it was a little endearing, although this really wasn't the time for that.

“Hey, stop that! Get down from there!”

Give me a break. I was just about to give you credit for at least not being as loud as Karin, and you go and pull this. The other attendees were turning back to look at us now, searching for the source of the noise.

“I'm sorry. We'll be quiet. I'm really sorry.”

My master had stopped giving her lecture, and was cocking her head at us. The girl in the front row was looking too. If looks could kill, the glare boring into me from beneath her bangs would have dropped me stone dead. Although I couldn't exactly blame her for getting annoyed at someone bringing this commotion into a class.

Yes miss I'm so terribly sorry I won't do it again...ugh, what did I do to deserve this...

I had no way of knowing how to handle a young child like this boy in the first place – but that said, I also couldn't possible have left him behind in my apartment by himself. And I had thought to myself that I might learn something about him if I brought him here with me.

“Don't dogs say “bow-wow” in English, anyway?”

“Boh-roh.”

“Not even close. Must be nice to be able to mimic things like that, huh...”

Ohh boy. Starting to get the feeling I'm not going to be learning much from today's lecture...

I rested my head on my hand and pouted. Gazing idly at the young boy's angelic face out of the corner of my eye, I cast my mind back through my memories of my baptism last night.

It had happened on the previous evening, after I had been fished from the riverbed by Karin and Kouyou on the wharf. To cut a long story short, I decided to take the boy back to my apartment and put him up for the night, still none the wiser about who he was or where he had come from.

–

I had been living on my own ever since parting ways with my grandmother.

In a quiet corner of Akihabara, there was a small, depopulated district that most people avoided. Before the war, it had comprised a collection of multi-purpose buildings crammed to bursting with shops, but they had all been abandoned after the Grail's large-scale restructuring of the city. My apartment consisted of a room in one such building.

The inside of the room was decorated in Victorian style. Every inch of floor was covered by wooden floorboards, and its antique interior had been preserved unaltered. Apparently, it had originally housed some kind of dubious culinary establishment known as a “maid cafe”.

–

My apartment wasn't exactly designed for ease of living, but it was furnished with a proper bathroom and bedroom, and was more than sufficient for one person to live in comfortably. It even had a veranda, albeit a small one. From the window of my bedroom I could gaze out over a small vertical slice of ocean hemmed in by the surrounding buildings.

–

My opportunities to invite another person back to this humble abode were rare. Considering my job, the risks involved in freely letting others know where I lived were far too high. The only reason I had brought this child back with me was that it would have been too irresponsible to leave him to his own devices. I didn't even know who his contractor was; to have allowed him to freely roam the town would have been unthinkable.

He might have manifested in the form of an innocent child, but that only set me more on edge. I had allowed myself to be disarmed by a target's outward appearance before, on a previous job, and had made a grave mistake because of it. A Servant I had believed nothing more than an angelic young child - like purity itself sculpted in alabaster - had harboured a terrible darkness. The Avenger, Louis XVII. The incident that arose around that particular monstrosity had ultimately claimed not only the life of his Master, but those of a great number of innocents as well.

At the time, I had not yet fully graduated from childhood. Louis and I had been similar in stature, and I had thought we could have been good friends. In the end, however, my friendship and goodwill had been used and turned against me. That incident was not one I would forget easily.

–

There was another reason that I had brought this stray child back with me: I had been driven to my wits' end in another sense. Frankly speaking, I could not take it any more: the rank stench that permeated the both of us had become unbearable, and I could not bear to go another minute without washing it off.

The culprit was the oil slick near the quay that I'd had the ill fortune to be dragged through when I was fished out of the Kanda river. Petroleum-based waste oil, that had leaked from one of the boats moored in the harbour. I had hardly had the time to worry about such things immediately after being deposited on the wharf, but now that I had returned to my senses the discomfort was driving me to distraction. Pouring water over myself or wiping myself down with paper towels would do nothing to remove this - I needed a proper bath.

I had been stopped by a worried Karin when I had tried to totter my way home, still bearing a serious wound that I had no right to have recovered from so quickly. She had only seen me off after I had explained about the charms and such that I kept in my house. She was easygoing like that.

I had tried to invite her to stay the night here, but she had breezily turned me down, saying that she had a friend in the vicinity who would put her up for the night. Karin's social connections remained as much a mystery to me as ever. Although she had given me a rueful smile, saying that her family would be angry with her for returning home the following morning.

–

In any case, I had finally returned home, and could allow myself to relax a little. I looked the boy over once more, this time with the aid of my apartment's artificial lights.

“Hold on. Hey, no, wait, wait, wait! Don't just go right in! Just stand here for a minute.”

I grabbed him by his sodden scarf and yanked him back, prompting a visible sulk.

“Uh...sorry.”

So he did possess emotions, and the capacity to appeal to them. That would be useful, at least.

Both of us looked ridiculous, soaked from head to toe and glistening with oil. I was at least wearing swimwear and a windbreaker in place of my ordinary clothes, but his lot was a much more miserable one. I could feel my memories of the unearthly spectacle I had witnessed below the surface of the water growing more distant by the minute.

Alll-righty. I pulled myself together, and sank to one knee in the entranceway, looking over this child once more from top to toe.

He at least appeared to be eight, maybe nine years old. He was Caucasian, with the pale features particular to Scandinavian climes - although given that Servants were as much concept as they were genetics, any attempt to determine their race was close to meaningless. His hair was a pale blonde, almost white, and it had been left to grow freely.

His scarf was sodden, and hung limp around his neck. Or maybe it was a muffler? Well, it wasn't as though it mattered. It was composed of fabric knitted from some strange, gaudy material – it was hard to say if it was actual gold, or just extremely intricate needlework. His clothing looked to be made of cotton, and had a simple design, reminiscent of a Greek-style tunic. He had a small embroidered design on his chest, which I made a note of as a potentially important clue.

His belt and shoes were made of the same material as his scarf. The heels of the latter had a strange design; they were tapered towards the back, like spurs used for riding horses. I could have taken that as an indication that in life he had been some sort of knight – but nothing else about him gave that impression. He's nothing like any other Saber or Rider-class Servants I've seen.

His pale blue eyes stared back at me questioningly as I scrutinised him. I was seized by a sudden rush of curiosity.

“Hey. Do you think you could tell me where you came from?”

He smoothly lifted an arm to point towards the ceiling.

“From the sky? From Heaven? You don't mean from the moon, do you?”

He shook his head at all of them.

“I've come...from somewhere very far away.”

“All Servants have.”

“...Really?” He must have found something amusing, because his face blossomed into a smile, and he giggled. I was relieved at the unexpected ease with which I was able to communicate with him, although it seemed like he was still struggling to understand what I was saying.

His first words had been in halting English, but from the way he had appeared to be listening in on the conversation between me and Karin I would venture that he at least understood our language. If he was a Servant who had been summoned legitimately, he would have been granted a bare minimum level of common knowledge about the modern era by the Grail, as well as the linguistic capabilities necessary to express himself to others naturally. However, now that I was trying to determine his true name, that was only serving to impede my search.

As I questioned him, I produced a pair of scissors and carefully snipped a five-millimetre length of thread from the back of his tunic, which I deposited in a zip-lock sample bag.

“Would you mind letting me take one of your hairs as well?”

It looked like he was giving me the ok. He did as I asked, without resisting, and as I did he asked me a question.

“Have you come from somewhere far away like me, Eri?”

“Don't call me that. Did you get that from Karin? Alright, listen here. I'm not “Eri”, I'm not “Old man Eri”, and I'm not “Eri-pie”. I'm Erice. Utsumi Erice.”

“Hmm.”

He remained staring at me, giving me no indication whether or not he'd understood. His reaction was a little dispiriting, but I continued anyway. If I kept talking, I might be able to glean something.

“It's not all that far away, really. I was born in Shinjuku. I'm fourteen now, so I guess you could call me a middle schooler, but I don't usually go to school anyway.”

“What's a 'school'?”

“A school is...it's where you go to learn. It's a big building where lots of children all go. Or at least, that's what I hear it was like before the war. They've changed a lot since then.”

“You don't go to school, Eri?”

“I told you to call me Erice. And I don't need to. I'm passing my academic evaluations, and I'm getting the credits I need from extracurricular courses. And I show up for health inspections and such.”

“You don't want to go to school, do you?”

I grit my teeth. He'd hit the nail on the head. He was annoyingly good at that.

“It's...not a matter of whether I want to go or not. I...I have more important things to do.”

“You're alone.” He cocked his head, and then broke out into another smile. “Just like me.”

I suppressed my irritation silently as I tapped at my tablet. I was trying a search for the symbol embroidered on his chest, but nothing was coming up. Just in case, I tried accessing the city network, but no-one had registered any missing Servants - although it wasn't as though that was a frequent occurrence anyway. I could ask my master about any information that might be being suppressed on a public level, but I could hardly go blithely to her cap-in-hand. Not after I had tried to hide from her that I had disobeyed her orders and let Kundry go.

Even so, there was one theory as to his identity that I had managed to come up with. Spurred on by that, I decided to bite the bullet.

“So, which Servant are you?”

“...?”

He tilted his head in confusion. Was he trying to play dumb? It didn't look like an act, at any rate. It seemed that somehow, he really didn't understand the concept of a Servant. Was that even possible?

“I'm asking about your true name. Although your nickname will do, if that's better-known.”

Once, Servants would not have revealed their true name lightly, but that was before the war. In the modern world, it had become more of a question of personal privacy. No small number of Servants had origins that could complicate life in Mosaic City if they became known to others, and the degree of discretion necessary might also change depending on their relationship with their Master.

This boy likely wouldn't talk about his true name if his unknown Master did not wish it. And all the more so if he didn't have one at all.

“Your name, I said. Tell me your name.”

“...Name?”

“That's right. Your name.”

“Don't you know it?”

“...Huh? Don't I...you mean my name?”

It was supposed to be me asking the questions here. I was starting to feel that if I just allowed this wide-eyed child to talk at his own pace, I would end up the one being profiled.

Abruptly, he opened his mouth again. “There's something I've lost.”

“Something you've lost? What did you lose?”

“I don't know.”

I heaved a sigh. At the same moment, a sharp stench once more pricked at my nostrils.

“It sounds like you're suffering from memory loss. I think things like that can happen after summoning...? Well, anyway, there's nothing we can do for now. And I'm about at my wits' end, so right now I'm going to have a shower. I'll let you use the bathroom too, so go on ahead.”

“Show-er?”

“A shower. You know, like a bath.”

“...A bath?”

“Wait, you really don't know? Don't tell me you don't even know what a shower is? Hang on, have you ever even had a wash?”

He shook his head. Apparently he really hadn't ever experienced a bath. Although even if he hadn't, surely the idea itself fell under common knowledge.

Do your job, Holy Grail.

For as long as I had lived here, my bathroom had been rather chic. It had a French-style interior, and was easily wide enough for two people. The star of the show was a shallow enamel bathtub, pulled straight from a western movie. Incidentally, the bedroom was decorated in equally charming fashion, and was the biggest reason I chose this apartment.

The design was uncharacteristically luxurious for a department store coffee shop. Either the owner had been extremely specific tastes...or from the beginning, this building had been designed with less-than-wholesome purposes in mind. Probably the latter. Not that that had anything to do with me; I was nothing more than a grateful beneficiary. But it did mean one more thing for Karin to tease me about.

I gritted my teeth, and led the boy by the hand to the bathroom. He was still dawdling, unsure as to what was going on. I had him take off his clothes and made him stand in the dressing room. Then I set to filling the bathtub, removing my own dirtied clothing as I did so. He's just a kid. What's there to be embarrassed about? Nothing! That's right, nothing at all.

There was still an outside chance that he would turn out to have the mind of a middle-aged man, but I'd cross that bridge if I came to it.

“I suppose I'd better put my swimsuit in to soak...ouch!”

Agony lanced through me as I twisted my body the wrong way. I re-treated the injury to my abdomen, and covered it over with a water-resistant patch. It was still undergoing accelerated recovery, and it was warm to the touch. The wound was serious enough that with the treatment methods of the past, oligemic shock and acute inflammation would have been unavoidable. But this new world had conquered death itself, and treatments for injuries and accidents had not been overlooked on the way. Many technologies had been developed during the war, and now I reaped the benefits.

“It looks like it hurts.”

“Well, maybe a little.”

His eyes were drawn to the scar on my ear, and he screwed up his face.

“It isn’t nice, is it? Every thorn-prick makes its own hole.”

“...You said it.”

Was he worrying that I might be left with a scar, in his own way? If so, he was quite the gentleman.

“But it's ok. Kouyou patched it up for me, so it'll heal with time.”

For my part, I carefully looked his naked body up and down once more. This was a vital step in my investigation, and thus an entirely proper and lawful act.

He was...definitely a boy, yep.

–

Once I had painstakingly washed away the cause of the stench, I finally entered the bathtub - along with the boy, who was trying to escape at any opportunity.

“It's hot.”

“That's what's good about it. Ordinary Servants love to take baths. They're all very happy to get in. There are even some who have baths as their Noble Phantasms. There's one who summons this great big bathchamber, called Terme di Caracalla...”

“I want to get out.”

He was pulling a very sullen expression, but at least he was being obedient.

I can't see any scars on him. His muscles and weight don't seem any different from a normal child's, either. I found it very hard to believe that he might be some kind of knight summoned in their youth. When he'd said that he didn't know what a bath was, the first thing I'd suspected was child abuse; Heroic Spirits who had come from such unhappy backgrounds were too numerous to count. But he showed no sign of having received that kind of treatment, or at least not outwardly.

My confidence in my hypothesis was growing stronger, and I decided to put it to the test.

–

I stretched out from the bathtub. With the steam-clouded mirror as my canvas, I drew a picture of a hat with my fingertip. It was a crude sketch of an old-fashioned, wide-brimmed men's hat with a slightly indented top, as seen from the side.

“Hey. Can you tell me what this is?” I asked him hesitantly, my chest pounding nervously. It only took a brief glance at the picture before he answered.

“It's...a snake.”

I started. For a moment, I was lost for words.

“It looks like it's eaten something big.”

He'd answered my question perfectly.

“It scares me a little.”

Droplets fell from his body as he shivered and turned away. I hadn't even imagined that he might show such a violent reaction. I quickly wiped away the picture on the mirror, and found myself patting his head to try and reassure him. I could feel the slickness of his wet hair and the warmth of his body through the palm of my hand.

“What about “B-612”? Or maybe you could call it “Besixdouze”?”

“Yes.” He nodded in answer. No hesitation.

“You know it?”

“It's a planet, isn't it? But there's no-one there.”

I was silent for a moment. That's right. It's a planet. Of course it is.

“I see...so there's no-one there. But I think...I might know your true name now.”’  

B-612 was the name of an asteroid that orbited the solar system. It was not remarkable in any way, save for the fact that it had been discovered by a Japanese national. It would hardly be included in the common knowledge that the Holy Grail bestowed upon Servants. But that asteroid was named for a novella from a foreign country, and the title of that novella was “The Little Prince”.

On a sudden impulse, I embraced him. In the bathtub, I wrapped my arms around his narrow shoulders from behind, and squeezed him tight. So as not to break him. So as not to hurt him.

“If only...if only you had been my Servant...”

He showed no sign of answering me.

Before entering the bathtub, as I was washing myself, I had checked everywhere. Desperately, I had searched to see if Command Seals, the proof of a contract with a Servant, had appeared anywhere on my body. I had strained my eyes in the mirror, checking my back, beneath the translucent medical patch, even the soles of my feet. But they were nowhere to be seen.

Then I was no-one's Master. I could not have made any contract with this boy through the Grail. I was just the Reaper, the same as I had always been.

In that case, what had that sense of foreboding been?

What had that trembling been in my chest? That sense that something had begun that would change my life forever?

In the end, it had all just been my own wishful thinking.

–

After the bath, we retired to my living-cum-dining room, where a mahogany table had stood ever since this place was a cafe. The boy sat in a chair, working his way through a lasagne that I had microwaved from frozen. I was recording the day's events, tablet in hand and a towel around my head, and I was blushing as red as his bolognese sauce. I felt incredibly embarrassed. This boy hadn't even yet come of age, but I had suddenly embraced him, whispered something that felt almost like a confession of love, and then ended up crying. While naked, no less.

His only response, after a while had passed, had been to furrow his eyebrows and complain “It's hot”.

“Is that good?”, I asked.

“It tastes.”

“Really? Sounds great.”

The samples I had taken earlier were on the table. Both contents of the zip-lock bag had vanished, just as I had expected. Separated from his body, his hair and the thread from his tunic had ceased to exist in their pseudo-physical form, and had reverted to being part of his mana. In other words, his body and the clothes he wore were woven from the stuff. That made for strong evidence that he was a Servant - but it was unneeded, because an easier way to tell was right before my eyes. The clothes that I had left on the floor of the dressing room had since returned to a clean, dry state.

The scarf that he wore around his neck floated freely, with no regard for the laws of physics. Even while he was eating, it fluttered gently, as though rising upon the wind. Needless to say, there was no wind inside my apartment.

He couldn't be the Simoun...could he? The poison wind?

–

The night had grown late, and I wrestled with the sleepiness and exhaustion that assailed me as I stared at my tablet. I thought back to the words I had exchanged with the Flying Dutchman, Captain Van der Decken. Every word of the warning he had given me lay heavy on my breast.

Until it became clear that our enemy was the mad queen, he had maintained a policy of non-interference, and only once had he commented on my methods. He had been cursed by a devil of the ocean. My lot was not too dissimilar - for I too was cursed, and possessed by evil spirits. Living my life beyond the sight of the Grail, I might as well have been a naked offering to them. But that was also the reason that I'd lasted as long as I had in this job.

I had let my guard down. I had allowed myself to believe that Captain Van der Decken and I might have been able to find an understanding, as bearers of the same fate. But he had seen through those naïve expectations, and had roughly spurned my advances.

“You have grown to feel joy in the act of slaying Servants, under the pretence of executing the authority of the city. Though you think yourself the master of your spectres, they in turn use you.”

He was telling me, in a roundabout way, that I was intoxicated by the idea of being a superhero. That what I had believed to be pride was in fact conceit.

“Someday, Erice, you will call forth a great evil. And when that time comes, that which you have clung to so dearly will instead force you to your knees.”

Unable to accept his words and fiercely ashamed, I had retorted with some frivolous argument - although I could admit now that it had just been something I had cooked up to make myself feel better. At the time I had thought he was just trying to put me in my place, but thinking back on it now, his words might have been as much in reproach of himself as they had been for me. His relationship with his contractor Aheseurus - equal in spite of being Master and Servant - spoke more eloquently of his sincerity than words ever could.

“Are you paying attention, Erice?”

I was brought out of my reverie by my master's polite chiding.

“You seem very tired. Perhaps it might be for the best if you took a moment to rest in the break room? I can prepare the lecture material for your perusal later, if you'd like.”

I let out a whimper. This was embarrassing. My second disgrace this morning. I shook my head vigorously. My master nodded, and recommenced the lecture in a soft voice.

–

Her name was Caren Fujimura. She was the lecturer responsible for this class, and also my master. I had known her for as long as I could walk.

Outwardly, she appeared to be in her twenties. She had light amber eyes, and wavy, pale grey hair that cascaded down to the small of her back. Her body combined a slender build with voluptuous Hispanic curves. Most notable of all, however, was her impeccable sense of style. Nobody else could come close to its audacity. Today, too, she looked sharp as a knife.

Or at least, I thought so, but waxing lyrical on the subject only seemed to earn me pained smiles from Karin and others. Well, it wasn't as though I cared anyway. If I was the only one who could understand her magnificence, so be it.

“...?”

The boy, who had been quiet at my side for a long time, had begun focusing on my master when she had spoken to me. Now he turned his gaze to the skirt of my school uniform, then to his own trousers, and cocked his head. He turned his head to make one more pass, carefully comparing, and then spoke with some conviction.

“She isn't wearing anything down there.”

“That she isn't.”

My master really was incredible.

It was not on account of her position as my lecturer that I called Caren Fujimura my master. Nor was it on account of her being my fashion role model. She was inhuman, in every way, and not in the sense of being part of the new postwar humanity. She was an artificial intelligence – an AI.

More precisely, she was the municipal administration AI tasked with the management of the Akihabara ward. A human interface that allowed the Grail to communicate directly with the people of the city. A hybrid intelligence – the most valuable in the city – born of the fusion of summoning magecraft, modelled on the kind that called forth Heroic Spirits, and cutting-edge information engineering technology. Such was the true nature of Caren Fujimura.

–

Ms. Fujimura's lecture on pre-war human history continued. Today's topic was the history and profiles of the great pioneers. Those brave adventurers who sailed west on crude wooden vessels, carving a path to an unknown lands. Those bold explorers who discovered – or rediscovered – the distant new world, and secured the shipping routes that would become the lifeblood of a global civilisation.

–

She spoke of Eric the Red, who crossed from Europe to Greenland and settled there. Of his son, Lief Ericsson, who made landfall in the northeast of North America and named it “Vinland”. Of the roots of the Polynesians, who propagated across the islands of the south Pacific in canoes little better than rafts, and were sometimes set adrift by rogue currents to journey thousands of kilometres.

Of Christopher Columbus, the conqueror who never once lost sight of his dream; who sailed to the farthest reaches of the western sea aboard the legendary Santa Maria, and there rediscovered the new world. Of Vasco de Gama, who crossed the Cape of Good Hope and pioneered the Indian trade route. Of the Cape itself - the southern tip of the African continent and one of the great perils of the Age of Discovery, where Captain Van der Decken's Dutch galleon met its fate upon the rocks.

She told of Ferdinand Magellan, whose vessels first circumnavigated the world. Although he perished before the completion of his journey, his feat proclaimed to the world beyond all doubt that the earth was not flat, but round. Through him, the people came to know that the world they lived on was just one more celestial body like the moon or Mars, forging silently onwards through the void.

And here too was the first captain to circumnavigate the globe: Francis Drake, the privateer! Ah, here was the magnificent Golden Hind! I had already been absorbed in the lecture, but here my excitement reached its zenith, my mind filling with daydreams of the open sea.

From Servants who had lived through the same era, I had heard tales that Drake, the admiral who broke the back of the invincible Spanish Armada, had in truth been a woman more gallant than any man. That the man who set the sun had, in fact, been the woman who set the sun. I personally found them impossible to believe, and I'd also heard them refuted by other pirate Servants. Stories like that ain't nothin' more'n piss in the wind, girly. Drake was a man, sure as my beard is long.

It was a common enough story when it came to Servants. Some ages of history had placed little importance on gender distinctions. Conversely, in others women had been so oppressed that they could only perform heroic deeds whilst disguised in men's clothing. Such confusion was liable to muddy historical records.

Even if Drake had been female, it would do nothing to tarnish the glory of her legend.

–

My enriching study time was now approaching its end, although I had struggled to focus on all of the contents of the lecture.

“I would like to give a brief introduction to one final figure. An American man whose one small step signified a giant leap for mankind.”

The screen changed in sync with Ms. Fujimura's commentary. Now it displayed a world of extreme contrasts: a sea of grey regolith, and the dark vacuum of space. Within the shadow thrown by a lunar lander, a figure in a space suit descended a ladder to stand upon the moon's surface.

“This was the first man to stand on the face of the moon. He, too, counts among the great pioneers of the human race.”

“...Eh...?”

A single voice arose, quavering not with wonder but with astonishment.

“A human went to the moon...? A living human?”

The source of the voice was none other than the young girl in the front row.

“Indeed. It would be fifty-six years before the modern day. Three astronauts ventured to the moon, and two among them descended to walk upon its surface.”

“More than half a century ago? There weren't even control units back then capable of calculating orbital trajectories-”

“There were.”

Another video resource flashed onto the screen. This time it showed a bulky copper box that must have weighed dozens of kilograms, and a small keyboard. The commentary indicated that this was the Apollo spaceship's guidance computer.

“Single-core, 8-bit. A most splendid computer to be mounted in the lunar lander. It likely had less than one ten-thousandth the processing power of the smartphones you all have in your pockets. And yet it was enough to guide the lander by autopilot, even though human error necessitated its rebooting just prior to landing.”

Ms. Fujimura sounded almost triumphant now. There had been a strange change in her expression, although it was so slight I doubted anyone but me would even have a chance of noticing. Perhaps, for an AI, it was a point of pride to be able to talk about the vital contribution a computer had made to one of humanity's most historic achievements.

No, that's not it...

She was delighting in the shock her student was experiencing, from her first contact with this knowledge. She was revelling in it. The girl retracted her body and sat back down in her seat, fuming.

“That's irresponsible. It's reckless.”

“Indeed it was. It was one of the most reckless ventures in human history, and precious lives were lost along the way.”

“That's all the more reason it could never have happened!”

As though scoffing at our worries from across the ages, the portly figure of the spaceman upon the screen began to moonwalk, gleefully bounding across the moon's surface. He was humming to himself merrily, like some shameless delinquent.

“Rather carefree, isn't he? One would never think only a thin spacesuit separated him from the zero-pressure vacuum and the hellish 110-degree temperatures outside.”

My master smiled faintly, as she expressed her admiration for the men in the video. Even when they raced their moon buggies across the lunar plain, they were rough and careless, as though they were driving go-karts at some amusement park. The girl at the front returned to gazing at the video, a flabbergasted expression on her face.

“Ah...ahaha...!” I couldn't help bursting out in laughter.

Her shoulders trembled a little. I'd picked an awful time.

–

The “Great Pioneers” instalment concluded by saying that although the human race had raised its flag in one great unknown after the other – first the new world beyond the seas, then the distant skies, and finally the void of space – landing a group of carefree delinquents on the surface of the moon had marked the end of their exploits. Not once since had they set their sights on anything farther. The Apollo generation's dream of a grand conquest of the stars remained a dream to this day. Mars, Venus and the outer space beyond the solar system remained unknown to the print of human boot.

I wondered if perhaps the human race had, somewhere along its way, lost sight of something incredibly precious.

I wondered if perhaps someday there might rise once again, on the edge of the farthest frontier, someone worthy of being called a hero. Someone who would lead mankind forth once more towards a new world.

“Hey, there you are, Eri-pie! Wanne grab some food?”

Karin burst into the classroom just as the lecture had ended. She must have guessed where I would be. I had thought she might have returned home after the events of last night, but she must have remained in Akihabara.

“Oh, it's you, Karin. I'll hold off for now. I've still got things I need to do.”

“Ehh? Hasn't your class just wrapped up?”

“Well, yeah, but I'm not talking about class.”

“Oh, the shrimp's tagging along? Good, good. You put some proper breakfast in him, right? What's he been eatin'?”

“Cereal. And some water.”

“Oh, ouch. You know that's child abuse, right? Like, I should probably be calling a social worker about now?”

“Just give it a rest, geez...”

I hadn't been back to my apartment for the past few days, and my reserves had all expired, so I had ended up with very little by way of food. I hadn't so much as forced cereal and water on him as noticed his interest in the food I was hurriedly shovelling down and shared a little.

Servants didn't typically require meals in the usual sense, but in the post-war world where they had become commonplace, more care was being paid to improving their quality of life. There were even some citizens' groups that insisted that they had a right to live the same as humans. In my view, Servants were fundamentally inhuman existences, and I saw those attempts to impose human restrictions on something unbound by the framework of nature as little more than evidence of their Masters' egotism – although I couldn't deny that might just have been the bitter prejudice of a have-not speaking.

“Sssssssup! Morning, Caren!”

“Good morning to you too, Karin.”

Ms. Fujimura approached the two of us.

“Karin...and Caren...?”

The boy looked between the two, confused.

“Yeah, you got it. Pain in the ass, right? The Caren in Akihabara has this kinda grown-up, sexy feel to her. The one back home is a lot more, uh...wha-chaa!”

“What's “wha-chaa!” supposed to mean? And you should be calling her Ms. Fujimura.” Karin had drawn one knee up to strike a kung-fu pose. I gave her a smack.

“Karin lives in the Shibuya district. The me who lives there is a drawer for a Chinese restaurant.” My master smiled gently. I wondered what it felt like, to know there were different versions of herself active all over the city.

A few elderly students were still hanging around in the classroom, chatting amongst themselves. My master ushered us from the room, and we relocated to a terrace protruding from midway up the building. This was a leisure space, and it commanded a wide view of the sprawl of Akihabara. At this early hour, the sea breeze was light, and the sun was not too strong. It was just cool enough that that shaded areas were still a little chilly.

The distant rumble of a train smoothly pulling in from the oversea viaduct drifted to us from across the water, along with the faint toot of its horn. Beyond the horizon, where the railway vanished, lay Shinjuku and Shibuya.

“So this child is the Servant with the unknown Master?”

“That's right.”

I had already informed her about the situation in advance, but I took the opportunity to introduce the boy to her in person.

“To tell the truth, I already have a good guess as to his identity. Although he doesn't really react to what I say most of the time. He doesn't seem to be entirely all there.”

I took the plunge, and told her about last night's discoveries – hoping somewhere deep down this made up for the regret I felt at keeping quiet about Kundry's flight and the events that had followed.

“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry...? A French author, as I recall, and one of great renown. He was also an accomplished pilot, and served in the Second World War. You believe this child's identity to be this Saint-Exupéry?”

The object of our scrutiny, the child in question, showed no reaction to the name. He took a sip of the freshly-squeezed orange juice that Karin had bought from a juice stand, and pulled a face. Sour.

“His appearance is a poor match, even taking into account the age difference.” I could sense my master checking records in the background, and cross-referencing them with the child in front of her. I pressed on with my next hypothesis.

“I think he's the Little Prince. Don't you think he looks just like Saint-Exupéry's illustrations?”

The Little Prince was an allegorical short story. It was the last completed work by Saint-Exupéry, who passed away at a young age. Whether online or in physical bookshops, one would inevitably find it in the children's book category, but it couldn't be more different to the fairy tales it rubbed shoulders with on the shelves. That said, nor was it something like the Bible, whose every line existed to be quoted and venerated. It was a comforting presence, like a familiar friend at your side, always ready with a lighthearted quip or a sobering anecdote. Or so I thought, anyway.

“Eh? So you're a prince, are you? Hmmmm? Now you mention it, he does look kinda regal. Think he'd make a good match with my Momi? She is a princess, you know. Whaddaya think?”

Karin pinched the boy's cheek, grinning wickedly, and he turned his head away in clear discomfort. I decided to leave them to it, and added to my master that last night the boy had answered my riddle with the keyword that only the Little Prince would know.

“I see...” She struck a contemplative pose as I continued.

“I'm aware that he doesn't look very much like Saint-Exupéry. That's why I'm wondering if he could be an author Servant who's taken on the form of a character from one of his own works. I'm sure there are examples of that.”

“There are indeed. Many authors' works leave a far greater impression on the world to come than the men themselves. Many more choose such forms of their own accord. However, if you would permit me my personal opinion - ”

She left a beat, pushing up her glasses.

“ - I would conjecture that Saint-Exupéry would project himself not onto the Little Prince, but onto the Pilot who narrates the story. It was, after all, his own experience of crash-landing in the Sahara desert that formed the basis for the book.”

“Ah...yes, I...I suppose...”

She was right. Given the content of the book, it was an entirely legitimate criticism. She was saying that this child was likely something fundamentally different to just some writer Servant with perverse tendencies and a strong capacity for empathy.

While I hadn't been watching, the subject of out conversation had begun sipping on a honey-lemon drink. He must have traded his orange juice with Karin. This was evidently more to his tastes; he was smiling broadly.

“I have conferred with the Caren units in the other districts, but he does not appear to match any Servant under our jurisdiction. I cannot even venture more than vague hypotheses as to his class.” It seemed that as an AI, she was capable of communicating with her other units in the background even as she talked with me.

So he wasn't a lost Servant who had wandered in from some other district. At the very least, we now knew that there was no record of Saint-Exupéry being registered as a Servant anywhere in Mosaic City.

“Please do not be disheartened, Erice. I do not mean to dismiss your opinion; the possibility remains. And just by having secured him, you have already done a wonderful job.”

“I suppose...”

“He seems to be stable, aside from his memories, so I will fit him with a classification tag. For as long as he continues to reside in this town, I will refer to him as “The Little Prince (TBD)””.

“...'Brackets...TBD'...?”

“Guess so. Would be a pain in the ass if he didn't have a name, right? Brackets, TBD.” Karin cheerily patted the Little Prince (TBD) on the head.

“Um...about last night's incident...” I straightened my back, and tried to change the topic to my report of the previous night's events – and suddenly my master stood up from her seat, looking at me ruefully.

“I owe you an apology, Erice. A matter has sprung up that requires my urgent attention. Would you mind submitting your report as a brief text document?”

“Eh...? I mean...of course.”

I felt relieved, but at the same time more concerned. Whatever this urgent matter was, this was the first I'd heard of it, and my master was not known for changing her schedule lightly.

“But what do you think I should do about him?”

“That was my next point. I am sorry to ask this of you, but would you mind taking charge of him for the time being? If his identity becomes clear during that time, all the better.”

“Eh-?”

My master's eyes narrowed into a smile as my mouth clamped shut. The already-unusual situation had just taken a turn for the stranger.

“No way, no way, no way. Isn't that going to be a problem? With my job and everything?”

“No other individual in Akihabara is so equipped to tackle as exceptional a case. To call you a specialist in the handling of Servants would not be an exaggeration.”

It would. It absolutely would. My specialisation was not the handling of Servants - it was murder. Restraining the most villainous of Servants, and keeping them under strict surveillance, I could do. But I was not nearly so capable of attending to the needs of a young boy, barely any different from an ordinary human child, who didn't even know his own name.

Karin chipped in. “Can't he just bunk at my place? What's an extra brother or two, anyway?”

“Quite a lot, I think...”

Karin's suggestion was extraordinarily irresponsible, but my master only inclined her head. “My thanks for your hospitality Karin, but I am afraid that I cannot yet say what threat this child poses. I cannot permit him to reside with ordinary citizens.”

“I'm tellin' you, it's cool. I've got Momi, don't I? It'll be fine!”

Karin dug in deeper, and my master responded with another polite but firm refusal. In all honesty, it would have been a weight off my mind – although I wouldn't say that the notion of Karin taking responsibility for a portion of my job didn't grate on me a little.

Just as I was becoming aware of my own troublesome misgivings, a newcomer hurriedly approached the recreation space where we were conversing.

“Caren Fujimura? If you wouldn't mind, there's something I'd like to ask you.”

It was her – the girl in the hat from the front row. She had run out of the classroom just before the lecture had ended, conversing with someone over her smartphone. She must have returned now that her conversation had ended.

“It's nice to see you, Haruko. Do you have a question for me about the lecture?”

“That's right. I wanted to ask about the role of astrology during the Age of Discovery-” A sudden squall blew through the terrace, and she clutched at her hat, pulling it down tightly over her ears. I saw my chance and hurriedly forced my way into the conversation – although really, she had been the one who had interrupted us.

“H-hang on a moment. I was already talking with Ms. Fujimura...”

She glared at me in silence. Her brilliant peppermint-green eyes glinted from behind a parting in her fringe. “It was only thanks to the repeated interruptions from you and your Servant that I didn't have the opportunity to ask these questions during the lecture.”

“Well, I'm...I'm sorry about that. But, well, you see, he's not exactly my Servant...”

“Is that so? My apologies. But as his guardian, you should be more conscious of your responsibility to ensure he does not cause trouble for others in public spaces.”

Her motions – her gait, and even the way she was holding down her hat - were clipped and precise. She was barely taller than the innocent child drinking juice by my side, but she somehow seemed many years his elder. Beneath the white gown I had seen so often in lectures, she was wearing a slightly old-fashioned bright yellow blouse.

I'm positive...I've seen those clothes before somewhere... Now where was it?

“Um...you mentioned astrology, didn't you? If you're curious about the involvement of magecraft in human history, why don't you go to the library? You'd be able to research it as much as you wanted.”

I'd intended it as a sincere and respectful recommendation...but instead she expelled a short, sharp sigh, and her attitude became palpably frostier. This was getting awkward.

“You're telling me to go to the library? That would be far less efficient than asking an administrative AI – I mean, Ms. Fujimura directly. I would have thought that someone who went to the trouble of attending lectures would be cognizant of the vast difference in value between the vague knowledge one can acquire through reference materials, and the clear and consistent explanations that can be gained through conversations with an expert in the field. And if you do not understand that, then I must ask why you insist on wasting others' time with your indolence.”

“W-what do you mean, 'indolence'...?”

“Well damn. Kid's got a mouth on her...”

Things were going from bad to worse - now Karin had taken an interest. If I left this alone, it could easily easily escalate beyond my control and into an all-out brawl. She was free to pick whichever fights she wanted, but I wanted to avoid any risk of worsening my relationships with other students and ending up barred from attending.

“Come on, Karin. Cut it out. I'm not mad or anything.”

“...Hm? Wait a second, I'm sure...” Karin looked as though she'd just noticed something. The girl hurriedly pulled her hat back down over her head. My master had called this girl Haruko, hadn't she?

“I too have important matters to attend to. I really do have to hurry.”

“I...I see. Sorry about all this.” She had come all the way to this terrace searching for my master, and I wanted to show some recognition of her dedication. In that sense, we were kindred spirits. “If I'm not mistaken, you don't come to lectures very often, do you? If you wouldn't mind, I could let you borrow my old notes...”

“If you're going to mock me so, I hope you're prepared for the consequences.”

“Eh? Did...did I say something wrong?” How short was this girl's fuse? I desperately looked to Karin for help, but she only shook her head as though to say there was nothing she could do. And then, in that moment -

“I think that's quite enough, Erice.”

Another newcomer – a woman, who had not been in the classroom – strolled towards us, calling out to me with uncomfortable familiarity. Her footsteps clacked on the floor as she approached.

“Welcome. Your arrival is earlier than I had expected.” Ms. Fujimura, who had been maintaining a position of neutrality in our argument, greeted her in an oddly forced tone of voice.

“It was your message that hurried me here, Caren. You said that I might have the opportunity to see something interesting.” She was dressed in a vintage black sailor uniform, and her long silver hair was left to hang freely. I knew this woman – this woman who looked so out-of-place in Akihabara, who clad herself in an elegant shroud of bygone days.

“Chitose... What...what are you doing here...?”

Now it made sense. Caren's urgent matter must have been her.

The girl in the hat must have caught my murmured whisper. “Chitose...? What kind of civilian could call directly on a municipal administration AI without an appointment...?”

I heard the rushing sound of an intake of breath, and she turned sharply back around to the woman once more. Now that they were standing face-to-face, her small frame meant that she had to crane her neck to look her in the eyes.

“You aren't...Manazuru Chitose, are you...? The Stigmata?”

“...I am indeed. It's been a while since I last heard that name.”

The girl let out a whimper. “How could this happen...”

Her reaction was so violent, I thought for a moment that they might have been about to duel it out on the spot. In stark contrast to her brief reverie, now she was tripping over herself to be polite. She scrambled backwards three paces, and lowered her head woodenly. Her ears were glowing bright red, and from the glimpses I could catch through her bangs her cheeks were similarly flushed.

One of her fingers brushed against the side of her hat. With a swish, it folded in on itself and collapsed into a hairband. With her face now exposed, she bowed her head once more.

“I apologise wholeheartedly for my insolence, Stigmata.”

Chitose only shook her head quietly. “You had business with Caren, did you not? I do not mind waiting a while.”

“I-it was nothing! Certainly, nothing of consequence next to your duties.” She was so stiff and anxious now, her haughty demeanour not two minutes ago seemed like a distant memory. It was actually a little adorable -  although in general, I found people's tendency to become so ill at ease in Chitose's presence rather hard to deal with.

For her part, Chitose might have been responding amiably, but that should not have been mistaken for warmth or compassion. Her gaze fell upon the boy seated at our table, and for an instant, her eyes were those of a serpent that had found its prey.

“Yes, that's the boy”, she said, as though talking to herself. “I can't even tell which class his Saint Graph is. I suppose the world is full of surprises.”

I confess - my interest was aroused, and I couldn't suppress a sadistic curiosity. What reaction would her gaze stir in him? Would he show awe? Animosity? Would he ignore her completely, as though erasing his own existence?

But instead – he smiled. A beaming smile, like a shining star. A clear window straight to his heart.

Silence reigned for a second, and then Chitose smiled back at him thinly. Next to me, I felt the girl with the hat flinch. And then, her expression relaxing into a slightly mischievous smile, she approached me, and laid a pale white fingertip on my shoulder.

“I charge you with monitoring this child, Erice.”

“Understood”, I muttered. She gave a small shrug at my disgruntled response.

It looked like our conversation was over. Once Chitose had made a clear decision, my master would abide by it. I stood up from my seat, bowed to my master, and accompanied the boy from the terrace as I'd been instructed.

“Who the hell was that?”, Karin asked breezily, once we were in the corridor. “Gave me the creeps.” Just this once, I was grateful for her laid-back demeanour.

“And what's up with you, anyway? Didn't you have something to ask Caren about? You sure you're ok just leaving like this?”

“It doesn't matter. Let's just go.”

I put the building behind me, as though I were running away from something.

[amoralto]

Q: Paul McCartney: An Innocent Man? (October, 1986)

(Note: I’ve posted so many quotes and audio clips from this interview in the past (#interviewer: chris salewicz), I may as well post the entire printed interview as well. Still remains one of my very favourite Paul interviews - candid, emotionally fraught, brimming with preoccupations, and all the more revealing for it.

-

Paul McCartney curls up on the couch and relives the Beatles’ story for the first time since the death of John Lennon. “He was one great guy, but part of his greatness was that he wasn’t a saint.”

by Chris Salewicz

Paul McCartney is 44. He was 20 when his first composition appeared on record. Today he’s just returned from remixing a second single from his new LP Press To Play, his 27th solo or group studio album in 24 years.

He’s sitting on a sofa on the second floor of the building in Central London from which he directs his activities. Outside, on this sunny early afternoon, lie the neatly trimmed lawns of Soho Square; inside a forest of deco mahogany woodwork, a De Kooning on the wall and a chrome and neon-garlanded Wurlitzer jukebox of quite archetypal proportions and splendour. He’s wearing fawn moccasins, yellow socks, and a blue and white striped shirt and trousers and, despite the omnipresent grey hair, he looks in immensely good shape for someone who was still in the studio at three in the morning.

Part of McCartney’s agility as a communicator has been the paradoxical mastery of revealing nothing whatsoever of himself to journalists. This was particularly notable during the interviews he gave for Give My Regards To Broad Street, an almost unprecedented barrage of publicity in which it seemed that the more people he spoke to, the less he said. This was perhaps connected with a comprehension of the transparent unsubstantiality of the work. “Broad Street?” he says now. “You don’t stop things just because they’re not good; if you’ve done a bit of work, you put it out. I mean, if Picasso’s painted a thing…”

Today, however, on this Friday afternoon, Paul McCartney is immensely forthcoming. Possibly this is a reflection of the confidence he feels in his new LP, a work that stands almost on a par with Band On The Run, his finest solo record and one which, in many ways, seems to have a direct conduit to post-Sgt. Pepper Beatles albums.

The interview has a relaxed, conversational tone with no sense of formally structured questions and answers. In the cold light of print, his replies can occasionally take on a tone that seems almost petty in its self-justification, but such an emphasis is completely absent when he’s delivering these words to you in person.

The principle strength of the new LP is the quality of the songs, six of which McCartney co-wrote with Eric Stewart, the former 10cc singer and writer of such classics as ‘I’m Not In Love’, a song that is almost a parody of a McCartney love ballad.

The numbers were written, he says, in the manner in which he would work with John Lennon, sitting side-by-side, watching each other search for appropriate chords.

You’ve been in the studio all night re-mixing tracks from the new album for single release. How do you feel about the new LP?

I like it. I have a lot of trouble saying, ‘I think it’s great.’ I wish I was just a fan and I could genuinely like it without seeming wildly immodest. I can’t be objective yet. It’s going to take me a couple of months. I can listen to McCartney, I can just listen to that. I like that one; it’s growing on me. It’s a touchy subject. You’ve done a thing and there it is, it’s your presentation. You mean to get every bit of it right.

So how do you react to criticism?

When I see bad reviews, it’ll hurt me. I am giving myself a bit easier time in life these days. I’ve gone through so much criticism, and not just from critics. From people like John, over so many things, that like a fool I just stood there and said, ‘Yeah, you must be right.’ All those things I was said to be the cause of, I just accepted that I was to blame. I’m beginning to see it a bit differently now. I’m beginning to see a lot of what they say is their problem, not mine.

John was going through a lot of pain when he said a lot of that stuff, and he felt that we were being vindictive towards him and Yoko. In fact I think we were quite good, looking back on it; many people would’ve just downed tools in a situation like that, would’ve just said: ‘Look man, she’s not sitting on our amps while we’re making a film.’ That wouldn’t be unheard of. Most people just say, ‘We’re not having this person here, don’t care how much you love her.’

But we were actually quite supportive. Not supportive enough, you know; it would have been nice to have been really supportive because then we could look back and say, Weren’t we really terrific? But looking back on it, I think we were OK. We were never really that mean to them, but I think a lot of the time John suspected meanness where it wasn’t really there.

He was presumably fairly paranoid.

I think so. He warned me off Yoko once: ‘Look, this is my chick!’ Just because he knew my reputation. We knew each other rather well. I just said, ‘Yeah, no problem.’ But I did feel he ought to have known I wouldn’t. That was John; just a jealous guy. He was a paranoid guy. And he was into drugs … heavy. He was into heroin, the extent of which I hadn’t realised, till just now.

It’s all starting to click a bit in my brain. I just figured, Oh, there’s John, my buddy, and he’s turning on me. He once said to me, ‘Oh, they’re all on the McCartney bandwagon.’ Yet things like that were hurting him, and looking back on it now I just think that it’s a bit sad really.

I saw that thing in The Observer the other week, about the manuscript of the Apple Beatles biography and the vitriolic comments John made in the margins.

I think that shows the sort of pain he was going through. Look, he was a great guy, great sense of humour and I’d do it all again. I’d go through it all again, and have him slagging me off again just because he was so great; those are all the down moments, there was much more pleasure than has really come out. I had a wonderful time, with one of the world’s most talented people. We had all that craziness, but if someone took one of your wedding photos and put ‘funeral’ on it, as he did on that manuscript, you’d tend to feel a bit sorry for the guy. I’ll tell you what, if I’d ever done that to him, he would’ve just hit the roof. But I just sat through it all like mild-mannered Clark Kent.

This was hurting you, presumably.

Not half.

When did you actually get a perspective on it?

I still haven’t. It’s still inside me. John was lucky. He got all his hurt out. I’m a different sort of a personality. There’s still a lot inside me that’s trying to work it out. And that’s why it’s good to see that wedding-funeral bit, because I started to think, ‘Wait a minute, this is someone who’s going over the top. This is paranoia manifesting itself.’ And so my feeling is just like it was at the time, which is like, He’s my buddy, I don’t really want to do anything to hurt him, or his memory, or anything. I don’t want to hurt Yoko. But, at the same time, it doesn’t mean that I understand what went down.

I went at Yoko’s request to New York recently. She said she wanted to see me, I said I was going through New York and so I stopped off and rang her, and she said she couldn’t see me that day. I was 400 yards away from her. I said, ‘Well, I’ll pop over any time today; five minutes, ten minutes, whenever you can squeeze me in.’ She said. ‘It’s going to be very difficult.’ I said, ‘Well, OK, I understand; what is the reason, by the way?’ She said, ‘I was up all night with Sean.’ I said, ‘Well, I understand that. I’ve got four kids, you know. But you’re bound to have a minute today, sometime.’

She asked me to come. I’d flown in specially to see her, and she wouldn’t even see me. So I felt a little humiliated, but I said, ‘OK, 9.30 tomorrow morning, let’s make an appointment.’ She rang up at about 9.00 and said, ‘Could you make it tomorrow morning?’

So that’s the kind of thing. I’m beginning to think it wasn’t all my fault. I’m beginning to let myself off a lot of the guilt. I always felt guilty, but looking back on it I can say OK, let’s try and outline some things. John was hurt; what was he hurt by? What is the single biggest thing that we can find in all our research that hurt John? And the biggest thing that I can find is that I told the world that The Beatles were finished. I don’t think that’s so hurtful.

I’ll tell you what was unfortunate was the method of announcing it all. I said to the guy at the office. Peter Brown, of book fame, I’ve got an album coming out called McCartney. And I don’t really want to see too much press. Can you do me some question-and-answer things?

So he sent all those questions over and I answered them all. We had them printed up and put in the press copies of the album. It wasn’t a number. I see it now and shudder. At the time it was me trying to answer some questions that were being asked and I decided not to fudge those questions.

We didn’t accept Yoko totally, but how many groups do you know who would? It’s a joke, like Spinal Tap. You know, I loved John, I was his best mate for a long time. Then the group started to break up. It was very sad. I got the rap as the guy who broke the group up. It wasn’t actually true.

But legally you had to do that to get out of the contract with Allen Klein, didn’t you?

Yeah, legally I had to. I had to take the other Beatles to court. And I got a lot of guilt off that. But you tell me what you would have done if the entire earnings that you’d made — and it was something like The Beatles’ entire earnings, a big figure, everything we’d ever done up to somewhere round about ‘Hey Jude’ — was about to disappear into someone’s pocket. The guy I’m talking about, Allen Klein, had £5 million the first year he managed The Beatles. So I smelled a rat and thought, £5 million in one year, how long’s it going to take him to get rid of it all?

So I started to resist, and I was given a lot of pressure. The others said, ‘Oh, you’re always stalling’ when I kept refusing to sign Klein’s contract.

But the others suspected you of looking after number one by wanting to bring in your wife’s family as managers.

Obviously everyone worried that because it was my father-in-law, I’d be the one he’d look after. Quite naturally, they said, ‘No, we can’t have him.’ So in the end it turned out to be Klein. And I said, ‘Well, I want out of this. I want to sue this guy Klein.’

They said, ‘You can’t, because he’s not party to any of the agreements.’ So it became clear that I had to sue The Beatles. So obviously I became the baddie. I did take The Beatles to the High Court, which was a highly traumatic period for me, living to front that one out. Imagine, seriously, having to front that one out.

How did you feel through all that?

Crazy, just insane. So insecure. Half the reason I grew the beard.

People often put hair on their faces to hide.

It’s often a cover-up. And I had this big beard and I went to the High Court and actually managed to save the situation. But my whole life was on the line at that point. I felt this was the fire, this was the furnace. It had finally arrived. And we used to get shakes in our voices in court. We used to get the Nixon shakes, something we’d never ever had before. So we went through a lot of those problems. But the nice thing was afterwards each one of them in turn very, very quietly and very briefly said, ‘Oh, thanks for that.’ That was about all I ever heard about it.

But again, John turned it round. He said, ‘But you’re always right, aren’t you?’ See, there was always this thing. I mean, it seemed crazy for me because I thought the idea was to try and get it right, you know. It was quite surprising to find that if you did get it right, people could then turn that one around and say: ‘But you’re always right aren’t you?’ It’s like moving the goal posts.

I mean, it occurred quite a few times because I’m pretty ruthless, ambitious, all that stuff. No more than anyone trying to break into showbiz, but I can be pretty forceful. If we’ve gotta make a record, I’ll actually sit down and write songs. This could be interpreted as being overpowering and forceful.

I’d heard that you were the driving force of The Beatles, but that John would be more interested in doing anything but what The Beatles were supposed to be doing.

Yeah, I remember doing Let It Be and we sat around the table in Apple and I came up with this idea that we should get it on film. I remember John said, ‘Why? What for?’ I explained a bit more. He said, ‘I get it. You want a job!’ Yeah, that’s it! But it seemed strange to me that he didn’t. He seemed quite happy languishing out in St George’s Hill in Weybridge.

I always wanted to make the group great, and even greater. When we made the Let It Be album, and it was a bit crummy, I insisted that we made Abbey Road because I knew what we were capable of. I didn’t think that we’d pulled it off on Let It Be and then with the Phil Spector remix, we kinda walked away from that LP. In fact, the best version of it was before anyone got hold of it: the Glyn Johns early mixes were great but they were very spartan; it would be one of the hippest records going if they brought it out. Before it had all its raw edges off it, that was one of the best Beatles albums because it was a bit avant-garde. I loved it.

So then it was Abbey Road we were doing and I got some grief on that because it took three days to do ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’. You know how long Trevor Horn takes to do a mix for Frankie Goes to Hollywood? It takes two days to switch on the Fairlight! I had a group in the other day, spent two days trying to find the ON switch! That’s what we’re into these days, you know.

I’m sure I did piss people off at the time, much as I tried not to. It just seemed to me when we had a session booked it was a cool idea to turn up. Like Sgt. Pepper: George turned up for his number and a couple of other sessions but not for very much else.

George was supposed to have resented you for always getting on his back.

He did resent it. Two examples; one on Abbey Road. I was beginning to get too producery for everyone. George Martin was the actual producer and I was beginning to be too definite, and George and Ringo turned around and said, ‘Look, piss off, we’re grown-ups and we can do it without you fine.’ People like me who don’t realise when they’re being very overbearing, it comes as a great surprise to be told.

So I completely clammed up and backed off: right, ‘OK, they’re right, I’m a turd.’ So a day or so went by and the session started to flag a bit and so eventually Ringo turned round to me and said, ‘Come on… produce’, and so it was like you couldn’t have it both ways. You either had to have me doing what I did, which, let’s face it, I hadn’t done too bad, or I was going to back off and become paranoid myself, which was what happened.

A lot of Wings was to do with that; I’d been told that I was so overbearing. If the guitarists in Wings wanted to play a solo a certain way, I wouldn’t dare tell them that it wasn’t good.

The other example that really pissed George off was when we were making ‘Hey Jude’. To me it had to have a sparse opening and it was going to build. So I started off ‘Hey Jude’ (sings) and George went ‘durnurnawnaww’ (makes guitar noise), and then ‘Don’t make it bad’, and he’d go ‘Derdlederlederdle’ and he was answering every line through the whole song and I just said, ‘No, man, I really don’t want that, it’s my song.’ The rule was whoever’s song it was to say how we did the arrangement for them.

That pissed him off, and I’m sure it pissed Ringo off when he couldn’t quite get the drums to ‘Back In The U.S.S.R.’, and I sat in. I remember sitting for hours thinking, ‘Should I say this thing?’ In the end it always came down to, ‘You should have said something,’ so it’s very hard to balance that. In the end I have to say that sometimes I was overbearing and sometimes they liked it.

Do you have much to do with them now?

I’m just starting to get back with them. It’s all business troubles. If we don’t talk about Apple then we get on like a house on fire. So I’ve just started to see them again. I had a great day the other day when George came down to visit me and for the first time in billions of years we had a really nice time. George was my original mate in The Beatles.

More than John?

He lived near me in Upton Green and I lived in Ardwick Road, and it was like half a mile away, so we took the same bus to the same school — the 500, which was the express — and then we got guitars at about the same time. We went through the Bert Weedon books and learned D and A together and we were quite big buddies then, so that was something I’d missed for all these years. We’d got all professional and Beatles and everything, and you lose that obviously, and he just came down the other day and we didn’t talk about Apple and we didn’t touch an instrument. It was just back as mates, like on the bus. He’s very into trees and planting and horticulture, as I am more now, and so we talked about planting trees. It was great to actually relate as two people and try and get all that crap out the window.

But that seems to be part of the process; he seems to be emerging more now anyway.

We’re all kind of coming to. We all brushed off this whole Beatles episode and sort of said, Well, it’s no big deal. Obviously it’s a big deal… it was a huge deal… if there ever was a big deal, that was it! So I don’t think half of us know what happened to us, really. I can never tell you what year anything was; literally they all go into a haze for me, the years and stuff. I keep seeing pictures of myself shaking hands with Mitzi Gaynor and I think, I didn’t know I met her. It’s that vague. And yet I look as straight as a die in there.

Were you on speed or something?

I don’t think so. I think it was just that life was speeding; you just met Mitzi Gaynor for five minutes and then you’d go and meet Jerry Lewis’s kids. It becomes very difficult after a while to know if you met 50 of them. I keep seeing weird photos of me with people that I didn’t even know I’d met. It’s quite embarrassing. Bowie’s got that problem too; he’s got huge periods of his life where he just does not know what happened.

When the money started to come in, were you aware of that or were you just living your life and you’d hear suddenly you were worth so much?

We used to ask them, ‘Am I a millionaire yet?’ and they used to say cryptic things like ‘On paper you are’ and we’d say, ‘Well, what does that mean? Am I or aren’t I? Are there more than a million of those green things in my bank yet?’ and they’d say, ‘Well, it’s not actually in a bank… we think you are.’ It was actually very difficult to get anything out of these people and the accountants never made you feel successful.

I remember we had the whole top five in America and I decided I wanted to buy a country house. I wasn’t asking for the world. In those days it would have cost about £30,000, top whack, and so I went to the accountants and they said, ‘You’ll have to get a mortgage’ and I said, ‘What do you mean, a mortgage? Aren’t we doing well yet? We’ve got the whole top five in the biggest market in the world! There’s gotta be some money coming in off that!’

They always try and keep you down. So you didn’t actually get much of a feeling of being very rich. The first time I actually saw cheques was when I left Apple, and it wasn’t me that saw them, it was Linda, because we’d co-written a few of our early things.

There are lots of stories about you and money. Miles, once the editor of International Times, who was a friend of yours in the mid-‘60s, told me about finding your MBE and a bunch of £20 notes stuffed into a sock drawer in your bedroom at the Asher house.

Yeah, I’ve heard that story too. I never remember actually having a wad of money like that. Still, it was nice of him not to nick it anyway, wasn’t it? I did know Miles very well. He was my mate. We had many a wondrous stoned evening in his place listening to all sorts of stuff.

That was another of the interesting things. I think that I’ve got a certain personality and if I give charity I don’t like to shout about it. If I get into avant-garde stuff, I don’t particularly shout about that either. I just get on with it. So way before John met Yoko and got avant-garde, I was like the avant-garde London bachelor with Miles in my pad in St. John’s Wood. I was making 8mm movies and showing them to Antonioni. I had all sorts of theories of music — we’d put on a Ravi Shankar record to our home movies and it’d synchronise and John used to come from Weybridge, kind of looking slightly goofy and saying ‘Wow! This is great! We should do more of this!’

I used to sit in a basement in Montagu Square with William Burroughs and a couple of gay guys he knew from Morocco and that Marianne Faithfull-John Dunbar crowd doing little tapes, crazy stuff with guitar and cello. But it didn’t occur to me in the next NME interview I did to rave about William Burroughs. Maybe it would have been good for me to do that.

It’s like Yoko met me before she met John. She turned up for a charity thing, she wanted manuscripts, any spare lyric sheets you had around. Ours tended to be on the backs of envelopes and to tell you the truth I didn’t want to give her any. They were very precious to me and the cause didn’t seem so great. So I said, ‘Look, my mate might be interested,’ and I gave her John’s address, and I think that’s how they first hooked up, and then she had her exhibition and stuff and then their side of the story started to happen.

I feel as though I have to justify living, you know, which is a bit of a piss-off. I don’t really want to have to sit around and justify myself; it’s a bit humiliating. But there are lots of things that haven’t come out. For instance, when they bust up their marriage, she came through London. He was in LA doing Pussy Cats with Nilsson and having a generally quite crazy time of it all, fighting with photographers and haranguing the Smothers Brothers, all because he genuinely loved Yoko and they had a very, very deep, strong relationship, but they were into all sorts of crazy stuff, stuff I don’t know the half of. A lot of people don’t know the half of that. Hints of it keep coming out in books but you never know if you can believe them.

You mean occultism?

All sorts. I certainly did get a postcard from Yoko saying ‘Go round the world in a South-Easterly direction. It’d be good for you. You’re allowed to stop at four places.’ George Martin got one of those and he sort of said, ‘Would it be alright if I go to Montserrat?’, and she said, ‘No.’ Actually, John did the voyage. John went in a South-Easterly direction around the world, but we all kind of went, ‘Sure, sure, we’ll go round the South-East.’ There are so many memories that come flooding in and it’s like a psycho session, the minute I get on this stuff. I’m on a couch and I’m just trying to purge it all.

Linda and me came over for dinner once and John said, ‘You fancy getting the trepanning tiling done?’ I said, ‘Well, what is it?’ and he said, ‘Well, you kind of have a hole bored in your skull and it relieves the pressure.’ We’re sitting at dinner and this is seriously being offered! Now this wasn’t a joke, this was like, ‘Let’s go next week, we know a guy who can do it and maybe we could all go together.’ So I said. ‘Look, you go and have it done, and if it works, great. Tell us all about it and we’ll all have it.’

But I’m afraid I’ve always been a little bit cynical about stuff like that — thank God! — because I think that there’s so much crap that you’ve got to be careful of. But John was more open to things like that.

Anyway, I was telling you about the marriage break-up thing. Yoko came through London and visited us, which was very nice. Linda and I were just married and living in this big old house in St John’s Wood. She came by and we started talking, and obviously the important subject for us is: ‘What’s happened? You’ve broken up then? I mean, you’re here and he’s there.’

She was very nice and confided in us but she was being very strong about it. She said, ‘No, he’s got to work his way back.’ I said, ‘Well look, do you still love him?’, and she said, ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘Well, would you think it was an intrusion if I said to him, “Look, man, she loves you and there’s a way to get back”— sounds like a Beatles’ song — and I said ‘Would that be OK?’

She said she didn’t mind and we went out to visit him in L.A. in that house where all the crazy things went on and I took him into the back room and said, ‘This girl of yours, she really still loves you. Do you love her?’ And he said he did but he didn’t know what to do.

So I said, ‘You’re going to have to work your little ass off, man. You have to get back to New York, you have to take a separate flat, you have to send her roses every fucking day, you have to work at it like a bitch! Then you just might get her back.’ And he did. I mean, if you hear it from John’s point of view, it’ll just be that he spoke to Yoko on the phone and she said to him, ‘Come back.’

I always found it interesting that he got married a month after you.

I think we spurred each other into marriage. They were very strong together which left me out of the picture, so then I got together with Linda and we got our own kind of strength. I think again that they were a little bit peeved that we got married first.

Was it the kind of thing where there are two blokes who are good mates and one of them finds a girl and then the friendship breaks up?

‘Wedding Bells’ is what it was. ‘Wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine.’ We used to sing that song, Gene Vincent did it. It was like an army song and for us the Beatles became the army. We always knew that one day ‘Wedding Bells’ would come true, and that was when it did.

Trouble is, in trying to set the record straight I don’t want to blame John. I did this thing recently with Hunter Davies and they pulled out the one line, ‘John could be a manoeuvring swine.’ Well, I still stick to that, but I’d better not say it to The Sun because I’m just going to get hauled over the coals again.

I’ll tell you exactly why I said that. We had a business meeting to break up The Beatles, one of the famous ones that we’d been having — we’re still having them 17 years later, actually. We all flew in to New York specially. George came off his disastrous tour, Ring of flew in and we were at the Plaza for the big final settlement meeting. John was half a mile away at the Dakota and he sent a balloon over with a note that said ‘Listen to this balloon.’ I mean, you’ve got to be pretty cool to handle that kind of stuff.

George blew his cool and rang him up: ’You fucking maniac!! You take your fucking dark glasses off and come and look at us, man!!’ and gave him a whole load of that shit. Around the same time at another meeting we had it all settled, and John asked for an extra million pounds at the last minute. So of course that meeting blew up in disarray. Later, when we got a bit friendlier — and from time to time there would be these little stepping-stones of friendship in the Apple sea — I asked him why he’d actually wanted that million and he said, I just wanted cards to play with. It’s absolutely standard business practice. He wanted a couple of jacks to up your pair of nines. He was one great guy, but part of his greatness was that he wasn’t a saint.

You got an awful lot of shit for saying “It’s a drag” after he’d been killed.

Yea. I think why some politicians are so successful is that they have a little bleeper box in their heads and before they say something they run things through and they can see it as a headline. If it doesn’t look good they edit it. I have that sometimes, but in moments like that all my bleepers go out the window. I just came out of the place and somebody just stuck the proverbial microphone in the window of the car, which I’m mad enough to have open because, you see, I’m quite outgoing and I was telling the fans ‘Thank you, it’s alright.’ You know. Fab Macca, thumbs aloft, wacky… to me that’s just being nice… that’s just ordinary. I’m not going to carry any can for that kind of shit, for me that was OK… Sticking my thumb up isn’t some armour against the fans, it’s just a perfectly straightforward way of being friendly with people.

But, anyway, I said, ‘It’s a dra-a-ag.’ If I could’ve I might’ve just lengthened that word ‘drag’ for about a thousand years, to get the full meaning. Hunter Davies was on television that night, giving a very reasoned account of John, and all the puppets sprang right up there. I thought it was well tasteless. Jesus Christ, ready with the answers, aren’t we? Aren’t we just ready with a summary? Mind you, Hunter admitted to us years ago that he already had our obituaries written. They’re on file at The Times and they just update them, which is chilling to learn.

The question is, which is the more sensitive: my thing or his thing? He was the one I rang up about ‘manoeuvring swine’ too, so it shows what a buddy he is, he immediately put it in print.

That incident reminded me of John saying ‘We’re bigger than Jesus,’ which was a Maureen Cleave article for the Evening Standard. John and Maureen were good friends and in context it was actually John saying to the church, ‘Hey, wake up! We’re bigger than you.’

But you take it out of context, you send it to Selma, Alabama, you put it on the front page and you’ve got little 11-year-olds thumping on your coach window saying, ‘Blasphemer! Devil Worshipper!’ and I’ll never forget the sight of a little blond kid trying to get to us, and he would have done it, if he’d have got to us. I mean, at 11, what does this kid know of life and religion or anything? He’d just been whipped up.

It’s like Phillip Norman’s book Shout. It’s shameful the way it says that George spent the whole of his career holding a plectrum waiting for a solo. To dismiss George like that is just stupid, nothing less. George was a major influence musically. Trouble is with all these guys, when they come to interview you they come with a clipboard of facts that they’ve got from the files. That’s how Willie Russell wrote his play, John, Paul, George, Ringo… and Bert. That’s how I’ve become known as the one who broke up the Beatles.

The only thing I’m thankful for is that now the truth is starting to come out, and when I see that wedding changed to funeral, I start to realise that it was John’s problem, not mine.

What was his problem, do you think?

Heroin, a slight problem.

When did you know he was doing heroin?

When he was living in Montagu Square with Yoko after he’d split up with Cynthia. He never actually told us, no one ever actually saw him take it, but we heard. I was very lucky to miss that whole scene. I was the first one on coke in the group, which horrified the whole group, and I just thought, No sweat. The minute I stopped, the whole record industry got into it and has never stopped since.

I knew the time was up when I saw Jim Webb — Up Up And Away! — offering me a toot. I thought, ‘Hello, this is getting way too popular.’

When was this that you were doing it?

In LA, it was Sgt. Pepper time, it was my circle of friends: the William Burroughs, the Robert Frasers, the Rolling Stones crowd, and we’d use it to wake up after the pot. But that was quite shortlived and I hated it. I soon got the message that it was a big downer.

There’s a story that sums up all that drugs thing. When I went out to LA at the time of that Pussy Cats album I was offered angel dust. I said, ‘What is it?’ and they said, ‘It’s an elephant tranquillizer,’ and I said to the guy, ‘Is it fun?’ He thought for a moment and said, ‘No it’s not fun.’ So I said, ‘OK, I won’t have any then.’ That sums it up, you know. You had anything, man, even if it wasn’t fun! You sort of had to do it — peer pressure.

I was given a lot of stick for being the last one to take acid. I wish I’d held out now in a way, Although it was the times. I don’t really regret anything actually. I remember John going on The Old Grey Whistle Test and saying, ‘Paul only took it four times! We all took it twenty times!!’ It was as if you’d scored points…

Real twenty pints a night stuff, isn’t it?

It really is!! That’s it, exactly! Very northern. It’s the same thing. If you get it right with one crowd; of people, it’s wrong with another crowd, so you can’t win, basically. But it was great times and I really don’t regret it. I love a lot of what we did; we had screwed-up moments too, but who doesn’t?

Like Geldof — there’s this guy who does great stuff, but that doesn’t mean that he’s a saint. In fact, it’s often the opposite with these people; it just means that they’ve got Go Power.

I love the story where they finished the USA For Africa record and Geldof is buzzing and Michael Jackson and his family were having a light meal at about three in the morning. They’re all devout Jehovah’s Witnesses and they were all sitting there and Bob walks in and says, ‘You lot fucking disgust me!!’ The jaws just drop.

He didn’t make himself too wildly popular. I think that’s why he got a bit elbowed in the States. They never mention him. It’s the American guy they always mention. I don’t even know what his name is. Ken something. They all thank him. They never say, ‘And by the way, he got the idea off this mad Irish bog bandit.’

How did you feel at Live Aid? The first time you’d been on stage for ages and it all went wrong.

When the mic went? I felt very strange. It was very loosely organised and I turned up not knowing quite what was expected of me, other than that I had to do ‘Let It Be’. So I sat down at the piano, looked around for a cue to go, and there was just one roadie, and I looked at him for a signal. I started and the monitor was off and I thought, No sweat, this is BBC, this is world television, someone’s bound to have a feed, it’s just that my monitor’s off.

Then I wondered if the audience could hear because I knew some of the words of ‘Let It Be’ were kind of relevant to what we were doing. Anyway, I thought, This is OK, they can hear me, they’re singing along. I just had to keep going, so it was very embarrassing. The terrible thing was that in the middle I heard the roadies come through on the monitor, shouting, ’No, this plug doesn’t go here!‘ I thought, Hello, we have problems. The worst moment was watching it on telly later.

The event itself was so great, but it wasn’t for my ego. It was for people who are dying and it raised over £50 million, and so it was like having been at the battle of Agincourt. It’s something you’ll tell your grandchildren about. I know Paul Simon slightly regrets that he didn’t do it. He was asked, but he had other things to do. I very nearly didn’t do it; Bob just badgered me into it.

That’s your mother invoked in ‘Let It Be’, isn’t it?

Yeah, well, I had a lot of bad times in the ‘60s there, and we used to sort of — probably all the drugs — lie in bed and wonder what was going on and feel quite paranoid. I had a dream one night about my mother. She died when I was 14 so I hadn’t really heard from her in quite a while, and it was very good. It gave me some strength. In my darkest hour Mother Mary comes to me. I don’t know whether you’ve got parents that are still living, but if you do… I get dreams with John in, and my Dad. It’s very nice because you meet them again. It’s wondrous, it’s like magic. Of course, you’re not meeting them, you’re meeting yourself, or whatever…

What about ‘Lady Madonna’?

Lady Madonna’s all women. How do they do it? — bless ‘em — it’s that one, you know. Baby at your breast, how do they get the time to feed them? Where do you get the money? How do you do this thing that women do?

Was your mother a very strong force in your life?

Well, I loved her, you know, yeah.

Was it very traumatic when she died?

Yeah, but I’m a bit of a cover-up. There are many people like me in the world who don’t find it easy to have public grief. But that was one of the things that brought John and I very close together. We used to actually talk about it, being 16 or 17. We actually used to know, not in a cynical way, but a way that was accepting the reality of the situation, how people felt when they said, ‘How’s your mother?’ And we’d say, ‘Well, she’s dead.’ We almost had a sort of joke, we’d have to say, ‘It’s alright, don’t worry.’ We’d both lost our mothers. It was never really spoken about much; no-one really spoke about anything real. There was a famous expression: ‘Don’t get real on me, man.’

How did you feel about all the stick Linda got?

I feel sorry for her. She got a lot of stick, more than we admit to.

It presumably affected your relationship in some way?

It made us stronger, really; the thing I’m beginning to understand now about Linda was that we were just two people who liked each other and found a lot in common and fell in love, got married and found that we liked it. To the world, of course, she was the girl that Paul McCartney had married, and she was a divorcee, which didn’t seem right. People preferred Jane Asher. Jane Asher fitted. She was a better Fergie.

Linda wasn’t a very good Fergie for me, and people generally tended to disapprove of me marrying a divorcee and an American. That wasn’t too clever. None of that made a blind bit of difference; I actually just liked her, I still do and that’s all it’s to do with.

I mean, we got married in the craziest clothes when I look back on it. We didn’t even bother to buy her a decent outfit. I can see it all now; I can see why people were amazed that I’d put her in the group. At the time it didn’t seem the least bit unusual. I even had quotes from Jagger saying, ‘Oh, he’s got his old lady up onstage man.’

A lot of people give her stick for playing with one finger, but as a matter of fact they weren’t polyphonic, the Moogs, in those days. You can only play them with one finger; you can play them with five if you like, but only one’s gonna register, so it’s things like that all added to the picture, and by the time she did the ’76 tour with Wings, she was well good at stuff and actually I was quite surprised, I mean, she was holding down the keyboard job with one of the big bands in the world. From knowing nothing! I mean, the balls of the girl!

But along with the public condemnations, there were always millions of people who liked her. Our shows always did OK, and our records occasionally did OK. Occasionally we’d have a whopper burger that’d suddenly make it worthwhile. Then we’d have our big whopper failures, but as long as you measure them against your successes, it’s alright.

How do you feel about the Wings output?

I was never very happy with the whole thing but I’m actually starting to think that it was a bit churlish of me, because I’m meeting a lot of people now who had a completely different perception of the whole thing. I met a nurse recently who was a Wings fan! I mean, forget me, forget The Beatles, she was an actual die-hard Wings fan. I didn’t think they existed.

A lot of the younger people coming up didn’t really know the Beatles history. There are people who don’t know what Sgt. Pepper was. We find it a bit difficult to understand. It’s like not knowing what War And Peace is.So it’s OK. I was never very pleased with the whole thing, but I’m warming to it now. I’m starting to look at it through my own eyes, and saying, Wait a minute. What did we do? Where did we go wrong? Most people would give their right arm for the Wings career, to have hits as big as ‘Mull Of Kintyre’, ‘My Love’, ‘Band On The Run’, ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’.

But it came to an end when you were busted in Japan. How did that happen?

It happened because we got some good grass in America and no-one could face putting it down the toilet. It was an absolutely crazy move. We knew we weren’t going to get any in Japan. Anybody else would have given it to their roadies, but I didn’t want them to take the rap. It was lying on top of the bloody suitcase. I’ll never forget the guy’s face as he pulled it out. He almost put it back. He just did not want the embarrassment. But it’s a hysterical subject and I’d prefer to skirt round it these days, because I don’t want any of the pressures that go with it, so I’m telling everyone, stay clean, be cool.

I’m pretty straight. I know what crazy is.

[banghyung]

happy (f)

word count - 1.5k

warnings - fluff, tsundere!sunwoo

member - Sunwoo of The Boyz

request - “can u do a tsundere sunwoo fluff where the shy reader and him both wont admit they like eachother and in the end they kiss or something idk asdfgkl i love ur work and love cliche anime shit oof”

a/n - ahhhh thank you so much! I thought this would be a good scenario to try a new style, I hope you like it! :D

sunwoo?

yeah, you know sunwoo

everyone knows sunwoo

most know him as that hot guy that walks around school with a resting bitch face

you know him as that hot guy that sulks in the corner of music comp

what you don’t know is that he’s actually the softest bean

he had to bribe his friends with a month’s worth of food so that they wouldn’t blow his cover

“I just wanna be edgy foR ONCE”

“Sunwoo you cry watching romance movies”

“and when you see cute pictures of animals” 

“and-”

“THE WHOLE SCHOOL DOESN’T NEED TO KNOW THAT”

hyunjae and eric still laugh when they see him walk through the halls like he owns the place

sunwoo, ya know the hardass that he is, oftentimes comes home and guSHES over you

“hYUNGs Y/N was wearing the cutest outfit today I walked into class and almost started yelling”

“you mean like you’re yelling now?”

“shut up eric no one asked you”

despite how much you made him melt inside

he always kept up his dark, mysterious persona

and no matter how hot you thought he was

you were always too shy to talk to him

besides he has the whole school drooling after him, why would your attention in particular be anything special

you stopped any feelings from growing for that reason

until

you’re walking home after getting off work late one night when you hear a familiar voice coming from an alley

“come here kitty kitty, i just want to pet you”

out of sheer curiosity, you peeked your head into the alleyway 

and who did you find?

none other than Mr. Edgy himself, Kim Sunwoo

“stop running away from me I just want tO LOVE YOU”

“Sunwoo?”

he whipped his head around, scaring the cat more and causing it to leave various gashes in sunwoo’s exposed arm before running away

“oh my god are you okay??” you ran up to him and held his arm gently in your hands as you looked at the various cuts

sunwoo, speechless, just kinda looked at you like :O

“wow it got you pretty good”

edgywoo finally came back to his senses and pulled his arm out of your grip

“yeah i’m !!! fine!!!”

you’ve never heard a more forced laugh in your entire life

“right,,,,,,,,,well i live close by why don’t you just come with me and I can clean your arm up because it’s bleeding pretty bad”

sunwoo, still staring at you only a little, only noticed the blood dripping down his arm after you said something

cue hardass!sunwoo jumping around in panic 

“OH MY GOD OH MY GOD IM BLEEDING WHAT THE FU-”

only calms down when you put your hands on his shoulders

“come on” 

you grab his hand and start pulling him in the direction of where you live

sunwoo just trailed along, his jaw practically dragging on the ground as he looked down at your hand holding his

he was speechless the entire walk to your apartment

even after you let go of his hand

he tried to pull himself together 

but for some reason his heart was beating really fast and his mouth was dry???

you chalk it up to he’s in shock because he obviously doesn’t know how to handle the sight of blood

so when you reach your door and he still hasn’t said a word, you’re worried he’s about to pass out

you pull him into the apartment and quickly push him into the bathroom

the entire time you’re scolding yourself because you were supposed to clean yesterday after class

but instead you took a nap 

and NOW look

there was a hot guy in your apartment

along with the 2 weeks worth of clutter that you put off because of studying

anyways,,

you closed the toilet and sat him down, grabbing your first aid kit from under the sink

as you start to clean up his arm you attempt to make small talk to keep your mind from hanging on the fact that THE hottest boy on earth was currently in your bathroom 

“so why exactly did you think that chasing a stray cat was a good idea?”

he sucked in a breath harshly as your cloth ran over the wound

“i just,,,,,,wanted to pet it” 

you nodded in understanding as you finished cleaning his arm

“there, all done.”

you both stood up and you walked him towards the door, sunwoo finally being able to think clearly enough to once again to resume his edgy persona

“i guess i’ll see you monday then” you said as he walked out of your apartment

he nodded before muttering a soft “thanks” and walking off

leaving you with a heart doing backflips and the sudden urge to clean your apartment from top to bottom

as the weekend passed you grew more and more anxious for monday

what were you supposed to do???

ignore him and pretend like nothing happened?

make a joke about possible rabies and risk getting hit??

???????

you settled on a happy medium

if sunwoo noticed your existence in any way - you would respond

if he didn’t - then it was just another school day 

although, you were a little disappointed when you were walking out of music comp and he hadn’t even spared a glance in your direction

resigned to your fate, you realized that it was just another one-sided crush 

and you forgot about it

until you were leaving work late once again

and stumbled across a stray sunwoo hovering awkwardly in the same alley way that had brought you together before

“are you looking for that cat again?” you asked, catching him by surprise

“no. i was out walking and remembered this was about the time you got off work the other day and i didn’t want you to walk home by yourself”

you tried to control the incessant fluttering of your heart

but couldn’t help the blush that spread on your cheeks

you were just thankful that it was nighttime

“oh,,,,,uh thank you”

you walked home in silence once again, but you were grateful for the company

you hated walking alone in the dark

after you reached your apartment building you muttered a quick thank you to sunwoo before going to head inside

“wait”

at his words, you turned back around 

“give me your phone number” 

you looked at him in shock, your jaw dropping slightly as you fumbled around for your phone

you handed it to him so he could put his number in

your mouth was suddenly really dry for some reason and you couldn’t quite get words out

after he had put his number in and texted himself from your phone he handed it back

“text me whenever you have to work late, I’ll walk you home.”

and then he left

leaving you wheezing on the stairs

but this was the routine you fell into

sunwoo met you by the alley every night that you had to work late and walked you home

but he would still barely acknowledge your existence in school

you found comfort in this, though

and walking home with sunwoo became the highlight of your week

you were looking forward to it the entire time that you closed up at your job

finally yelling a “I’m heading out” to your boss after all of the work was done

walking out, you opened your phone to see that sunwoo had texted you

‘something came up. be safe walking home’

you sighed and shoved your phone in your pocket

disappointment crept its way up your throat as you thought about how stupid you were for catching feelings for a guy that was still so out of your league

tears were almost

ALMOST

about to spill as you reached your apartment building

you grabbed for the door handle as you heard someone yell your name from behind you

you turned around, seeing sunwoo run towards you

“Sunwoo?? what the hell are you doing???”

when he finally reached you he bent over, trying to catch his breath

“i’m sorry that i couldnt walk you home” he began after he finally regained control of his breathing

you looked down at your feet

“its okay-”

you were interrupted by sunwoo yelling “I like you a lot”

you looked up at him, dumbfounded

“you,,,,,,what?”

“i like you a lot. I have for a while, actually. I just didn’t know how to tell you.”

you laughed in shock, causing sunwoo to look at you in amusement

“you,,, WHAT?” you laughed out

he stepped closer to you

“I like you. You’re the cutest person i’ve ever seen in my whole life. From the way your eyebrows scrunch when you concentrate in class to the way that you always stare at the sky like it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen when I walk you home, you make my heart do this really weird thing and at first I thought it was anxiety but my friend Sangyeon told me I was stupid and then I realized that its just because I like you, a lot.”

You stared at him, taken aback by his sudden confession.

“I like you too.”

“you,, what”

“We’re not doing this again-”

you were interrupted by sunwoo pressing his lips against yours

“You don’t know how happy that makes me,” he whispered against you

You smiled and wrapped your arms around his neck, kissing him again.

“You don’t know how happy you make me.”

[christophe-delorne]

Good Dog

Chapter 10

Warnings: None

Pairings: Gregory x Christophe

AU: Adulthood

The house was what he'd describe as... homey. Not really an apt descriptor, but it fit and it was all Christophe could come up with at the moment. Like one of those cookie cutter American Dream homes, with a little porch out front fixed with a hanging swing. Picturesque. And everything about it rubbed Christophe the wrong way. It reminded him of his mother's home when he was a child, the way she strained so hard to make everything perfect on the outside when everything on the inside was crumbling within.

To make matters worse, Gregory had made him dress 'decently' as he put it. Chocolate brown slacks, silk hunter green button up top. He looked like a suburban husband with his hair combed and face clean shaven, everything that he was not. He'd been warned several times on their way here to behave, a lofty expectation coming from the likes of Christophe, especially considering who's home they were going in.

He didn't particularly blame Stan and Kyle for his death, but they hadn't really given a shit either. They were kids, Christophe should have known better than to even think about putting such a responsibility on them. He should've went alone, maybe then he wouldn't have died. The sole blame of his death was on the kid named Eric Cartman, the boy hadn't turned off the alarms, didn't have enough spine to overcome his fears and eventually had failed everyone. He supposed he could blame Kenny as well, being he'd been the source of fear in Eric, but the boy had enough shit on his plate and Kenny's sacrifice had brought Christophe back. So they were even.

As Christophe mulled through his thoughts, Gregory pressed the button on the doorbell to gain the attention of the residents inside. Christophe could hear the muffled talking, the tapping of feet on hardwood floors as someone neared the door. When the door opened, it revealed Wendy, she was dressed nicely, her hair styled casually. Her loose blouse was slightly feminine but never too out there, regardless, the way she held herself was something that probably had drawn Gregory in. The reminder was slightly annoying to Christophe and already he was yearning for a cigarette, but Gregory had taken them from him. No smoking on this night.

"Gregory, nice that you could stop by, come in, the dinner is almost ready." Polite as usual with Gregory, but the look Christophe received was just above scathing. The feeling was mutual.

"Of course, I can't pass up spending some time with some dear old friends." Gregory held up a bottle of wine, some expensive wine that Christophe hadn't paid attention to. Despite being French, Christophe didn't fall into the stereotype of liking wine. "I brought a little something to top it all off." Gregory smiled as he followed after Wendy, leaving Christophe to slink behind with his hands in his pockets.

As they entered the small dining area, Christophe spotted a man with black hair sitting at the table, he didn't look too keen on being in nice clothes either. When he noticed Gregory, he gave a small frown but kept himself in check. Still seemed he wasn't all too fond of Gregory being friends with Wendy, Christophe could relate with that at least. "Hey, Gregory. Long time no see." Probably had to be on his best behavior as well, considering the warning look Wendy had given Stan before entering the kitchen.

"Pleasure as well, Stan. Its good to see you're doing well." Gregory, ever the charmer as he pulled out a seat but didn't take it. Instead, blue eyes looked over to Christophe, indicating he should sit. Christophe scowled, eyes narrowing and causing the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes to become harsher. The man was toying with him. Pulling out his seat like they were on some date? Christophe took a moment to consider the situation. Maybe Gregory was thinking with his dick again and Christophe didn't like the idea of Gregory going back to his girl in London after all of this. If Christophe let Gregory get away with these sort of things, they would likely only escalate and leave Christophe in ruins. Again.

However, he didn't want to start a fight right now, even though it was tempting to lash out at everyone in the house at the moment. Gregory and indicated he needed Christophe there and Christophe couldn't say no to that. Despite everything, Christophe would always be loyal to the Brit. He sat down in the chair as Gregory pushed it in in the same motion. Formal and smooth as always. Gregory took the seat next to him, which left two empty chairs at the table. Christophe wasn't certain if it was just because they had guests over often or they were expecting one more, so he took to observing the house around him.

There were pictures on the wall, not a lot, just a few here and there between decorations. He didn't take Stan as the type to decorate, from the short time knowing him as kids. Stan had been realistic, but at the time he'd been focused on jealousy between Gregory and Wendy. Didn't seem like he grew out of that jealous streak either. Wendy, while political, did tend to enjoy some feminine things, finding some sort of strong balance with what she liked. So the decor was likely all her, simple yet fitting for the small house. As Christophe took stock of the interior, he noticed there were three people in most of the pictures. A red head he assumed was Kyle. He remembered Kyle fairly well, it was the last face he'd seen before he had died.

While it may seem like Kyle had been sympathetic, holding onto Christophe so he wouldn't die alone. They were strangers, he expected no tears from the other boy. Kyle was sympathetic but with a aggressive streak with the possibility to turn out more like his mom than he would've liked. Luckily, Christophe hadn't heard any news about a war breaking out in America, the violence there was the usual. So the empty chair might mean that Kyle could be coming over, which didn't bode well for Christophe. All the people he tried so hard to forget were popping up in his life again, all at once.

"I hear you're moving up in the construction business, Stan." Christophe zoned back to the conversation that was going on without him. Gregory had always been able to hold a conversation, putting all the attention on himself and letting Christophe relax in the background.

"Yeah, my company was ranked number one in Denver this year. MBP just signed us on to lead the construction of their new facility in Colorado Springs." Stan replied, gaining Christophe's attention. MBP was the same company that Mr. Hall said that had hired him to outsource drugs in Europe. Christophe slid his gaze to Gregory suspiciously, had he been getting close to Wendy because she had connections? Well, it certainly was something Testaburger would be interested in, the woman was a lawyer up front, but an activist in her free time. Maybe if he stuck with Gregory and Wendy on the ride to the hotel, he might have a little more information.

Before the conversation could continue on, Christophe heard the front door unlock and open, causing him to tense, ready to stand up. He hated being in another person's home, he had no real control here, didn't know the layout of the house, who would be able to come and go. The new guest rounded the corner to the dining room and Christophe recognized the face, slightly curly red hair, a bit of a mess, was a telling sign. It seemed Christophe was right to think Kyle would be joining them.

"Sorry I'm late, I got held up at the lab." Kyle smiled as he first took in Stan and Wendy, though it faltered when he noticed Gregory and Christophe. Apparently he hadn't been informed they were coming, though the 'why' was the part that interested Christophe. Certainly something like dinner guests would be alright to tell those who would also be joining. Though, those green eyes seemed to stick to Christophe, staring at him like he'd seen a ghost. Probably not far off from the truth either. Christophe hadn't told anyone he'd returned back to life, Gregory had only known because he'd gone searching for Christophe's body, the only one who had. Gregory had apparently told Wendy though, how much was beyond Christophe's knowledge though.

"Shit." Was all Kyle could say after a moment's pause, it seemed given that small amount of time, he'd been able to process how Christophe was here. Kyle had been there, had seen the result of the war but probably just hadn't thought that it had effected Christophe as well. Probably better off that way, the less people knew about him, the better. Though, coming back here was messing up that plan, luckily only four people really knew what the 'Mole' looked like, other than Gregory. Christophe was tempted to take that number down to zero, but that would throw a wrench into Gregory's plan.

"Kyle, you're just in time, dinner's ready." Wendy broke the tension as she brought out a couple of pre-made plates. "I tried a new recipe that was suggested to me from Bebe, so you guys are my guinea pigs for the night." She set down a plate in front of Stan and one in front of the empty chair that was for Kyle.

"What is it?" Stan looked a little confused by the plate, but didn't seem like he was complaining.

"Cider-braised Chicken-and-Fennel Panzanella." Wendy stated pleasantly, despite Stan's even more confused look. The man seemed to shrug as Wendy went back to retrieve more plates, but Kyle followed after her, planning to help out. With Kyle's assistance, the table was set up with plates, silverware, and wine glasses. Gregory took the liberty to pour the wine into the glasses, insisting Wendy and Kyle to set and let him at least handle this.

"This looks gorgeous, Wendy. Thank you for inviting us over, I simply couldn't pass up spending some time with dear old friends while I'm here in America." Gregory sat back down, this whole time he hadn't passed a single glance in Christophe's direction. The Frenchman was already poking at his food, fairly used to eating things he didn't really understand the names of. Well, by now he did know as Gregory enjoyed explaining things to him and no matter how much Christophe tried to ignore him, the information stuck. Technically, this dish was served during the autumn months and right now it was just hitting summer, the flavor of cider was supposed to make people feel... He didn't know the world for it but people traditionally did things in certain seasons to feel in the moment with that season.

Gregory likely knew this but chose not to mention it in favor of being polite, irritating Christophe that he could remember such useless knowledge. Why couldn't he replace it with something that would benefit him, like remembering his passport numbers. Once Gregory began to eat, Christophe followed after, a habit picked up when they were kids, when Gregory took their roles a bit more literally. 'The master eats before the dogs', the words still stuck with him to this day, most of the time he didn't notice it was so far ingrained into him. The food was decent enough, Christophe was never really picky unless he wanted to spite a certain someone. A free meal was a free meal.

"So, Kyle, Wendy has informed me that you require outside assistance on a certain matter?" Gregory finally broached a topic Christophe was more interested in than the drivel they had been conversing about during most of the dinner. Kyle looked over in surprise at Wendy, who merely shrugged and took a sip of her wine, she didn't seem apologetic.

"Well, yes, I wasn't really sure if I was serious about it or not." He gave a look at Wendy, a glare almost. "But I'm having moral issues with the company I work for."

"And what, pray tell, company would that be?" Gregory pressed as if he already didn't know the answer.

"MBP, I'm one of the researchers working there. My team and I... We only meant to create something that would help boost low immune systems, to help aid the cure of diseases. It wasn't a sure thing to cure, but it would greatly increase the chances of other medications and therapy working." Kyle looked down at his plate, pushing around bits of leftover food he hadn't finished eating. Maybe guilt was slowing his appetite. "With the boost in immunity, the side-effects were both good and bad. It made people feel on top of the world. A high almost. But it was also addicting and prolonged use caused severe hallucinations."

Gregory sat back in his chair, appearing as if Kyle was regaling a fanciful story, looking as noble as his blood would indicate. Kyle continued on when Gregory didn't ask anything, "We were planning to go back to the drawing board, addiction to medication is already bad enough as it is, so we wanted to see if we could at least lessen the side-effects a little. However, our CEO got wind of the drug and decided we should continue on with it. I don't agree with the decision, but I could easily be replaced at this point. So I decided to stay on board, it would be better to get information on what was going on."

"Which is why I'm here." Gregory concluded setting his empty wine glass down. "A wise choice on Wendy's part to contact me. You don't have the necessary skill to really take down an empire like MBP and when dealing with drugs, I can only assume the company would monitor their finest scientist. In case of any insurrections that may happen."

"How do you plan on stopping this?" Kyle seemed anxious but the determination to join in on the discussion was reaffirmed now that stopping MBP became an almost realistic outcome now.

"Ah, I can't let you in on the details, least someone in the company begins to suspect you. Wendy would be most upset with me if I let you in harm's way." There was an unspoken 'again' at the end of his sentence, Gregory had let Kyle and Stan go into a dangerous USO show, but Wendy hadn't been the only one who had someone they cared about go in to a brewing warzone. "For now, I simply need you to write down your daily routine, as much knowledge of the security in the building as you know and then hand it to me. Let me take care of the rest."

Kyle seemed dissatisfied with that, dropping his fork on the plate and pressing his hands on the table. "You can't expect me to sit on the sidelines, I'm as much of a part of this as anyone else! It was my mistake."

Stan reached over, placing a hand on Kyle's shoulder in attempts to calm him down, but Kyle brushed him off, his Jersey temper seemed to have flared and would take time to stifle back down. Gregory didn't seem too concerned, pouring himself another glass of wine before replying to Kyle.

"If you want this plan to work, then it is best you sit this one out. I, for one, am not going to make the mistake of trusting you or your friends would be capable of carrying out a mission again. Not after last time."