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//It is also expected to strengthen a quadrilateral partnership that includes Japan and the U.S. and is seen by analysts as part of efforts to contain China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific.//
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“Please, Faith,” Claire pled in a whisper as she rocked the fussing six-month-old. “Your belly is full so please go back to sleep.”

Jamie slipped out of bed and crossed to where Claire sat near the fire, clearly exhausted, Faith squirming in her arms and pulling Claire’s hair as she rubbed her eyes with her fist.

“Let me take her, Sassenach,” Jamie offered already reaching and loosening Faith’s grip on Claire’s curls. “I cannae sleep anyhow.”

“Charles?” Claire asked, sighing with relief as the weight of Faith’s restlessness was lifted from her.

“I dinna ken how to approach him on this,” Jamie admitted, his large hand pressed to Faith’s back as she pressed her face to his shoulder and gnawed on his collarbone, her drool soaking his nightshirt. “He’s goin’ to ask me to gather support for him when we go back, I can feel it.”

“I thought the loss of the wine shipment was supposed to cripple his chances of raising the rebellion,” Claire remarked before groaning with satisfaction as she slipped back into bed and relaxed against the pillows.

“Aye well, God and the mission Charles believes He’s given him cannae be brushed aside so easily.” Jamie turned pressed his nose to the crown of Faith’s head. He found it easier to stifle the shaking rage that Charles Stuart inspired when he held Faith in his arms. She was what mattered––she and Claire were all that mattered. But how to explain such a feeling––an apparent change of heart––to a man like Charles Stuart…

“Tell him God spoke to you in a dream,” Claire said with a yawn. “Charles isn’t the only one whom God can speak to and if He gives you a vision of the Rising failing..”

Jamie chuckled and Faith began to croon her agreement. “I can just imagine how that conversation will go,” Jamie told Faith quietly as he glanced over and saw that Claire had already drifted off to sleep. “Well, yer highness, I cannae be a Jacobite any more. No, it’s no to do wi’ the charges against me being vacated, though I must admit I am grateful for how it’s turned out. Rather, the Lord in His mighty wisdom sent me a vision of what lies ahead should ye take to the field of battle in the near future. It will end with thousands of yer men dead for naught––for worse than naught. If they dinna fight they’d be no worse off than they are now but if they do ye will lose and when ye lose it’ll no be you who pays the price but all the people ye fail.”

Faith began to whimper and rub her face against Jamie’s neck. He cupped her head with his hand and rubbed his thumb soothingly against her temple. “Aye, it will be a sad day should that come to pass,” he agreed with her. He felt her chubby fist slide up his chest to her face and heard the quiet smack of her lips as she began to suck her thumb. The restlessness within her had begun to calm though he could tell she would simply lie against him in a half-awake stupor for some time yet, listening to the rhythm of his words as though he were telling her a story.

“If I’m honest… I dinna think there is a way to stop that wee fool from sailing to Scotland and making his mess… I only hope to keep his foolishness from somehow touching us and Lallybroch… in so far as it’s possible.” Jamie sighed.

He’d come so close to losing everything but time had miraculously worked in his favor. If he had left five minutes sooner or Claire had stayed at l’hopital five minutes later that fateful day, they would have missed each other. He’d have gone to the woods and met Randall, swords drawn. Whether either of them would have died or they both would simply have landed in the Bastille, Jamie only knew with certainty that he likely would have lost both Faith and Claire forever.

Instead, Claire had been in the doorway of their room when he’d finished scrawling his apologetic note. She’d refused to move and forced him to explain what had happened, her hand pressing tighter and tighter circles into her swollen belly as he spoke. She’d asked about Fergus––where was he, had he been examined, was he all right––and Jamie had seen the fear and anger in Claire’s face, felt the shame rise in his own even as he grew frustrated that he was being delayed.

Then Claire had collapsed and getting her to l’hopital was all that he could think about calling for Fergus to come along and help him, Randall forgotten until Claire was settled and her bleeding was under control and his temper had cooled enough for Claire to convince him to have Randall arrested for what he’d done to Fergus.

Everything that happened in the weeks and months after he’d filed the report with the gendarme had been a blur, the passage of time between them marked by Faith’s birth and development. Word of Randall’s arrest and indefinite imprisonment had come as the fear for Claire and Faith faded in the days after her risky birth. Murtagh had arrived back in Paris when it was finally decided Claire and Faith could leave l’hopital and return to the house. The news of Randall’s situation had spread to England by the time Faith had started smiling so all three Frasers grinned when a letter reached them from Ned Gowan that, in the wake of the scandalous tale, he had sought out the Duke of Sandringham to see if one of the additional copies he’d made of Jamie’s petition of complaint might prove more successful in completing its journey than the first; the Duke was only too happy to be of assistance. Faith had just started sleeping through the night when Claire had word from Mary Hawkins about how Jonathan Randall’s disgrace had brought Alex Randall back into his family’s good graces; they hoped her godfather could help convince their respective families to allow their marriage within the year. And now that Faith was cutting her first tooth, word that the petition of complaint had succeeded and the charges against Jamie had been vacated had arrived; they could return to Scotland in time for Christmas.

Yet when he’d shown the letter to Claire he had struggled to understand the weight he still felt on his shoulders, the shadow he couldn’t explain.

“You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop,” she had told him while in the process of changing Faith’s clout. “We still don’t know if we’ve done enough to change things and without the certainty…” She’d looked to the gold ring on her finger. Randall was in the Bastille and it didn’t look like he’d be getting out anytime soon and if he did, it was unlikely he’d be marrying Mary Hawkins, yet Claire still had her gold ring.

He was back to pacing the darkened room slowly, the damp of Faith drooling into his shirt slowly spreading.

“I’m glad ye’re too small to ken how scared I am of such a wee fool,” he murmured into the top of Faith’s head. “But I plan to protect you and yer mother from any danger, even that posed by wee fools… and fools like Charles Stuart can be the most dangerous of all, believing they’re about God’s work when it’s other men’s lives they’re risking. I promise we’ll no be leaving France until I can be sure our place in Scotland is truly safe, that Charles Stuart and his half-baked schemes cannae burn us.”

Faith’s soggy thumb left her mouth long enough for her hand to find it’s way to Jamie’s chin. He smiled and raised a hand to press the delicate fingers to his lips, feeling her smile against his shoulder. She sighed heavily and reinserted the thumb in her mouth, her body relaxing further until she was limp with sleep.

“If I cannae convince Charles to give up the Rising, I’ll just have to make my true allegiance clear,” Jamie whispered, rubbing Faith’s back as he crossed to settle her in her cradle. She looked like Claire when she slept, her hair long enough now to start curling around her ear. Afraid the feathery strands would tickle and wake her, he tucked them behind and let his finger trace the round of her cheek, lightly touch the tip of her nose which wrinkled in response.

The restored calm in the room seeped into him as well. He lifted the covers and crawled back into bed with Claire, her cold bare feet finding the warmth of his legs in moments.

Having an English wife he adored should be a good start toward proving he wasn’t the staunch Jacobite he’d been playing at the last few months.

Draping an arm across Claire’s waist and pulling her closer, Jamie pushed his fears out of his mind and into the shadows where they could lurk until morning.

gotham-ruaidh:

hormonallyours:

The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, commonly known in mainland China as the June Fourth Incident (Chinese: 六四事件, liùsì shìjiàn), were student-led demonstrations in Beijing (the capital of the People’s Republic of China) for the establishment of basic human and press rights and against the Communist-led Chinese government in mid-1989. More broadly, it refers to the popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests during that period, sometimes called the ‘89 Democracy Movement (Chinese: 八九民运, bājiǔ mínyùn). The protests were forcibly suppressed after Chinese Premier Li Peng declared martial law. In what became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, troops with assault rifles and tanks fired at the demonstrators trying to block the military’s advance towards Tiananmen Square. The crowds were stunned that the army was using live ammunition and reacted by hurling insults and projectiles. The troops used expanding bullets, prohibited by international law for use in warfare, which expand upon entering the body and create larger wounds. The number of civilian deaths was internally estimated by the Chinese government to be near or above 10,000.

The Communist Party of China forbids discussion of the Tiananmen Square protests and has taken measures to block or censor related information. Textbooks have little, if any, information about the protests. After the protests, officials banned controversial films and books, and shut down many newspapers. Within a year, 12% of all newspapers, 8% of publishing companies, 13% of social science periodicals and more than 150 films were banned or shut down. The government also announced it had seized 32 million contraband books and 2.4 million video and audio cassettes. Access to media and Internet resources on the subject are restricted or blocked by censors.

June 4, 1989-2020

We Hongkongers have commemorated Tiananmen Square Massacre for 31 years. This year we defy a police ban to gather, we stand up against CCP’s oppression in Hong Kong.

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2020-06-04T13:57:07.000Z
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2020-06-04T13:57:07.000Z
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//美國全國示威持續，明尼蘇達州檢察總長 Keith Ellison 當地時間周三下午宣佈，會落案起訴另外三名涉與上周明尼阿波利斯市 (Minneapolis) 非裔男子 George Floyd 死亡案有關的前警員，並向對直接跪頸的 Derek Chauvin 控以更嚴重的二級謀殺罪//
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