sapphicwiles

[sapphicwiles]

based on that post i saw

[sapphicwiles]

It’s ArcaneFanKidWeek over on Twitter! I initially I wasn’t going to participate bc it feels weird knowing that my fic isn’t complete so there’s, like, not a fankid to write about? At least, not in the ways the prompts are set up. BUT! I couldn’t resist. This is for the prompt, “new sibling.”

I don’t consider it a spoiler for anything (except for maybe Slugger’s name if you haven’t figured it out yet), but it is set about three years after the final chapter of glad you’re here. I hope you enjoy a little fluff about actual CaitVi moms!

“Mama?” Caitlyn calls softly from the doorway, her voice high and lilting. “Mama, may we come in?”

“Who’s ‘we,’ Mummy? Is that my Cammie?” Vi answers.

Vi hears Cammie’s sweet giggle before she sees her, muffled behind Caitlyn’s thigh where she clings tighter than a secret. That giggle, so unlike the baby’s powerful cries not even an hour before, has Vi’s chest hitching with nostalgia as she looks down at her new daughter’s sleeping face. It wasn’t so very long ago that Cammie was small enough to be swaddled this way. It wouldn’t be so very long before the new baby giggled that sweetly. Today was the day her daughters became sisters, giggling and sleeping and too little to remember it.

Vi wants to remember every second.

The double doors open wider to reveal Caitlyn and Cammie, peeking around Mummy’s leg and gasping when her wide blue eyes land on Vi.

“Hi, bud,” Vi smiles at her. She had already had a bath and been dressed in her little nightgown, damp lilac hair slicked back from her rosy face. “I missed you. C’mere, I wanna hold you.”

Vi lifts the baby off her legs and settles her into the crook of her elbow. Her little mouth grunts in displeasure, but Vi is quick to offer her a kiss and a soothing, “Oh, it’s okay. Big sister’s here to see you.”

Cammie doesn’t trip forward on bare feet, she doesn’t run for Vi’s unoccupied lap. She just watches from behind Caitlyn’s leg until Mummy bends down to pick her up and cuddle her close.

“Your baby sister wants to meet you so badly, blossom. She can’t wait, she was talking all about you.” Caitlyn says, kissing her cheek.

Cammie lets herself be kissed—for which Vi is grateful, she had recently taken to wiping her kisses off as a ploy to get more—but she doesn’t look away from Vi. Caitlyn had helped Vi clean up as best she could and brushed her hair, but she must still look worryingly subdued to Cammie.

“You okay, Mama?”

Oh, her sweet girl.

“I’m okay, bud. I’m just sleepy.”

Cammie flexes her little bicep with a grunt. “Bein’ so tough?”

“I was bein’ so tough—just ask Mummy.”

“So, so tough,” Caitlyn assures her, squeezing Cammie’s bicep. “Do you want to go show Mama what you made for her?”

“Come show me, Camellia,” says Vi. “Come here, baby.”

Caitlyn walks her over to the bed and sits gingerly down next to Vi, giving her a quick kiss over their daughters’—their daughters’—heads. Vi can still taste Caitlyn’s earlier smile, the salt of her tears and the shape of her teeth, unable to stay hidden in her joy. Camellia shifts around in Caitlyn’s lap until she is leaning all the way on Vi’s arm to peer down at the baby.

She catches Caitlyn’s eye and can’t help but laugh at the way they both mist over at the sight of those two purple heads, sweetly close. Caitlyn cups her hand behind the baby’s head. Vi watches her. She rubs her thumb against the edge of the knitted cap and traces the shell of the baby’s ear in wonder.

That nostalgia overtakes her again. The remembrance of holding Camellia like this nearly three years ago, the same wonder guiding Caitlyn’s every touch against petal-soft skin. And now Cammie follows Caitlyn’s example. She traces her finger right behind Mummy’s, eager to touch her baby sister.

“Where’s her…nose?” Caitlyn asks softly. “Where’s her…ears? Where’s her…big sister? Very good. Where’s her…well, not her eyes. Um, where’s her…chin? Good.”

Vi is overwhelmed by it. By her new baby girl’s sleeping face. By her big girl’s growing confidence. By her wife’s tender hand as she guides them along together. Tears gather in the corner of her eyes and her face begins to crumple with the force of it all, but she sniffs it back and asks Cammie, “What do you think, bud?”

Camellia looks back up at Vi with her Mummy’s curious eyes. “How come your tummy getted big but she just getted so tiny?”

Vi laughs despite the ache it causes and Caitlyn brushes Cammie’s damp hair back to kiss her temple better.

“Well, babies have to grow inside a tummy before they can come out and meet their families, remember?” Caitlyn asks. “It feels like she grew for a very long time, but she’s still just tiny, isn’t she? She’ll get a little bigger every week until she’s big enough to play with you.”

“Yeah, ‘member when I was a baby when it was lasterday, and I was so, so teeny tiny too?”

“You were so teeny tiny,” Vi all but chokes. “And now you’re a big girl, huh? Got all your teeth and everything. You’re a big sister.”

Cammie shows all of her teeth and then turns her attention to the baby again, continuing her soft tracing.

“Show Mama what you made for her,” Caitlyn prompts. “Do you have your drawing?” Cammie offers up the crumpled piece of paper in her hand. One of the drawings Meggie and Heddy kept her occupied with while both of her moms and her Yèye were busy bringing her baby sister into the world.

Cammie points out the little blobs of color one by one. “That’s me, and Mama and Mummy, and baby sister. That’s Yéye, and Meggie, and Addie.”

“Are those your arms? They look so strong,” says Vi.

“Yeah, so strong so I can hug all of everybody in our whole family!”

The baby’s bleary eyes open at Cammie’s exclamation and she begins making unhappy little noises. Vi and Caitlyn each pat a hand against the baby’s back and bum as Vi rocks her. It’s surreal to be a team in this way again. Not that they aren’t a team in raising their toddler, partners in all things, but to soothe their new baby with the shared confidence they lacked with the first is a bittersweet blessing.

“You need a hug, baby?” Cammie asks. She looks down at her little sister’s scrunched up, wrinkly face, smiles sweetly, and lays her head down on the baby’s chest. Confused but comforted, the baby quiets back down.

It won’t last long, she’ll need to eat very soon and she’ll make quite a ruckus if Vi takes too much longer, but for now, Vi just holds her family. She holds them and lets them hold her. Tomorrow will be the first full day of their family of four, but today is the first minute, the first memory, the first moment.

Vi wants to remember every second.

[sapphicwiles]

I think about Free Treasure all the time. It's the one kid-fic that has really stolen my heart. I'm sad that we only have a few chapters left, but excited to see where it goes!

I am genuinely in the same boat 😭 wtf am I even gonna think about when this fic doesn’t occupy my thoughts 24/7???? But I really think you’re gonna find the last three chapters worth it :)

Thank you so much for your kind words, this message made me smile so big!! 🥺 May I offer you a comedic sneak peek of ch 8 as thanks? I try not to do sneak peaks unless I’m like around 24 hours from posting, but I hope you’ll forgive me for breaking the rules 😅

[sapphicwiles]

HEY, MOM @cameronwolfe MENTIONED ME!!

That’s so ridiculously nice of you 😭 I love writing dreams/nightmares and I LOVE that you appreciate a nightmare sequence!! As soon as I’m done writing this fic, I’m devouring your behemoth of a story, I can’t wait to read this dream sequence!!

Ohhhhh man dream sequences. It's awesome to hear you say you're picky about them because I almost always hate them. They feel to me like they have no stakes! And usually no point either because the writer is too busy playing with zany imagery or incongruous dialog/character combos. Yes we get it it's cuh-razy that the vicar would be sitting in the corner speaking cryptically while the character fucks their ex or whatever, shut uppppp raaagh.

I have feelings I guess.

Exactly!!!! Exactly exactly exactly, I completely agree.

If you're interested in reading a GOOD nightmare sequence, I highly recommend the Free Treasure series by @sapphicwiles! The second installment has an excellent nightmare depiction that I'm still thinking about even though I read that chapter days ago - in my opinion, it's the perfect example of how to do a dream/nightmare that feels realistic but also affects the character's waking reality!

[sapphicwiles]

i love love love LOVE your series on ao3 Free Treasure. Can I ask, what inspired you to write it?

Omg hi!! I’m so happy that you love it! I actually saw this notification while taking a break from ch 8 so I’m like double excited because I love this fic too!!

That is a very good question and one that I am trying to figure out as I write it lol 😅 Initially, I really was just writing a horny oneshot after obsessing over the show. In fact, I was writing it in my notes app in between patients at work and this line was the initial thought I had:

“Caitlyn could not have molded a better fitting hand from the finest clay; nor could she have begged the gods of her family’s temples for a more perfectly made mouth; nor could she have conceived of a will so equal to her own, mind pressed flush to her mind, pulling and pushing and demanding and unerring.”

And I built smut around that lmao.

At the time I was writing the oneshot, I had not been vibing with too many caitvi fics and their characterizations of Caitlyn and Vi (shout out to @perniciousgranma and their fic ‘the dirt and the road’ for saving my life, that fic awoke something insane in me, it’s SO GOOD) and then also for some reason, a lot of the discourse on Twitter at the time was about like how…Vi being a butch means she wouldn’t want to carry their child if they had one??? Or on the other end, that Caitlyn isn’t loving enough to be a good mom??? And I thought all of that was wack

So I started building out the oneshot around how I thought a conversation about having a family would look (in my opinion) between Vi and Caitlyn.

Like that was literally supposed to be it!

And then it got WAAAAYYY more attention than I thought it would and people kept commenting for more of the story, and the more I thought about it, the more I actually had quite a lot to process about my own desire for a family when making one with my spouse is not an easy answer. I decided to explore infertility through a magical Arcane lens, figured I could invent a magic ritual and have the central conflict be an unknown translation error (there’s so much to unpack there 🤪) and then BAM! Now there’s 120,000 words in a google doc on my internet browser!

That was a super long winded answer, but basically what inspired this fic: horny, Magic, queer conception feelings, a little spite???? and obsessive tendencies

Thank you so much for taking the time to message me and ask that, I’m like smiling ear to ear with the chance to talk about this story, I never shut up about it!! I hope you continue to enjoy the updates!!

[sapphicwiles]

Still Fantastic Week Four: Angst

A part 2 to my Commander/Pitfighter entry

Totally am not posting this a week late, what??

{Still Caitvi Pride Event}

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out of nowhere I got an urge to draw ✨her ✨

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@explosionshark had the amazing idea to put Caitlyn in this hat and I simply made the visual because she REALLY really needs this hat

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Publishing chapters chronologically is so stupid. What do you mean I have to finish and post ch 8 if I want you guys to finally read ch 9? Dumb

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Hi remember when I said ch 7 was edging close to the 14k line yet again? She is 17k, she is chock full of Vi-heavy character study through use of gratuitous extended metaphors, trauma processing, emotional hurt/comfort to an insane degree, smut (AND COVER ART BY @toriwritesstories!!!!)

Take your time and enjoy, let me know if you read it!

[sapphicwiles]

Hello friends and readers of glad you’re here, it’s time for a sneak peak of chapter 7 👀 word count is edging toward the 14k mark again I’m sorry for the wait

[sapphicwiles]

Oh my god, are these not the prettiest covers 😭😭😭

Tori made these for me while keeping them an absolute secret and I’ve never been so stunned in my life. I was GOBSMACKED. These are so beautiful, I can’t believe they’re for my fic! The elixir, the baby’s breath, the VIOLETS, the runic patterns, the CAMELLIAS!!!!!!!!!!! I’m throwing up over how much detail and love and attention went into these, I’m AMAZED!

Y’all! I made cover art for the incredible series by @sapphicwiles , Free Treasure! If you’re not familiar, post-canon Caitvi struggling to get pregnant and finally getting to make their baby real 💜

“We take two lives, and in love, make one. Not to counter fate, but to ensure it.”

If you haven’t read this series, I HIGHLY recommend it! The first fic is complete and the second is well on its way! 💜

and I gotta say, giving these to Bea was the most well executed surprise of my life!!

(and also, peep those little glimpses on the glad you’re here cover… there may be more art where this came from…)

Individual covers below the cut!

[sapphicwiles]

piltie vi AU

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@toriwritesstories tagged me in WIP Wednesday so I’m posting the most recent sentence I wrote in my current wip!

“Her words slur together with panic and exhaustion, fighting to come back up to the surface.”

That’s ch 7 of glad you’re here which is coming along well! Hopefully I’ll have something post-able after the weekend (as long as I keep it under 14k this time lmao)

[sapphicwiles]

Chapter 6 of glad you’re here is up!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63784024/chapters/171049570#chapter_6_endnotes

Did we remember that protective Caitlyn is like…kind of what started this whole thing? You’re about to remember…

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Hi, it’s me, I know it’s been ten years, but I’m back from vacation and chapter six of glad you’re here will be up in the next 24 hours! Here is a little sneak peak 💕

[sapphicwiles]

I would stare too...