#otp: you had to ask

[demaparbat-hp]

Crush, crush, crush!

[lover-of-mine]

Alternative ending for the ambulance explosion from 9-1-1 A Look Back, A Look Ahead.

[esmes]

that wouldn't be too painful, would it? 🎥 @theriddletrades

[amasec]

First time Heinrix sees Runa pet a fluffy creature. 😸

“Rogue Trader?”

The Interrogator’s imperious voice rang out across the bustling dock, his words loud enough to carve cleanly through the din of the rabble. Tall and broad, the man cut a strong, indomitable figure, the crimson mantle at his back bearing a not-so-subtle reminder of the Inquisition’s ever-watchful presence.

The authority of that Inquisitorial presence accompanied the heavy tread of the Interrogator’s boots against plasteel grating. Catching the attention of many a wary port guard, he inadvertently drew glances of both fear and resentment, his appearance alone attracting more than just a few curious pairs of eyes.

But Heinrix was unconcerned with the whispers of locals. His focus never deviated from the back of the Lord Captain’s head, eyes locked onto the mane of ivory hair that she had bundled into a substantial yet untidy chignon at the nape of her neck. Not once did she turn around, instead stepping into a hurried, purposeful stride as she left her retinue behind, in pursuit of a goal yet unknown.

Heinrix’s frown deepened, and his pace increased in order to catch up with her, ignoring the pointed stares from the other members of her retinue. Footfall’s reputation preceded it – the dock was a lawless place at the best of times. Losing sight of the Rogue Trader in a place as busy and unpredictable as this one could only spell disaster.

Ultimately, the Lord Captain was unaware of his concerns for her safety, and thus, she continued unabatedly. But even then, her pace gradually began to slow, and she came to a halt directly before the door of a rusted container; where she dropped to her knees, crouching low against the plasteel walkway.

“Rogue Trader!”

Still, she did not turn around, and the poorly concealed impatience was evident in his exasperation. He blew out a huff of irritation as he closed in on where she was kneeling, coming to a stop behind her.

“Runa.”

Folding his arms across his chest, Heinrix stared down his long nose at where the woman remained crouched, tending to something as yet unseen. His curiosity was masked by an increasingly irritated glare – she either did not understand the dangers surrounding her, or she did, but simply did not care. Recalling her background, he assumed it was the latter – but those days were well and truly over. A considerable responsibility now rested upon her shoulders, and hers alone. And what use would it be to the ancient and esteemed House von Valancius for its last remaining heir to be stabbed by a cultist in a Footfall alleyway? She needed to reevaluate her position – and remain focused in the meantime.

Runa stood carefully, clutching something small within both hands, and the Interrogator was pulled out of his thoughts and back into the present. Frowning impatiently into the back of her head, he considered what it was that she had been so eager to retrieve. Like any smuggler worth their weight, she had developed an additional sense for discarded archeotech – something that may fetch a high price on the black market. Perhaps she had located a cache of some description.

But after a few moments, Runa turned around to face him – and nothing could have prepared Heinrix for what she was carrying.

Supported by one gloved hand and nestled against the swell of her chest was a tiny lump of black fur; an object that he recognised instantly as a trembling kitten.

The Rogue Trader did not acknowledge him, but the soft wonder in her eyes as she gazed down at the juvenile cat almost immediately threatened the integrity of Heinrix’s stoic foundation. He remained utterly frozen in place, watching as the fragile creature nestled comfortably against her, trusting the Rogue Trader implicitly – just like any other of her devoted subjects.

He didn’t have to wait long before Runa glanced up at him, her face split by a radiant smile. The index finger of her free hand tickled the kitten’s tiny chin.

Oh– well, this was not at all what he had been expecting.

Speechless and utterly blindsided by her smile, of all things, Heinrix found himself unconsciously gravitating a step closer, his arms dropping to rest loosely at his sides. The happiness on her face was unlike anything he’d ever seen, the joyous smile dimpling her cheeks and drawing his attention to her golden canine. He found himself suddenly transfixed. Far more familiar with being on the receiving end of her sardonic sneers and unkind smirks, he found his irritation at her sudden abscondment had been entirely forgotten.

“A kitten–?” he began, hesitant voice soft as he glanced down at the animal she clutched so possessively. It stared back up at him with round, curious blue eyes; the innocence of a tiny creature destined for a short, miserable existence, hand-plucked from the gutter by one of the most powerful women in the Expanse. Heinrix exhaled through his nose. It was so small – so unbelievably feeble.

The kitten would never know how lucky it was.

“I saw it.” Runa looked down at the fluffy animal fondly. “From all the way across the dock. The eyes, they’re reflective – I think they must’ve caught the light at the exact right time.”

“I see.”

Heinrix couldn’t even find it within himself to admonish her for her carelessness, and so, he simply stared; observing how the kitten twisted to get comfortable in Runa’s hand, settling its chin against the reassuring warmth of her bare skin, directly above where her heart was beating. Its tired eyes began to close as the Rogue Trader continued to soothe it, rubbing tiny circles into the dusty fur.

He had never considered the potential that the voidborn was even remotely capable of such warmth, such tenderness – partly because every conversation he’d ever had with her had been conducted under duress. She ignored him frequently, refusing to cooperate with many of his sanctioned requests, even despite the friendliness and kindness she displayed to the rest of her retinue and her crew. She maintained a cold, terse distance between herself and the Interrogator, making it clear to him – and everyone around them – that she deeply resented his presence on board her ship.

Normally, she would be observing him coldly, with her nostrils flared in not-so-subtle disgust; a biting comment clenched waiting between her teeth. But this time, something was different – her smile never wavered, even as she glanced up once more from where the kitten was pawing at her. There was no maliciousness in the way she considered him – and for the first time since joining her retinue, he recognised a steadily growing sense of alarm that had begun to build within the pit of his stomach.

“What are you going to do with it?” he forced out, an unfamiliar heat prickling beneath the collar of his shirt.

“It’s one of my subjects.” The Lord Captain’s smile faltered, morphing instead into a lopsided grin. “I’m bringing it back with us.”

The kitten stretched out its paws, almost as if it had understood her, shifting to nestle more closely against the comforting swell of her cleavage. He watched as it pawed fruitlessly at her golden necklace, attempting to catch the opal stone pendant within its tiny claws.

Never had he ever expected to find himself envious of a stray kitten.

As Runa allowed the kitten to burrow closer, she laughed; a light, joyous sound; and Heinrix felt something deep within him clench uncomfortably tight. He stared at the creature, which gazed back at him in turn with inquisitive eyes.

The kitten knew exactly what it was doing.

↳ First Time Prompts

[askgardenerwoods]

hi Emma! Who do you consider your friends do you have a crush on anybody?

" For crushes... "

[takaraphoenix]

For the ship ask game: Steter, 10 & 11? ♥️

Thanks for playing!! ^-^

10. Who gets more jealous?

I don't think either of them are jealous. Stiles knows how stupidly devoted Peter is to him, that man shows it. So even though Stiles is dating the hottest guy in town and all the single ladies and many single guys try to throw themselves at him, Stiles has repeatedly seen Peter push them out of the way in annoyance so he could get to Stiles quicker whenever they met at a club. Peter doesn't have eyes for anyone else, there's nothing to be jealous over.

The same goes for Peter. Stiles' most prominent trait is his unwavering loyalty. He would never cheat on his partner. Though Peter does make sure to let any poor bastard who tries to flirt with his mate know that said mate is taken, Peter never feels jealous. After all, he's the one taking Stiles home.

11. Who is more possessive?

Oh, Peter for sure. Werewolf. Also because Peter doesn't understand why not everybody is all over that boy. What do you mean you chose [partner] when Stiles is right there?? Baffling, sign of bad taste and poor decision making. (Many fights between Peter and Lydia have started this way. Jackson stopped taking actual offense to it a long time ago. Him and Stiles usually watch in amusement.)

He thoroughly scent-marks Stiles every chance he gets, loves when every were can smell that Stiles is his, makes Stiles wear his clothes and sit on his lap during boring pack meetings (which also has the perk of making the pack meetings less boring).

If he could get away with it, he would put a collar on Stiles (well, he does get away with it, but only in the bedroom. Peter digresses and makes up for it with excessive hickeys around Stiles' neck.)

Ship Ask Game

[a2zillustration]

The desire to draw these two again but without the motivation to make something more than one of these little charts (oops)

Thank you Valc0 for making the sheet!

[agentnatesewell]

Following up on Hobbs's question: what do Nuri's wedding rings look like? (if you have a specific idea in mind!!)

Hello, PD beloved!! Thank you very much for the follow up ask, I had a lot of fun picking out their wedding rings (surprisingly haven’t done this yet!)

Now, I know that N tends to go more towards the ‘traditional’, but I believe they would be persuaded more towards the sentimental (of course for Nate particularly, men in the western world didnt start wearing wedding bands traditionally until the 20th century)

Nate wears rings already, and we don’t know (yet?) what they signify, but I imagine there is some family tie - so, for Suri picking out his band, she would want it to stand out a bit and be something special and as a symbol of their union. This is aesthetically pleasing (green being Nate’s color, green being the complementary color to Suri’s pink ring), and the tag line for this ring is “it's a cosmic celebration made for your cosmic connection”, which is truly how she feels about their relationship. Also, something out of this world something supernatural something something

Minter + Richter Meteorite, Imperial Jade, and Titanium Wedding Ring

As for Suri’s ring, she’d want something to match the halo engagement ring that she has. Something that she could wear together as a set or something she could wear on its own

AusGems Co straight diamond wedding ring in a rose gold setting. It’s still glamorous on its own

For when they both need to be a bit less known/more inconspicuous, they have more demure, more subdued rings (like if they’re going under cover or on a covert mission). Nate’s would be silver and Suri would be rose gold

[saessenach]

OK WAIT I HAVE QUESTIONS. I wanna know the lore behind your Cantori Diamond !!!!! Spill the tea I'm INTRIGUED!!

HIIII

First of all THANK YOU for your wonderful comments and your enthusiasm, I'm so !!! 🫶🫶🫶

Second of all - this will hopefully be the topic of another fic I've got on the backburner, about Teia's rise to Talon-hood. it'll be a while yet before that materialises lololol, I have only a very sketchy outline and on pride, freedom and Treviso took a LOT out of me, but I'm playing around with so many ideas of what might or could have happened to her, that she got to the point where we meet her in 8LT, and later in Veilguard.

In short though, we know she was taken in by the Crows at roughly 8 years of age. We know she considers Caterina her mother, BUT she is very distinctly of a different house. Now, there are all lot of ways as to how that might have played out, and I'm only doing guess-work here and finding what feels fun to me, but I would imagine that when she was first, ahem, recruited, somehow both Caterina and the then-Cantori Talon were involved (I'm delighted at the idea that she might have tried to pickpocket Caterina, because that would be a fun little way to outrage the First Talon, AND set a precedent for the way they bond over beautiful things in 8LT. But that's just me) What were these two Talons doing in Antiva City 30 years ago? idk, you decide. I imagine between the two of them, Cantori took her in as being the weaker house, but Caterina couldn't help but also be charmed by the brazen little street urchin.

This is where HC territory truly begins. Here is what we know: given the sheer size of Villa Dellamorte and the way Lucanis personally identifies with Treviso, it's a safe bet that Treviso is the Dellamorte city, the same way Salle and Rialto belong to de Riva and Cantori. We know Crows have specific territories, but also that they forge alliances - so it could be possible that the Cantori Diamond was a concession in that sense, and a show of allyship between the two Houses. I imagine it might have been an establishment Teia was spent a lot of time in as a child, since her relationship with Caterina didn't wane over the years, so for that you need proximity. Perhaps House Cantori moved between Rialto and Treviso a few times a year! Perhaps Fledgelings were trained in one place and Crows worked in another! I don't know, but Teia needed to be in Treviso.

Now then, the scene is set, and from here we get certain glimpses over Teia's life, in lines such as the infamous "cruel men seemed drawn to her" or "we cannot let the cruelty of others define us" - between that and what we know from Zevran of how Crows were treated back then, the picture is quite not pretty. I don't think House Cantori would have been particularly kind, or particularly stable - and yet, it is a point of pride for Teia to be a part of it. You don't get a whole back piece you keep on display about something you're not proud of. As such, I imagine Teia's meteoric rise to power happened against a backdrop of cruelty and intrigue, with the Diamond as the seedy setting. No one in their right mind is going to consider a twenty-something year old, no matter how charismatic, the right choice for head of House, not unless every other option is so much worse.

SO to end this rant that I'm not 100% sure answers your question, I went with the idea that the Diamond is a piece of the Cantori legacy she inherited - a place where at least one of her precursors were brutally killed, where she might not have been safe, but at least she could be close to Caterina, and where her idea of family first coalesced. Somewhere that married the horror and wonder of being an Antivan Crow, and a place that she ultimately turned, later in life with her partner-in-crime, into the seat of a resitance movement. I think it's an experiment, for her, for what the Crows could be, and I am obsessed with that.

[lover-of-mine]

#Allergies season be like

[kanerallels]

And I'll wrap it up with an unexpected Chenni and Okadiah (my beloveds)

AWWW I LOVE THAT

Low key some of this stuff happens off screen not on but now you got me wanting to write about how they first meet when they're young and like. Dang I got feelings about this

[thekingofthenameless]

Could you tell me your process in designing Merlin and Charlie, both in aesthetics and personalities? You mentioned in your Q&A post about the design changes so I’m intrigued in your thought process!

Thanks for the ask! :D

My memory is shit so I had to go through old Discord messages for this lmaooo, but it was fun! …When I wasn’t dying due to cringe.

For those who don’t know, these two are Tales of Arcadia’s Merlin, and Tales of Arcadia’s Charlie! Aka the two that started all this.

Merlin:

Back when The King of the Nameless was still a ToA fanfiction, (titled Emerald Embers), I didn’t have plans to change Merlin that much at first, besides giving him a long white ponytail (inspired by his concept art), some earrings, and the outfit that @tenyai drew in some storyboard explorations!

After some time passed, I decided to make him look more intimidating to better fit his role as someone who’s been through war for most of his life. I was inspired by this concept art! I thought he looked really cool, and it’s still my favorite storyboard version of him.

A few months later my Artbreeder era started when I wanted to make him myself. We don’t talk about that.

Eventually, I got a design commissioned!

By this point, I’d had the idea to depict him with darker skin, but he didn’t have a defined race (I accepted @aaronwaltke’s headcanon/idea of him being so old nationalities weren’t a thing yet.)

Time passed, and I went on my unintentional but helpful hiatus for several months before coming back.

Once I started revisiting the yet to be retitled Emerald Embers, I had the idea to redesign Merlin again.

I had watched this TikTok, and afterwards, for some reason, got curious and decided to look up if locs with white hair exist (they do, of course, I was just making sure I wasn’t being stupid).

The idea was also partly from me realizing that Merlin being ambiguously brown without a defined race wasn’t… good, even with his “age”. The trope of characters without a defined race is really common, and a bit problematic, so it would be cool to have a clearly Black protagonist. I was already getting heavily attached to the concept when I approached my boyfriend with it, and I tried to convince him to tell me redesigning him again was a bad idea, but I don’t think I would’ve listened even if he had told me lol.

I also remembered Once Upon A Time’s Merlin, who’s Black, and that helped convince me more!

About a week later, I was making Picrews while planning to commission someone eventually!

I finally approached his original artist after searching for one a bit, because I saw one of their posts on Reddit and loved their art style!

After a few renditions, Merlin had a set design at last!

Or… so I thought, lol. I’d wanted Merlin to have an undercut on every side of his head, like an au of Adora where she has the hairstyle, and his locs actually going halfway down his back. I basically gaslighted myself into forgetting that when his first artist drew it short. 💀 Maybe he started growing it out and shaved the rest of his head after he turned immortal or something lol.

Anyways, got into contact with his current design’s artist. While looking up references for his body type (even though I had one already, so I don’t know why I did that lol), I found his current body type and was like “Perfect”.

And his hair is actually longer than I’d planned! :D Fully down, I think it would reach his knees or possibly longer.

Then him being a transgender man grabbed me by the throat, and I eventually came up with a design for how he looked when he found Charlie!

He was physically twelve at this point, but chronologically sixty-four. (Almost thirteen and sixty-five lol. He transitioned when he was sixteen physically, chronologically eighty.)

So, in a summary, Merlin has gone from cisgender white ➡️ cisgender ambiguously brown skinned (glad I changed that lol) ➡️ cisgender Black ➡️ transgender Black.

He’s changed so much lol.

And something I find funny about DR!Merlin's design vs TKN Merlin: the latter Merlin is just. ONE inch taller now. 6'8" compared to 6'7".

Also I’ll end this with the point that technically, his appearance is never described in original Arthurian text, so he can look like whatever I want him to. ;)

Charlie:

Finally onto the best boy!!

After getting my first adoptable, a dragon named Mantis, I looked at ToA Charlie again and just went “😬”

Alongside him being a little bit too humanoid for my taste, (and his neck proportions taking me out, lol) his wings being leathery with holes in them made me annoyed because they logically should have repaired themselves; as long as a bat has proper rest and nutrition, tears in their wings can heal on their own without medical attention. With as many holes as he has, he obviously shouldn’t be able to fly.

Anyways, thought of redesigning him for a bit, but never had any fleshed out concepts of anything since dragon Picrews are unfortunately hard to come by.

Then I got this dragon adoptable!

Apparently about three minutes later, I thought: what if that was the redesign for Charlie? I ran with it, and that’s how this dragon became Charlie! Still ToA at this point, lol.

(Me deciding an adoptable is perfect for a character design, actually, was what happened with Morgana too but we’ll talk about her later.)

Later, I saw an awesome unicorn adoptable and wondered if it was still open, so I contacted Charlie’s second artist! It wasn’t, so I asked if I could get a commission instead since some slots were available.

If I remember right, I asked for him to be in a flying pose, and after a traditional sketch I loved immediately, it was onto digital, then coloring! He got a little bit of a redesign, lol; I love how his colors seem far more vibrant, and how his wings actually look like lava! :D

Somewhere along the line, I decided the swirls and leaves on his leg would be his familiar mark!

Time passed, and The King of the Nameless started coming to life. I asked Reddit for new name suggestions for Charlie because I thought I shouldn't/couldn't keep the same name; got absolutely great suggestions like Fred, Scorch (also fun fact that's referenced in this oneshot lol), and... Jarred. No, I'm not kidding. Gave up on Reddit and Googled male dragon names before going to a generator. That gave me the amazing name Tyson, and hell yeah, I'm absolutely gonna name an ancient dragon after chicken nuggets! (It's actually derived from the Old French word "tison", or "firebrand", but admit it, the chicken nuggets is funnier.) I even thought of naming him Falkor after the dragon in The Neverending Story lol.

But Falkor didn't stick. No matter how hard I tried, my brain refused to latch onto the name, and I always kept internally referring to my dragon as Charlie. I tried to think of more new names, but nothing would come to mind, and at one point the only name I could think of was Adam. Eventually my boyfriend just said "as long as you don't name him Charlemagne from Tales of Arcadia you'll be fine".

So after all that, Charlie he stayed!

Some more time passed, and I got my first commission of Merlin and Charlie in the same picture!

He was unintentionally drawn as pretty small since I forgot to send size references at first lol.

Got two more pieces! He was pretty much consistent size wise for these two.

I started getting a fourth piece of them together, using an incredible sketch I made for the artist to have as a reference that I should post against the final art like this post lol.

And when I got the sketch, Charlie was BIG, far bigger than before.

Debated on it keeping it his new size or not for a little bit until I was like: "fuck it we ball the other arts are in the past and this is present". (Also Merl's hair isn't long in most pieces anyway lol.)

Bro's like. the size of a car now.

Something I thought funny that applies to both of their designs: just like Merlin’s hair got longer and longer (although I wanted it halfway down his back in the first place and forgot) Charlie’s gotten bigger and bigger lol.

Commissioned another piece with Charlie's new size!

Another thing about Charlie's design I find funny: he's bigger than ToA Charlie now.

That concludes the epic saga of their design changes, and now they're both set in stone! They really are. I promise.

Artist credits: @undeadchestnut, @honeyxmonkey, Soberana Art (on Artstation), @cat-gh0ul, NaldThal (on Ko-Fi), @heropaws, @biposi, @honeyxmonkey, @theeio, @azurewildflight

Picrew credits: djarn, romanapologist/hotvanilla, brightgoat

Links to their individual posts, if applicable: ToA Merlin’s concept art (1, 2, 3, 4), Merlin’s original hair (1, 2, 3), ToA Merlin’s medieval outfit, The Original Tiktok, White locs (1, 2, 3), Adora undercut au, Merlin’s original body type, Merlin’s current body type, Current Merlin, Trans Merlin, Mantis the dragon, Original Charlie, Charlie's name fiasco (on Reddit), Forest, Cuddles, Sploot, Embrace, Meadow. (also a few more links throughout the post lol)

Taglist: @gaylightisminetocommand, @the-arson-author-gamer, @honeyxmonkey, @danhengsbestie

[takaraphoenix]

Steter for 3💖

Thanks for playing!! ^^

3. Who cooks and who cleans?

I actually think they both cook. They can both cook and they also both enjoy it. I somehow decided to have Peter lean more Italian cuisine, while Stiles mostly cooks Polish recipes from his mom.

So, some days, Peter cooks - when Stiles is too deep down the research rabbit hole, or has too much to do for college. Other days - when Peter is working on a big case (lawyer) - Stiles cooks. And if they both have time, they cook together.

But Peter does the cleaning. I think that Peter is very peculiar about that, he doesn't like chaos. Stiles doesn't mind chaos, he often doesn't even see it. Perks of ADHD, if something is in a place long enough it just blends into the background and disappears.

Ship Ask Game

[thelastwarriornun]

24 for avatrice?

Bang. Bang.

Beatrice’s ears ring with it in the absence of Ava’s shouting, or the shrill clicks and shrieks of the clicker. Beatrice’s breaths are a loud rasping thing, only  interrupted by the rhythmic wet tap, whether from the recently deceased clicker, or her own injuries Beatrice isn't sure. 

It comes back in fragments. Ava, patrol, the creek trails, all very routine. Nothing Beatrice would consider even a challenge. They’d found broken glass, and a fresh trail of blood leading them into a local minimart. Unusual certainly, but they were experienced with this. The building was old, rot having set in from all the moisture, another commonality. 

All very routine, until the floor had given way, wood shrieking and splitting as it collapsed, taking Ava with it. A gaping hole left in its stead. Beatrice remembers shouting, dropping onto her stomach with an outstretched hand as if she could undo the damage. She remembers sliding through the fractured wood, and dropping despite the height ignoring the ache in her knees. 

It wasn’t until Beatrice had landed, taking in the dark room around her, that she heard it. The telltale clicks and shrieks of a clicker. Beatrice's hand barely finds her holster before it’s there just two feet from Ava, Ava who’s groans come with tightly closed eyes, still reeling from the world falling out from under her.

It was too close. Too close to take a shot without putting Ava at risk. Too close to do anything except shield Ava from the fevered snap of jaws. It was an easy choice to make. It was the only choice. It doesn’t make it any less painful, Beatrice throwing herself into the shambling form, as teeth tear and rip through her shoulder, taking flesh and fabric indiscriminately.  Well this will be much harder to cover up with a chemical burn. 

Beatrice somehow manages to find her pistol, pressing the barrel against the clicker's head. Well head was probably overly generous, whatever once resembled a skull had given way now to the fungus blooming into something bright orange and ovular shaped. Beatrice fires twice, two shots in quick succession that spray blood and flecks of fungus against the ceiling. They fall together, and the clicker makes for a terrible cushion, smelling of rot, and full of varying lumps, manifestations of the infection. 

So Beatrice finds herself rolling off the infected, a groan on her lips as her back collides with cold tile, ears ringing. “Fuck.” It felt like an appropriate time for cursing.

“Beatrice.” Ava’s voice is faint, confused, likely still regaining her senses.  

Beatrice finds that pushing herself upright is a losing game, her right hand useless between the painful ache in her muscles, and the slick sticky puddle of blood now coating the tile. Right then, laying will have to do.  

“Beatrice!” More urgent now, and hands are on her. They’re gentle, as they pull Beatrice up, propping her against a nearby wall as Ava tries to fix something that can’t be mended. “This isn’t– it can't be– it’s from falling right? It didn’t bite you?” 

Beatrice laughs, a wet sound, ignoring the waves of pain that echo from her shoulder. Even she can see the distinct rows of teeth now memorialized in the cut of her shoulder. “Ava listen to me.” 

“Shut the fuck up Beatrice. Just give me a second to think.” Ava tears her flannel open, buttons scattering across the floor as Ava turns it into a bandage.

“That was one of my favorites.” Beatrice’s complaint is quiet, but Ava scowls all the same, tying the fabric in a tight knot against the open flesh, as Beatrice grits her teeth. 

“Now you want to be funny. You’ve barely said a word to me this entire patrol. But now you can’t seem to shut up.” Ava’s tone is harsh but her hands are gentle as they grip onto the front of Beatrice’s t-shirt. “That should slow the bleeding. Maybe I can buy us some time. They won’t come looking for a few hours–” 

“Ava stop.” Beatrice manages to catch Ava’s hands, hates the way they threaten to slip away between her own red stained fingers. Still Beatrice holds fast, and really this would be so much easier if the edges of her vision would stop blurring. “I have to tell you something, and I need you to promise me you won’t speak until I’ve finished.” 

“Beatrice there isn’t time.” Ava protests, and Beatrice can see it’s a losing battle, understands it really. Even now Beatrice finds herself caught between this moment, and a dream, a time when Beatrice’s curses were interrupted with inappropriate laughter, and the rising swell of grief. We’ll lose our minds together. 

It was so many years ago, and yet here Beatrice was. Once again watching love turn someone to insanity. Except this time Beatrice can stop it, can quell the rising tide, be the stormbreak she couldn’t before. 

Beatrice’s good hand slides along the curve of Ava’s arm, finding its way to the knape of her neck. It catches there, fingers tangling in the hairs that have escaped Ava’s ponytail. It seems silly now, their fight earlier, thinly veiled jealousy rearing its ugly head in both of them, Ava jealous over a girl Beatrice hadn’t spoken to in weeks. Beatrice, already steeling herself for the next time Ava makes up with Michael. They’ve been doing this dance for years, too afraid to speak plainly lest it ruin this. 

“Bea.” It escapes in a sob, Ava’s breath warm against Beatrice’s cheek. 

Fingers press against the knape of Ava’s neck, and Beatrice closes her eyes, unwilling to see the rejection she might find, or even worse, a reflection of herself all those years ago. Ava’s lips are soft, gentle, as if Ava’s worried she might break her. But Beatrice has spent years damming her own want and desire, and the soft press of Ava’s lips is enough to send the whole of it crashing down. Beatrice’s fingers are no longer gentle, as she surges forward, as much as the press of Ava’s body will allow, nipping at Ava’s bottom lip. 

Beatrice swallows a gasp against her lips, as Ava’s palms press flat against her chest, as if torn between returning the kiss, or pushing her away. Beatrice retreats, opening her eyes, expecting to find rejection. Instead Ava is afire, eyes wide, stuck somewhere between desire and grief, the two twisting together until Beatrice can hardly read the difference. Beatrice doesn’t make it far, only softens the press of her fingers against Ava’s neck when the tension of indecision seems to snap, and it’s Ava this time who closes the gap, molding their lips together. 

Beatrice's head bumps painfully against the wall, but she’d do it a hundred more times to keep Ava’s lips against her own. Ava’s hands cup along each side of her face, thumbs brushing along her jaw. And fuck immunity, fuck dying, because Beatrice is sure that there’s nothing she wants more than to fade into oblivion like this, with the press of Ava’s lips against her own, and the thud of her own heartbeat filling her ears. 

Ava’s hand slips down along her neck, and Beatrice hisses from between clenched teeth at the sharp wave of pain that rolls through her. But Beatrice doesn’t want to lose this, the starstruck look in Ava’s eyes, or the clench of her hands in Beatrice’s tattered shirt. So Beatrice smirks,” if I’d have known that would shut you up I would’ve tried that years ago.” 

“You should’ve.” Ava doesn't miss a beat. 

“Who’s being funny now?” Beatrice pauses sucking in a breath. The weight of years of secrecy, of hiding was a tough vow to break. Especially when so many people had paid the cost to keep it so. 

“I don’t want you to die.” Ava’s voice is soft, tears glistening even in the dim light of the basement, and Beatrice hears it again, an echo of the past, I cannot watch you die. We’ll go together then. 

“I’m not going to turn Ava.” Beatrice flips her arm displaying the fully healed tattoo on her arm, biting back a laugh when Ava scowls. 

“Really? You want to show off your stupid tattoo now?” 

“Not the tattoo, the burn. I’m immune, Ava.” It falls flat, and Beatrice presses a hand to Ava’s cheek forcing her to look at her before she can withdraw much. “I’m serious Ava. The only people who know are Mary, Shannon, and Suzanne. I was bit back in the QZ, that’s how I met Shannon and Mary. It was a long time ago, they were worried how people might react so that’s how I got the chemical burn. I’m going to be fine.” 

It’s not much, a flicker of something, hope, in the softening lines of Ava’s face. “Swear to me.” 

Beatrice doesn’t look away, simply brushes her thumb across the remaining trail of moisture along Ava’s cheek. “I swear. Assuming we make it out of this, I’ll be fine.” 

“Okay then.” Ava glances around, frowning slightly as she straightens up, as if just now recognizing the gravity of the situation. Ava extends an arm to Beatrice, who takes it with a grimace allowing herself to be pulled upright. “Don’t think bleeding out will stop you from having to talk about that kiss.” 

Beatrice laughs, ignoring the way the world seems to tilt beneath her as they look for an exit. Because of course Ava would take this in stride, and god Beatrice would do it again, throw herself into the jaws of a monster if it meant spending just another day with her. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

[burberrycanary]

Hi there! I am about midway through reading your story Lost Vocabularies and it is amazing!! The whole series has been so lovely, I’m obsessed with the way you write! The way that you convey the boys complicated emotions and capture all the little nuances of their dynamic has me feral!! Beyond even them the way you inject so much personality into the locations is so good, I feel like I am there!! So thank you for writing this lovely story 💕 I was wondering if you happen to have a list of all the books that Bucky and Steve read? I have been looking up a lot of them and adding them to my to read list bc they sound so interesting lol! On that same note, how did you decide what books to mention? Are they all ones that you have read or did you do research to find ones you thought they would like?

I’ve been coming back and rereading this kind and wonderful comment in my inbox over the last few weeks when way too many massive, stressful, time-sensitive things were all happening at once. 💕 But since I have a little breather between crazy periods, I get to dive in here as a treat.

Lost Vocabularies involved a lot of research, which I hope isn’t apparent because I didn’t want there to be any noticeable difference between the parts of the story that are based on places I’d been, foods I’d tried and books I’d read personally—and what was created purely based on research. Fingers crossed that the seams don't show!

In this series, we see both Steve and Bucky use art to process—helping them understand themselves and connect to the world again. Bucky is drawn to stories while Steve as an artist is much more visual, but the underlying impulse is similar. In the same way that you learn a lot by glancing through someone’s bookshelves, what characters read is interesting to me, and revealing. This version of Bucky is a very private person so these books offer a glimpse into his inner life. And as the POV character we get to experience all these things alongside Steve.

I’m not much of a sci-fi or fantasy reader so some of Bucky’s picks were a real challenge for me. But I wanted these to be grounded in the characters and the storytelling functions, not based on my own taste and opinions, though of course those always bleed through. 

Steve’s Reading List

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Alice Neel: People Come First by Kelly Baum and Randall Griffey

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston, edited by Ann J. Abadie

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 by Jia Lynn Yang

Bucky’s Reading List

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time by Richard Feynman

Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos by Steven H. Strogatz

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

I’ve included some notes and commentary on why I picked each of these works under the cut.

The Same River, Twice (The Man Is Still Left with His Hands)

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Classic post-WWII dystopian sci-fi that focuses on society collapsing after a series of catastrophes that were unintentional but very much caused by people, which leads to a lot of the population becoming blind. Thematically this work engages with the loss of identity that people, both abled and disabled, face in the process of survival and a dark look at what happens after societies break down. How this applies to Bucky is obvious, but part of the argument of this post-Endgame series is that it applies to Steve, too. 

Also, there are huge mobile carnivorous plants. 

Fun fact: the opening of this novel is said to have been the inspiration for 28 Days Later!

Still Left with the River (The Paradox of Motion)

Alice Neel: People Come First by Kelly Baum and Randall Griffey

Alice Neel’s portraits are extraordinary, almost unnervingly vivid. In this story, Steve is familiar with her work as a fellow New York-based artist active in communist circles in the 1930s. She also worked for the WPA, producing wonderful street scenes that documented New York neighborhoods of the era. 

To be honest, I have so many questions about what Steve was up to in the late 1930s before his war mania of the 40s hits.

One of the core themes of this series is Steve struggling with what his body is for if it’s no longer for violence. Who is he if he’s not a soldier? What is his radically changed body if it’s not a weapon? How do you come home from the war?

In this regard, Steve and Bucky have all kinds of shared life experience.

So thematically I include Neel because of her startling gift for capturing personalities and bodies through a process of frank, earnest, truthful observation of the integrated completeness of body and self: this space that’s you. 

But a book of Alice Neel’s work with her sensitive portraits and fleshy frank nudes pulls him into flipping through page after page of these personalities and bodies, not idealized: seen.

Steve isn’t ready for that when he bumps into this big “impractical” art book in a holdover Barnes & Noble in Brooklyn, not when he’s still so shook up and adrift. But he will be.

There’s such empathy and radical humanism to her pieces. “People,” as she famously said, “come first.” I stand by the conclusion that Steve would love her work.

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft was relatively unknown in his lifetime—he died in 1937—but his stories were published in popular fantasy pulp magazines like Weird Tales and Astounding Stories, which is where Bucky would have come across his work. The fact that Steve recognizes Lovecraft by name means that teenage Bucky must have talked about what he was reading and the pulp stories he liked with teenage Steve, which is adorable—“this Lovecraft fellow, Steve, you wouldn’t believe the stuff he comes up with.” And Steve was paying attention enough to remember two decades and change later without the benefit of his serum-enhanced memory, which hurts my heart a little in the best possible way. 

That’s how Steve all these years and decades later is able to wordlessly toss this collection of H. P. Lovecraft’s stories at Bucky on a hot hazy stumbled-upon beach in northern Florida and watch Bucky’s whole face light up. 

And of course Bucky would view Lovecraft as a great beach read 😂

But this is the basis for something I’ve written into this series: Bucky excitedly sharing things he finds interesting with Steve—wanting to tell Steve first, Steve most. And although Steve is quiet, stoical and very self-contained, he’s paying a whole hell of a lot of attention.

Given that Bucky is canonically a Tolkien fan, I think the imaginativeness and ranging scope of Lovecraft’s complex, often interconnected stories would appeal to him. And, thematically, Lovecraft is distinctive for the era for having characters psychologically fragment when confronting these vast inhuman others. 

“The Call of Cthulhu” opens with:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

Steve and Bucky have each voyaged out a long way.

Trauma, in a way, is a form of terrible knowledge. You can heal but you can’t unknow things. 

Not Language but a Map (The Grammar of Sensation)

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

This is the first book in the series that we see Bucky pick for himself. And, wow, he picks a doozy with themes of multiple and unstable identities, invasive surveillance, manipulation, psychosis, and how individuals can get chewed up by larger systems, falling through the cracks of society. Dick was writing based on his own troubled experiences with southern California drug culture of the early 70s, but this work gets at much more fundamental darknesses that I think would speak to some of the horrors Bucky has gone through and won’t talk about, not even with Steve. 

Within the first few pages, we get this:

It was midday, in June of 1994. In California, in a tract area of cheap but durable plastic houses, long ago vacated by the straights. Jerry had at an earlier date sprayed metal paint over all the windows, though, to keep out the light; the illumination for the room came from a pole lamp into which he had screwed nothing but spot lamps, which shone day and night, so as to abolish time for him and his friends. He liked that; he liked to get rid of time. By doing that he could concentrate on important things without interruption.

The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston, edited by Ann J. Abadie

Eggleston was an early pioneer in color photography and that fascination with color is very apparent in his work. I think this focus would grab Steve as an artist who doesn’t take seeing the full spectrum of color for granted. Even in the MCU’s thin action-film scripts, Steve comments on things that offend his aesthetic sensibilities even when that has absolutely no bearing on the situation at hand, from Stark Tower to Lang’s van.

Not even a world-ending crisis can keep Steve from going, wow, no, that’s ugly. I enjoyed running with that 😂

Steve’s view of Eggleston’s photographs shifts over the course of the series, reflecting what he’s feeling, from the fragmented and disconnected detachment—“isolated and off-kilter”— that he sees in them at the beginning that shifts to the passionate engagement in the world he finds in them later. 

Steve looks through the whole book of William Eggleston’s photographs again and at first the colors still roll over him like the shockwave of a distant explosion, all he can focus on. But gradually the subjects and compositions pull forward, too: monumentalized images of the everyday that at first seem neutral, the work of a detached observer. But the off-center framing of ordinary life is so deliberate as though everything might be important and where every detail deserves attention—that’s nothing like neutral. That’s not detached at all. You have to care a whole hell of a lot.

This mirrors the journey this post-Endgame Steve goes on. Because Steve Rogers should be a character who cares a whole hell of a lot, not what the MCU writers eventually reduced him to. And that’s what this fix-it is trying to fix. 

Lost Vocabularies that Might Express (The Memory of These Broken Impressions)

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman

I love writing Bucky as a big fucking science nerd. His last night in New York and how does he want to spend the time? At a science fair with his best friend and a couple of pretty girls. So Bucky reading about quantum electrodynamics is delightful to me. The thing is, though, Bucky is a bright enough guy with a high school education. He’s not a genius—and the MCU is lousy with geniuses. But if Bucky wanted to learn a little more about all this quantum stuff he heard about in passing during some vague and very improbable sounding explanations, which by the way also allowed one of the few people still living who truly matters to him and the closest thing Bucky had left to family to fuck off to the past, well, Feynman’s QED isn’t a bad place to start in understanding some of this quantum stuff, at least. 

Feynman here is very much writing for a popular audience. His writing is conversational—the book is adapted from a set of lectures he gave—and his voice is witty, casual and surprisingly light, but at the same time Feynman is deeply invested in helping lay people understand quantum mechanics. The book opens with:

Alix Mautner was very curious about physics and often asked me to explain things to her. I would do all right, just as I do with a group of students at Caltech that come to me for an hour on Thursdays, but eventually I’d fail at what is to me the most interesting part: We would always get hung up on the crazy ideas of quantum mechanics. I told her I couldn’t explain these ideas in an hour or an evening—it would take a long time—but I promised her that someday I’d prepare a set of lectures on the subject.

I prepared some lectures, and I went to New Zealand to try them out—because New Zealand is far enough away that if they weren’t successful, it would be all right! Well, the people in New Zealand thought they were okay, so I guess they’re okay—at least for New Zealand! So here are the lectures I really prepared for Alix, but unfortunately I can’t tell them to her directly, now.

C’mon! Tell me Bucky Barnes would not be hooked by this opening. 

Thematically, and more seriously, the question of how could Steve do this? has two very different meanings. So far in this series Bucky isn’t ready to confront the harder version of that question which comes potentially with some very painful answers: how could Steve make that choice? Nope, he’s not ready for that. Instead, his brain unconsciously takes the easier way out: trying to understand quantum electrodynamics. 😂😭

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Bucky must have liked A Scanner Darkly, because he went for another Philip K. Dick novel. Today remembered mostly as the source material for Blade Runner, this bleak dystopian novel is set in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear war that destroys most life on Earth. The work has themes around empathy—who feels empathy and for what?—materialism and what really makes us human. 

I find it interesting how Sebastian Stan talks about The Winter Soldier in terms of someone who has undergone a process of total desensitization, which to varying degrees is deliberately part of the training of all soldiers. But rebuilding his core sense of empathy was one of the things Bucky chose to do as soon as he had any agency in that two-year period where he was on the run, which is remarkable. As a person who has been treated as though he wasn’t human and had his empathy forcibly stripped from him, I think Bucky would have a lot of complicated feelings about the enslaved androids who escape but are ruthlessly tracked down and killed. Some of these escaped androids are dangerous and do lack basic empathy—shown in the book by torturing and mutilating an animal—while other androids seem like ordinary people just trying to live their lives. 

I like that Bucky talks about the book with Steve later in the story, returning in my view to a very old habit of bookworm Bucky wanting to share what he’d been reading with Steve <333

“I need to find something to read next,” Bucky says after wrapping up his description of an imagined religion that involved plugging into a box to virtually suffer the existence of a man forever walking up a steep hill while struck by crashing stones. 

“Well, did the androids dream of electric sheep?” Steve asks.

“Who knows?” Bucky knocks into him gently as he takes the bowl Steve passes over. “They just wanted to be free. Though the free people just wanted to own stuff or plug into a box and suffer. So, you know, sort of a grim outlook. ”

“A little light, cheerful reading.”

“Hey, we live in a world where people write ‘Take back what’s yours’ in the streets and then smash up the windows. Dystopias don’t seem so far off the mark.”

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time by Richard Feynman

Another case of Bucky sticking with an author he likes! To me, this implies that Bucky has already read Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces, which explains some of the foundational basics of physics for a very broad and non-technical audience. Six Not-So-Easy Pieces is also drawn from Feynman’s famous Lectures on Physics, focusing here on relativity and space-time, but this work assumes a greater knowledge of math, hence the name. But as a legendary sniper Bucky must have a strong aptitude for math and anyway I just leaned into making Bucky an all-around nerd, because Bucky Barnes, nerd who grew up hot, is delightful to me. 

Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time are all on point for a post-Endgame fix-it, which I think should count as a not-so-easy piece in its own right. 

Throughout the series, we see Bucky using physical copies when he reads fiction, more or less from unconscious nostalgia: connecting back to memories of his younger self who was an avid reader of pulp magazines and cheap paperbacks. Once Steve gets him going with that first quietly tossed-over gift, Bucky always carries around a sci-fi or fantasy book in this series despite the limited space in his backpack. And this familiarity wouldn’t just be from his pre-war life since I figure Bucky would have gone for the Armed Services Editions that were distributed for free to soldiers. Bucky likely traded with other soldiers once he finished a book if he couldn’t get a new ASE distribution: trading in his finished novel for a new one is Bucky unconsciously falling back into another old habit.

But for non-fiction, Bucky is absolutely here for the Modern Marvel of being able to carry around as many books as he likes on his phone. I figure Bucky would have used public libraries during certain stages of his recovery when he was homeless and migratory since they are a place to get information that is consistently available in cities; and a warm, quiet place you can go with a minimal number of security cameras. I headcanon a middle-aged librarian who has a few streaks of gray in her dark hair—and who reminds Bucky of someone but he has no idea who—explaining what e-books are to this tall, gaunt, soft-spoken homeless guy with an eye contact problem. And this person who isn’t the Asset anymore and isn’t Bucky Barnes yet has the out-of-nowhere thought: huh, whaddaya know. That’s pretty neat.

Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: With Applications To Physics, Biology, Chemistry, And Engineering by Steven H. Strogatz

Isolated systems tend to evolve towards a single equilibrium and these equilibrium points have been the focus of many-body research for centuries. But life is generally not that simple because most systems aren’t isolated. Often the dynamics of a system result from the product of multiple different interacting forces and objects in these systems can change between multiple different attractor wells over time. Or as Strogatz puts it:

As we’ve mentioned earlier, most nonlinear systems are impossible to solve analytically. Why are nonlinear systems so much harder to analyze than linear ones? The essential difference is that linear systems can be broken down into parts. Then each part can be solved separately and finally recombined to get the answer. This idea allows a fantastic simplification of complex problems, and underlies such methods as normal modes, Laplace transforms, superposition arguments, and Fourier analysis. In this sense, a linear system is precisely equal to the sum of its parts.

But many things in nature don’t act this way. Whenever parts of a system interfere, or cooperate, or compete, there are nonlinear interactions going on. Most of everyday life is nonlinear, and the principle of superposition fails spectacularly. 

You can think of nonlinear dynamics as situations in which the sum of the parts is insufficient to understand the whole. This connects to multiple themes in this story as Bucky and Steve try to understand themselves, their lives and each other. But here Bucky is also just continuing to live his best life as a nerd with a strong intuitive knack for math, a high school education, an internet connection and a growing collection of science e-books. Or as Bucky puts it:

“It’s nice, though, like this smart guy is just talking to you but doesn’t assume you’re dumb because of what you don’t know.”

It’s touched on only very lightly in the series so far, but Bucky has a lot of complex feelings about higher education that relate to class, indirectly to sexuality, and go back to the experience of being the son of upwardly mobile working-class immigrants who were very bought-in on a traditional take on the American Dream.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

I picked this partly because I thought the title would grab Bucky, who has been a stranger in a strange land several times over. Thematically this midcentury sci-fi novel focuses on challenging social norms through having the main character, a human who’d been raised by Martians on Mars, come back to Earth as an adult. A best-seller in its day that was controversial for its rejection of Christianity, monogamy and the nuclear family, the work is very tied to the looming cultural changes of the 60s and 70s. 

The novel’s critical reputation has been steadily in decline for decades, but I think Bucky would find it interesting since he grew up within the traditional early 20th-century culture this novel satirizes and challenges—mores that this story’s version of Bucky didn’t unquestioningly accept but didn’t openly challenge, either.

Having Bucky pick this novel reflects the themes for the last act of this story that focus more on Steve and Bucky's different experiences as closeted queer men growing up in a deeply homophobic society. These experiences continue to shape and impact them and yet are also a past these two are coming to terms with and growing beyond. 

Fun fact: this novel coined the word “grok.”

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 by Jia Lynn Yang

Of all the books featured in this series, One Mighty and Irresistible Tide is my top recommendation. This is an accessible, well-written history of a topic that haunts American history: immigration. The specific focus is the waves of legislation passed in the first half of the 20th century that tried—and often succeeded—in limiting who could legally immigrate based on the racial and ethnic hierarchies that equally haunt American history, right down to the foundation. 

In this series, I wanted to pick up the themes of social justice and immigration that were so vaguely and incoherently included in TFATWS. These themes are inherent in the Snap and Return plotline except that Disney does not want to touch any of these politics with a ten-foot pole. But I remain fascinated by trying to wrap my mind around what it would mean for half the population to vanish and then return five years later, catastrophically in both cases. It’s a huge, intricate, sticky, difficult world-building problem that’s inescapably political. 

Steve isn’t quite ready to dive into facing or helping to fix the problems of the post-Return world that his actions helped to create. But here we get to see Steve’s burned-out passion and conviction slowly rekindle as he reads about the complicated and often ugly history of American immigration—and he gets mad about it. Of course, he gets mad about it! This is my answer to the ludicrous idea that Steve Rogers could quietly sit out the second half of the twentieth century. 

At the same time, I can have compassion for Steve knowing he can’t keep going but not knowing how to help himself, only to be given the cursed monkey’s paw of time travel. And he fucks up. His actions have real and lasting consequences. But that doesn’t make the situation hopeless or mean Steve can’t try to repair the relationships he damaged or work to regain the trust he lost, assuming he’s lucky enough to be given another chance by people who love him but have been hurt by his choices.

One of the greatest challenges in writing this Endgame fix-it was accepting Endgame as the starting point of the story and trying to reconcile a character I love with the choices canon has him make. Over the course of these stories, the central point isn’t Steve coming back to Bucky. It’s Steve coming back to himself. Through a slow and painful struggle, Steve finds himself again—rediscovering his stubborn endurance, his compassion for others and his drive to set wrongs right. Steve stumbled, badly, but he gets back up. Because that’s who Steve Rogers is. 

And because of who Bucky Barnes is—his innate kindness, his warm-hearted generosity and his stubborn loyalty that isn’t blind but runs deep—that’s how these two characters come back to each other, after everything.

Deliberately, this series is the first hard-fought and hopeful glimmer in a long trudging process that can get so heavy to carry forward, day after day, but is shot through with moments of beauty and joy all the same. 

I can't go on; I'll go on.

In other words, to quote one of my favorite poets: what the living do.

[illumiera]

how does Miraak describe being skeletonized? 👀 Does he laugh about it now/even remember it, or was it horribly traumatizing? Does it upset Elentari?

OH, GOOD QUESTION, THANK YOU‼️ 👀

Miraak remembers everything.

he remembers dying in Elentari's arms and asking her to tell him about Sovngarde (because she would be his afterlife instead, and perhaps they'd meet in her dreams, he thought), and then learning her name with his last breath. he remembers the bright pain of his soul coming loose, and the strangeness of it settling inside her, like he was a second heart right beside her own. he remembers her travelling through time itself to find him, and how she'd kissed him to give back his soul, and how having a soul returned (or returning a soul!) hurts as much as having it ripped away.

(in his own words: “I remember how you carried my soul within you as safely as if it were your own, Elentari, Kundruniiki, vokriidi,” he continues to her profile, wondering what he would see in her eyes if he were to reach out, and with the gentlest touch of his claw-tipped fingers at the curve of her jaw, turn her to face him, “and how I knew no fear, so long as your feet were carving a path of stars for mine to follow. How you crossed entire rivers of time and cheated the Prince of Fate to salvage such an undeserving spirit as mine, knowing that he will surely hunt us to the ends of Nirn in return.”)

he won't laugh about it, but he's not exactly traumatised, either—he's just living with the quiet certainty that he survived, despite everything, and now he's here with a scar to show for it, just like Elentari herself. they have matching scars right over their hearts now, after all, from when they died and came back nonetheless!

and meanwhile, Elentari... very much doesn't like to speak of it yet. she struggles to even say the words "you died" or "you were dead" to him, because in her eyes, the fact that she brought him back doesn't erase the fact that she had to watch yet another person die as she tried to save them. maybe that will all change in time, though... 🤲