#to live a life believing it is the way things are and to never question or judge

[colouredbyd]

About You

james potter x reader

synopsis: in a world where soulmates see color only when they meet, james potter has always lived in vivid hues without knowing why. the girl who once lit up his world in childhood vanished, leaving only fragments of memory behind. years later, when she returns, tangled memories and aching hearts reveal a truth he’s longed for — that everything has always been about you.

cw: soulmate au, reader is adopted, childhood friends to lovers, getting hit by a ball, kissing, dual point of view, extensive james pov, james deeply in love, reader adopted by a french family, reader is a transfer student to hogwarts, background wolfstar elements, mild emotional intensity, some angst, slow-burn romance, no major triggers, fluff fluff fluff!

w/c: 5.8k

request: here!

a/n: based on the song About You by The 1975. i’m genuinely so proud of this, and will be rereading it till i get the ick <3

masterlist

James Potter believed he had no soulmate. For many reasons.

The idea that the universe could conjure one singular person who was perfect for him sounded, frankly, implausible. 

Wasn’t a person meant to decide their own fate? The very notion bristled against his nature, too neat, too scripted, too convenient. 

James had never liked being told how things ought to be, how paths were meant to wind, or whom he was meant to love. 

He thought of the way the world spun with infinite variables, endless choices, each step shaping the next in ways no prophecy could predict. 

What if he didn’t like his soulmate? Worse, what if they didn’t like him? 

The thought sat sharp-edged and unwelcome in the quiet corners of his mind. He did not dwell on it, as a rule.

Still, it was difficult to escape the idea entirely. All his life, he had heard the stories, told over dinners, late-night fires, quiet moments between his parents. 

Tales of that first breathless instant when color had bled into the world, so rich it left them dazed. 

His father would speak of the impossible green of his mother’s eyes, the startling red of her lips. His mother would smile, eyes soft with memory, describing the gold in his father’s hair beneath the sun. 

James would listen, curious but strangely distant from it all, as they told him how the world had split wide and new when they met, how they could still remember the exact moment the grey had vanished.

There was something beautiful in it, he supposed. Something that stirred at the edge of longing. But beneath that was a quieter, sharper thing — fear, perhaps.

 A worry that his story would not unfold in such a fairytale manner, that the universe might be cruel, or careless, or simply indifferent.

And yet, for all those tangled doubts and questions, none were his strongest reason for disbelief.

In a world where people are born to see only black and white, where the first meeting of a soulmate floods the eye with color, James had known with mounting certainty that he did not have one. 

Because for as long as he could remember, he had seen the world in color.

He remembered it as a child, dashing barefoot through the echoing halls of Potter Manor, the tapestries a riot of gold and crimson, the gardens spilling green across the summer air. 

He remembered color at the village markets, the bright bustle of stalls, the striped awnings swaying in the wind. 

And most of all, he remembered color from the orphanage, of all places, a rather grey and drafty stone building that somehow still flickered to life whenever he visited.

Euphemia Potter had a heart wide as the sky. Though she came from a pure-blood family, she had never cared for the stuffy ideas that often clung to such lineage. 

She would say, in her usual firm and breezy way, that the world had more than enough coldness in it already. 

And so it had been her habit, even after marriage and motherhood, to visit the local orphanage with baskets of sweets, books, blankets. 

She brought James with her, of course.

“You should make friends everywhere you can,” she would tell him. “That is what magic is for.”

James had not needed convincing. A boy of seven with boundless curiosity and a great deal too much energy, he had thought the visits a grand adventure. 

The halls of the orphanage were a new playground, full of new faces, new games, new scrapes to be had.

And though his memory, even now, was a rather hopeless mess of scattered images and blurred hours — he had been seven, after all, with the attention span of a gnat — there was one thing he remembered clearly. 

One certain girl.

She had bickered with him from the very first moment. It seemed to be her sport, her purpose in life, to contradict everything he said. 

If he claimed the sky was blue, she would argue that it was grey. 

If he ran to the swings, she would beat him there and call him slow. 

If he tried to charm her with sweets from his mother’s basket, she would sniff at them and declare them probably poisoned.

And yet, for all her stubbornness, for all her sharp tongue and quicker wit, something about her had altered James’s world, tilted it on its axis.

He could remember the exact shade of her hair beneath the sun, the color of her laugh (yes, it had seemed to have color, or perhaps that was only how he had felt about it), the bright flash of her eyes when she grinned at him in triumph after a particularly vicious game of tag.

She had been, if he was honest, the closest James had ever come to finding love. 

Not that he had known it at the time. It had been a stupid thing. A childish thing. A crush from when he was seven, foolish and fleeting. 

But sometimes, in quiet moments, the memory would drift back.

And then, as quickly as she had appeared, she had vanished.

One day, she simply was not there.

James had asked his mother, bewildered and frowning. “Where did she go?”

Euphemia had smiled, soft and knowing. “She was adopted, love.”

Adopted. Off into some other life, some other world. Gone.

And so, James had decided, with the certainty only a small boy could possess: he was doomed. Utterly doomed. Never to find love again.

A ridiculous thought, of course. A dramatic one. 

But even now, if one asked James Potter about soulmates, he would shrug and say with a crooked grin that the matter was simple: he had missed his chance at seven years old, and the universe had long since given up on him.

Which was all fine by him, really.

Absolutely fine.

Or so he told himself.

Still, doomed or not, James had other things to think about. Seventh year would not make itself easy. N.E.W.T.s, Quidditch, Prefect duties he mostly ignored. 

The castle was louder this year, more crowded with couples now that so many had found their soulmates. 

Everywhere he looked it seemed someone was falling into place — eyes brighter, hands clasped in the corridors, laughter a little too soft for comfort. 

Even Sirius and Remus had settled, the two of them inseparable these days, perfectly content in their own easy orbit.

James had long since stopped teasing them for it. It was hard to begrudge your best mates something so clearly right. 

No one in their year was surprised when Sirius stopped chasing girls and started sitting closer to Remus by the fire, heads bent together over a book, fingers sometimes laced beneath the table. 

The two of them had found what the rest were still hoping for.

And James — well. He had no use for hoping. The universe had forgotten him, or worse, chosen to leave him out of the story altogether. 

And honestly, it was fine. Absolutely fine. He was not the type to pine for something that would never be.

He did not even think of it again. Not until one crisp October afternoon, when fate  chose to remind him that the universe had its own plans after all.

It had been a long practice. The Gryffindor team had spent hours drilling plays beneath a sky streaked pale with autumn clouds. 

By the time James finally touched down on the pitch, the sun was slanting low behind the towers, painting everything in gold.

James touched down first, broom tucked beneath one arm, hair a windswept mess, sweat clinging to the nape of his neck. 

A few paces behind, Sirius landed with a grin, spinning his broom lazily through one hand. 

They had lingered after the rest of the team had gone in — a habit of James’s, these days. Some hours just did not want to end.

Remus was waiting at the edge of the stands, book tucked beneath one arm, watching them with quiet amusement. 

He was never one for flying — though he had a good eye for plays — and often brought some battered novel to keep himself occupied during long practices.

By now the pitch had mostly emptied. A few stragglers remained at the far end, gathering gear, trailing off toward the castle. 

James caught a worn quaffle from the basket and tossed it from hand to hand as they crossed the grass. 

“Remus says you nearly knocked their new Chaser off her broom earlier,” Sirius said, slinging an arm over James’s shoulder. “Show-off.”

“She wasn’t watching her line,” James replied easily, giving the quaffle another spin. 

“Besides, the only thing I knocked was that shot past you, mate.”

Sirius laughed, but before he could retort, James wound back and sent the quaffle arcing lazily into the air. 

The throw was wide, idle, more habit than thought, the sort of casual motion born from years of play.

“Oi, careful with that,” Sirius called, shielding his eyes from the sun.

But already the quaffle was sailing out across the pitch, farther than James had meant, the angle off. 

It spun in a slow arc toward the edge of the stands — and straight into an unsuspecting figure who had just rounded the corner.

There was a faint cry, a stumble — and then you went down hard, knees hitting the damp earth where the grass was still slick from the rain the night before. 

A sharp splash of mud streaked your skirt, the quaffle rolling uselessly to a stop in the grass beside you.

Brilliant. Your first week at this school and already you were on your knees in the dirt.

And then a shadow fell across you.

“I’m so sorry—” he began, dropping into a crouch, reaching for your hand.

You looked up, ready to snap, and the words caught somewhere between your chest and throat.

The boy standing before you was tall, broad-shouldered beneath the loose fall of his Quidditch robes. 

His skin was tanned deep by long hours beneath the sun, warm against the crisp October light. 

Curls of dark brown hair framed his face, damp from practice, a little tousled at the edges. And his eyes—

You faltered.

His eyes were something else entirely. A colour so fierce and rich it stopped your breath, as though the world had narrowed to that single glance. 

He crouched swiftly, one strong hand reaching out. His fingers curled around yours, firm and steady, as he helped you upright.

The instant his palm touched yours, the air shifted. 

A spark, low and bright, lit beneath your skin. The faintest hum, dizzy and disorienting, curled through your chest. Every inch of you seemed to prickle with heat.

Your breath stilled.

And then you saw it in him. The subtle gasp, the way his mouth parted in some small sound. 

His eyes widened, sharp with something between recognition and alarm. His grip faltered.

He jerked his hand back as though burned, stumbling a half-step away, chest rising fast beneath his robes. 

He stared at you, gaze bright and bewildered, lips parted, no words finding their way out.

Then, without a word, he spun sharply on his heel, boots slipping slightly in the wet grass as he fled across the pitch.

You stood frozen, one hand half-raised where he had left it, heart beating so loud you were certain it would echo through the field. Your skin still hummed faintly, breath caught and uneven.

You blinked after his retreating form, brows drawing together.

“What in Merlin’s—?”

His friend, who was standing far behind him, frowned. “Prongs?”

But the boy was gone, disappearing fast beyond the edge of the stands. After a beat, the two of them exchanged a glance and hurried after him.

You were left sitting in the damp grass, heart racing so loudly you were certain the whole pitch could hear it. 

“What a complete weirdo,” you muttered aloud, though your voice shook faintly. 

You pressed your palms to your knees, trying to catch your breath.

The earth spun quietly beneath you.

“There you are!”

You glanced up. Lily Evans was making her way toward you, copper hair glinting in the sun, Mary Macdonald trailing close behind. Both girls looked concerned.

“We saw what happened,” Lily said, crouching beside you. “Are you alright? That looked like a nasty fall.”

“I’m fine,” you answered, though your heart was still pounding. “It was just—surprising.”

Mary smiled. “That’s one way to start the afternoon.”

Lily offered her hand to help you up. You took it gratefully, brushing damp earth from your knees.

“Honestly,” Lily continued, shaking her head, “some of these Quidditch boys have no aim at all.”

You forced a small laugh. “It seems so.”

Lily gave you a warm look. “Come on. Let’s get you back inside.”

You fell into step with them as they made their way toward the castle, grateful, as always, for their easy company. 

Transferring to Hogwarts for your final year had been an ordeal, a whirlwind decision after your adoptive family’s move from France. 

Beauxbatons had been your home for six years, all grace and polished magic. 

Hogwarts was wild and sprawling by comparison, full of shifting staircases and unruly ghosts and students who had known each other forever.

It was rare to transfer so late. You knew the whispers that followed you through the halls. 

A seventh-year newcomer was no small curiosity.

But Lily had been kind from the first. So had Mary. Their friendship had been a soft, steady thing amidst the strangeness, helping you find your footing in this unfamiliar place.

Still, even now, there were moments when it felt as though you did not quite belong.

“I still feel a bit lost,” you admitted quietly. “All of it is so different here.”

“It’ll settle in,” Lily promised. “Give it time.”

Mary grinned. “Just watch out for stray quaffles.”

You managed a real laugh then, though your thoughts kept circling back. Not to the fall. Not even to the crowd that had stared.

But to him.

The boy with eyes like burnished gold, who had looked at you as though the world itself had cracked open.

And fled. What a coward—who even gets scared from girls?

Lily glanced at you with a gentle smile, her eyes bright despite the chill in the air. “You’ve handled the fall better than most first years.”

Mary nudged your arm playfully.

“Yeah, and that mud really brings out your fille mystérieuse aesthetic.”

You rolled your eyes, though a reluctant smile tugged at your lips.

“If fille mystérieuse means ‘walking disaster,’ then sure. I’m nailing it.”

Mary grinned, “I still can’t believe you transferred here this late. Must be quite the change from Beauxbatons.”

You shrugged, folding your arms against the cool air. 

“It’s... different. Beauxbatons is more... polished, orderly. Hogwarts feels like a wild storm — unpredictable and sprawling.”

Lily nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose that makes sense. But it’s home, in its own way. You’ll find your place.”

“Do you miss it? France?” Mary asked quietly.

You hesitated, looking down at your boots. “Sometimes. The way things were there. The certainty.”

Lily’s voice softened. “We all feel a bit adrift sometimes. Especially here, where everything is old and layered with so many stories.”

You looked up, catching their eyes. “Thanks. You both have been... a lifeline.”

Mary smiled warmly. “That’s what friends are for.”

The conversation drifted then, from classes to teachers to the upcoming exams. 

The castle buzzed around you with the usual hum of students rushing between lessons, laughter echoing in the high ceilings.

And slowly, your attention began to wander, the words around you blurring into background noise.

That’s when you saw him.

He was standing farther down the corridor now, leaning casually against a stone pillar. 

The sunlight caught in his curls, highlighting the rich brown and the damp sheen from practice. His skin, lightly tanned, seemed to glow faintly in the afternoon light.

But it was his eyes that rooted you in place — steady, unflinching, as if he were watching something rare and fragile.

You blinked, startled by the intensity of his gaze.

“Do you see that?” you murmured, nodding toward him.

Mary’s eyes followed your gesture, a grin tugging at her lips. “He’s staring like you’re some miracle.”

You folded your arms, lips tightening. “What’s up with that idiot bastard? Can’t he find anything better to do than gawking like I’m some kind of freak?”

Lily laughed softly. “You’d think someone from Beauxbatons would handle that sort of attention with a bit more grace.”

You rolled your eyes, a wry smile breaking through. “Grace isn’t exactly what I’m feeling.”

Mary chuckled. “Don’t mind him. That’s James Potter.”

You frowned, the name slipping somewhere into your memory. “James Potter...?”

Lily nodded. “Gryffindor’s Seeker. A bit of a troublemaker, but talented.”

“And his friends,” Mary added, “Sirius Black — his best mate, always at his side — and Remus Lupin, who’s been close to both for years.”

Your mind swirled with those names, distant echoes you’d heard but never quite understood. 

You glanced back at James, still watching you without shame or hesitation.

The conversation with Lily and Mary faded into the background as you watched James, his figure etched against the stone pillar, his eyes still locked on you with that strange intensity.

There was something about him that tugged at the edges of your memory — a distant echo, a faint pulse beneath the surface of thought — but no matter how hard you tried, you could not place it.

It was as if a name was just beyond reach, a face blurred by time and distance. 

You scoured your mind for clues, for fragments of some forgotten chapter, but all you found was a quiet ache of familiarity you couldn’t name.

You swallowed the feeling, telling yourself it was just the oddness of being new here, the disorienting swirl of so many unfamiliar faces and names.

With a sigh, you shifted your weight and turned toward the exit, ready to leave the corridor and the boy who unsettled you so deeply.

Mary and Lily fell into step beside you, their easy chatter picking up once more, but before you could take more than a few steps, a voice called out your name.

“Y/N.”

You stopped in your tracks, heart suddenly pounding as you spun around.

James was running toward you, his expression a mixture of hope and something more vulnerable. 

Closer now, the fading light revealed a faint scar above his right eyebrow—a thin, pale line that caught your eye instantly.

And in that moment, the memories came flooding back with unrelenting clarity.

The muddy courtyard of the orphanage, sun-warmed stones beneath your hands. 

The days when he was just a boy with dark curls, tanned skin, and laughter that rang out loud and clear.

How his mother, Euphemia, would visit the orphanage and bring him along, her wide heart pulling children from shadow into light.

You remembered the afternoons spent teasing and bickering, how stubborn he was, how fiercely alive.

And then the sharp sting of a broken branch — your misjudged swing, the cry of pain, the apology whispered breathlessly as you pressed your hand to his brow.

The scar you had given him was etched deep, a mark of childhood recklessness and unspoken connection.

Your breath caught.

He was the boy from your past — the boy who had shifted your world on its axis before disappearing into the unknown.

“James,” you whispered, the name tasting strange and familiar on your tongue.

He smiled, a little sheepish, but his eyes shone with relief.

“I never thought I’d see you again.”

For a second, the world hung still.

Your name trembled between you, spoken softly, almost reverently. His voice, warm with memory and something far deeper, seemed to echo through your chest.

And then, without thought, without hesitation, you moved.

“Oh my God,” you whispered, the recognition swelling so suddenly within you that it left you breathless.

 “James Potter!”

You crossed the space between you, heart racing, arms rising as though guided by something older than memory.

You embraced him, your arms winding around his neck, pressing close with the full, unguarded joy of seeing someone long lost to time.

James stood frozen for a single, fragile instant. His breath caught in his throat, eyes wide with disbelief, as if the entire universe had shifted beneath his feet. 

He had imagined this moment before, of course. 

Countless times in quiet hours, in stray, half-formed thoughts that never quite dared to hope. But no imagining had prepared him for this. 

For the way you felt in his arms, for the press of your cheek against his shoulder, for the soft scent of lavender and rain-soaked grass clinging to you.

Slowly, his arms rose and wrapped around you, unsure at first, almost hesitant, as though he feared one wrong movement might break the spell. 

But the warmth of you was too real, too vivid, and something in him unfurled in that moment. 

He held you closer, like he couldn’t quite believe you were real — like if he loosened his grip for even a second, you might vanish again. 

His heart pounded hard enough to hurt, a wild, desperate rhythm that had only ever belonged to you. 

It wasn’t just relief blooming in his chest. It was recognition. It was longing curling inward like a second heartbeat, something older than memory, louder than logic.     

Everything in him was reaching — every thread of muscle and magic and soul stretching toward you, as if his very existence had been stitched together wrong without you in it. 

He didn’t just want you close. He needed it, like air in his lungs, like light in a place that had gone too long without warmth. 

And in that moment, with you wrapped in his arms, the noise of the world faded. It didn’t matter where you had been, how long it had taken, or how much had been lost. 

You were here. You had always been his. And everything inside him knew it.

You pulled back after a long, trembling breath, your cheeks flushed, a bright smile curving your lips.

“Sorry,” you said, voice breathless, eyes shining. “I—”

James found his voice, rough and low, though his heart still beat wildly beneath his ribs. “It is all right,” he managed. 

“It is more than all right.”

Around you, the corridor seemed to dim and still, as if the castle itself had withdrawn, leaving only the two of you in this suspended moment. 

Lily and Mary shared a glance behind you, a quiet understanding passing between them. With a soft word and a small smile, they slipped away into the flow of students, leaving behind a silence that was somehow heavier.

James could not look away from you. 

He traced the lines of your face as though seeing them for the first time, though some part of him had carried the memory of them all these years. 

The curve of your mouth, the shape of your eyes, the light that seemed to radiate from within you. 

The years had only deepened what was already beautiful.

His voice was softer when he spoke again, touched with something you could not name. “Where have you been all this time?”

You drew in a breath, eyes flicking away for a moment as you gathered the words, unsure where to begin. 

“I was adopted,” you said quietly. 

“A family from France. It was… very sudden. I remember Euphemia told me the day before it happened. One moment I was there, with you and the others… and then I was gone.”

James’s brow furrowed, something aching flickering in his gaze. “I remember,” he said softly. 

“Mum told me you’d been adopted. I thought—” He hesitated. “I thought you might still be nearby. I kept hoping.”

Your heart gave an odd little lurch at that, though you pressed on. “They moved not long after. To Provence. 1They were kind, truly, but it was all so new, and I suppose… I lost touch with everything from before. I spent the next six years at Beauxbatons.”

A faint smile touched your lips, though it carried a hint of wistfulness. “It was… beautiful there. Graceful, in its own way. Very different. But I always wondered about this place.”

James could only listen, rapt, as though your voice alone could anchor him to this moment.

“And then,” you continued, “this summer, they decided to return. My adoptive father was offered a position here, something in the Ministry. They thought it would be good for me too, to finish school here before… well, before whatever comes next.”

You let out a soft breath, lifting your gaze back to his. “And so, here I am. Quite unexpected.”

James shook his head, a slow, incredulous smile growing at the corners of his mouth. “Not unexpected,” he said, voice low and sure. “Fate, maybe.”

Something about the way he said it sent a ripple through you, warm and unsteady.

He studied you openly, drinking in every change, every new grace in your bearing, every familiar spark that still lived in your eyes.

“You have grown…” His voice caught, but he pressed on. “Beautifully. I nearly did not recognise you at first.”

You tilted your head, a glint of humour dancing beneath your words. 

“So I was not beautiful before?”

Colour flushed his cheeks instantly, his composure slipping. “No— no, that is not— you were— you have always—” He broke off with a helpless little laugh, raking a hand through his damp curls.

You laughed too, the sound light, lilting between you. “I am teasing, James.”

Relief washed across his face, though the warmth in his eyes only deepened.

You let your gaze travel over him for a moment, noting how the years had reshaped him. 

Gone was the boy who used to trail after you in the orphanage courtyard, all gangly limbs and stubborn defiance.

Now he stood taller, broader, with a presence that seemed to fill the corridor. The glasses remained, but behind them his eyes gleamed brighter than you remembered, full of something vivid and unspoken.

“You have grown quite well yourself,” you said softly. “You used to be shorter than me. I remember quite clearly.”

That drew a breathless, boyish laugh from him, the kind that caught in his throat. “Well,” he managed, “I could not let you stay taller forever.”

For a beat, neither of you moved. The moment stretched between you, a quiet, humming thing, as though the air itself was charged with something neither of you fully understood.

And James Potter, who had once been certain he would never know what it felt like to belong to someone, found himself standing before you, heart laid bare, and wondered how he had ever imagined anything else.

After that day, something began to change between you and James Potter, though the nature of that change unfolded with such quiet certainty that it seemed almost inevitable, as though it had been written long before either of you could comprehend it.

He began to appear more often in the spaces between your days — not merely by chance, but with a certain quiet deliberation, as though drawn to your orbit without fully understanding why. 

After lessons, he would be there at the foot of the stairs or by the classroom door, offering a bright smile and some casual remark that seemed to disguise the hope in his eyes.

In the corridors between lectures, he would fall into step beside you, his presence easy and unforced, the conversation flowing in a manner that was both comfortable and new.

Before long, you began to notice him elsewhere. 

In the library, beneath the high arches of the south wing, where he would pass by your table with an idle glance.

On the way to meals, where he would hold a place for you without being asked, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. 

In the common room, where his voice would grow softer when he spoke to you, his laughter somehow warmer.

It had been years since you had seen him last, and though your memories of the orphanage remained fragmented — blurred impressions of sunlit courtyards, laughter on wind-stirred afternoons, a stubborn boy with a scar on his brow and a fierce glint in his gaze — there was something about him that stirred an unspoken familiarity. 

He felt, even now, like the sun itself: so warm and so constant that no matter how long you had wandered or how far you had been carried by the tides of life, you would always know the shape of that light. 

It was impossible to outrun the sun, after all. One might seek shadows or turn away, but sooner or later, its warmth would find you again.

And so it was with James Potter.

You also grew closer still to Lily and Mary, their friendship becoming a steady anchor in this new place. 

The three of you would linger over long breakfasts in the Great Hall, take quiet walks beneath the changing leaves, or while away late evenings in the common room .

The Marauders too, in their own way, welcomed you into their fold. 

Remus, with his quiet wisdom and perceptive gaze, would offer thoughtful conversation and a gentle kind of understanding that needed no words. 

Sirius, bright and sharp-edged, carried his loyalty with an intensity that was impossible to miss. 

Aand beneath his teasing smiles there was a depth you came to value more with each passing day. 

It was on one such afternoon that you found yourself with James beneath the willow by the lake.

The great tree swayed above you, its long branches drifting in the breeze like the threads of some ancient tapestry. 

The grass beneath was cool, the earth soft, and from your place beneath the canopy. The castle seemed distant, its towers half-lost in the glow of the descending sun.

Books lay forgotten at your side, your conversation having long since drifted away from studies. 

After some time, James shifted slightly where he sat, drawing one knee beneath him as though bracing himself. 

He glanced toward you, and there was a seriousness in his gaze that stilled the air between you, a question that had long been waiting for the right moment.

When he spoke, his voice was lower than usual, touched with something softer, more deliberate.

“May I ask you something?”

You turned toward him, curiosity flickering beneath the surface of your calm. “Of course.”

He hesitated only a heartbeat, his amber gaze searching yours with a quiet intensity.

[please, please, please play About You by The 1975, here!! it will change up the entire scene <3]

“Have you,” he asked, his words careful now, as though they carried more weight than he could explain, “have you found your soulmate?”

“No, I haven’t.” You whispered.

Something about the look in his eyes made your breath catch, though you did not quite understand why.

You turned your head slightly toward him, voice quiet, curious.

“Have you found yours?” you asked softly. “Your soulmate.”

His breath seemed caught in his chest, his shoulders taut, as though your question had shifted something vast within him.

And then at last, he spoke, voice low, but the truth of it rang through you all the same.

“I have,” he said.

The words struck harder than they should have, sharp and sudden. 

You flinched inwardly, though you tried to mask it. 

Your heart, for reasons you could not quite understand, seemed to stutter painfully in your chest. 

Of course he had. Of course. By this age, nearly everyone had. It had been foolish of you to even wonder otherwise. 

A tightness rose in your throat. You glanced away, pushing quickly to your feet, fingers trembling faintly at your sides. 

The sudden need to put distance between yourself and him felt overwhelming.

“I… I should go,” you murmured, already beginning to step back, voice unsteady despite your efforts to remain composed. 

“I have— I should not be here.”

But before you could take another step, James surged forward, his hand catching yours.

You tried instinctively to pull away, to keep the ache in your chest from spilling over, but he held fast.

“Wait—” he said, his voice rough with something raw and vulnerable. “You asked if I’d found mine. And I told you yes.”

You froze, your heart thundering.

James swallowed, his gaze pinned to yours, his fingers trembling where they held your wrist.

“I always wondered why I could see colors when I never met my soulmate. Why I felt everything so deeply when no one was meant for me. Why everyone else had to wait to meet their soulmate till they saw color.”

He laughed, but it was hollow.

“I thought maybe the universe made a mistake. That maybe I was broken. I spent years thinking I was born wrong, that I was the only one who got left out of the magic.”

His thumb brushed lightly against your knuckles.

“But then you came along. And suddenly everything made sense. All that time I spent aching, waiting, wondering — it was for you”

You stared at him, breath caught.

James took a breath like it was the first one that hadn’t hurt in years.

“It’s always been about you.”

And before the ache in your chest could even become a word, he kissed you.

His mouth found yours with a hunger that stole the breath from your lungs, a heat that seemed to burn through every inch of you. 

The contact sent a rush of sensation through your body, sharp and bright, as though the very air had turned electric. 

You gasped softly into the kiss, the shock of it leaving you dizzy, helpless beneath the weight of the moment. 

His lips moved over yours with aching purpose, gentle at first, then deepening, as though something vast and unspoken had broken free in him at last.

Your fingers curled unconsciously into the fabric of his robes, holding on as though the earth itself had shifted beneath you. 

You could feel the heat of him through every layer, the taut strength of his arms braced around you.

And still the kiss went on — searing, consuming — until at last, breathless and trembling, you tore your mouth from his, gasping for air.

You stared up at him, wide-eyed, chest rising and falling in uneven rhythm. 

James hovered above you, one hand still cradling your head, the other pressed to the earth beside you. 

His gaze was blazing, the amber darkened with something fierce and undeniable.

“You are my soulmate,” he said, voice thick with something unshakable. “You always have been.”

The words wrapped around you like a thread pulled tight, tugging at something buried deep beneath your ribs.

“James,” you breathed, your voice trembled. “I thought you would forget me.”

His eyes didn’t waver. His hand tightened gently around yours.

“Do you think I have forgotten about you?” he asked, quiet but fierce, like the very idea was an insult to the stars.

You let out a soft, shaky laugh, one that didn’t quite hide the ache underneath. “I forgot a lot of things,” you said, watching him like he might disappear.

“But do you know what I never forgot?”

His brows furrowed, gaze locked to yours. “What?”

You lifted your hand, slow and hesitant, and reached up to brush your fingers gently across the arch of his brow.

“This scar,” you whispered. “Right here.”

His lips parted in surprise, a breath of laughter slipping out. “You gave me that,” he said, eyes lighting with memory.

“We were playing near the garden wall behind the orphanage. You hit me with a stick and then cried harder than I did.”

“I was dramatic,” you said, smiling now.

“You still are.”

Your smile wavered, softening into something more fragile. “There’s a lot I forgot about you, James. But somehow… there’s something about you that even now, when I can’t remember everything — it’s the same smile, same eyes, and the same damn scar that made my heart surrender.”

He didn’t speak at first. Just looked at you like you’d stitched the air back into his lungs.

Then, with a quiet, aching tenderness, he leaned closer, pressing his forehead to yours, breath warm between you.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “We’ve got the entire time in the world to remember each other.”

You laughed as he pressed another warm kiss into your lips. 

“My mother will lose her mind,” he said with a soft laugh. 

“She will be beside herself when she sees you. I have to write her the moment we leave this tree. She will not forgive me if I wait even an hour.”

That drew a true, another bright laugh from you.

You curled closer, head resting lightly against his shoulder, your heart steady now in a way it had never been.

And for James Potter—who had spent so many years quietly mistrusting the universe, doubting that such fragile, luminous things as soulmates could truly exist beyond storybooks and hopeful hearts — this was the moment everything changed. 

Beneath the ancient sweep of the willow, with you nestled close and your fingers tangled in his, James held you like something sacred. 

Your breath moved gently at his shoulder. The taste of your kiss still lingered on his lips, and all the old fears melted away like mist beneath the morning sun.

Because how could he doubt any longer? 

How could he deny the truth when every thread of his life, every unseen choice and twist of fate, had led him here.

To you, the girl who once lit his world with color before he even knew he’d been living in grey, the only soul whose presence could turn the air to gold and make the light itself feel like it was made just for you.

In this moment, James Potter finally believed in fate, not as some cold hand that ruled from above, but as a force that, against all odds, had placed you in his path again.

Because it had always been you.

Every turn, every heartbeat, and every breath he took without knowing why.

All of it had been about you.

[rhettrosunsets]

Dear Soulmate - Robert Reynolds X Fem!Reader

Pairing: Robert Reynolds X Fem!Reader

Category: Fluff

Summary: You've been called many things, a hopeless romantic, an eternal optimist, delusional. But you know in your heart of hearts that somewhere out there, your soulmate is waiting for you, and you'll keep writing about it till you find them.

(Based Off Laufey's Dear Soulmate)

Masterlist

Warnings: No use of Y/N. No description of reader. Reader is a hopeless romantic. Illusions to bad dates. Some people are shitty to reader. Laufey lyrics are intertwined throughout the fic.

Notes: This is so self indulgent. I absolutely adore this song with my entire being. I got the inspiration and just knew that I wanted to write Bob to this song.

You’ve always believed in love.

Maybe not the fairytale kind with beautiful sweeping ball gowns, dashing princes, and princesses losing their shoes. But you believed in the quiet kind, the kind of love that slips into your life like warm sunlight after a harsh winter's day.

The kind of love that sounds like laughter in the kitchen on early mornings while you cook breakfast together. The kind of love that feels like a warm hug after you've been in the cold. The type of love where you understand each other on a deeper level, like you two know each other better than anyone around you.

You’ve spent your whole life wondering where that love might be.

It started when you were little. You used to watch couples in old movies, your tiny head tilted, and your heart aching with something you didn’t have words for yet.

You would always proclaim that you wanted to be loved like the girls in the movies while tears welled in your small eyes. Your family laughed in the background, but you meant it. That’s what you wanted. You soon began to wonder about all the thing’s your future soulmate would have. 

That's when you started your journal, a small journal with a lock and key that you got at the bookfair. You began to scribble in it every time you noticed something about yourself, or thought about features your soulmate might have. You would messily write down questions in bright gel pens adorned with various stickers? 

“Dear Soulmate, Do you live In New York City?”

“Dear Soulmate, Do you have a sister too?

Even as you got older and your life got louder, you never stopped holding onto that hope. The hope that someone out there was also thinking about you in the same way you thought about them. 

You went through high school, and you were called a hopeless romantic, someone who could never be satisfied, an eternal optimist for a love that doesn’t really exist. But you felt in your heart that it did, you knew it did. Despite what people would say and the words muttered about your perception of love, you just knew that someone had to be out there for you.

College had rolled around, and you still hadn’t found the one. You went on dates, plenty of them. You’ve gone on first dates with all types of people, some nice, some smart. Some were hilarious, and some were so cruel that you felt your heart slowly chipping away piece by piece. But none of them fit, none of them ever truly saw the real you. And you always left those dinners and coffee shops feeling lonelier than when you’d arrived.

But still, you waited, still writing in the same journal you’ve kept since you were a kid. 

“Dear Soulmate, Do you think of me?”

It was a bleary Fall day on campus. You were in the final stretch of your senior year of college and you wanted nothing more than to finish up your studies and get a move on with your life. Despite the urge to finish this part of your life, you felt somewhat defeated. It felt like with every first date you went on, that you were getting further and further from ever meeting your soulmate. 

It was on this day, after a particularly bad first date that you were sat with your friend, you writing in the falling apart lock and key journal. Your friend had questioned what you were writing, and you told her the truth. You were writing about your soulmates, questions you had for them, the things you wondered about.

Your friend laughed but didn’t make fun of you, or even discourage your writing, she just uttered a simple. “When you meet your soulmate, you’ve gotta give them that so they can see how long you’ve been pining for them.”

You laughed with a shake of your head at her reply and went back to writing, having moved on from the stickers all over the pages, but still using colorful pens that remind you of your youthful dreams. 

You wrote out

“Dear Soulmate, One day i’ll give this to you”

You meet Bob on a Thursday.

It’s the kind of day you don’t expect anything good to come from. The New York skyline was bleak and gray with a storm obviously coming in. Your once hot coffee was now cold after hours of not being able to drink it. And your to-do list was so laughably long It made you want to cry just thinking about it. You’re running some errands for a friend when you bump into him outside the bookstore, quite literally.

You feel yourself hit a solid body as you go tumbling backwards, your coffee luckily falling to the side and not all over you. Your bag drops, books and journal tumbling to the sidewalk. And before you can even apologize to whoever you just hit at full speed someone is crouched beside you, carefully gathering them up.

“Oh my god, M’so sorry.” you start to say, throwing your journal quickly in your bag “I wasn’t paying attention, my head was a million mi-”

“No, no, that was me.” he interrupts, his voice low, warm and gentle. He glances up at you, and your breath hitches in your throat just a little. He’s tall, has broad shoulders, has messy brown hair and the most gorgeous blue eyes you’ve ever seen.

He reaches for your copy of Jane Eyre, brushing his long fingers across the cover. “This is a good one. I just read it.” he said quietly, then held it out to you for you to take.

You blinked, startled by how gentle he sounded when he talked to you. “Yeah. Kind of a quiet little comfort read for me.” You mutter back softly, enthralled by the man who quite literally took your breath away as you reach for the book to put back into your bag.

“I like the quiet ones” he said gently as he looked at you. 

You smiled wide, your heart beating a million miles as your heart felt like it could leap out of your chest.

You soon learned his name was Bob, it was so simple, but it felt so right. You two ended up walking a couple blocks together, your conservation never getting dull or boring, it just kept going about anything and everything.

You gave him your number on impulse, scribbled on the back of an old receipt you had in your bag using the same purple gel pen that you use in your journal. It's probably the boldest thing you’ve ever done. But something in you told you to do it, and you listened.

You never expected him to use it. You expected him to throw it away as soon as you walked away.

But he used it.

A day later, he texted you

 “Hey. It’s Bob from the sidewalk disaster. Was wondering if you’d let me take you out for coffee sometime. Replace the one I ruined.”

You stared at the message longer than you cared to admit, your heart pounding away in your chest, a smile gracing your lips before finally typing a response

 “Only if you promise to let me pay for the coffee.”

The second time you saw him, it was pouring rain. You ducked under the coffee shop awning, soaked to the bone from the walk, but a smile gracing your face anyways. You spotted him already waiting at a window seat, one hand curled around a mug, his thumb tracing the handle slowly like he was lost in thought. He stood up the second he saw you,

“You okay?” He asked, his voice full of concern, his gentle eyes scanning your drenched form.

“Just a bit damp” you laughed softly. “But the coffee’s so worth it”

He smiled, his eyes softening as he mumbles a soft “You’re worth it.” so subtle you almost can’t hear him. You paused while taking your jacket off as you felt your face flush with heat, and then looked down, shyly. Responding with a soft “That’s a bold line for the first date.” 

Bob then made your heart skip another beat by saying, “It’s not a line, just the truth.” Before helping you take your soaked jacket off and laying it over the back of his seat instead of yours.

The two of you fell into a rhythm after that date.

Late night texts became a normality. The both of you stayed up till ungodly hours as you talked about anything and everything you could. Long walks became something you two took together, you loved walking through parks and pointing out the simple things, or feeding the ducks in the lake. 

You talked about everything and nothing, and he just let you. He loved the way you never stopped looking for meaning in small things and Bob listened like he’d never heard anyone speak the way you did, like every word touched his soul.

One night, a few months into your relationship you asked the question “Do you believe in soulmates?” It was a late rainy night. You were both curled on the couch at the tower with a bunch of blankets thrown over your laps, soft music playing in the background, while rain pelted at the windows. Bob was lying back against the couch with his arm around you, your head tucked under his chin.

He didn’t answer right away, seeming to give the question a moment of thought.

“Not always.” he said softly with a sigh before continuing, “I used to think that maybe that kind of thing wasn’t meant for people like me.”

You turned your head slightly to meet his gentle eyes. “What kind of people?” you asked softly. His gaze flickered as his eyes dimmed a bit. “The ones who’ve been broken before and have broken others. The ones who can’t always keep that light on inside them.”

Your heart clenched as you looked at your boyfriend, a loving gaze in your eyes. “Maybe that’s exactly who soulmates are meant for?” you reply gently, before grabbing his hand in yours and giving it a gentle squeeze. 

He looked at you like he was seeing something unreal in front of him. A look of wonder, his eyes holding a look of love that you didn’t know what to do with.  “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

You leaned in and kissed his cheek. “You waited,” you replied like it was the simplest thing in the world.

Two years later, You opened your journal one last time seeing the last thing written being

“Dear Soulmate, I can’t wait to fall in love with you.”

You chuckled softly looking at the ring on your finger, before scratching that out with your pen, and rewriting it.

“Dear Soulmate, I can’t wait to fall in love with you.”

“Dear Soulmate, I’m so glad I fell in love with you.”

[thehydraethereal]

Rafe Cameron x reader

⒉ Not hitting you when you anger him, waiting until he calms down and you detense.

⒙ Him finding your "escape" bag and burning it in front of you.

Rafe and the reader are married. Reader is a housewife but by force and Rafe is just ever abusive to her, she plans an escape and packs her bags but rafe finds it and confronts her about it. He waits until is distracted and caught off guard to hit her, rafe kind of locks reader in the house so people won’t see her bruisers on her face

  ❝ BLEED ME DRY ❞

ˁ ⌗ S4 DARK!HUSBAND RAFE CAMERON && WIFE ⌗ READER

CONTENT WARNINGS - HERE 𓆧 PROMPTS - here.

Your hands tremble so hard, fingers looking like twigs in the unforgiving way of the wind of a thunderstorm. The weathered denim bag you had hidden until now was tossed roughly at your feet and beside it, stood your husband, Rafe, his composure anything but empathic.

Ever since your finger was ringed with the golden band, you, despite your lack of consent and despite your disgust, never dared to disobey your husband, not because you believed that was the rightful thing to do, but because of the horrifying temper he had. You were sure that, if you ever angered him willingly, he would have probably murdered you.

And the thought of living with a man you had never truly loved, and with your potential murderer was not an easy burden. That is when you decided to flee this miserable life.

But, to your terror, Rafe was much more careful with your moves than you had believed.

You could not physically scream, throat closed with lumps of disbelief and utter fear.

Rafe approached you and you jumped, shoulder bumping into the wall. His hand, surprisingly tender, extended and touched your jaw. You flinched again at the feeling of his fingers on your skin, and shut your eyes tightly.

"Why did you try to leave me, hmm?", your husband asked as his large palm wrapped around the back of your head, pushing you even more in the warmth of his embrace. "Am I not...good? Good enough for my-my wife to act fucking grateful?", Rafe's voice broke as the question left his lips, fingers pressing against his own chest, after he released your face. When he finished his words, your husband wrapped his arm around your torso.

You were so confused, his behaviour made your brain vibrate with pain, but the way his chest rumbled when he talked and the way his forearm was pushing at your spine to hug you tighter was giving you an odd form of comfort.

"Tell me the truth, baby...", he asked, voice firmer, but coated with a subtle sweetness.

You broke into a wrecking sob, and he squeezed you even tighter. Guilt and confusion swallowed the fear you had in your bones, but when you rose your gaze, Rafe's eyes were rather rageful, and his breaths came out as angered puffs, making your insides churn in terror, despite your foolish state of comfort you had seconds ago.

His hand fisted in your hair and he pushed you harshly into the wall. You felt his musculature and veins pumping with vengeful strength, and your eyes pooled with tears.

A sudden backhand was thrown at the delicate skin of your cheek. Instinctually, you brought your hand up to cup the bruise already forming beneath the skin, but Rafe prevented it by grabbing your wrist. "You-you made me do this. I was a changed man and you fucking made me do this!", he growled at you.

As he released you, he nudged agressively the bag in the fireplace with his foot. "N-no-", you whined, trying to crawl closer to the burning flames, in attempt to save your papers and IDs.

"Fuckin' leave it", Rafe commanded, grabbing the back of your neck. "From now on, you'll do what I say, d'you hear me?". When you didn't answer, he shook you, his grip adjusting harsher. "Huh? Answer, baby", he exhaled, and you whined a 'yes'.

Rafe's bicep curled around your waist, and his heart started racing when he felt your body trembling and jolting with pain. "Don't make me do shit like this again."

A cry tore itself from your throat, when you caught a glimpe of your battered face in the wide window across. "C'mon, don't do this now, baby. I'll jus' cancel that dinner with Ward, so you can fix your face. It's because of you, anyway."

𓆧TAGS ⌗ @essraxi @stargirllanaa (BABY I MISS U BTW)

[fayevalentiinee]

heavy angst , gojo satoru x civilian f!reader , mention of pregnancy , not proofread

Gojo Satoru, you never really knew what he was. it felt like holding him close and still touching nothing at all. like loving a ghost — fingers brushing smoke, then wondering if it had ever been there in the first place.

not when he first smiled at you across the crowded café, all teeth and sunlight, syrupy sugary latte drink in one hand, mischief in his voice. not when he slipped into your life like a second skin — with midnight snacks, an absurd collection of sunglasses, and blindfolds you weren’t supposed to question.

he never answered your curiosity, always deflecting with jokes. he only made you feel like the only real thing he had ever touched. he never told you about curses or the deaths he faced, or how shadows bloomed in the seams of human life, hungry for hate, patient like rot to strike.

you only knew the warmth of his hands. the way he made the world hush when it got too loud. the man who kissed you between laughter and late night movie marathons — not the one who lay beside you, staring at the ceiling like it held all his sins, quietly unraveling while you dreamed.

and then — he was gone. no. vanished. like a spell undone. like he had never drawn breath in your apartment, never pressed his lips to yours, never made tea that still sat half-steeped and cold on the windowsill, where raindrops slipped down the glass like even the sky was mourning.

his toothbrush — gone. his clothes — gone. his scent still in your sheets. the imprint of him still warm in your bed. but no goodbye. no trace. no name on the news. nobody in the ground.

you dropped to your knees. you screamed. you shattered. you waited — days, then weeks, then some time outside of time. you tore yourself open, bled every memory until it blistered. what did you do? was it your fault? had he ever even loved you?

you vomited from grief. collapsed from longing. sat in a sterile chair while therapists asked you to speak. but how do you speak of a love that may have never been real? and still, your mind echoes with him in the place between sleep and waking, where he once whispered, you’re my soulmate.

and for a moment, you almost believe he meant it. before the silence swallows it whole.

but satoru gojo didn’t vanish because he stopped loving you. he vanished because he did. it was getting dangerous — too dangerous. he’d already caught the scent of curses brushing too close to your world.

a warning, once, scratched in dried blood along your doorstep. just faint enough to be mistaken for vandalism. you never noticed. but he did. and he knew: if he stayed, they would come for you. and he would never survive that.

so he left. not because he wanted to. but because it was the only way to keep you safe. he just never thought not being with you could hurt worse than dying.

years passed. the world changed. the war never ended for him. but you… you lived. the first time he saw you again, his heart didn’t just break — it decayed.

your hair was longer now. you looked quieter. softer. healed. he was on a mission, blending into a crowd outside a gallery where a cursed spirit had once crept too close. he almost missed you.

until you laughed. softly. shyly. at something a man whispered into your ear. and that’s when his soul cracked. your hand rested in the crook of another man’s arm. he looked… ordinary. gentle. safe.

everything gojo satoru had never been. could never be. he watched from across the street, hidden behind a thin glamour veil. and though you couldn’t see him, he felt exposed. like a wound still bleeding beneath the bandages.

you were smiling. you were okay. and it killed him. his fingers twitched at his side — not for defense. not for battle. but for the memory of you. your breath against his neck, your laughter folded into the steam of morning tea.

he wanted to run to you. to pull you into his arms and beg, forgive me. to explain that leaving was the only way he knew how to love you. that you were never the mistake — only the salvation he couldn’t ask to carry into a bloodstained world.

but someone else got to stay. someone else got to hold you without fear. someone else got to grow old with you, with clean hands and calm nights. he stood there, frozen, as the man pressed a kiss to your temple and you leaned into it like it was home.

you didn’t look back.

he stayed in your shadow long after the mission ended. long after the street emptied and the dusk stole the last light from the day. he remembered the night he left — how you murmured his name in your sleep, how your hand curled in the sheets, searching for a warmth he was already preparing to take with him.

he’d cried beside you. silent. still. tears slipping like ghosts down his face as he memorized the shape of you in the dark. you never knew. he never let you. and now, now he was nothing but a phantom watching from the cold.

nothing but a memory stretched thin beneath streetlights. he had no right to ache like this. but he did. god, he did. because no one else had ever made him feel like he could be saved.

and now, he couldn’t even look at you without wondering if you still kept the tea he used to drink. he stayed longer than he should have. hands shaking. cursed energy humming low, angry, jealous, grieving.

he wanted to kill the man. the one who kissed your temple, who made you laugh, who held you like a prayer answered. he wanted to erase him from time. to reclaim what once was his. to feel you again, to hear his name in your mouth like a promise.

but then — he saw you smile. really smile. and that’s when he knew — he wasn’t watching another man steal what was his. he was watching you heal from what he broke. and it ruined him.

because maybe, just maybe, that man didn’t deserve to die. maybe he deserved to live — for loving you in a way gojo couldn’t. for giving you the one thing gojo never could: peace.

so he turned. empty. not powerful, not divine — just broken. because the strongest sorcerer in the world couldn’t win back the one thing that ever made him feel human. you. and the worst part? he still loved you. more than he ever should.

you paused mid step, a shiver climbing your spine like a memory rising from the earth. you looked around — nothing. just dusk and silence and the faint tremble of streetlight glow. but your heart was pounding. a sudden ache behind your ribs.

your fingers loosened, and the drink slipped from your hand. your husband caught it. brushed your cheek. and you flinched, startled back to the world. his thumb came away wet. “are you okay, my darling?”

he looped his arm around you, his gaze scanning the dimming street. “see something wrong?” you smiled, weakly. “no... no, it was n…” your voice trailed off. you looked again. “nothing,” you said, ��my mind’s just playing tricks on me. i think it’s the effect of pregnancy.”

you walked on. steadily. together. toward the light. and behind you, in the shadows, a man still stood —nnot fighting curses this time, but the oldest enemy of all: a love he couldn’t kill, a grief that never left.

and a truth that shredded him as he heard your voice, soft and breathless, speaking of the life growing inside you — a life that belonged to another man. and for the first time, satoru gojo knew: this time, he wouldn’t recover.

[mister-tom-a-dildo-lover]

I just know that the Scarcrux would hate Harry so much for maybe a week... and then the Dursleys withhold food as punishment for the first time, because of some random offense that they made up, and he'd lose his shit.

A magical child placed in a cupboard under the stairs? A magical child, the one prophesied to be his end, not being allowed to eat? By Muggles?! A magical child being forced to wear hideous hand-me-downs? A magical child forced to cook for Muggles, forced to do the gardening for Muggles, forced to clean for Muggles?

The injustice of someone who was prophesied to be strong enough to vanquish him being disrespected by those lesser than him. Of a clear similarity to himself. A guardian who detests him and will not only lie to his face but also spread lies about him to anyone who will listen, thereby turning everybody in his life against him. A child who makes friends with the little snakes in the garden, hissing premature Parseltongue at them somehow. No friends or companions and believed to be an inferior lifeform to everyone else, only for the opposite to be true.

The accidental magic allowing him to Apparate, to regrow his own shaved off hair, and to even damn near vanish clothes he's too embarrassed to wear. A Halfblood who is the last of a once long and respected Pureblood line.

Harry's entire upbringing would prove every horrible opinion he has correct. Muggles are horrible. They need to be kept away from magical people. Magical children should not allowed be around them. Eliminate all Muggles. History of his own life basically repeating itself, except there's no muggle World War at the time.

And because Dumbledore interfered, no one is going to actually give Harry Potter the truth about anything. All information he gets is going to be heavily sanitized before it actually reaches his ears. He's already being encouraged to not ask questions so he doesn't get in trouble, and the moment someone shows him even a bit of decency he'll be too happy to think to ask questions.

And this would also prove every negative thing that he has to think about Dumbledore true as well. He will reason it all away as Dumbledore once again failing another magical child in a long list of magical children he has failed, and how he intends to use this boy and force him into a similar life that Tom Riddle once led just to try to use him as an example of how Goodness and Righteousness can stop any other Voldemorts from coming about.

Which is so interesting because Goodness and Righteousness didn't care about helping Tom Riddle when it was very clear that he needed help. Maybe if Dumbledore actually lived what he preached, then Voldemort never would have been a necessity. But who knows? It was long since passed the time for What Ifs and clearly Dumbledore won't change.

Scarcrux's hyper fixation on Harry would be stronger than any other version of Tom/Voldemort because he'll be there every step of the way for Harry's journey.

And wouldn't it just be so wonderful if he could do something about all this nonsense?

[brujaluas]

How would a tarot reader (me) describe you in a personalized tarot reading for you?

Let's put this reading here as a person wanting to know about you through tarot, what would I say to this person?

ps: I'm going to do the reading still using the term "you" even if it's from someone's point of view reading about you, because I think it will be less confusing that way, but I can change it if you want.

Pile 1

There are some here whose body is on Earth but whose mind is on Mars, or rather, on the moon. You daydream a lot, this can be good, you can end up projecting a lot of what your dream will be like, what you will dream, do we have some shifting here? You may feel coerced or in a way there is a shadow with masculine energy that you feel consumes your soul and your life, you may be intelligent people, some here are quite studious, and when I say this I don't mean to talk only about colleges and school, but about having very varied interests, wanting to have a thousand different hobbies. But your mind always seems to want a lot of things but at the same time wants nothing. It reminds me of anxiety, feeling a rush to do everything, but ending up not being able to do anything because your mind is not in a state of peace.

Take care of yourselves, my dears. I keep you in my heart.

Pile 2

oh oh oh calm down, you guys have a very complicated and dense energy, I'm not going to lie, some of you here, in fact, the vast majority have anger issues here, it doesn't matter if it's explosive or implosive, but there's a question of having anger boiling in your blood. Something happened here. You are very aggressive people when it comes to defending yourselves or your ideals. You never let your guard down and if you make a decision about something, stick to it until the end. rule things and your lives with an iron fist (I don't know if you know about this expression, but it's about someone who is very tough, relentless and unyielding). It's a fate. You, with this aggressiveness and way of being, can be both the answer to achieving your goals and also your own downfall. You need to cut something out of your life, put an end to something. If you believe in something, seek help and spiritual counseling, because people may want to do you some energetic harm. When you free yourself from this, you will become kinder to the world around you and to yourself. You will feel a lightness that you usually don't feel.

Pile 3

MY SHAYLASSSSSSSS

You are very kind, I can feel it, don't let bad people ruin or dull your shine, you are prosperous people, with chances of achieving many things, you can be very loved by people and if you don't identify with that it's because you haven't found your chosen family of the heart yet! but there is a lot of love here, I see the something or someone (or more that one person) being very affectionate with you, it could be a spiritual guide, an ancestor but there is a caring energy from something or someone or from beings that are not in our plane, someone can see you as a figure to be protected, you awaken the maternal/paternal instinct of people

I think that pile 1 are my middle children, those in pile 2 are my older children who always have something happening to them as a burden and pile 3 are my youngest children lol

[xomintybreezexo]

Damian and Jon's Favorite Christmas

(quick question before we get into it, is there a ship name for Dami and Ellie and Ellie and Jon? Cause I know Dami and Jon's ship name is supersons, but what would all three of them be?)

Danny hates Christmas, there's a whole episode in canon about it, but if we're talking about Danny viewing Ellie as his daughter and Ellie viewing Danny as her father, then I feel like not enough people are acknowledging that he would do anything to make her love Christmas, or at least not hate it like he does.

Ellie, for a while, didn't know why Danny hated Christmas so much; she has no knowledge of his life and life experiences unless she's told about them, so this makes sense. After finding out that Danny hated Christmas, by watching his behavior on the days leading up to it, she, like any child, started to imitate his attitude towards it, complaining about the lights and music even when she didn't know why she hated it so much.

Danny recognized this pattern instantly, and he's horrified. He, very quickly, becomes bound and determined to make sure she has great Christmas experiences, even if that means keeping her away from his parents on the day of.

After learning that he was the ghost boy Phantom, his parents, being accepting of him, thank goodness, have become more focused on observing and actually researching ghosts than trying to capture and experiment on them. Telling them about Ellie and how she came to be was nerve-wracking.

(What if they didn't believe that Vlad cloned their kid to try to make the perfect son, and probably most likely take over the world? What if they were convinced she was evil and tricking him, and playing the long con? What would he do then?)

Thankfully, they were fully accepting of her and fully horrified by Vlad, so they started putting massive distance between themselves and him.

Danny doesn't like dredging up the specifics of why he hates the Christmas holiday, but it doesn't matter because this is going to be the best first Christmas of Ellie's not-quite-living life! He, Sam, Tucker, and Jazz were going to make sure of it. But that plan started and ended out of Amity. As much as he loves his parents and knows they're trying to do better, they couldn't even wait until Christmas Eve to start the arguments and fights about all Christmas-related matters, so Sam bought the four of them, the trio and Ellie, a hotel stay for winter break, 2 full weeks off school that they can spend in Gotham City, New Jersey! He's so going to kill it at this parenting thing! Even Jazz agrees that, for his circumstances (whatever that means), he's doing amazing!

Damian was only mildly appeased because Jon was here. Father and Kent decided it would be good to get out of the house and go out together as a family, which somehow translated to them being at a mall right after opening, when there were the fewest people around, and Batman and the rest of the bats and birds weren't active and mostly unneeded. And, look, it's not that he hates the holidays; he just doesn't understand them beyond familial connection.

(which he still doesn't fully understand, no matter how many ways Father and Pennyworth attempt to explain it to him)

He's long since begun to ignore his family and the Kents, instead pouring his attention into Jon and their surroundings for potential hostiles. A Wayne can never be too careful, especially not in broad daylight.

Instead, all he finds is a cheerful girl his age, maybe a year or two younger (Damian and Jon are thirteen in this, Ellie is twelve like in the show) with three older teens, one of whom must be her older brother; they look strikingly similar. His observing(he is not staring creepily, thank you very much) catches Jon's attention, and the other boy leans over his shoulder to see who it is.

"Whoa...She looks really pretty..." Jon is whispering, probably trying to circumvent his father's less-than-convenient, in this moment at least, super hearing. And Damian does have to agree. She could be considered conventionally attractive. Long, matte black hair in a low ponytail, strikingly bright purple eyes that almost seem to glow, pale skin with rosy cheeks and a wide grin, letting her sharp teeth and elongated canines show, moving her hair to one side and revealing longer, pointed ears. Such things are not typically found in nature, and his first assumption, and the most likely to be correct, is that she's a meta-human, like Duke.

But he doesn't get a chance to ponder that further before she opens her mouth, takes a deep breath, and begins to sing along to the music the mall is playing.

"Santa, tell me if you're really there~ don't make me fall in love again if he won't be next year~"

If he were paying any mind to those she's with, he would have noticed the dark skinned boy with locs falling into his face from under his red beret and the goth girl with black lipstick and purple highlights walking away at the same time. The boy headed to the food court with the girl's card and a reminder to 'not go crazy,' and the girl, giving the other boy he's taken to calling adoption bait(A.B. for short) in his head, a quick peck on the cheek, to a store that famously uses vegan leather.

"Santa, tell me if he really cares~ 'Cause I can't give it all away if he won't be here next year~"

A.B. smiles softly and a little sadly at his younger sister before leaning against the wall behind him, waiting for the other two to return, no doubt. Jon grabs his arm and begins to pull him their direction, somehow without either of their families taking notice.

"Let's go talk to her!" What. Damian Wayne doesn't do talking. What are they even supposed to say?! 'Hey there, random stranger, the two of us who have only been officially dating for about 3 months at this point really like your style, wanna be our third?' She'd think they're crazy!

...Then again, her older brother could be dating those other two teenagers they were with.

Jon doesn't hesitate to join in on the song, either. The girl seems to know the lyrics by heart, so he had to guess it's a favorite of hers.

Good to know.

"Feeling Christmas all around and I'm trying to play it cool~ But it's hard to focus when I see him-" Jon nudges his arm with that stupid, pretty grin on his stupid pretty face, "-Walkin' 'cross the room~"

She turns to them and grins brightly, singing louder now that they are joining in, swaying to the music.

"'Let it Snow' is blasting out, but I won't get in the mood~ I'm avoiding every mistletoe until I know it's true love that he thinks of~" She moves closer to them and is standing on Damian's right, with Jon on his left. They both nudge him, probably wanting him to join the song. He sighs heavily, like it's an annoyance for him, but decides that he will, to impress this girl and ease her into their relationship, hopefully.

Birds sing to attract mates, after all. He doesn't see how this is any different.

"So next Christmas I'm not all alone, boy~" Jon grabs his hand, and the girl leans in closer, her eyes shining with curiosity. Yes, he would sing if it meant she would stay by their sides for even a moment longer. "Santa, tell me if you're really there~ Don't make me fall in love again if he won't be here next year~" Damian hears gasps from behind them, no doubt his siblings and the Kents marvelling at his singing voice. He's only ever sung himself to sleep before, with lullabies he remembers Mother singing to him on worse nights. His voice is soft and melodious, and he's well aware.

"Santa, tell me if he really cares~ 'Cause I can't give it all away if he won't be here next year~" Is this why the film industry is so obsessed with 'Christmas romances'? Jon taught him what love, romantic and platonic love, felt like, but this felt different somehow. Was it because he was here with two people he loved romantically and platonically? He felt like his world had narrowed down to Jon and this new potential partner of theirs, not taking notice of anything else but their bright smiles that made a small one of his own crack on his face.

Even if the girl(he should really ask her name) didn't want to join their relationship, surely they could remain friends, yes?

"I've been down this road before, fell in love on Christmas night~ (ooh, babe)~ But on New Year's Day, I woke up and he wasn't by my side~" Love was a truly strange and wonderous thing, he didn't think it would ever be something he'd experience, believing it to be another weakness to overcome. He never believed what different media and even his own family said about it being one of the most empowering forces to experience, at least, not until he met Jon, and now, after meeting her.

"Now I need someone to hold-" The girl grabbed his arm gently and leaned her head on his shoulder. Another round of gasps broke out when she wasn't immediately shoved away. A sly grin cut her cheeks, and the warmth on his face increased from the sight of it. Jon was still holding his hand, he realized after flexing his fingers. "-Be my fire in the cold~ (yeah, yeah)~"

He finally looked away from the two of them and over at their families. Most of them had their phones out, recording, most likely. He made sure to put on his nastiest scowl, but it was broken when the girl followed his gaze and gave them that same toothy smile. Brown literally squealed with delight, and Grayson looked like he was vibrating in place. West, whom he hadn't realized was here, actually was vibrating in place, with Kori'ander looking immensely pleased. He didn't want to even look at Father or Kent, or Lane for that matter.

"But it's hard to tell if this is just a fling or if it's true love that he thinks of~ (of)~" Even though a part of him wishes to stop singing, mostly to spite Drake and Todd, who look smug and amused, he was having a nice moment and refused to allow them to ruin it. "So next Christmas I'm not all alone, babe~"

This was shaping up to be a good day, if he ignored his meddling family.

"Santa, tell me if you're really there~" He looked to where he hoped the girl's brother still was and found him watching, still leaning against the wall, with a fond smile on his face. They locked eyes for a moment, and his smile grew slightly as he nodded in acknowledgement. "Don't make me fall in love again if he won't be here next year~"

He wondered if he could convince the girl to follow them along on their shopping trip...And if he could find a mistletoe to stand under with her.

"Santa, tell me if he really cares~" Maybe he should write poetry for her? Like he did with Jon? Or create art for her? Like he did with Jon? "'Cause I can't give it all away if he won't be here next year~" But would she like any of that? Maybe he should take to learning an instrument?

She pulled away from them, and he tried to squash his upset, Jon very clearly feeling the same way, if the small frown was indicative. She, instead of leaving, stood in front of them with her hands on her hips and a determined smile.

"Hi! I'm Ellie! I wanted to ask you guys your names, cause I can't keep calling you 'scowley' and 'smiley' in my head." She said it like it was the most relatable thing ever, and maybe it was, how would Damian know one way or the other?

"Damian." He was curt but polite, bowing his head slightly. He left the last name out on purpose. She didn't seem to recognize him, as far as he could tell, and he didn't want to jeopardize their most definitely budding relationship with his status. Status he, typically, flashed in people's faces, specifically so they would leave him alone. "And this is Jon." "Hi, Ellie!" Jon was as excitable as always. Another rare, non sadistic smile from Damian as he watched his girl interact with their potential girlfriend.

"I'm glad you finally told us your name! I also wanted to ask cause I couldn't keep calling you 'pretty girl' in my head!" Ah, apparently it was relatable. Damian, 0, everyone else, 1. Somehow, he's not too upset with that. Not everyone can be Robin, after all.

"Hi there!" Ugh.

Grayson didn't hesitate to lean over him with his signature dumb grin plastered all over his face. Ellie looked up at him curiously. "Damian's big brother here! It's so nice to meet you, Ellie! Where are your parents?" Grayson asked, looking around for anyone who looked like they could fit the bill.

"Right here." Adoption bait said with a polite smile. Ellie grinned up at him, and Damian felt the world stop, figuratively, of course. What is that supposed to mean? How can he be her father when he looks 15? He looks barely three years older than the person he's claiming to be his daughter, and isn't that some concerning imagery?

"You're her father?" That was Drake. He didn't need to see it to know that everyone was looking concerned.

"He's my momma, actually!" Ellie said it with a bright smile, like it wasn't even more concerning. Suddenly, the deep eye bags and almost anemic-looking skin made more sense if he was raising a kid.

"Hi. I'm Danny." He gave a bright smile and a slight wave.

"You're her mother...?" Todd, and he didn't need to see it to know his eyes were turning green. Honestly, he could understand; he was also feeling a little murderous at the thought of a child being forced to take care of another child.

Danny shrugged, like it was no big deal. "I mean, technically." He locked eyes with Ellie as he said it. She nodded sagely. "Cloning can be weird sometimes." He felt the world restart again.

"You're a clone?" Jon asked it, tilting his head like a puppy. Ellie nodded, a bit uncomfortable. Jon grinned widely, gesturing to Conner. "So, is my older brother!" She grinned back.

Ellie, Jon, and Him got to talking all about their interests while her mom/brother/template was being subletely interrogated by Lois Lane and Father. He was happy to learn about Ellie's love of space, travel, and animals.

He thought she was perfect for them, and he was certain Jon agreed. He looked awestruck. She talked about her love of glazed donuts and toasted bagels with strawberry cream cheese. She even mentioned how much she loved her grandma's, her template's mother's, homemade fudge. She went on about how she was learning from her 'Auntie Sam' how to do makeup, even outside of the other girl's traditional goth style. How she was learning to code from her 'Uncle Tucker' and how cool it was to learn to hack into people's stuff. She was simply radiant. And she literally glowed when Damian told her that.

I don't know if i'll add anything else to this, maybe like Sam and Tucker's reactions to Ellie and Danny somehow getting to know the Wayne and Kent families in the 30ish minutes to 1 hour they were gone lol but maybe also how they keep in touch are how they react to Phantom and Phasma and maybe Nightsahde(Sam) and Pharaoh(Tucker) I would love to see what you guys add tho

[emmg]

Quod Manet

The sage (aka @lavenderprose) once said:

I think Emmrich deserves to take a heel turn. The man begs to be morally questionable. I love how good and kind and gentle he is but also. He could shove those things deep deep down inside himself and let his fear of death take over and do some REALY bonkers shit [...] He needs to claw his way out of the morally reprehensible mess he's made of his life, kicking and screaming, and he needs to do it because he's in LOVE.

and so I have written it

All mages, sooner or later, beckon a demon. 

His answers early. He is nineteen and luminous. Hands like peeled almonds, hair the shade of extinguished charcoal. He walks, already, with a scrip of acclaim tucked under one arm, a whisper of ink-smoke prestige trailing behind him. They call him promising; some say brilliant, and in that flattery, that coiling vine of praise, he finds both warmth and nausea. 

Yes, yes, he thinks, cheeks colored faintly with shame. Surely, he must be. It is not that he demands the world, but that the world owes him at least the token by which the rest might be bartered: talent. 

He assists. He observes. He murmurs syllables older than glass. The older members of the Mourn Watch nod, and he nods with them. Nineteen... nineteen is the age of mirrored swagger. Emmrich mirrors well. 

They soothe the dead. They instruct the living.  

Deep in the Vault of the Beloved, where the stone sweats and silence grows in stalactites, there is a spirit that does not whisper or drift or echo. It cries. Continuously. Without crescendo or resolution. A thin, reedy lament, as if sorrow had been distilled to a single, perpetual note. 

When Johanna means to wound him, she calls him sentimental. He never denies it. He wears the word like a smudge on a lens, frustrating but necessary to the viewing. It is not a flaw, he says, rehearsing the defense again and again, winding it through clauses and metaphors. She replies, as ever, by extending her middle finger, and their conversation goes nowhere. 

And yet, this softness, this ache for what trembles and breaks, it is the cradle of his talent. The fuel, he thinks, behind the small, slow fire that makes his work different, better. It is why he volunteers. Why he descends into the damp oubliette of memory and murmur. Why he believes he will rise from it adorned in new praise, gilded in commendation. Well done, they will say, heads nodding in bureaucratic rhythm. Very well done, Volkarin.

But the spell, like all first loves, fails. 

And in the Vault, something begins to wake that has long preferred to weep. 

Within the salt-ring: not the tractable dead, not the docile revenant he meant to cradle across the veil, but a thing. Heaped, convulsing, indecent. A clot of limbs bent against their nature, strung together with ligaments that flex like wet twine. Skin hangs from it in veils, peeling and pink as fresh burns. Teeth bloom from its flanks, nested in gums where no mouth should grow. One eye, yellowed and milk-fogged, rotates endlessly, while others blister open along its spine like boils ready to burst.

It reeks. An odor of old milk curdled in bone, of wet fur and the seared iron tang of childbirth gone wrong. When it breathes, if breath it is, it wheezes through holes punched in cartilage, dragging spit and air in uneven rhythm. The sound is not quite human and not entirely beast; more the groan of something being born unwillingly, backwards. 

It tries to speak, or maybe that’s wishful thinking. What comes is a vibration, a hot murmur from a throat sealed in pus. And from this rot-hymn he hears her: not his mother as she was, but as she ended, the brittle gasp, the splintered ribs shifting under stone, the ragged breath that gurgled red as it fled her. 

The thing remembers. And it wears that memory like a second skin, sodden, stinking, stretched too thin over too much. 

“No, no,” he breathes, and in that hushed repetition is the fullness of his terror: childlike and intimate. He is trembling now; excessively, visibly, the way leaves shake before the storm even touches them. His balance tilts. His foot slips. A fraction of misstep, and the salt, that brittle, sacred line, is scattered. 

The circle opens. 

It begins to crawl. Not move—crawl. A thing that knows it will have you. It drags its bulk across the stone in lurching motions, sloughing viscera in its wake, limbs glistening and warped. Where it passes, the ground seems to sicken.

Sweet one, it croons.

Dear, dear, come here.

A lullaby fractured into thirds: one voice sonorous as water in a cavern, another sharp and bright as a child's shriek, and the third, unbearably, his mother’s. Not quite mimicry, not quite memory, but something worse: recollection chewed and spat back up, still warm.

Dear boy, it sings. Lovely boy.

Its hand, moist and cold, the color of unrendered fat, settles on his ankle. Too many fingers. Far too many joints. They clutch with a strange tenderness, like a lover not yet sure if they’re dreaming. 

Don’t cry over the milk, Emmrich, it purrs, and his stomach turns because that’s how she said it, how she leaned down once, years ago, as he wept over a broken mug.

The thing pulls itself up his shins, its belly dragging wetly behind it, its skin opening and closing in slow, pulsing flaps. Fingers—too many, and not all whole—emerge from beneath its dragging mass. Some are cleanly forked, as if the bone inside had decided to go its own way. Others twitch, trembling with the blind curiosity of subterranean things. Their pads are moist and yielding, unpleasantly soft, like the inside of a child’s mouth, or the underside of a slug. 

And as it clutches him, kneeling like a devotee before a shrine made of meat, Emmrich begins to remember. Not just what is before him, but what was buried. 

There had been a day, quiet, indistinct in its beginning, sharp only in its interruption. He had opened a door. The room smelled of iron and wood. His father had turned too quickly, apron soaked and clinging to him, and in that graceless movement smeared a red thumbprint across Emmrich’s forehead. Not violently, just urgently. An attempt to hide the sight. To shield the child with his own body before shoving him back into the corridor and sealing the memory into silence.

But the mind cheats. 

He remembers what he wasn’t meant to: the cow’s head on the block, one eye slack in its socket, the cranium cleaved open like a cracked melon. The tongue already gone. The cheek—soft, pale, furred on the outside and raw within—looked like a bed of fleshy reeds. 

And now, in the Vault, the thing on him pulses with uncanny familiarity. Not just borrowed from mother, no, though her voice slips from its mouths, but from father too. From blade and block.

For it takes two to make one. 

It is not merely some echo of the woman who stitched lullabies into his marrow, who sang in flour-dusted kitchens and died beneath beams and brick. No, this monstrous concatenation is heir also to the man who carved in silence, who smelled perpetually of lanolin and lye, and who taught him to count to twelve by pointing at ribs, at vertebrae, at the neat white pegs of butchered spine. 

It speaks with her breath. It grips with his hands. And in that synthesis, so vile and tender, Emmrich understands: this thing knows him, because it is him, grown backward from memory like a tumor with teeth.

It is Dread. Not the pantomime specter spoken of in taverns or classroom warnings, not a shadow with claws or a name in old ink, but the true kind, the kind that shifts with the angle of your gaze, always known, never quite seen. For every eye it wears a different mask, and for his, it has chosen one with his mother's voice and his father's silence sewn into the seams. 

At last, he remembers. 

Not a memory of fact, but of function: the syllables, the shape of the thing he must say. His hands shake. His thoughts slip and scatter. But his throat, blessedly, does not close. 

The words come out fractured, but they come. And the thing, with an almost theatrical grace, begins to go. 

It burns, but without flame, consumed instead by something internal, a heat born of its own knowing. The scent it leaves behind is acrid and intimate: the precise stink of milk teeth gone rotten, of bone charred. 

It goes easily. 

Too easily. 

Because it knows that the haunt need not linger in form. The stage is struck, but the echo has been set. And Emmrich, kneeling in the stillness that follows, knows it too. 

He folds, gracelessly, as if his bones have lost their agreement with one another. Bites down on his thumb, hard enough to taste blood. Screams, but into the wet hollow of his own palm, so no one, not even himself, can hear it. 

His free hand slams into the stone. Once, twice, again. Each time less out of rage than an attempt to prove he is still there, still inside this body. Skin splits. That hand, once soft, once used to pen and page, opens red beneath him like a flower learning pain.

And after that—Dread stays. 

****

Emmrich understands—has always understood, in the quiet, coiling parts of himself—that he is very much afraid of dying. Understands it in the way a drowning man fears the water not for its depth, but for its silence. 

His life runs in a circle, the same way his thoughts do: not a tidy ring, but a slow spiral inward, a vortex of fixation. Everything turns back to the body: its fragility, its expiration, its betrayal. His research is not merely academic; it is devotional. Every theorem, every scraped parchment and sleepless translation, bends toward the same sacrament: avoidance. How to cheat the tally. How to slip through the hourglass. How to remain.

He begins, as all do, with sanctioned inquiry—professors who answer readily, books in the light-drenched front of the library that discuss the soul in tasteful metaphor. But Emmrich, meticulous and unsatisfied, presses deeper. Past the polite tomes into the dust-heavy wings where the air is thicker, where the pages are darker not with age but with secrecy. 

There, the guardian spirits start to appear, not stern, but sorrowful, turning him away with that peculiar expression reserved for children too curious to survive. Permission is required, they murmur.

So he obtains it. 

Because he is talented, and talent, properly shaped, opens all locks. His work has been praised. His hands are steady. His eyes are sharp. He speaks the dead tongue without stuttering. And so the permissions come.

Beneath that final layer, in a section with no name, he finds it. 

Lichdom. 

A word that does not sit easily in the mouth. A word that rusts as it is spoken. 

It is not immortality in the poetic sense; no golden apples, no serene elevation to the stars. It is flesh given up. It is the body made irrelevant. Bone sucked clean of meat. A sacrifice grotesque and glorious. A body traded for time.

His mind burns. Yes, it cries. Yes, this is it.

He imagines eternity not as heaven, but as absence: the absence of ending, of wheeze, of rot, of the slow collapse into helplessness. He thinks of his mother, breath fluttering, ribs groaning under their final effort. He remembers the animals brought to his father, bleeding or dazed, often not quite dead, their owners too squeamish, too slow with the blade.

It was always the butcher’s job to finish it. 

And Emmrich had watched. Watched how death stammered before it arrived, how it gurgled and flailed, how it lingered where it wasn’t wanted. 

No. Not for him. 

He will not wheeze. 

He will not beg.

He will not need finishing.

He will simply endure. 

****

At first, Emmrich mistakes his fear for a singular thing: a dread shaped like death, like an abyss he could name. But as years settle over him, as his shadow lengthens and quiet begins to hum louder in empty rooms, he begins to feel the outline of a second fear. One less operatic, more insidious: loneliness. 

At nineteen, twenty, twenty-four, he craved affection in elegant forms. He believed in courtship that resembled sonatas; gloved hands kissed in moonlight, pressed flowers between books, trembling confessions written but never sent. And when they did not stay—those pale-eyed boys and tempestuous girls—he told himself it was timing, youth, the inevitability of motion. 

So he gave more. 

More of himself, peeled gently back. More of what he had: access, knowledge, charm, gifts that glittered. He dressed his yearning in velvet and wit. But still, they left. Some with apologies, some with silence, some simply disappearing like chalk in rain. 

Slowly, his hair began to lose its color. 

There were years when he was not entirely alone—companions, students, half-lovers passing through—but even then, there were nights when the walls pressed in, soft and padded, reminiscent of an asylum's, and he wanted to claw them, not in madness but in protest. Why don’t they stay? he would ask the ceiling. Why do they always leave?

He is no longer the boy in the Watch’s hand-me-down robes, trousers hemmed with mismatched thread, shoes a size too small that made him walk like he was apologizing to the earth. No. That boy has long since been replaced. 

Now he is renowned. Now his name is spoken in the same breath as the great dead. His grave dowry—though he still harbors a childish hope he will never be asked to spend it—is impressive and gleaming. His fingers are heavy with rings, thick with gold so pure it should be too soft for use. It scratches at itself when he folds his hands.

The eternal metal. The unyielding gleam. 

Yet, each evening, when he removes the rings one by one, lays them in their velvet box like relics from a body already gone, his hands look strangely bare, as though they had forgotten how to be simply his. 

They should belong to someone. 

They should be held. 

They should be holding.

They should be known.

At the very least—he thinks this sometimes, never aloud—he should wear one ring that is not his. A simple one would do. A twist of tin, of twine, of whatever lasts just long enough to mean something.

It needn’t be lovely. It need only be given.

But no such ring comes. 

What comes instead is a curious little wisp, a flutter of presence, something half-formed and prematurely loyal. It appears seemingly out of nowhere, trailing him through the Necropolis, skimming along crypt walls, nosing into shadows. It floats just behind him as he walks his rounds, never touching but never gone. 

It begins to appear at his lectures, slipping under the door like a draft. His students laugh when it spins a circle round his head, mist catching on his hair like spider silk. He scolds it once—“Not now.” Another time he ignores it.

And then one day, perhaps more tired than usual, or lonelier, or just resigned, he flicks a hand and says, “Well, go on, then.” 

The wisp shivers, then drops. Condenses. Curves into something denser, more eager. It settles into a fragment of bone, a vertebra perhaps, or a bit of shoulder. From there it begins to build. A skeleton, clumsy at first, ribs like misremembered harp strings, a femur from one drawer, a jaw from another. They sit together—Emmrich and his not-yet-companion—among the bodies left for donation, the unclaimed, the forgotten.

They sort through limbs as though they were organizing a family archive. They find phalanges for the left hand, delicate and mismatched. A rib is slotted into place. The kneecaps are borrowed from two different donors, but they seem to agree with each other. 

Later—days, or maybe weeks—they sit together again, not at a workbench but at a table, turning the fragile pages of a book meant for expecting parents. The irony does not escape him. But the act feels solemn, absurd, necessary. 

And there, amid names scribbled in soft ink—dreamt up by people who imagined lullabies, not resurrection—he stops. 

They both agree. 

And so the little thing becomes him.

And the necromancer, still without a ring not his own, finds, at least, a name that was given, not taken.

****

He can whisper to corpses, yes, but he can also hush them. Still their mouths like pressing a finger to a sleeping child’s lips. The Watch does not need to know everything. Let them catalog his published studies, his sanctioned conjurations. Let them praise what they can cite. Some things, Emmrich has decided, belong to him alone.

Not everything must be peer-reviewed. 

The books run dry. The tomes grow repetitive, self-referential, devouring one another like snakes penned too long in a box. Lichdom, that cold, brilliant grail, eludes him.

The “guardians” whispered of in footnotes and marginalia fail to appear. No spectral gatekeepers. No final keys. He has visited every ossuary with a name, whispered through every hinge in the library’s spine. He is left gnawing at pages. 

And all the while, the clock ticks—not metaphorically, but audibly, somewhere in the base of his skull.

The lines beside his eyes have deepened into small, suspicious shadows. His hair is entirely grey now. 

In the tomb—a narrow, incense-stale chamber lined with plaques and familial smugness—a corpse weeps behind a bronze door. 

“Oh, no need for theatrics,” Emmrich murmurs, kneeling. His voice, once sympathetic, has been sanded down to utility. Whatever empathy once bubbled in him has long since gone flat, evaporated somewhere between the seventeenth and thirty-sixth exhumation. 

It seems, this one will not answer to spells alone.

They’re all the same. The dead. Nobles, paupers, bakers, mages. His mother, the women who bought her bread, the girls who wrote him letters on pressed flower-paper. Stripped of skin and scandal, they always return to the same script: hiss, plead, beg. 

Why? he wants to ask them. What else do you imagine you have left to lose? You have no flesh. Only secrets.

And secrets, like all currency, must eventually circulate.

This one is still fresh. Embalmed scarcely a week ago. The chemicals have not yet muddled the synaptic trails. The memory is warm and pliable. 

He remembers this one—a professor, once. A soft-voiced man with too many cardigans, who pressed a warm hand to Emmrich’s shoulder when his first paper was published, who offered quiet praise instead of thunderous approval, who always left the door open. 

But kindness is no shield. Not here. Not when time is closing its teeth. 

The body lies on the slab. Embalming has not yet erased the last traces of expression; the furrow of the brow remains, the corners of the mouth turned down in what might have been concern or simple refusal to die politely. 

Emmrich does not hesitate. He sets his tools beside the corpse with the same delicacy a midwife might reserve for birth. A little silver rod, hooked at the end. A bone chime. A polished black candle that burns with no scent. 

Whispering to the dead sometimes requires more than whispering.

He begins with the mouth. Always the mouth. 

The tongue is stiff, half-cured by fluid, but he coaxes it loose with whispered syllables. The lips quiver. Teeth chatter. 

“Tell me,” he says, as he slides a gloved finger past the lips, pushing down until the jaw cracks, not quite open, but wide enough. The corpse groans, a low, bubbling exhalation. 

“Tell me,” he repeats, voice low, as he begins the coaxing work of necromantic pressure. One hand on the sternum, the other pressed to the temple. The skull hums. The nails on its left hand curl inward as if gripping pain. 

The secrets don’t come easily. They rarely do. He has to reach for them; through nerves that no longer carry sensation, through sinew knotted by rot and ritual. 

The spine arches. A noise tears from the body, too wet to be a scream, too human to be dismissed. The ribcage gives a shudder, bones straining against ligature. There’s a faint pop, and something dark leaks from the ears, viscous, almost iridescent.

He feels the memory begin to yield like a molar being ripped from the jaw, still warm, still connected by its stubborn root. The corpse jerks, and for a moment, its eyes roll open. milky, directionless, aware.

“You had it,” Emmrich whispers. “In your last months. I know you did. You wrote in cipher. You left diagrams you thought no one would understand. You were afraid.” 

The corpse thrashes, subtly and pitifully. Its throat contracts, forcing out a ragged, breathless noise, a dry bark of a sound that might once have been no or please.

“I am afraid too,” Emmrich says, softly now, desperate not for cruelty but for communion. “Don’t you see? I’m still here. I still have time to lose.” 

“Give it to me,” he demands. He pushes harder. The candle flickers. 

And then something snaps, not physically, but beneath the surface. A vein of thought ruptures. He sees flashes: a hidden page, a sigil burnt into fabric, a phrase repeated until it lost meaning.

The body collapses. A puppet with its strings finally cut—only the strings were tendons, and they tore as they fell. 

Emmrich pulls back, panting, fingers slick with something that should not exist; neither blood nor sap nor spirit, but some fusion of the three. He looks down at his hands. The gold on his rings has been scratched again, scored by the tooth of a jaw that refused to be opened. 

The dead man has told him something. Not enough. But something. 

Emmrich wipes his hands on a linen cloth. His throat is dry. He does not apologize. 

There is no immortality without extraction. 

****

Still, it does not come to him. Not the final piece, not the elegant solution he has clawed toward for decades. Lichdom remains just out of reach, a shimmer at the edge of a fever dream, a name whispered through a keyhole that will not open. 

What comes instead is an invitation, spoken.

It arrives on an otherwise unremarkable afternoon, when the light through his study windows is the color of old paper. She enters without knocking—a girl barely twenty, flanked by an assassin carved from silence and a Warden whose armor bears the faded sigils of a broken order. 

She says his name—Emmrich Volkarin—like it means something mythic. Like it’s already been carved into some monument he hasn’t yet died for. She doesn’t bow. She doesn’t plead. She simply speaks.

The invitation is brief.  

They need him. 

The world is falling apart.

Her hand hovers between them, waiting to be taken. 

His own hand trembles as it rises—not from weakness, though he is fifty-two and no longer young—but from the familiar, coiled pulse of inevitability. 

He decides to take it, to take that outstretched hand of hers. 

He accepts, not out of heroism, not even out of courage, but because he fears what might happen if he refuses to act: 

The gods do not stay buried.

The Blight does not sleep.

If he says no, he knows exactly what will come: a life of waiting. Of watching. Of rotting.

He fears death—yes. Always has. But he fears uselessness more.

So he says yes. 

No cheers greet him. No horns, no accolades. The assassin turns and slips away. The Warden follows, each step heavy. 

The girl remains a moment longer. She watches him with the gaze of someone who has already mourned him in advance. 

Then, just before turning, she smiles. Softly, almost shy. 

And Emmrich, foolish, exhausted, long past the age of foolishness, smiles back. 

There is a warmth in his cheeks he does not recognize. It embarrasses him. 

But he does not look away. 

****

He learns, swiftly and with some small embarrassment, that there is nothing remotely shy about her. 

Rook, she calls herself. There is another name, once offered in a moment of idle conversation. When he tries to use it—tentatively, experimentally, like testing the depth of a cold pool—she grimaces, waves it away with a theatrical shudder, and mutters something profane in a dialect he cannot place. 

He does not try again. 

Rook, then. Rook is good. 

He can say Rook.

He does say it, often. Not aloud, but in the quiet syllabary of the mind. Rook, Rook, Rook, as though repetition might turn her into something tameable.

She flirts with the assassin, Lucanis—probably. Possibly. It is difficult to tell. She teases him with the air of someone who has never once second-guessed their own charm, then punctuates the moment by kicking him sharply in the shin and announcing, “Ta-ta!” before flouncing from the room, giggling like a bell swung too hard.

Lucanis collapses onto a bench with a hiss, pressing his hand to the offended limb. Emmrich helps him up, feigning nonchalance, adjusting his sleeve with too much care. 

“I lost a bet,” the Antivan mutters, teeth bared. He offers no further detail. 

In the morning, Emmrich notices something else. 

Lucanis pours her coffee first. 

Emmrich tries not to feel it. Whatever it is.

Disappointment is too simple a word. What he feels is more complicated; something brittle and childish tucked under the sternum. 

He had, after all, memorized the way she took her coffee: black, but with two sugar cubes, the second always dropped in distractedly, as if pretending she did not have a sweet tooth. He had intended—yes, intended—to fill her cup that morning. To ask, no, not to ask, but to offer, casually, like a man who had simply risen early and happened to be near the pot.

But Lucanis moved first. 

And Rook smiled at him—at him, not Emmrich—and took the cup without comment.

Emmrich, ancient student of death, mutterer of half-forbidden syllables, whose fingers had long ago stopped shaking before bone—felt, absurdly, the sting of being too late. 

****

He has always become fascinated a little too quickly. With things, with people, with the mere suggestion of affection. His mind snags on glances, on gestures half-meant. He loves—no, fixates—with a speed that startles, that repels. He gives gifts too soon, too grand. Poems copied in his own careful hand, obscure sweets from distant markets, relics that should have felt like treasure but only ever felt like pressure. He has ended more beginnings than he has had proper middles, not from cruelty but from this simple, incurable thing:

He is, and has always been, lovesick.

Not occasionally, not romantically, but as a state of being. As others are near-sighted or allergic to pollen. 

It is only the object that changes. 

The face. The scent. The cadence of voice.

The hands he reaches for that always, inevitably, pull away.

So it is with Rook. 

It begins with a smile; one of her careless ones, tossed over her shoulder like a scarf. Then a compliment: “Handsome,” she says, as if it were just another word.  

Then comes the pun. Awful. Delivered with the smugness of someone who knows it is bad and relishes it anyway. She repeats it for three days. Three.

He does not laugh. 

On the third day, he groans. “Enough.”

He rubs his temples with the slow despair of a man approaching migraine. She beams as if he had declared undying love.

He begins to want. Too much. Too fast.

It coils in him, low and quiet at first, then louder, as they share cramped hallways in the Lighthouse. When their doors are close. When he hears her humming through the walls. 

And in the wild, it’s worse. 

In the Arlathan forest, with their fire sputtering under damp wood, they sleep side by side in the dark like offerings placed before a god. He lies awake and watches the gentle swell of her chest, the blanket rising and falling. He sees, in silhouette, the shape of her shoulder, the dip of her waist. 

And in the morning, the sound of the river—splashing, voices, her laughter—pulls at him like a hook. 

Then her voice, sudden, too near. 

“Coming?” she asks, not coquettish, not shy—just asking—as her fingers toy with the laces of her tunic, already half-undone. She does not turn to look at him. She’s already walking, hair braided roughly, bare skin beginning to peek through cloth as she steps toward the water.

He cannot answer at first. 

Then, at last, with a voice he forces to remain level:  “No. I believe I’ll wait for the comforts of the Lighthouse. But… thank you.”

She tosses her head back and grins. “Prude.” 

Then she disappears into the trees, into the river, into light. 

He remains by the fire, utterly still. 

The air is cool. The flame stutters.

And nothing in the world burns quite as slowly as wanting.

****

There is always more to her. That is the great irritation. The quiet delight. The trap. 

More than the foul jokes she delivers with glee, more than the crude jabs, the pantomimed obscenities she flings like spells. Beneath the swagger and the noise—there is something else. Something she never advertises, never names, but which flickers out now and then like a trick of the light: a softness, a sincerity so abrupt it feels like a slap.

They’re in Minrathous again—what’s left of it—where the marble glows with soot and the sky has the sick yellow sheen of bruised parchment. She asks him, offhand, to coax information from a Venatori corpse—one they’d found stuffed in a cistern, a bureaucrat with blood still in his ears. Missing people. A list of names. A hope. 

He obliges, of course. It's what he does. 

The corpse groans. A low, wet syllable, meaningless. He exhales through his nose, already preparing for the descent. 

This is the part he knows too well. The routine. Pressure applied not physically but metaphysically; pushing deeper, threading through the brittle synaptic remnants, prodding until the memory gives way. 

The corpse begins to sob, or as close to sobbing as a dead man can manage. Airless, shuddering gasps. A jaw clicking with strain. 

He tightens the gesture, curling his wrist, an old motion, a habitual cruelty. The spine on the slab bends in reply, vertebrae scraping like teeth. 

Then—her hand. On his shoulder. 

“Stop,” she says, her voice low, unfamiliar in its disapproval. “What are you doing?” 

He glances at her. Her frown is odd. Not performative. Just… disappointed. 

“You’re kinder than this,” she adds, quiet. “I saw you feed the stray cats. You always bring something for them when we come to Minrathous.” 

Leave it to Rook, he thinks, to equate moral virtue with tins of fish.

“Oh, no, darling,” he says lightly, almost laughing, as he sharpens the motion of his wrist, dragging another groan from the corpse. “It is no trouble. He’ll talk. Sooner or later. I do not mind.” 

“Yes, it is trouble,” she insists, now clutching his sleeve, her weight dragging slightly at his arm.

And so—he stops. 

Not because he wants to. Not because the corpse has earned mercy. But because she means it. Because she really, impossibly, believes it.

He wants to tell her that kindness never opened the right doors. That he tried it. Again and again. That it failed him, left him in cold rooms with warm intentions and nothing else. 

He says only this: “Kindness doesn’t get you anywhere.” 

She doesn’t blink. “Kindness feeds cats.” 

The corpse collapses with a sigh, slack and quiet. Its jaw hangs open, as if relieved. 

And for once, Emmrich lets it lie. 

****

He is not proud of himself. 

He, of all people, ought to know better. Ought to know discipline. Mastery. He who can still a spirit with a glance, who speaks to the dead in the grammar of dominion—he should be immune to this.

But he yearns.

And the yearning grows, becomes something grotesquely palpable, like an organ that should not exist: a second heart, smaller and louder. All it takes is a phrase, careless, complimentary, tossed like a bone to a dog, and he practically folds at her feet. 

He could fall in love with her shadow, he realizes, and probably already has. 

If you are sincere, he wants to say—no, to beg, to etch into his skin with a scalpel, one letter at a time—I will have you. I will take you in with the same reverence I have for forbidden tomes and bone-white flame. I will be yours gladly. Gladly.

Instead, he says something quiet. Controlled. The tone even, the phrasing elegant. A line that could pass for a witticism, could pass for courtly banter, unless one were listening too closely. His voice, as she’s said before, is “pretty.” 

She stares. Not at his face, but at his shoulder, as though the words had landed there instead of in the air between them. There’s a pause, brief but thick. Then she grumbles something that might be approval or amusement or simply a startled exhale disguised as speech. 

And he... he yearns harder. 

Because now he knows he’s not dreaming. Because now the possibility, however remote, has roots. 

And he is not proud. 

But he is hers.

In silence. In waiting. In want.

He is not proud of himself. 

Not at night, not when the candle has guttered low and the walls seem to breathe with the heat of his own shame. Not when he lies there, sleepless, aching, clenched with want so taut it hums beneath his skin. He resents the softness of his sheets, the way they whisper around his thighs like a suggestion. 

But the yearning will not go. 

And so he takes himself in hand, efficiently, the way a man might carry out a duty he finds beneath him but cannot refuse. 

He closes his eyes. Tries not to see her. Fails. Of course he sees her. Her face, sun-drenched and scowling. Her hands, ink-stained, calloused. Her mouth, mid-laugh. And—worse still—the imagined press of her warmth, the impossible sweetness of her, the heat he has never known but now cannot un-imagine.

He spills into his palm with a whimper so soft it disgusts him. The sound startles even him; foolish, animal, unsummoned. 

He cleans up with haste. Turns his face into the pillow. Tries not to think. 

In the morning, she notices. Of course she notices. He cannot meet her eyes. His face feels like it’s glowing from the inside. 

“What’s wrong?” she asks, sing-song, already grinning. “What’s wrooooooong?” 

He shakes his head. He hopes she will drop it. She doesn’t. She never does.

It becomes unbearable, this slow needling, and when the others have gone, when the table is theirs and only theirs, when there is too much silence between his breath and hers—he says it. 

He confesses. 

That he wants her. Very, very much. That he’s sorry, unspeakably sorry. That he should not have said anything but now he cannot not say it.

The words all but tumble out. He looks down at his hands, one of which he cannot help but remember in that other, more private context. 

Rook blinks. 

“Oh,” she says, as if registering a shift in weather. She stares into the middle distance as if someone else had just spoken. 

Then, awkwardly—fumbling, too close—she reaches out and takes his face in both hands. 

And kisses him. 

It is neither romantic nor clean.

The angle is wrong, and she tastes like coffee and sleep. Her breath is warm and faintly sour, her braid coming undone, strands tickling his cheek. 

His mind is burning once more. With shame. With disbelief. With the dangerous flicker of hope. 

Below all that, he begins to want again. 

****

He tells her of his hopes. Of the way he dreams of slipping past the scythe. Of death packed away neatly, like winter clothes. Of lichdom: the cold, glittering answer. 

How he will never have to go. 

He tells her he has not found the key yet, but he will. One day, it will come to him. He will break open every tomb, disassemble every saint, gut every doctrine if he must. He will earn his permanence by force, if not by right. 

She makes a face at this, as if he’d offered her spoiled fruit. Her nose wrinkles. She recoils not in fear, but in distaste. 

“Oh no,” she says. “No, no, no. That wouldn’t suit you at all.” 

She leans forward like she’s whispering a spell. “You’re too kind for that. Liches... things of bone... they don’t feel. Or they do, but only for a while. And then it goes. It must. You’d forget how.”

He laughs and reassures her. If that’s the concern, he says, he’ll craft illusion. He’ll wear his old face, just as she remembers it, even after ritual takes it from him. He’ll keep his voice sweet. His hands gentle. She won’t even notice. 

She shakes her head at him, frustrated, like he’s missed the punchline of something terribly important. 

“That’s not the point,” she mutters, turning away, hands twitching. “You feel... everything.” 

She tries again. “And if you become... eternal... how long do you really think that’ll last? A decade? A century? You’ll stop crying over cats. You’ll stop getting migraines from bad puns. You’ll stop blushing.”

Her voice dips. “I don’t want an Emmrich who’s no longer kind.” 

He almost tells her the truth. 

That he shed that skin long ago; peeled it away like a scab and folded it neatly into the corner of some forgotten year. After Dread first visited. After the rituals. After lovers left without slamming doors. After he learned what kindness purchases: nothing but delay.

After that, he adopted efficiency. Precision. Quiet calculation. 

And yet—she sees it. Somehow. The ghost of it. The residue.

He wants to ask her—desperately—where she sees it.

Where, exactly, in his ruined shape, does that softness still show?

Because he has long since mourned its passing, and he would dig up its grave if she could only point him to it. If it would keep her. 

****

She is all longness. Long limbs, long hair, the color of candlelight through frost, soft like sleep, like something one ought to wake from with guilt. Her eyes are grey, the precise grey of his own hair, as though some shared melancholy binds them at the molecular level. 

She is soft and warm and naked, and he is lost, utterly and without defense.

He kisses her the way a scholar approaches an artifact; tender, awed, reverent to the point of trembling. Her throat first, which releases sighs like drifting smoke. Then the sharp grace of her collarbone. Her breasts, small and eager. Her belly, her hip, her thighs—each a continent on a map he is only just learning to read. 

And then—between them. 

He lowers his mouth to her, and there it is, that impossible heat, that slick ache, that proof that she is real and here and wants. His tongue moves first. She moans, open and shameless, and clutches his hair. When she comes, it is a pulse, a quake. He does not stop. He licks the remains of her pleasure like an oath.

Then he crawls back to her, up the gentle rise of her body, and kisses her as if to say, yes, yes, I am yours, say anything and I will believe it.

“Always so kind,” she says, and the words are shaped in that same tone she uses for jokes—but jokes she always means. 

And that’s what breaks him. 

Suddenly, his body betrays him. His arm gives, his mouth falters, and he collapses into the space between her shoulder and neck, that tender hollow that smells like sweat and skin and safety. He is trembling. Then—crying. 

Not sobbing. Not loudly. But weeping the way a building gives up heat after the fire is out. 

Because her words have landed now. Kind.

Kind, kind, kind. 

And he realizes: that’s the tether. That’s the condition. That’s the price. She will not stay if he isn’t. Not her. Not Rook. And if she leaves, then eternity will be nothing but echo, or, worse still, he won’t find it at all, and life will go on without her, and he is much, much too old to survive another name in his mouth that does not stay.

So for her, for Rook, he tries to remember the man he was before Dread came knocking. 

[evolutionsvoid]

Elementals can be created both naturally and artificially, as long as enough of a certain material or element is near and the right magical spark is ignited. Of course, this is simplifying it greatly, as the process takes quite a lot of resources and is pretty complex. But the theory behind it would suggest that the amount of elementals one could create is practically bottomless, especially if you are a human. With their ability to practically wield every kind of magic, then anything should be possible. However, you have probably already seen that this idea isn't really executed all that often. Humans have created and wielded elementals, but the variety of them is pretty low. That is because these familiars need to have some kind of use, a function to explain why someone would go through all the effort. Thus, mages and such tend to lean on the tried and true type, picking the safest bets to ensure they get their money's worth out of this creation. Other elements or materials are too hard to get, or are too chaotic to work with. Others would create something with no obvious use, which doesn't really help anyone. And in some cases, a type of elemental may not be made because few people even know that kind exists. But in the case of the Clonal Elemental, the ignorant ones are non-dryads, who pretty much never see such a rare creation.

Clonal Elementals are a dryad creation, and a rather bizarre one to outsiders. They appear to be a floating ball of plant and fungi parts, a cobbled entity whose form seems pretty useless. Indeed, their birth comes from the energizing of roots and mycelium, weaving them together into a singular being. When the process is done, these materials are given life and the Clonal Elemental is complete. It appears some form of magic allows them to float upon the air despite their weight, though they can also be seen being carted around by dryad workers. Their hanging tendrils sway in the breeze, and many gnarled roots and growths twitch and stretch. They are an interesting sight for sure, but eventually one has to ask: what do they do? The answer to that question is why you will never see a human or non-dryad ever make a Clonal Elemental, because their purpose is to simply exist.

It may seem absolutely useless when you hear it, the creation of a being that simply hangs around doing nothing. Can they cast magic? No. Can they do chores? No. Can they communicate in any way? Uh, kinda, but not really. This leads to the frustrating wondering on what the point of them even is then, as they seem utterly useless. This is funny, because it shows the lack of understanding one has for dryad culture with this question. Because while all other races see them as pointless, dryads see Clonal Elementals as precious and incredibly crucial. Why that is ties into what happens when dryads die, and the afterlife they believe in.

A quick refresher of dryad funerary services: when a dryad passes away, a seed is planted in their body and they are returned to the earth. The corpse is buried, and the seed within them will transfer their soul into the next stage of existence. The tree or plant that sprouts from their grave is said to not only contain their soul, but is believed to be that very dryad given a new form. They live on within this plant, and when their roots connect to the rest of the intricate network of the forest, they are linked up with all the dryads who have passed on. The grand system buried beneath our feet is where their souls go, generations of dryads contained within plant, root and fungus. This is how they commune with those gone, and gain wisdom from past souls. And it is this belief that causes dryads to be fiercely protective of their sacred groves and living homes, as it is more than just a tree. If their forest were to be burned and the root system destroyed, than that link to their ancestors would be forever lost. It is no doubt a tragic thing, but the sad fact is that it is a very real possibility in this world.

Dryads and the places they find sacred have been and will be under attack in one way or another. Be natural disasters, plague or invaders, they are aware the time may come when their sacred root system is threatened. Obviously, they will fight to the death to ensure its survival, but sometimes they must accept the fact that victory is not possible. A raging forest fire may not be able to be stopped before it consumes all, an invading force may be too strong to push back. When this happens, dryadkind knows it is best to salvage what they can, lest all is lost. Obviously, one cannot uproot a tree and carry it to safety. It isn't possible to rip out an extensive network of roots and mycelium for transplanting. Doing so would kill it, and thus erase their past. But with the use of magic, a vital chunk of this may be given life and an easier to move form.

Clonal Elementals are essentially living containers, given the vital task of moving dryad networks to safer places. They are not big enough to carry the entire biomass, but one must remember how cuttings work. Sometimes, a single piece is enough to save and regrow an entire species, and that is how the Clonal Elemental works. By transplanting this piece of the network elsewhere, all that was once contained within the previous system is saved. Their ancestors can live on, their wealth of knowledge and comfort preserved for future generations. So even if their forest homes burn, dryads can find peace and hope in the fact that not all was lost.

The life of a Clonal Elemental is obviously pretty short, as they are created to simply move plant matter from one location to the next. Yet, these existences are vital and fiercely guarded. It should be no wonder why these elementals are rarely seen by non-dryads, and why any dryad would throw themselves into danger to keep them safe. For when these beings are returned to the earth, the past is saved, a new home will flourish and dryads will continue to thrive despite all odds and hardships.

There are some rumors and beliefs tied to the Clonal Elementals that wonder if they are capable of more. Obviously, the task they do now is vital, but think of all that is contained within them. A bottomless well of dryad souls, generations of knowledge and essence. And this being is the ward to all of this. Then look to see how life blooms after they have been planted, like an entire forest rising in a mere fraction of the time. Thus they can create life, but does that mean they can create dryads? Can they give those passed a new shot at life? Humans, and even some dryads, have pondered this. For man, it would explain how dryads are able to reproduce so quickly, how they have spread nearly as wide as humanity. And of course, this has been brought up in whispered conversations about the infamous and mysterious Pando Village. That isolated dryad community that feels half fiction and half fact. Those strange, strange dryads, whose origins remain unknown. Some wonder if their creation is the result of a Clonal Elemental, perhaps one that went very wrong. Some think darker magic is at play, others think an insidious plot, and one very loud and angry dryad would prefer to beat all those theorists in the head with a stick.

[thorneheir]

“No.” It’s answered too quick to be a lie but then he hears the rest of what she says and his head shakes, disgust and sorrow covering his face at the very thought of being bought into the fold and living that kind of life that he wanted no part of. “It matters very little what I want but if I could make it how I wanted, I wouldn’t even be considered for the life he has planned for me.” He thinks, his jaw clenching in controlled hidden anger that he knows he gets from his father and hates it all the more. “It’s a shame his bastard can’t be legitimised.” It was a silly, rash, comment that he can’t help but say and its useless to be spoken given that he doesn’t even know the bastards intentions or if he wants the title.

While Kit was the perfect daughter in their fathers’ eyes and even though that was not what Tobias wanted, he resented it. It was a petty way of thinking that he held no control over but felt it all the same. Their Lord father would do anything for his daughters and doted on them, wanting the best for them in every way which stirred something in Tobias that he couldn’t identify.

“You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone in the Ton that would agree with that way of thinking. You know as well as I that this place is seeped and controlled by tradition, people don’t work for anything. They are born into it or marry it. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it. What accusations?” That was interesting. He’d been so consumed in his own wallowing that he hadn’t noticed that and cursed himself for missing something like that.

A rake to him was not something of shame. He’d been that way as a teenager before he left but more clumsy about it and not as extravagant as he had grown into as an adult. “Two of three, I would say. The first two to be specific. I’m a flirt, I take men and women to bed, I avoid marriage but I’m clear with everyone what I want and what I don’t. My reputation is my own to do what I want of it but I’m not a rake who leads someone on or that would endanger my bedpartners prospects.” The princess had tried to get him to court and hinder any of the queen’s diamond but he had refused on that reasoning. “You didn’t answer my question. A lot to gain from our downfall. Are you planning to take me down?” She could do it if she knew what taking him down meant. There was something about her that he thought gave her the ways she could complete whatever she set out to do.

“Don’t we all?” He sighs, shaking his head. “Destiny can’t be controlled. Influence, yes. Controlled, no. That influence requires power and neither you nor I have it.”

While he wanted the uncertainty, it seemed his sister craved it. One place was never something he wanted. It reeked of confinement, but he could see why that was different for someone else. He doesn’t want to but her words warm him to her. It explained why the home they shared was so different from what he remembered, why it was filled with different things that he didn’t recognize but yet they somehow fitted in perfectly with the home, made it better. Not something he would admit to himself or out loud. It bought him back to the baroness of his own room. Plain and nothing of him in there, just conformity and a blank area ready to be moulded. “Do you see Shrewsbury as that home you want?” Its not spoken with any nastiness, only intrigue. “I don’t think you will have to leave the Shrewsbury or the London home. Lord Thorne,” never father, “has made it clear its as much your home as it is his. It might not mean anything to you coming from my mouth but I believe it. And I knew him for sixteen years, I know how he thinks. He will not sour on you. You’re his pride of the house.” Again, no resentment there. He understands.

She heard the catch in his voice, unsure what it meant, but finding she could sympathize nonetheless. She too knew the experience of being on the outside looking in - had feared it would happen once more with her mother's marriage. Instead she had been welcomed into the fold, with her brother-in-law in the position she had thought she may occupy.

"Do you want it?" She asked, a genuine question. "If you could snap your finger and make it so, would you want to be brought into the fold. To live the life our father planned for you? To give up your chosen family for your birth one?" She suspected what his answer would be, but people surprised her more often than she guessed right.

"Do you truly believe our experiences will be the same in this matter? Perhaps my mother, and our sibling are safe in his affections. Perhaps he would never publicly denounce me - but there are other ways to show dissatisfaction in my choices. Little ways to push me out of a family I have been in for such a short time."

This family dynamic he saw was not by chance. Kit had maneuvered and plotted to earn her adopted father's affection - just as a young woman may maneuver to show a suitors family that she was fit to marry their child. She had played the part, assessed what he wanted and delivered the image of a daughter he had in mind. She had fought to dodge marriage arrangements which could have led to her being shipped away before she had time to make a home at Thorne house, all the while ensuring it was not seen as a slight by Lord Thorne nor a condemnation of his own choices.

She was surprised by his praise - frustrated that their conversation made him seem more human to her, not less. "And yet, I fear there are so many in the Ton who would not agree, who see people making something for themselves as a threat to what they perceive as the 'inherent class structure'. Even the rise in station we gained from our parents marriage has led to accusations of us as being 'upstarts'."

He described himself as a rake, and she wondered at the phrase. Were the gender roles around them less structured she might have found herself drawn to the life of a rake. "I do wonder at the use of that term - rake - we use it both for men who flirt, men who avoid marriage, and men who cause genuine harm to others, who lead them on and endanger their prospects in the future. I do not think these things should be captured together. If you are a rake, which category do you fall into?" If it was the latter he would lose any respect she had for him, but perhaps she would also have another tool in chasing the downfall she had already revealed too much about.

"I want control over my own destiny" she said, it was so simple, and yet so unattainable.

"Home has never been a place for me. I have been pulled from place too many times. Even in my childhood home I could feel the world my mother had left behind, the pieces she tried to find, perhaps to ensure we did not completely leave China behind..." Pieces which are now in the house they both live in. "Home is the communities we build. The people my mother surrounded herself with, the times our halls were filled with people she loved. The community that surrounds Shrewsbury - the people we serve as our vassals."

"Each time I have moved I have had to leave that community behind. Doing that again will feel like the third home I have lost - the third time I have had to rebuild. I am not willing to do that again lightly."