aggie-postemon

[aggie-postemon]

Kagome Between

When the well closes after the defeat of Naraku, Kagome finds herself facing a new battle: reintegrating into her own life. Thankfully, the local delinquent high school, Shirokin Gakuin, has just gone Co-Ed.

Math teacher Yamaguchi Kumiko isn't exactly ready to start teaching girls, but with her first batch of precious students safely graduated, she's ready to welcome the next.

Chapter Two — The New Class Begins!

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Holy shit, Kagome thought as she walked into Shirokin on her first day of class. The giant portrait of Sawada Shin from the website was hanging in the entrance hall. Internally, Kagome felt a rush of gratitude for the fact that she’d never been a top scorer, even before hunting for jewel shards and fighting Naraku had screwed over her academic performance.

She decided right then and there that she would be keeping her grades as dead average as possible. Good enough to get into a middling university maybe, if she decided later that she wanted it. She gave Sawada’s portrait a small, apologetic bow before ducking away to find her classroom.

It was horrifying, but no more horrifying than the Sawada portrait. Already, toward the back of the room, a couple of boys were fighting over a desk. Well. It was probably more than just the desk, but Kagome had missed the start and the context.

“Don’t be afraid of them. They just need to work it out,” said a voice at the front of the room. Kagome froze. The fighting boys froze. A woman in her mid-twenties melted from a shadow in the corner.

“When did the teacher get here?” said one boy to the other.

“Oh, I’m not afraid of them,” said Kagome.

“And what about the babe?” said the other boy. “Is she in our class?”

Kagome fixed him with a dead eyed stare before taking a seat toward the front of the room.

“Hot,” said one of the boys. Kagome did not dignify that with a response.

The teacher looked at her uncertainly. Or maybe she was looking at the notebook Kagome had already put on her desk uncertainly. “Higurashi Kagome,” Kagome finally said. “You’re Yamaguchi-sensei, right? That’s what it says on my schedule.”

Yamaguchi-sensei seemed to jolt. “That’s right!” she said. “But my students can call me Yankumi - my last class came up with it.”

That was cute. “Yankumi,” said Kagome, who never had any problem calling people what they wanted to be called.

“As if,” said one of the boys who’d trickled into the classroom. Yankumi, to her credit, didn’t seem phased by the rejection.

The school bell rang. Kagome looked around, fairly certain that the half-full classroom wasn’t nearly the full roster — and on the first day! Yankumi didn’t seem phased by that either.

“Well,” said Yamaguchi. “I’m sure most of your missing classmates are stalking Class 2 for a glimpse at Fujiyama-sensei. I can hardly blame them! But we can begin. I’ll introduce myself before taking the roll, to give the others some time to arrive."

Introductions were truly a disaster. Kagome thought that even Shirokin kids would be mildly attentive on the first day of their first year, but chatter sprung up all around her as Yankumi introduced herself. Again, the teacher didn’t seem phased.

Chatter aside, Yankumi’s predictions about attendance were spot on: most of the others arrived before introductions were done. Shirokin going co-ed officially hadn’t done much for enrollment, but girls managed to make up about a fourth of the class. Kagome figured that was pretty good for a school’s first co-ed year.

While two girls were sitting together towards the middle of the room, Kagome was amused to note that she and the last two girls had spaced themselves equidistantly around the classroom. She flashed the nearest a smile, but the other girl was focused on the playing cards she had laid out for solitaire.

This was Shirokin, after all. Distantly, Kagome heard her name — Yankumi, calling roll. She mumbled the sort of vague assent she’d heard out of the classmates who’d already gone, and the roll moved on.

When it was over, Yankumi looked around. “Homeroom really is just your time,” she said. “But I’ll want you all to at least pretend to pay attention when we switch to math. Keep it to one covert card game going on in the corner.”

Miraculously, Kagome heard a few stifled laughs. Somehow, even in a vivid red track suit, Yankumi seemed innocent and overly-organized. Seemed unprepared to handle a Shirokin classroom. That she would even make that joke was a surprise.

This time last year, when Kagome was still fourteen and entering ninth grade, she would have been unprepared to handle a Shirokin classroom. She wondered what that said about the buttoned-up Yankumi, that she’d prepared herself without having jumped through time.

Kagome spared one last glance toward her teacher before turning to the boy next to her and striking up a conversation. Homeroom had begun in earnest, and Kagome was curious about her peers.

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Kumiko sat back for the rest of homeroom, even when another small scuffle broke out towards the rear of the room. The kids were testing her, she knew, to see how far she’d let them bend the rules. She had a major advantage: these kids didn’t know each other. When she’d started with her very first class, they’d been second years with an established rapport and classroom dynamic. The hierarchy, with Sawada and his closest friends at the top, was settled and fixed.

It would be interesting to watch that dynamic establish itself this time around. She saw a few students right away that had a good chance at it. Handsome — or at least striking — and watching their classmates with speculative eyes. Then she remembered the girls. There were five of them in her class of twenty four, and Kumiko had no idea how they would impact the dynamic.

She knew how wives impacted a gang dynamic, she knew how hostesses and courtesans handled men. She could remember her female classmates from her own high school years, but her high school classrooms hadn’t run like a gang. Not in quite the way Shirokin classes tended to.

The Higurashi girl had handled overt appreciation without getting remotely flustered, and the others seemed to be navigating the tentative social dynamic that was forming well. Even the two that had sat down together seemed like they were fine.

Perhaps the sort of girls that would choose to enroll at Shirokin in the first place were the sort of girls that would thrive here. She cast a speculative glance at Higurashi's planner, notebook, and math textbook all laid out on her desk. Maybe not. The boy she was talking to seemed to be heckling her about it already.

Kumiko decided to check her middle school transcripts, because she wasn’t sure why someone who cared even that much about academics would come to Shirokin. Higurashi seemed fragile somehow, too. She was well built, and she’d navigated the earlier heckling over her looks and the current heckling over her school supplies so well that Kumiko hadn’t noticed at first.

Almost like Kubo, she realized. Holding it together better than Kubo ever had, certainly. She wasn’t sitting there strung-out and shaking. But she was under some sort of stress, and she was hanging by a thread. Or maybe she wasn’t — maybe enrolling at Shirokin had been part of a self-destructive emotional spiral.

The bell signaled the end of homeroom, so Kumiko handed out her math syllabi. Higurashi, she noticed, dutifully transcribed the major deadlines and test dates into her planner. When one of her nearby classmates gave her shit for it, her foot flashed out from under her desk and kicked him in the ankle. He yelped. Huh. The fragility really was only emotional.

At the end of the day, Kumiko went straight to the student records files, Hi, she thought, sorting through the hiragana labels. For Higurashi.

“Someone’s caught your eye already, huh?” said Fujiyama, voice lilting. “Trying to make Sawada-kun jealous?”

“She had a notebook and a planner on her desk before homeroom was even over,” said Kumiko, before her brain caught up with Fujiyama’s second sentence. She gave the most menacing glare in her arsenal, but it was rather undercut by her involuntary flush. “Sawada is a child, leave him and his puppy crushes alone.”

“He might not be twenty, but he’s a university man now,” said Fujiyama, sing-song and bright. “But tell me more about your new student! A planner on her desk? Really?”

Kumiko recognized that Fujiyama was only changing the subject to avoid vicious retribution, but she let it go in favor of the more pressing concern. “Really,” she said. “She had the most current edition of the math textbook ready to go, too, which means she actually read her supply list.”

“Is this Higurashi Kagome? Because she was weirdly prepared in music class, too,” Fujiyama said.

“That’s the one,” said Kumiko, and there was her file. “Ah ha! Here it is.” She pulled it out with a flourish, flipped through the pages to her middle school grades, and immediately winced. “Okay there it is, that’s why she’s here.”

Fujiyama peered over her shoulder and whistled. “That is bad,” she said. “Especially for someone so put together. But look at the year before! Not exactly a star student, but maybe even a little higher than average.”

Kumiko looked. Sure enough. “So something happened last year. I thought so. She had that newly-traumatized look about her.”

“And you know so much about how newly-traumatized people look,” said Fujiyama flatly.

“Look at this,” said Kumiko, deciding to ignore that remark entirely. ��The medical file her parents supplied doesn't indicate a history of serious illness at all, but the record her middle school supplied is absolutely crazy!”

“What is she, eighty?” said Fujiyama.

“Gout?” read Kumiko, remembering the deft kick Higurashi had dealt to her classmate. “Something’s fishy about this.”

“She was making excuses to skip school, and her family was complicit,” said Fujiyama. “And whatever the reason, it isn’t a problem now, because they didn’t bother to set up the possibility that she’d be missing for medical reasons.”

Kumiko always forgot how damnably perceptive Fujiyama could be. “I think this calls for a stakeout!”

“No. Bad Yamaguchi,” said Fujiyama. “This calls for keeping your nose out of where it doesn’t belong. Save the stakeouts for when you know how she performs in class.”

“Like you’ve ever once kept your nose where it belongs,” Kumiko said reproachfully. Fujiyama began humming whatever piece she’d started their students on and twirled out of reach, pretending like she’d never so much as heard of Hokkaido. But hypocritical as it was, it wasn’t terrible advice.

Higurashi’s file slid easily back into place. “We’ll see how you do, Higurashi-chan,” Kumiko said in an undertone before gathering up the introduction slips she’d managed to wrangle her students into filling out during her math classes. It was a whole new cohort, and Higurashi was far from the only interesting student in it.

When Kumiko got home, introduction slips and lesson plans crammed in her briefcase, she was horrified but unsurprised to see Sawada at the dining room table. “Don’t you have something better to do?” she said. “Like getting to know your new university classmates?” He studiously ignored her, engrossed as he was in a conversation with Kyou-san, Grandpa, and Wakamatsu. Enablers, the lot of them.

[aggie-postemon]

Kagome Between

When the well closes after the defeat of Naraku, Kagome finds herself facing a new battle: reintegrating into her own life. Thankfully, the local delinquent high school, Shirokin Gakuin, has just gone Co-Ed.

Math teacher Yamaguchi Kumiko isn't exactly ready to start teaching girls, but with her first batch of precious students safely graduated, she's ready to welcome the next.

Chapter One - The Delinquent High School Goes Co-Ed?!

AO3 | FFN

Kagome was lying in the first sparse grass of spring with Eri, Yuka, and Ayumi. Their heads were close together, feet sticking out in different directions, and there was a buzz of excitement.

“I really want to get into Elize Academy,” Ayumi was saying. “Their entrance exams are next week and I’ve just been studying my butt off.”

“You’re so studious, Ayumi-chan,” said Eri. “I know it’s a good school, but the stress of applying, plus the stress of going there just seems impossible.”

“Where are you planning on going, then?” said Ayumi. “High school is stressful no matter where you go. I’d love to hear otherwise.”

“You know I don’t have any firm plans,” Eri said. “I’ve been going to recruitment open houses just about everywhere, trying to find a place that feels right. You’d know that if you’d come with me on any of the tours.”

Kagome felt a sort of listless desperation whenever the conversaation turned to high school applications. She had no idea where she was going to go, had gone on absolutely no tours, and her grades were still in the toilet. She had no idea if she’d even pass an entrance exam.

“Be glad you haven’t been going,” said Yuka, to both Ayumi and Kagome. “Eri dragged me to Shirokin of all places last weekend. Total delinquent heap.”

“Shirokin?” said Ayumi. “Isn’t that an all-boys school?”

“They’re going co-ed,” said Yuka, like one might say they’d found a cockroach in their cereal. “How they think any girls are stupid enough to go there, I have no idea.”

“Oh, come on,” said Eri. “I was curious. And you have to admit that one female teacher was super cool.”

“You mean the one that had to beat up an attacker in front of the school? Really cool, Eri. I totally want to go to a high school where teachers regularly have to beat people up.”

Eri gave a rather melodramatic exhale. “You’re right, I guess,” she said. “I just wanted to see what it was like. Those Shirokin boys are total boogeymen, you know?”

Kagome did know. Shirokin had a reputation for taking on just about any boy who wanted to continue their education past junior high, with almost no regard for their grades or their records or anything else. This time last year, Kagome had been a little afraid of Shirokin students.

“Maybe I should start coming on some of these tours,” said Kagome. The other girls sat up, surprised faces entering Kagome’s field of vision and blotting out the brilliant sky.

“Really?” said Eri. “Because I’ve tried to ask you along before.”

“You were never exactly studious, but with how bad this year has been for you I thought you’d probably want to take a year off!” said Yuka. Maybe repeat ninth grade, went unstated.

Ayumi just smiled at her, a bit of the worry that Kagome could see on her face sliding off.

“I fell so far behind this year that I’m just overwhelmed by the idea,” Kagome said. “So I’ve been avoiding it.”

It’s funny — while she had been running back and forth between the past and the present, Kagome had done her best to keep her grades as high as she could. Now that she was back and had no responsibilities at all, school didn’t seem to matter anymore. But it did. She knew it did. She didn’t have the future she’d begun to imagine in the past anymore. The well was closed. The past was gone.

Something in her stomach turned at the thought and she shoved it down ruthlessly, sat up to look the other girls in their faces.

“Maybe I’ll have to take that Shirokin entrance exam,” she said. The other girls laughed, but Kagome wasn’t sure if she was joking.

That night, she booted up the computer in the living room and started reading about Shirokin High — she knew colloquially that the high school had seen its fair share of scandals over the years, but not much of it had made its way to the internet. The school itself did have a website, but even Kagome, who was not particularly tech-savvy could tell that it was laughably put together. One page in particular had been lovingly crafted. Apparently, a student had scored second in the national mock exams and had managed to get into Tokyo University. He was set to start there this Spring.

“He doesn’t look like a top-scorer,” said Souta, ever the pest, peering over Kagome’s shoulder.

“Tell me about it,” said Kagome. “Look at that hair.” It was dyed a lurid red, almost blinding on the computer screen.

“And what kind of school puts a spotlight on a student like this?” Souta gestured at the screen. Kagome looked doubtfully at the roses that had been carefully edited to border the photograph of this Sawada Shin. “Tell me you’re not thinking of applying here, Nee-chan.”

“Look at my math grades and tell me I have better options.”

Souta didn’t say anything, but there was something in his silence that was irksome. Kagome stood from her chair, stretched, then hooked an arm around Souta’s neck and dragged him screaming to his bedroom.

Somewhere en route, it devolved into a tickle fight, and Kagome let herself be carried away by the joy of heckling her brother. She didn’t know what she’d do without him, really.

Before the night got too late, though, she returned to the family computer and put her name down as a prospective student. Shirokin had a reputation for taking anyone, and, well. At this point Kagome was anyone.

She didn’t tell Eri, Yuka, or Ayumi when she went to sit the entrance exam. They knew she was looking more seriously at high schools, and they roped Hojo into helping her study more than once. (That poor boy, Kagome always thought, when he looked at her with hope and soft affection in his eyes. She wasn’t the Kagome he had a crush on anymore. That Kagome died somewhere between the last year and five hundred years ago.)

Shirokin was better than no high school at all, so Kagome wasn’t sure why she was reluctant to tell them. Maybe it was because she thought Yuka would get shrill. Or maybe because she couldn’t bear to look at the expression of motherly pride Ayumi tended to hand out whenever anyone did anything even remotely in their best interest. Or maybe she was a little afraid Eri would laugh, then sign up to take the test too. She could almost hear her: I am curious, and if Kagome-chan’s doing it…

Kagome loved her friends, so she didn’t know why the thought of going to high school with any of them made bile rise in her throat. Part of her thought that it was because she kept comparing them to Sango and Miroku, who they were simply not. If only she could let them be themselves, maybe she wouldn’t be so disappointed.

The test, with her friends pushed firmly out of her mind, was easy. Even for Kagome. Her current junior high teachers did her the favor of pushing her through the year, too. She wasn’t sure she earned her junior high degree, but her story of sickly woe had even the most hard-ass teachers melting in sympathy with one glance at her mother’s pleading eyes. "My poor baby was just so sick this year. Can’t we make an arrangement so she can pass? Now that she’s better, I know that she can push through the work."

She pushed through the work all right, but Kagome didn’t know if she was better.

On graduation day, the girls all in their junior high uniforms for the last time, Eri cornered her. “So what did you end up deciding for high school? You’ve been avoiding the question.”

“Shirokin,” said Kagome, willing to share now that all the decisions were final. “I’ll be starting at Shirokin in two weeks.”

And yes, Yuka got shrill and Ayumi looked maternal. Eri had an adventurous glint of jealousy in her eye. But with everything settled, those things didn’t weigh as heavy as Kagome had thought they might.

“I should have known you’d pull something like this. You’ve gotten mighty comfortable with delinquents before,” said Yuka. Kagome knew that was a dig at Inuyasha, but the girls had quickly understood that he was Not To Be Spoken Of, and Yuka didn’t use his name. So despite the twinge in her chest, Kagome let it go. Shitty or not, she knew that Yuka was worried.

Kagome just wished that Yuka would do a better job at expressing it.

“I’m so glad that you’re going to get to go to high school in sync with the rest of us,” said Ayumi, redirecting the conversation with her usual brand of earnestness. “You never said anything, but I could tell you were worried about it. I was worried about it.”

“And what an exciting school!” said Eri. “To think! One of the first girls at Shirokin! Right in their first co-ed year! That’s fantastic.”

Kagome could admit that part of the draw was the novelty. So she gave all three of them the broadest smile she could muster. “I’m excited,” she said. And it was true, really. When she fought past the numbness that had become her predominant emotion after the well closed, she could touch excitement. It was there.

“This calls for celebration,” said Ayumi. “I know we all have graduation plans with our families today. But tomorrow. Fast food?”

“Fast food!” said Kagome in chorus with Eri and Yuka. Even after everything, fast food was unifying.

○○○ ○○○ ○○○

With the Shirokin High graduation ceremony all said and done, Yamaguchi Kumiko was preparing her classroom for the coming year when she realized that her next class would be co-ed. She didn’t know why this surprised her, she’d known that girls would be coming for months now, but it bowled her over nearly as thoroughly as Sawada’s ill-advised love confession.

She dropped by Fujiyama’s classroom, already relabeled “1-2” instead of “3-2.” Kumiko hadn’t changed her label yet. She couldn’t quite bear it.

Fujiyama met her at the classroom door, said, “Have you just realized that you’re going to have female students in two weeks?” Kumiko wondered when the hell she’d gotten that transparent.

“How do I teach girls?” she said, a slight quaver in her voice.

Fujiyama’s laugh was booming. “Just like you teach boys, you dumbass.”

“Really?” said Kumiko.

“Really,” said Fujiyama. “Have you written up your lesson plans yet?”

Kumiko had.

“At least one of us is on top of things,” said Fujiyama, dramatically swooning against her desk. “But I’ll figure it out.”

Kumiko wanted to bring the conversation back around to the subject of girls, but Fujiyama apparently thought her flailing was too funny to help her out of it. Fair enough. Kumiko would get her revenge eventually.

“I wonder if I’ll be able to get enough recruits to have a few chorus clubs at once,” Fujiyama said. “I’d love to keep an all-boys chorus going as well as having co-ed and all-girls choruses.”

“I’ll be sure to hand your fliers out to my class,” said Kumiko, then extricated herself before Fujiyama could go off the deep end about choral arrangements for different vocal types.

She stopped outside the sliding door to her classroom, looked up at the sign that still said “3-4.” She needed to change out that insert. She’d miss her first ever class of precious students, but it was time to welcome the second.

[aggie-postemon]

Burden

[aggie-postemon]

“In the land of Ingary where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of the three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes.”

Howl’s Moving Castle Diana Wynne Jones

[aggie-postemon]

howls moving castle but put it in the Harlem renaissance

[aggie-postemon]

Howl's Moving Castle but put it in Pacific Islands

[aggie-postemon]

There's no lonelier curse than that of immortality.

[aggie-postemon]

New hobby: stitching together DP screenshots to create panoramas

[aggie-postemon]

sosban fach? more like sosban FUCK

[aggie-postemon]

The Greater War

Twelve years after the start of the Great War (and ten years since it ended), Alek sits on the throne of Austria. He's got Dylan to thank for it, but even he's not entirely sure why his best friend brought him a country.

Come along for whispered secrets; shouted secrets; courtly intrigue; and, of course, a long-secret romance, revealed at last.

NOW COMPLETE!

Chapter Five - A Long Secret

AO3 | FFN

Once Alek had gone and warned Mrs. Sharp about the hawk, he found himself pacing anxiously around the private wings of Konopiště. He knew in his heart of hearts that Dylan had retreated to his own chambers, and Alek did not want to violate Dylan's very clear desire for space. His delusional half, however, was hoping that he'd bump into the Dylan of weeks ago — before all this secret keeping nonsense had come between them.

Instead, Alek bumped into Jaspert.

"Your princeliness." Jaspert looked more relaxed than Alek had ever seen him, which is to say still not very. Dylan spoke of Jaspert like he was a phenomenally laid back man, but that persona seemed to be reserved for persons-not-Alek.

"Mr. Sharp," Alek said. "It's a pleasure to see you."

"Jaspert," Jaspert said. "I keep telling you."

"Right," said Alek, but did not feel quite brave enough to actually say it. It was a familiarity that Jaspert took for himself, but quite plainly showed that Alek didn't deserve.

"Why are you and Dylan not in egg heaven right now? I thought we wouldn't see hide nor hair of you lot for days."

"Well," Alek said. "Honestly, I'm not sure."

"You're not sure," Jaspert said, like Alek was a particularly slow dog. Sharps. The ability to make Alek feel like a dummkopf must be heritable. Jaspert then looked around the corridor. "C'mon, I s'pect this isn't a conversation we should be having in the middle of the hallway."

Jaspert shuffled them into a nearby supply closet.

"Of course," Alek said. "A supply closet."

"You can complain or you can tell me how you bollixed things up today."

Alek could hardly find Jaspert's eyes in the gloom. That alone gave Alek permission to speak. "It was perhaps in poor taste, but I made a joke about Dylan finding a wife, and then more seriously asked him why he hasn't."

Jaspert let out a low whistle, crisp in the confined space. "That's a landmine there, mate. You saw him get ticked at Ma for the same question and thought your best idea was to press him yourself?"

"Not my best moment, I admit," Alek said. "But — and you keep making this point — he deserves better than this. I'm not blind to that."

Alek could almost picture the shrewd look Jaspert shot him then, but thankfully it was too dark to see it. "Better than this or better than you?"

That was another thing the Sharp family seemed to have in common. They always saw straight to the heart of whatever truth Alek was avoiding. Dylan did deserve better than Alek, but that shouldn't have anything to do with a theoretical wife. Shouldn't being the key word there — somehow, the nature of Alek and Dylan's relationship had everything to do with a theoretical wife. "I'm hardly a wife," Alek said, a non-answer.

"Better than you, then." Jaspert distinctly snorted, his figure shifting in the darkness. "I'm going to give both of you shit about this for decades."

"Shit about what?" Alek cried.

"Oh no," Jaspert said. "I've spoken to Ma, I've pestered Volger, and I've spoken to Dylan himself a lot this week. I've got all the details, but, as I know everyone has told you, I'm not the right person to spill them."

"It has to come from Dylan," Alek said. "Deryn."

Jaspert made a satisfied sort of noise. "Exactly, your princeliness, and I truly don't think it'll be long now. Der went absolutely spare about all this years ago."

"Everyone keeps saying that, too. If Dylan "went spare" about all this years ago, why didn't he tell me then?"

"Dylan likes being spare," Jaspert said, laughing again. "Well, no. He's afraid you'll hate him. I know people have told you that, too."

"Right." Alek still just couldn't believe that. "I don't think I could hate him."

Jaspert made a retching noise. "Don't remind me. And on that note — I can't take much more of this. Just have patience, your princeliness. It'll all be fine."

Jaspert opened the closet door then, and for a moment the light was blinding. Alek blinked away the stars in his vision just in time to catch a glimpse of Jaspert's expression. He thought the best word for it might be endeared, but that couldn't be true. Jaspert hadn't ever found Alek endearing.

There was no time to clarify, because Jaspert was already striding away in just the same manner that his brother tended to. Sharps. Alek thought he might love them all.

After emerging from the closet himself, he went straight to Dylan's chambers. Alek wasn't sure that this was his brightest idea, but he nevertheless knocked trepidatiously on the heavy wooden door. "Dylan?" he called. "The chicks are all settled. The hawk foster idea seems to be working."

There was a moment of silence before Dylan answered. "Good." He did not open the door, but there was genuine relief in his voice. "I'll see you at dinner."

"Are you okay?" Alek asked. "I'm sorry for everything I said, really."

"No you're not," Dylan said, but with a good natured note that was comforting. "Alek, I'm fine. I will see you at dinner."

Alek swallowed thickly. "Are you sure?"

"Alek," Dylan said, a warning.

"Dinner," Alek said. "I will see you at dinner. Have a nice day, Dylan."

Cowardice. That's what it was. Alek was a coward.

As he oh-so-bravely ran away from Dylan's chamber door, he felt a sharp pinch of self loathing. He tried to let it go. Hating himself didn't do anybody any good.

There was nothing to it but to wait.

The waiting did not pay off. Dylan was late to dinner.

"Put me on all the cooking, you'd think Der'd have the decency to show up," Mrs. Sharp said irritably.

"He said he would see me at dinner," Alek said. "He must just be late."

Mrs. Sharp shook her head. "The two of you on the outs again? I'd have thought you two would be well occupied with the beasties."

"Alek made a joke about finding Dylan a wife," Jaspert said, rubbing at his temple.

Mrs. Sharp distinctly giggled. Volger, from his spot at the end of the table, gave Alek a look of amused disdain.

"I cannot wait to understand why this is funny." Alek folded his arms over his chest, not caring if it looked unacceptably pouty for a grown man — a reigning monarch, no less.

"I wish I could promise that it would be soon," Mrs. Sharp said before piling another serving of potatoes on Alek's plate. "Alas, I thought it would be soon ten years ago."

That was not reassuring.

"Anyway, it wasn't just about the wife thing. It turned into a whole argument about his secrets. I didn't mean to bring it all up, but."

"Every time I think you might not be an idiot, you manage to prove me wrong," Volger said. "What did I say about letting him come to you? About patience?"

Mrs. Sharp muttered something unflattering in Scots, then sighed. "I 'spose you couldn't keep carrying all that tension around. Something was bound to give."

"What if he hates me for pushing the confrontation?"

Jaspert looked a little like he wanted to die, but said, "I think Dylan has about as much chance of hating you as you have of hating him. Don't worry about it. Seriously."

Just then, the sound of swishing skirts filtered in from the doorway. Jaspert distinctly paled.

Alek turned to look. At first he assumed it was the cook, come to stage an official protest about her work being usurped by a small army of paranoid Sharps. It wasn't. Alek's next instinct was to worry about a second assassination attempt. But the woman in the doorway was familiar, somehow. She was tall — taller than Alek, even — and wiry.

"My God," Volger said. "You stupid woman. I was sure Alek was the dramatic one."

The woman glared at him. "Shut up, Count," she said in Dylan's beloved voice, running a hand through Dylan's close cropped yellow hair. She looked nervous.

Mrs. Sharp, on the other hand, was beaming. "Deryn," she said, and this time it was clearly not a slip of her tongue.

"Ma," Deryn said warily. "Jaspert. Alek."

"Dylan?" Alek asked softly.

"Aye." Deryn said, clasping her hands at the front of her skirt. "That's me. Well. Deryn, really. And I'm wearing it to make a point, but blisters, I think I forgot how much I hate skirts. So don't expect me to wear 'em often. Or ever again."

Somewhere in Dylan's little speech, Alek had risen from his chair. He sent an uncertain glance at Volger, who nodded shortly, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"I don't know what I was expecting out of you, Miss Sharp," Volger said. "But I don't know that I was expecting this."

"Shut up, Count," Dylan said again. His eyes — her eyes? — were, however, fixated on Alek. Alek stepped hesitantly toward him, placed a hand on each of his shoulders, ran them down the length of his arms.

Her arms. Abruptly, Alek realized that this contact — so normal between him and Dylan — was utterly inappropriate between him and this woman he didn't really know. He blushed brilliantly and pulled his hands away.

Except he did know her. Volger had been clear about that much. Alek intimately knew Dylan, and all those things Alek knew about him were true of this Deryn. Mrs. Sharp's daughter. Jaspert Sharp's sister. This tall blonde woman in a long, vaguely outdated skirt. Something she'd pulled from her mother's wardrobe probably, because she didn't own any herself.

"Alek," Dylan said. "Say something."

"Deryn." Alek said, because Dylan still asserted itself in his head and Alek thought he'd need practice to get this right. He'd need practice to think and say his best friend's real name.

God's wounds, the name Alek had in his head for his best friend was wrong. He looked to Volger for help or guidance. Volger offered neither.

"You knew about this?" Alek demanded, suddenly so very tempted to go back on his promise to take this well.

Volger simply nodded.

"Fencing lessons." Deryn offered.

"Fencing lessons," muttered Mrs. Sharp, looking cross. Jaspert looked vaguely nauseated.

Alek stared at Volger, begging his mind not to jump to wild conclusions.

"What?" Volger snapped. "You have to adjust a student's stances. Certain things are obvious even when touching a student as little as possible, and I wasn't certain until she confirmed it when confronted."

Alek felt his shoulders relax, saw mild relief on Jaspert's face. Mrs. Sharp looked perhaps a little less cross.

"It wasn't like that." Deryn said, rolling her eyes at all three of them. "You know the Count. Only thing he wanted was to blackmail me into protecting Alek, and I was doing that anyway."

There were all sorts of implications to this conversation that Alek decided he didn't want to think too hard about. Instead, he looked back at his friend. His best friend. Perhaps the only friend Alek really had, who was Alek's friend before he — she — was anything else.

"Deryn," Alek said again, awkwardly wetting his lips. "I guess this explains a lot."

He thought about that for a moment. Thought about Lilit and Adela Rodgers. "Except why you're so adamant that you don't want a wife. Maybe Lilit would be interested after all."

"You dafty," Deryn said fondly. "This is why she was interested in the first place. But me? I'm afraid Lilit isn't my type." That last sentence was almost a purr.

Alek didn't care to examine his palpable feeling of relief. Or the odd glimmer that shot down his spine.

"I'm sorry, what?" This came from Mrs. Sharp, but Alek wasn't paying her enough attention to offer explanation.

"Wait, does this mean Lilit knew, too?" Alek asked, feeling stupid all over again.

"She's basically the only person who figured it out right away," Deryn said sheepishly. "I think her crush on me — when she doesn't like men — gave her a clue."

Alek figured that made sense.

"She figured it out faster than Volger, even, if that makes you feel any better."

Volger made an irritated noise in the back of his throat. It was that irritated noise, more than anything else, that did make Alek feel better.

"Deryn," Alek said.

"Yes?" Deryn tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"I just wanted to say it."

"Oh. Say it again?"

"Deryn," Alek said. "Deryn Sharp."

Jaspert audibly groaned in dismay. Alek hardly noticed because Deryn beamed at him — that smile that was reserved for Alek and the open sky.

Deryn's smile was Dylan's smile. The two of them truly merged in Alek's head, then.

Alek was beaming, too.

Mrs. Sharp and Count Volger were also beaming, but Alek wasn't watching them. He entirely missed the two of them exchange a brief and deeply out of character high five.

Bovril, however, did manage to get Alek's attention. It was a whisper straight in Alek's ear, clearly meant just for him. "Mr. Sharp," Bovril said. "Your wife."

This time, Alek understood.

[aggie-postemon]

fun thing about herding and/or generally neurotic breeds: they are really good at following rules you have instituted, but they will also make their own Dog Rules they will follow stringently whether or not you like it

[aggie-postemon]

yeah i get anons confusion, the lore can be pretty vague and a lot of old misunderstandings or fanon are still presented as truth on a lot of forums for anyone wondering, this is my understanding of the full list of heroes:

-The Hero of the Sky/ the chosen hero: Link in Skyward Sword (they are the same guy! The manga is non-canon!).

- The Hero of Men: Appears in the backstory of The Minish Cap

-The Hero of the Minish: Appears in The Minish Cap

-(might be another weilder of the four sword between these two from the four swords prolouge/manual or that might just be the hero of the minish, its not clear)

-The Hero of the Four Sword: Appears in Four Swords

-The Hero of Time: Appears in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask Child timeline:

-The Hero of Twilight: Appears in Twilight Princess

-The Hero of Light: Appears in Four Swords Adventures

Adult Timeline:

-The Hero of Winds: Appears in Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass

-The Hero of Spirits: Appears in Spirit Tracks Downfall Timeline:

-The Hero of Legend: Appears in A Link to the Past, Oracle of Seasons, Oracle of Ages, and Link's Awakening

-The New Hero of Hyrule: Appears in A Link Between Worlds and Triforce Heroes (no I don't know why he has such a stupid title. he comes before the original lol)

-The hero of...rifts? Echoes?: Link from Echoes of Wisdom (sorry i don't know his hero title)

-The Hero of Hyrule: Appears in The Legend of Zelda and Adventure of Link Wild Era Timeline:

-The ancient hero: Mentioned in BOTW having lived 10,000 years prior

-The Hero of the Wild: Appears in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom

YES, YESS.

That’s exactly what I understood too, very clever to point that sky is the same hero, he was just hearing legends about himself in the past, or al least thats why I think ?

Also I like to call EOW Link “Hero of Might” :]

You definitely did your homework, I love seeing zelda lore enjoyers fr.

[aggie-postemon]

The Greater War

Twelve years after the start of the Great War (and ten years since it ended), Alek sits on the throne of Austria. He's got Dylan to thank for it, but even he's not entirely sure why his best friend brought him a country.

Come along for whispered secrets; shouted secrets; courtly intrigue; and, of course, a long-secret romance, revealed at last.

Chapter Four - Hatching

AO3 | FFN

It was a long night. Assassination attempts always made for long nights. But sure enough, by morning, all traces of the dead woman were cleared out of Alek's chambers.

Dylan's noble associates were spreading rumors about a Duke's abrupt retirement to the countryside, and Volger was delegating three termination notices to the Chief of Staff — staffers who'd heard things, but had apparently been too afraid or too sympathetic to speak up.

Alek was scrubbing his hands raw. He'd done his fair share of killing and clean-up, but it always left him feeling dirty. The excessive hand washing didn't help, but neither did anything else.

On the other end of that spectrum, Alek was fairly sure Dylan still had blood in his hair as he ran around taking care of the last details. He'd changed his clothes, had clearly shaven as meticulously as he always did, but he'd missed a spot of dead man's blood and hadn't noticed.

It wasn't until Mrs. Sharp had come at him with a damp rag at their belated mid-morning breakfast that it got taken care of.

"Blisters," Dylan said as the rag came away red. "I've just been running around like that. Sorry, Ma."

"You were busy," Mrs. Sharp said. It was she who had prepared breakfast. Dylan was not yet ready to cede control back to Konopiště's staff, but truly had not had the time to do it himself.

"Charming," Jaspert said, glaring daggers at Alek. Alek just counted it as a win that Jaspert had even attended breakfast instead of taking it alone, sulking in his guest chambers. Not that Alek could talk about sulking.

Dylan seemed less inclined to count his blessings. "Please, Jaspert," he said. "I signed up to be a soldier before I even met him. My main goal might have been flying, but we both knew at the time that a certain amount of killing was inevitable."

"Honestly," Mrs. Sharp said. "Blame me. Dylan might not have even joined the air service if I hadn't burned the rest of your Da's balloons."

"You burned them?" Alek said incredulously.

"A balloon set my husband on fire," Mrs. Sharp said primly. "The rest got what was coming to them." So, Dylan had come by his vengeful streak honestly.

"You were just being protective, Ma. Dylan would have been up in those balloons by himself if you hadn't got rid of them, and nobody should balloon alone anyway."

"You weren't there, Jaspert," Mrs. Sharp said, and it was an indictment. "Dylan needed to fly, and I didn't let him."

From the look on Dylan's face, this was the closest thing to an apology Mrs. Sharp had ever given him. On Alek's part, the idea that he might never have met Dylan if Mrs. Sharp had kept just one balloon was discomfiting.

"I did need to fly," Dylan said. "But I think things worked out for the best."

Mrs. Sharp gave him a fragile smile. "This might be the wrong day to say it, but beyond the current circumstances, your life here seems happy, even if its not conventional. I'm glad."

Hastily, Mrs. Sharp shoved the blood-stained rag out of sight. It was the sort of thing that might have killed the mood, but Jaspert gingerly took the rag from where Mrs. Sharp had shoved it in the folds of her skirt.

"I'll take care of this, Ma," he said. He uncrumpled it, folded it so that the worst of the bloodstains faced in, and tucked the rag of the last remnants of a dead man into his breast pocket.

Mrs. Sharp patted Jaspert's hand. "You didn't have to do that, dear."

It occurred to Alek that Jaspert, despite his long service record, had seen less bloodshed than Dylan, that perhaps Jaspert didn't quite have the tools to understand the man his younger brother had become.

"Thanks," Dylan said. "To both of you. For being here."

"Of course," said Mrs. Sharp.

A strange expression crossed Dylan's face when he glanced at Alek, and Alek was sure he had more to say, he just didn't know how to say it with Alek in the room.

Alek looked pointedly at his lap, trying to seem unassuming. This seemed to help Dylan find his words.

"And thank you for then," Dylan said. "Jaspert, you especially. You might not have been home, and you might regret helping me get into the service now, but I think it probably saved my life."

Alek ached to put his hand on Dylan's shoulder — Dylan made no secret of the fact that losing his father had nearly killed him, but he rarely spoke of it with an air of such transparent vulnerability. Touching him now, though, would remind the room that Alek existed, and Alek did not want to break the spell that had enabled this veiled honesty among the Sharp family.

Jaspert tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling, evidently unsure how to proceed in the face of Dylan's gratitude.

"I don't regret it," he said finally. "I'll just hate it if your choices were ultimately dying or dying the long way around."

Dylan snorted. "Who'd take care of the royal wanker if I died now? I've got every intention of sticking around."

Alek had three thoughts. One, that surely he wasn't so helpless that his helplessness could forestall death. Two, that a man had every right to choose a man — a cause, really — he might die for. And three, that if Dylan did die in his service, Alek might burn even his beloved Austria to the ground.

He then had a fourth thought: maybe he really was that helpless, if the very thought of a world without Dylan (consistently, even!) drove him to murderous violence.

Jaspert then looked directly at Alek. "See to it."

Alek's inner moralist wanted to say that he couldn't see to it. That it was unfair for Jaspert to even ask. He could not put one man over all of Austria. The truth, however, was that he always would.

What good could he ever do for Austria without Dylan by his side?

Alek swallowed around the lump in his throat, said to Dylan, "You're not allowed to die before your time. That's an order."

For a moment, Dylan looked almost as helpless as Alek. "I'll do my best, Your Princeliness."

Alek wanted to say that that wasn't good enough, but he knew that wouldn't be fair, either. "I'll do my best, too," he said, and finally gave into the urge to put his hand on Dylan's shoulder.

Dylan put his own hand atop Alek's, squeezed.

Mrs. Sharp made a soft noise in the back of her throat, an expression nearly of heartbreak on her face.

"Enough," she said firmly. "Today, we are all alive and sitting at this table. There's no use speculating darkly about tomorrows that haven't happened yet."

Jaspert looked like he was going to say something in protest but Mrs. Sharp seemed to detect that, too, and steamrollered right over him.

"Der, I keep meaning to mention it, but you well know it's been a busy morning. The eggs are starting to rock. It'll be any time now. I set Bovril to watching them."

Just like that, Dylan was bolting out of his seat. "Alek!" he said. "Eggs!"

Alek bolted out of his seat too, then. "Eggs!"

"Eggs," Jaspert said dubiously. Alek barely heard him, though, because he and Dylan were already racing from the room to seek Mrs. Sharp's guest chambers, where the eggs had ridden out the chaotic night.

~~~

"My God," Alek said as they made it through the door. "We made it."

Bovril looked up at them from where it fussed at the box. "Made it," it concurred. It looked at them both in turn. "Egg parents."

"Egg parents," Deryn said. "You have always seen us as your parents."

Bovril stretched up from its perch on the eggs, forepaws extended, clearly indicating that it wanted to be picked up. Odd, because Bovril was quite capable of climbing onto and up a person under its own power. "My Mr. Sharp," it said.

"Oh, beastie," Dylan said, slipping his hands under Bovril's armpits. "Your Mr. Sharp. Your Alek." Dylan cradled Bovril to his chest.

"Busy," Bovril said.

"Yes," Dylan said. "I was away, and you're working so hard with the baby lorises, aren't you? You haven't gotten enough attention lately. I'm sorry, beastie."

Alek stepped closer, reached in to give Bovril a gentle scratch behind the ears. It was always happiest when it got attention from both of them at once. Bovril pressed its head into Alek's hand and melted more deeply into Dylan's chest.

Watching this — being part of this — abruptly dissolved the last of any silly notions Alek had about secret wives and neglected children. Dylan, quite plainly, would be an excellent father.

In a weird, Darwinist way, he was already Bovril's father. What that made Alek — Bovril's birth imprint — Alek decided not to think too hard about. He ignored the obvious answer — that Alek was Bovril's mother.

"Thank you for everything you've done lately, Bovril." Alek decided to say. "You've been very, very helpful."

"Helpful," Bovril said, though its voice was muffled somewhat by Dylan's shirt. "Egg. Soon."

Bovril chose that moment to wriggle a little higher on Dylan's chest, almost to his shoulder, supporting most of his weight in one of Dylan's elbows. He stayed nestled, did not shift into an active position, per say, but he did give Dylan a free arm, so that Dylan and Alek might lean over their hatching eggs together.

Just as they refocused their attention, heads nearly touching, a large chunk of shell flew off the egg that was furthest along. A tiny little beak poked through the hole.

"Oh, nicely done, beastie," Dylan said. He gently tapped the beak with a finger tip.

"A bird?" Alek asked, astonished.

Dylan gently touched a second egg. "Well, it is supposed to fly."

Alek shot him a dry look. "Ah yes, because the Huxleys, the Mantines, and the Leviathan herself are all birds."

"Yup," Dylan said, popping his 'P' with a lazy grin. "Don't'cha remember? All the feathers on the Leviathan's flank? Always getting caught in that hair of yours?"

Alek telegraphed a roll of his eyes and both of them laughed.

The second egg had a beak poking out of it now, and the first egg gave a mighty crrrack!

"Well done!" Alek said to the naked chick that flopped from the egg, utterly exhausted.

"Damn," Dylan said. "We were hoping to make them hatch a bit more like fowl, all fluffy like."

This sort of bird, Alek understood, was notoriously hard to keep alive without a mother.

"Didn't you say some of the hawks were broody?" Alek asked.

Dylan frowned dubiously, said, "Hawks eat pigeons."

"Pigeons?" Alek said, "And you wanted them to hatch like fowl?"

"Shut up," Dylan said. "We accounted for that."

"Well," Alek said. "These babies are almost as big as a full grown hawk. I doubt they'll read as prey."

"Good point," said Dylan. "Bovril, can you go find a broody hawk that seems trustworthy?"

"Broody," Bovril said. "Mr. Sharp." He then scampered off, leaving an offended looking Dylan in his wake.

"Broody?" Dylan shouted after him. "I'm not broody!"

Alek chuckled, envisioning Dylan as a father once more, sitting on a nest of human eggs.

The third egg was breached by a third beak. The second chick rolled out of its shell.

Dylan cooed at it. That vision of Dylan as a father so clear in Alek's mind, he felt the need to say something.

"If you are broody," Alek said, gesturing over the eggs, "We have enough birds for you to bring in a wife. One for you, one for me, one for her!" God, that was an awkward thing to say. Why was Alek always so horribly awkward?

Dylan looked at him incredulously. "Barking spiders, Alek, don't you start. I am not looking for a wife!"

Alek wanted to die of embarrassment, but he put that aside and asked one of the questions that had been on his mind. "Why not?"

A flash of both hurt and fury came and went from Dylan's expression. He broke eye contact to stare at the eggs.

"You know what?" Dylan drew back from the eggs entirely, swiping his hands on his trousers and smearing egg muck on the fabric. "I'll entertain this. Why not? Alek, why?"

Alek clasped his hands together uncertainly. "Why? I suppose that it's just what young men do, don't they? They look for wives. I know that some men never marry, and I know that some men are like Lilit and Adela. But…"

"Why aren't you looking for a wife, then? If it's something that young men do?"

Alek smiled wryly. "I think Austria's enough of a commitment for the time being, don't you?"

"Tu felix Austria nube," Dylan said pointedly.

Alek flinched, mentally shying away from the looming image of his marriage to someone suitable. The both of them doing their duty to their countries, afraid and unhappy. Alek understood his father more by the day.

"You can't fault me for being wary of political marriage," Alek said, now faintly hurt himself. "You, Dylan, you have a chance at real love, but you seem to keep choosing Austria over your own happiness."

"You dafty," Dylan said, and from him, that word was almost always fond. There was an edge of bitterness to it today, though. "I am choosing my own happiness."

Warmth flickered in Alek's chest, despite Dylan's cutting tone, until Dylan decided to ruin it: "Besides, how would I even go about finding a wife? I think I'm a little too busy to go courting."

Courting was a mocking word in Dylan's mouth, and it seemed lighthearted enough, like Dylan was trying to turn the whole conversation into a joke. Still, that hit upon so many of Alek's fears, he had to keep talking.

"But that's exactly why I'm worried!" Alek said. "How would you go about courting? I'm afraid that your life here won't meet your needs forever."

Dylan froze. "That this life won't meet my needs?"

"Choosing Austria won't feel like choosing your own happiness forever," Alek said, wistful.

"You think this life doesn't meet my needs," Dylan said, and God's wounds, that was fear in his voice. "Tell me you haven't been talking to Volger."

Dylan was afraid of Alek. Alek couldn't even imagine how that was possible.

"He didn't tell me anything specific," Alek said. "You know it's impossible to get information out of the Count if he doesn't want to share it."

"True," Dylan said, but his voice was tight. "What did he tell you?"

Alek sighed, closed his eyes, and decided to damn everything anyone had told him thus far. He just couldn't wait for Dylan to come to him anymore. "Nothing I didn't already figure out. I overheard your conversation right before you left for London."

Alek didn't open his eyes. He didn't want to see the look on Dylan's face.

"You listened in on us," Dylan said. His voice was low and more than a little dangerous. "Then you confronted him."

"Yes," Alek said, finally daring to look at his closest friend. "I'm so sorry."

"Then you know," Dylan said. His complexion had taken on a pallid tone, hollowed and damp where it should be warm and bright.

"No!" Alek was quick to reassure him. "I just know you have a secret. I don't know what it is, I promised I wouldn't try to figure it out. I've had so many theories, but I just keep trying to put them out of my head. Your secrets are your business, Deryn, I just wish you didn't feel like you had to keep them from me."

Alek was proud of himself for that one for approximately a millisecond.

"Deryn," Dylan said. "Alek, why do you know that name?"

"Well, your mother says it often enough." Alek ran a shaky hand through his hair.

"I thought you thought it was just a slip up! She told you something, too, didn't she?"

God, Alek was such a dummkoph, he hadn't meant to sell Mrs. Sharp down the river.

"Er. Only sort of."

"She did!" Dylan said, now nearly shrieking. There was a small round of peeping from the fresh chicks in the incubation box. Dylan lowered his voice, shuffled back a little closer to the box and reached into it. "Hush, beasties, I'm sorry."

Alek stuck his own hand into the incubation box, gave off a soft hum. For a moment, the frantic peeping continued. He and Dylan were allies again, and he was able to meet his eye contact. Dylan looked harried; Alek was sure he looked harried too. Then, the chicks settled.

Dylan removed his hand from the incubation box, shuffled backward again. This time, it didn't seem like he was stepping away from the box. Dylan was backing away slowly from Alek, like Alek was some sort of monstrous and feral fabrication on a rampage. Dylan cleared his throat, said in a soft, low voice, "Alek, if Volger hasn't told you anything, and my mother hasn't told you anything, then you shouldn't know anything. So excuse me if I think all three of you might be full of clart."

Suddenly, the chevron floor was fascinating. "I just don't understand," Alek said in a small voice.

"Understand what, Alek?"

"Why you're still here. Why this life is enough for you, when you're a brilliant airman and a brilliant scientist, and no part of you ever wanted to be a politician. Why is choosing Austria choosing your own happiness?"

Alek took a hasty glance at Dylan's face. It looked like stone. Alek looked back at the floor. Good, reliable chevron. He could trace the zig and the zag for hours.

Then, it sounded like Dylan was choking. Alek risked another glance at him. Now, Dylan looked almost devastated.

"Choosing Austria?" Dylan said incredulously. "I'm not choosing Austria. I'm choosing you. Because you're my friend."

"Lilit's your friend," Alek said, forcing himself to sustain eye contact. "You're not helping her run Turkey."

"I don't give a flying fuck about Lilit!" Dylan said. "I care about you. I'm here because I care about you. My mother and Volger are one thing, but I never thought you'd be trying to chase me away!"

"I'm not trying to chase you away!" Alek said. "I want you to stay! I like our life here! I'd like our life anywhere, as long as we stayed together! And maybe my feelings are hurt, over all the secrets. By God, Dylan, you never even told me your real name, and I still don't know why!"

By the end of that, Alek was breathing hard, and the chicks were peeping madly again.

"Barking spiders," Dylan said, backing even further away from him. "I can't keep doing this."

"Was?" Alek was sure he'd turned white as a sheet. He'd ruined it. Alek always ruined everything and Dylan was already marching for the door. Dylan was going to leave.

Dylan took pity on him. "No, Alek. Have some self-esteem for once in your life! I'm not leaving. I will see you later. I just can't keep doing this." Dylan gesticulated wildly, perhaps indicating the conversation, perhaps indicating Alek, perhaps indicating Konopiště at large. Alek just wished he knew which.

"But-!"

"Watch the chicks until the hawk gets here, make sure it doesn't look like she'll eat them."

Dylan strode purposefully from the room.

"Was it something I said?" Alek called after him. He received no response. Alek stared at the door for a long moment. Dylan did not come back through them.

Finally, Alek looked down at the chicks, now all shivering wetly in their heated box.

"It seems your father has gone and left the delivery room. And I'm afraid I'm a poor excuse for a mother."

Alek dragged a plush armchair next to the incubation box, sat, and put his hand in the box. He tucked the chicks closer together. They were too large to cover with his palm like he might have done if they were smaller, so instead he arranged hay around them in mounds to try and insulate their fragile warmth. He bumped their heater up a notch.

Without Dylan, Alek truly had very little idea of what to do with these beasts. Bovril, by comparison, had been easy. Thankfully, Bovril continued to be easy, that beautiful first born child of his — and okay, maybe Alek was taking the metaphor too far. Metaphor or no metaphor, Bovril scampered back into the room with a messenger hawk right on his heels.

"Not snack," Bovril said sternly.

The hawk landed on the edge of the incubation box and gave both Alek and Bovril an imperious look. It pecked at Alek's hand til he withdrew it and stood. It then shuffled the over-sized pigeon chicks into a pile of its own making.

It had to fully spread its wings to cover them, and it made good use of its extended wingspan to firmly smack both Alek and Bovril for being too close.

They stepped away in unison.

"Broody," Bovril said.

"So I see," said Alek.

"Double meaning," Bovril pointed out.

Alek blew a strand of auburn hair out of his eyes. ''Him or me?" Alek asked.

Bovril sounded deeply unimpressed when it said, "Both, dummkopf."

"Dylan's a bad influence on you."

"Mr. Sharp," Bovril said, then scampered out of the room again like he'd made some sort of grand point. It seemed even Bovril was sick of him. Of course.

Alek turned to sit back down by the egg box, but was disabused of the notion by, yes, a very broody hawk.

He left Mrs. Sharp's chambers. He'd have to warn her about the hawk. And try and figure out what was wrong with Dylan now. By God, Alek wasn't looking forward to the reckoning he was sure was coming.

"I can't keep doing this," Dylan had said.

Alek tried to pretend those words didn't terrify him. It was another thing at which Alek was a miserable failure.

[aggie-postemon]

Leonid Pasternak  (Ukrainian, 1862–1945) - The Torments of Creative Work

[aggie-postemon]

Day Four: Mirror Image // Everyone thinks they are the only one that knows about Phantom. They’re wrong. // Costume Swap

<Damian and Danny are estranged twins.> I love this trope! I also worked super hard on this piece - I'll post a progress breakdown later for y'all. I find it really neat, I used a lot of new techniques and references to improve my end result :)

[aggie-postemon]

The Greater War

Twelve years after the start of the Great War (and ten years since it ended), Alek sits on the throne of Austria. He's got Dylan to thank for it, but even he's not entirely sure why his best friend brought him a country.

Come along for whispered secrets; shouted secrets; courtly intrigue; and, of course, a long-secret romance, revealed at last.

Chapter Three - Counsel and the Council

AO3 | FFN

By the time Alek returned to his chambers for the evening — leaving Dylan curled up in his armchair with Bovril, one hand in the egg crate to feel for the temperature — Alek had almost convinced himself that he was wrong. Dylan had been barely fifteen when he had boarded the Leviathan. Fifteen (or, god forbid, even fourteen) was younger than most people married. This was especially true among commoners, who had no fragile political alliances that early marriage might cement. Still, Dylan's secret was bound up in this concept of a wife. Bound up in his family, who certainly seemed to have marriage on the brain. "Jaspert's not married," Dylan said angrily to his mother one morning. "And he's older than me. Why aren't you on his case?" Jaspert took a long sip of tea, a silent plea to leave him out of the conversation. "Don't worry, Darren," Mrs. Sharp said, flexing to that incorrect name again. "I am on his case. Unfortunately, the village lasses have all turned down my inquiries with extreme prejudice." "Of course they did," Dylan said darkly. That retort seemed to be too much for Jaspert to handle. He put his teacup down sharply, something hard in his expression. "I dunno," Jaspert said. "Think they might be holding out for the dashing Sharp brother from that mover footage. You were supposed to keep a low profile, remember?" Dylan sputtered. "That was twelve years ago, ye great bumrag!" "Ye could've quietly waited out the war with me on the Minotaur, but no, ye needed to stay aloft in a storm, get carted God knows how many miles, and end up on the most famous airship of all time. Then crash in the Alps, meet a blasted Prince Charming of all things. And if that wasn't enough! "You had to be directly involved with destabilizing the Ottoman Empire with a revolution, and oversee your prince become a king. All that's not even mentioning the Mexican revolutionaries who took that footage!" Jaspert was breathing hard, now. It seemed the elder Sharp brother might have had that on his chest for a long while. More reasonably, Mrs. Sharp said, "Three revolutions was a bit much, dear. Governments are allowed to change hands without the input of one very young Scotsman." "Alek was already technically next in line for Austria," Dylan said. "That's hardly throwing a revolution, making sure he lived to take Austria on." Both Mrs. Sharp and Jaspert looked at Dylan like they had their own suspicions about the death of Alek's grand-uncle. So, Alek wasn't the only one. "What? His letter from the Pope was completely legitimate!" "With no one alive to corroborate it, of course," Mrs. Sharp said, eagle-eyed. "I'm sure everyone else who stood to inherit accepted his claim with no ruffled feathers at all." Alek looked down at his hands. Dylan could have had a perfectly ordinary life as a Scottish Airman, if he'd not met Alek.

Except. "If I hadn't dragged him into politics , Dr. Barlow would have." Stabilizing and destabilizing governments would have been Dylan's day job, then. "Not if he'd sent out the panic flag instead of choosing to ride out a storm on a Huxley on his first day," Jaspert said stonily. "Blisters, Jaspert," Dylan said softly. "I thought we'd got through this." "Blisters, Jaspert," Jaspert said, pitching his voice high. "You don't even try anymore, do you? And he still hasn't figured it out." "Oh fuck you," Dylan said. "He's right here." "It won't matter," Jaspert said. "I could fucking spell it out and he'd still be oblivious. We were over this, Darren, back before you gave him another ten years of your life, when he was newly on the throne. Back when I thought he'd know eventually. Know and do right by you." Dylan's expression shuttered completely. "That's never what this was, Jaspert. I'm here because he's my friend, because Austria needs him, and because I damn well want to be. And I am tired of people telling me that I should want something different, that I should want more. If you can't stomach my life here, Jaspert Sharp? You should just go home." "Fuck flying, then." Jaspert said. "I guess you really did just want to be a soldier. His." "Yes! Alek's solider," Dylan hissed, leaning across the table into Jaspert's personal space for emphasis. "That is my job. That is what I signed up for when I left the Air Service!" Jaspert stood from his chair, then. He looked to Alek. "Excuse me, Your Majesty," he said, suddenly all politeness. "This has been a lovely meal, but I think a need to take a walk." "Of course," Alek said. "Thank you for dining with us." Alek was bewildered again. He was spending too much time bewildered, lately. Jaspert Sharp stalked from the room. The door slammed behind him. "He called you the wrong name," Alek said, deciding to address one of his many questions. "Your mother does, sometimes. I've always assumed Darren must be an uncle, or something. I've never heard Jaspert say it, though." "Glaikit wee shite," Mrs. Sharp said, burying her face in one hand. "Fuck me," said Dylan, more simply. "Now that," Mrs. Sharp said, "Is a bridge too far, young man. No fucking until you're married." "I'm twenty-seven!" Dylan said, nearly screeching. "So?" Mrs. Sharp said. "I'm all for a certain amount of swearing among frustrated adults, but I think we all know you mean that one a little too literally." Dylan pushed his plate away, then theatrically slammed his head on the hardwood table. Mrs. Sharp gave a disapproving little hum. "Don't be silly. Think how disappointed Dr. Barlow would be if you damaged that fabricator's brain of yours." Dylan looked to Alek for help. Oh no. Alek was staying out of this one. Mrs. Sharp then looked to Alek for help. "We all know you could get married more or less the moment you wanted to, Dylan. Right, Alek?" Alek floundered for a long moment. "Any woman would be lucky to have you, Dylan." God's wounds, why was that such an awful and awkward sentence to say? Was Alek so reliant on his friend that he resented a theoretical wife Dylan didn't even have yet? He must have said it well enough, though, because Mrs. Sharp beamed at him. "I hate you all," Dylan said.

"Yes, well," said Mrs. Sharp. "That's what mothers and best friends are for." As breakfast broke up, Alek reflected that Jaspert was right. The Sharps had clearly been trying to spell something out for Alek, despite obvious resistance from Dylan, and Alek did, indeed, end the meal oblivious. That it was perhaps undignified for a king to be spoken of that way did not actually occur to him. Alek wondered if his own mother might ever have gotten so forward with Alek if she had lived to see him become a man. She'd be worse, he decided. The lady-in-waiting who'd captured a prince would absolutely be worse. But she'd be subtler about it. Alek smiled at the imagined sight of his mother, Sophie Chotek in all her glory, hassling him about picking a bride. It ached. It would always ache. But it was a good ache, today.

~~~

After that disastrous breakfast, Alek spent more of his waking hours at Dylan's side than was probably productive for either of them, but it was luxurious, being in his friend's presence after time spent apart. Also, Alek couldn't quite stop himself from obsessively watching Dylan's every move, trying not to think too hard on anything at all. The quality time was a good excuse. Dylan could tell, though, and that created tension.

The tension was made worse by the fact that Jaspert was clearly avoiding both of them. Alek made it two days before he tracked down Mrs. Sharp. "Jaspert," he said. "Is he okay?" Mrs. Sharp was in the greenhouse. She set down the baby loris she was teaching the alphabet. "He's fine," she assured. "He's just protective of Dylan, and feeling a bit like a failure." "Because he's not as accomplished as Dylan?" Alek could handle jealousy, but despite Jaspert's words at breakfast, the tone hadn't spoken of jealousy. "Not at all," Mrs. Sharp said. "Jaspert's earned his flowers and he's right where he wants to be. He feels like a failure because I tasked him with being Dylan's protector, and Jaspert managed to lose him the very first day." "I know Dylan was a little young to join the service," Alek said. "But did he really need protection that badly?" "Well, he managed not to die without it," Mrs. Sharp said. "I wasn't sure he would, when he left." "And why was Jaspert even qualified?" Alek asked. "He's not much older than Dylan, and he was very young when he enlisted." "He enlisted behind my back," Mrs. Sharp said. "I lost my husband to the sky. I did not want to lose my children. But Jaspert was officially the head of the household. There was nothing I could do to stop him." "But you could have stopped Dylan?" Mrs. Sharp turned to face Alek a little more squarely, tugged at the end of her graying braid.

"Not without killing him by inches," she said. "He was dying in Glasgow. Finally, despite my feelings on the matter, despite the fact that he was too young, and despite. Well. Everything else, I had to let him try. I thought he had a better chance of coming back to me alive, whole, if he had Jaspert there to watch his back. And I knew Dylan would watch Jaspert's back in turn. Honestly, I thought he'd be caught right away, laughed straight off the proving ground. He'd come home, miserable, but at least he would have known he tried." "Because he was a year too young?" Mrs. Sharp gave Alek a wry smile. "Let's go with that." "So because of his other secret, then," Alek said. "You've figured out that he has a secret, then?" Mrs. Sharp said. "You're less of a numpty than we thought." "You had the right of it, I'm afraid," Alek said. "I overheard a conversation between him and Count Volger the night before he left for London. They didn't say what it was, or even that he had one. It's just that they were clearly talking around a truth I didn't know." "And did you ask the Count?" Mrs. Sharp asked, eyes glittering. "I spoke to him," Alek said. "But he said, and I agree, that I should hear it from Dylan whenever he's ready. So I don't know what it is. I said I'd try not to guess, so I'm also trying not to think on it too deeply." Alek shrugged. "Doesn't stop me from thinking about it constantly." "Oh, Alek," Mrs. Sharp said, before pulling him into a hug. "You sweet boy. You must know he isn't keeping it from you to hurt you." Ten years ago, twelve years ago, Alek would not have felt so sure. Today, he submitted to Mrs. Sharp's embrace and mumbled into her shoulder, "I know." He did know. "I promised Volger I would try to take it well, when and if he tells me." "He will," Mrs. Sharp promised, pulling away to look at him, a hand on each of his shoulders. "Keeping up the act gets harder every year. Mostly because he hates hiding anything from you." "I've never been able to hide anything from him, not for long." "Believe it or not, except for this one tiny detail, Darren feels the same way." And now Alek knew that had to be intentional. He picked up a loris, just to do something with his hands. "Why do you call him that?" Mrs. Sharp practically smirked at him. "I believe, young monarch, that you are overdue to find that out. A little more patience is all I ask." Alek stared at her, dumbfounded. Darren wasn't just an odd substitution with some uncle or cousin. "By God, that's his name." Mrs. Sharp tilted her head. "I'm almost certain you're spelling it wrong in your head. It's Scottish Deryn. Not English Darren. But explaining it would give the game away. And I think your Volger is right, you should hear it from him. He should have the opportunity to tell you." "Understood," Alek said. "I'll talk to Jaspert," Mrs. Sharp said. "I think these developments will make him feel better." "Good," Alek said, and was kind of surprised to find he meant it. He thought Jaspert had come a little too near to hurting Dylan's feelings at the breakfast where everything had gone to Hell. With that, Alek made his excuses. He had work to do, a council to contend with. As he picked his way back inside his father's castle, he realized that Dylan almost definitely did not have a wife. Not if he'd been dying by inches under his mother's watchful eye, a fourteen-year-old in Glasgow. A wife wouldn't have gotten him laughed off the proving grounds, either. Alek breathed in deeply, settling into a prevailing sense of relief.

~~~

When Alek walked into his next council meeting, he was whistling.

Dylan - Darren? some Scottish variety of Darren? - was already there. He was draped in one of the official council room's hard-backed chairs, an arm thrown carelessly behind him, one knee to his chest.

The Austrian noblemen already looked furious with him.

The ragtag assemblage of merchants and farmers and factory laborers that Dylan had picked up over the years looked like they were desperately trying not to laugh.

Dylan, of course, had brought the crate of eggs. They could almost certainly be left alone for an hour at this stage in their development, but they rattled the dyed-in-the-wool Clankers in the room, and Dylan loved rattling dyed-in-the-wool-Clankers. Everyone needs hobbies.

"Why must you persist in breeding these abominations against God?" asked one of the nobles. He was talking to Dylan, but he'd obviously waited until Alek was in the room to say it. Alek's nobles were more then a little afraid of Dylan.

Dylan ignored the question in favor of cooing at the egg box, shifting one of the heaters, a smile in the corner of his mouth.

"They're a symbol of Clanker-Darwinist cooperation," Alek answered firmly. "They give Austria an air of neutrality we cannot afford to lose."

"That," Dylan said. "Also, look at them. They're cute."

Distinctly, the noble wrinkled his nose at Dylan, but he only responded to Alek. "They make you look like a Darwinist, that's hardly neutral."

How this was true when Alek also devoted not insignificant tax dollars to Master Klopp's project in Prague — a school of mechanics for both nobles and commoners — Alek was not sure.

But it was clearly one man's opinion, so it was not impossible that others might share it.

Dylan, however, looked frosty. "Would you call either Japan or America Darwinist? Their unique blends of technology protected them both during the Great War, kept them out of things for longer then the rest of us."

"Austria is hardly America," the nobleman spat, America a curse in his mouth

"True," Dylan said. "We lost territory in the Treaty of Versailles."

Alek cleared his throat, suddenly sure that this disagreement would come to blows if he didn't intervene. "I'd appreciate a little more civility," he said. The nobleman looked triumphant. "From both of you, Duke, Mr. Sharp."

"Of course, Your Majesty."

Austrian nobles said Alek's titles like insults, back when he was but the son of a lady-in-waiting. Many still did.

Alas, even as King of Austria, Alek was the son of a lady-in-waiting. At the end of things, he was Sophie's son before anything else. Sophie's son and Dylan's friend.

"Now," Alek said. "In the interest of civility, we need to talk about some of these tax requests. I understand that expenses are going up, but that is also true for the common folk. We cannot make them bear that burden alone. And that is why I called all of you here today, to attempt to broker a compromise between all the social classes that leaves everyone with enough money."

"They want a tax increase?" one of the farmers said, a note of panic in his voice. "Your Majesty, the farmers don't have it!"

"Right," Alek said. "Again that's why I wanted everyone here. So we can talk about the rates that work for everyone." Nobody looked happy, but honestly, that was Alek-and-Dylan's specialty.

...Alek had dragged them both to Austria, and honestly, one of these days an assassination attempt was going to actually work. Alek thought, rather unpleasantly, that he was just like his father.

At the end of the meeting, when Alek had stopped his nobles from bleeding the farmers dry, but had left the merchants and laborers perhaps a little less happy, Alek saw one of the laborers pass Dylan a surreptitious note.

That laborer, Alek knew, was a union organizer, with connections across German-speaking Europe.

Moreover, and Alek wasn't sure how formal this was, he was one of Dylan's primary information gatherers. He had access to a startling number of contacts, and he reported on all of them to Dylan.

Alek did understand that it was Dylan to whom this man had pledged his loyalty, and Alek honestly approved. He had the distinct impression, sometimes, that it was Dylan who ruled Austria. Alek was only there to keep the nobility from kicking up a fuss about it.

Dylan clapped a hand on the laborer's shoulder, slipped the note into his breast pocket, sewn a little low in his jacket.

"How is your wife and daughter?" Dylan asked, and Alek wasn't sure if it was out of genuine interest or just to disguise the exchange. Alek would have thought the exchange was blatant to anyone with eyes. Over the years, however, he had learned that he watched Dylan more closely than anyone else did.

The laborer glowed. His daughter, it turned out, had enrolled at Klopp's school. That had been one of Dylan's odd little insistences, that Klopp's school be open to women as well as men.

Dylan beamed at this news, and Alek knew that it was both. That's why Dylan was so effective - he genuinely cared, and he used that to disguise the fact that he'd developed a spy network under the counsel's nose.

Dylan made his way through the room, exchanging pleasantries with everyone, and receiving notes from a farmer and a member of minor nobility. Also, from one of Konopiste's staff, who were always welcome to sit in on these meetings, though few ever did.

Alek mingled. Making something akin to friends out of his councilmen was more than just a nicety - it kept him alive.

Unfortunately, Alek was not as good at making friends as Dylan. As soon as it was politically appropriate, he left the room, headed to the private council room where he debriefed with Dylan and Volger alone.

When Dylan and Volger joined him, Dylan's eyes were cold. "I'll be staying in your chambers tonight," he said. "Ma can watch the eggs."

"Oh?" Volger said, back in that silky tone.

"Come off it, Count," Dylan said, flapping an impatient hand. "I've been saying I don't like the collective tone in Prague for months, now."

"Ah," Volger said.

"You think there's going to be an attempt?" Alek said worriedly.

Dylan fished a pile of notes from his breast pocket, more than even Alek had seen exchange hands. "I've got reports from the union fellow, from members of nobility, and from a member of the castle staff who overheard an exchange. There's going to be an attempt. The question is when."

"Do you know who?" Alek said.

Dylan grimaced. "Yes, but I'm not sure how deep it goes or how many allies he has. And Alek, I need you to act normal."

Yes, Alek was a terrible actor. "Right," he said. "You know I trust you. I was just curious."

An odd current passed between them then, because Alek did trust Dylan, but this was the first time he'd needed to since discovering that there were secrets between them. He didn't like it, but the trust was still there.

That night, Dylan prepared Alek's meal. He was a surprisingly good cook of simple fare, but Alek knew he hated doing it. Most of the time. Alek trusted the castle staff, but cooking seemed to comfort Dylan, when they both knew that Alek's parents had been taken by poison, right along with their taster. The poison had been too slow-acting to show immediate effects.

"I sent Ma to town in disguise to buy ingredients," Dylan said. "Just in case."

That sounded a little excessive to Alek, but, "Thank you, Dylan."

"She wanted to cook, too, when I explained the situation, but you know."

"I know," Alek said. Dylan's own assassination attempts over the years had given Alek the impulse to do everything with his own hands, see everything with his own eyes, until he could really believe that Dylan was safe.

Alek ate a plate of bangers and mash, with, he understood, exactly the wrong kind of sausage. He himself wasn't enough of a connoisseur to know the difference.

"There's also sauerkraut." Dylan said, producing a jar of it from nowhere. "Ma bullied the cook into giving her the recipe, and she's been fermenting this jar in her room, so it should be safe. You do need a vegetable."

Alek gave it a hesitant taste. "I think I love your mother," he said.

"She loves you too, you know. That's why she asked for the sauerkraut recipe to begin with."

Alek wouldn't say that sauerkraut was a favorite food of his, but the attempt at kindness was so endearing that he decided that Mrs. Sharp's sauerkraut specifically was going onto his favorites list, now and forever. She'd included the juniper berries and caraway seeds and everything.

He heaped a large forkful onto his plate, decided he loved the tang of it in contrast to the blander British fare. "I'll be sure to thank her," Alek said. "For both the sauerkraut and the market run."

That night, they made a show of going into their separate chambers, in plain view of any number of castle staff. Barely an hour passed before Dylan slipped in through Alek's window. Genuinely, Alek had no damn idea how Dylan did that. The walls were sheer, the balconies were well separated.

There was a flurry of activity in the deepening dusk as Dylan checked the room. The sun set. Lamps were blown out.

"Sleep," Dylan said, sitting in one of Alek's armchairs, facing the door in total darkness.

It was like a spell. Alek slept, and did not wake until he heard a strangled scream, and a body hitting the floor.

He sat up. Dylan had not left the armchair. A woman — a new kitchen hire, if Alek remembered rightly — gurgled on the flagstone, one of Dylan's knives in her neck.

At first, Alek thought Dylan had made some horrible, awful mistake, but as he slipped from his bed covers to take a closer look, he saw that the woman's fingers were twitching around the handle of a knife of her own.

There was a knock at the door. Alek jerked to look at it. "It's me," came Volger's voice. "I'm coming in, stay your hand, Mr. Sharp."

Light spilled briefly into the room from the hallway. Volger wasted no time in shutting the door behind him, dark eyes going straight to the body. "My God," he said. He looked at Dylan. "You know who organized this?"

"Yes," Dylan said. "He will have quietly retired to the countryside by morning."

"Good," said Volger. "Good. You take care of that. I'll clean up in here."

Alek could see the war in Dylan's expression. He did not want to let Alek out of his sight, but he also wanted to see the job finished for himself. For a long moment, Dylan studied Volger's face. "Don't let him out of your sight. Even if that means cleaning up together."

Volger frowned. Neither Volger nor Dylan liked to let Alek's hands get dirty.

"I can help," Alek said, because Volger and Dylan were his men, and Alek would never ask his men to do something he would not do himself. "Dylan? Whomever he is, bring him down. Only cowards hide behind women."

Dylan nodded, placed a hand on the door to the balcony. "I will. But Alek? Women are full well capable of being monsters. She wasn't tricked or manipulated into this. She wanted you dead. Don't doubt that."

"Mr. Sharp," Volger said. "This is not the time for a battle of the sexes."

"Just think about it," Dylan said. "And keep your blasted eyes open. I think this is all we can expect for the night, but it's not impossible a fail-safe escaped my network."

"Of course," Volger said.

"I'll be careful," Alek promised.

Dylan nodded tightly, passed through the balcony doors, then hoisted himself over the balcony railing and out of sight.

Alek looked at the dead woman on his bedroom floor. "God's wounds."

Volger set to rolling her up in the ruined carpet — an older one, set out for this exact purpose. "God's wounds indeed."

Alek felt they might be talking about different things.

[aggie-postemon]

Jazz Takes Aim

Ectoberweek Day 3 - October 27th - "Ghost Peeler"

In which Jazz fires the Ghost Peeler at the Red Huntress, and she actually hits.

AO3 | FFN

Jazz sprinted pell mell down Amity Park's main street, aiming for the Nasty Burger. She didn't know what the hell she was thinking. She also didn't know what the hell had happened. All she knew was that Danny and Valerie were at each other's throats again, completely disregarding every temporary alliance they had ever made.

Danny was on the defensive, though. He was always on the defensive. Jazz understood not wanting to hurt your friends or family, but sometimes she wished her baby brother was willing to properly fight back against people who were earnestly trying to kill him.

Light glowed from the windows of the Nasty Burger, so Jazz could see exactly what she was doing as she decided to forgo running around the building to the front door. She launched herself at an exposed gutter instead, scuttling up the side of the building.

Her arms burned, but Danny and Valerie were in the sky, and Danny was losing.

Jazz climbed, then gave a massive heave with her arms, hoisting herself up and over the lip of the roof. Gooseflesh rose on the back of her neck as she entered the larger field of Danny and Valerie's fight. She didn't have ghost sense, Jazz knew that. But she sensed ghosts a little too reliably for her own comfort.

The moment her feet gained purchase on the flat tar roofing, Jazz ran for the far side, beyond which Danny and Valerie were trading increasingly frantic blows.

"Valerie Gray," Jazz shouted, knowing that the Red Huntress flinched sometimes, when her identity was brought into things, despite it being a fairly open secret. It paid off - Valerie looked her way. Unfortunately, Danny also looked at her. He was so busy gawping, he completely missed the opportunity to push advantage while Valerie was distracted.

"Valerie Gray," Jazz tried again. "I swear to god, if you hurt Phantom, I'm going to end you."

But Valerie's focus was back on Danny; she was laser sharp when she wanted to be, and whatever had triggered this resurgence of violence must have been serious.

Jazz really did not know what the hell she was thinking when she reached for the ghost peeler in her purse. "Valerie, I'll shoot."

"With Jack's aim?" Valerie threw back at her, taking aim herself again at Danny, shooting him successfully in the shoulder.

Jazz pressed the activation button, feeling the suit of the Peeler travel up her arm and over her body. Distantly, she remembered the Peeler successfully stripping Mr. Lancer down to his underwear.

Jazz fired.

In the split second that Jazz's shot hung in the air, she had the faint hope that it might do the same thing to Valerie, taking off her iconic black-and-red suit, removing her from the fight.

The shot hit home.

"Even the worst shot strikes occasionally," Jazz said, with no small amount of satisfaction.

Then Valerie screamed. Ancients, it almost seemed like she was blurring at the edges.

"Oh shit," Jazz said, wrenching her arm out and down and taking her finger off the trigger. "Valerie!"

Valerie fell. Danny reacted, dove down to get her. His legs merged into a tail as he pressed for speed. Danny, Jazz noticed, only had one good arm to catch her with.

While Danny dove and Jazz stood uselessly on the roof of the Nasty Burger, holding a literal smoking gun, Valerie did not stop screaming.

Jazz deactivated the Peeler entirely, shoving it back into her purse as the armor slid from her body. Then she moved.

By the time she was off the roof, Danny and Valerie had hit the ground together.

"Danny!" Jazz shouted. "Valerie!"

Valerie was prone on the asphalt. Danny bent over her, one arm pinned to his side, face an obvious grimace.

Jazz slid to her knees at Valerie's side. "Valerie. Valerie. Can you hear me?" she said, then looked at Danny. "Is she responsive at all?"

Danny shrugged with one shoulder, wide eyed.

Jazz rolled Valerie onto her back, and placed a fist on her sternum. She rubbed firmly, watching carefully for any signs of breathing. She hoped beyond reason that she would not need to pull out CPR. Statistics ran through Jazz's head - CPR was not nearly as effective as people liked to pretend.

Jazz bent over, putting her ear to Valerie's lips. She did not cease her sternum rub.

Yes!

A faint puff. Valerie's breathing was slower than it should be, but Jazz was fairly certain it was there.

"She's breathing," Jazz said. "I'm sure of it."

Danny slumped in visible relief. "Jazz?" he asked, voice small. "Why did the Peeler work?"

Valerie chose that moment to open her eyes. They glowed orange.