samsalami66 - Tumblr blog

samsalami66 · 2 days ago

Text

Never Far Apart, Even in Death

Some Jadder for those who didn't suffer enough with this ship in canon!

Everything else under the cut because of spoilers!

Summary: Janosh stays behind with Adder as he dies. When there's nothing left for him to live for, he asks Erik for one last favour.

Read on AO3!

Grey skies, black smoke, and the rotten stink of blood and shit were the only things left after the battle. No screams or sobs from dying men could be heard in the aftermath, no whoreson bandits begging for mercy they did not deserve, and no cries of hard-won victory. There was only the silence of men who had survived the clash of swords, but knew not all of them had been as lucky.

They could all smell Death, the way it clung to the bodies strewn around them and sought to bury its claws into their very souls. For Death was a ravenous beast indeed, greedy and gluttonous like no other force on this earth. It would not be satisfied, not until it had claimed them all as theirs, and tucked the warmth of their lives away into its darkest hollows. And even then, it would lie in wake, waiting to strike once more.

But tonight's feast was not yet over.

Death had its claws sunk deep into another life, ripping and tearing and wringing out groans of pain and terror from a mouth unused to expressing such emotion. It was a mouth much more used to spitting profanities, and even as Death grasped for the man's soul, his mouth found comfort in the things he knew best.

He joked with his friend — his man, his love —, about silver and sex and a woman he'd never met, all to stave off Death for a second longer, to pretend he didn't know its claws were buried so deep in him that he would not even see the sun rise over the horizon one last time. But he knew well that Death already owned him.

“Do not haul corpse,” he whispered as they tried to take him away, shaking his head and forcing the unfamiliar syllables to form in his mouth. It was a day of firsts, and of lasts. “Better to take living.”

There was no time nor reason to try and prevent the inevitable.

Adder would die.

Death would feast on him, make him its final meal for the day, and then it would retreat, awaiting the next battle to quench its never-ending hunger.

“At least… I can… pray in peace.” The Polish rolling off the man's tongue was heavy and slurred, meant only for the ears of a single man. A last joke, for Janosh knew him better than to believe that Adder would spend his last moments praying.

But the joke did not have the desired effect. It did not pull Janosh’s lips upwards like it usually would, did not make those dark brown eyes sparkle with mischief or laughter or… or love. Death really was cruel, for taking such a thing away from him in his final moments.

“Mount up everyone. We're leaving.”

Žižka's words cut through the night air much like that traitor Brabant's knife had cut into Adder's flesh. The pain was much the same too.

He would die alone. Alone, in the midst of rot and shit and the bodies of traitors, the memory of life his only comfort.

They paid their respects, one by one. The captain saluted, the priest signed the cross. One last blessing for the road to either Heaven or Hell. In Adder's case, the latter was probably much more likely.

Janosh simply… stared at him. There was no identifying the emotions behind that look, and no holding the stare either. Adder was too weak and tired to keep his eyes open, the claws of Death tearing relentlessly at him.

“I'm not leaving.” Janosh's gruff voice called out eventually, making every last head in their group turn towards him in surprise. The statement was met with quiet and worried glances, the men unsure how to make someone leave the most important person in their life behind to die, but clearly unwilling to let the other man stay behind either.

“Janosh, I… please, don't–”

“No,” Janosh interrupted Henry's attempt at sparking a change of his mind, his tone holding an edge to it that left little room for argument. “Where he go, I go. There no Janosh without Adder.”

“Don't be stupid, Jano,” Adder replied through clenched teeth, but Janosh ignored him, his jaw set in determination.

“We have to go,” Katherine urged the other men, her gaze flicking between Žižka, Janosh and Henry. There was another moment of hesitation, of stillness, before Žižka stepped up to Janosh and squeezed his arm.

“It was an honour to fight by your side. Both of you.”

One last nod, one last glance, and then they were off, leaving them alone.

Janosh, Adder and Death.

“You are as stubborn as a fucking donkey,” Adder murmured, blinking hard against the darkness threatening his vision.

“At least I won’t die with the face of one,” Janosh replied, his Polish rougher than that of the other man and the humour in his voice layered with grief for a man that has not yet died. He sat down next to his friend, his lover, and pulled his upper body onto his lap so he could hold him.

“But you could live, Jano. A corpse is not worth your life.” Their eyes met as Janosh brushed a rough thumb over Adder’s cheek, and Adder almost choked on the emotion he saw reflected in his friend’s eyes.

“We lived together, my Adder,” Janosh whispered. “We fought together, we drank together, we fucked together. And now, we die together.”

“Sentimental bastard,” Adder murmured in response, his words fading into a cough. Janosh wiped the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth away with steady fingers.

“But your bastard, no?” A tired chuckle escaped Adder, his hand finding Janosh’s for a gentle squeeze.

Death was catching up with him. He could feel it, squeezing his lungs and heart and wrenching consciousness from his trembling grasp. Words were stolen from his mouth and locked into his throat where the living could not make sense of them anymore. His hands started shaking, his breathing was growing laboured.

And Janosh knew. He watched as Adder was stolen away by the most ravenous of beasts while he held him in his arms, Death tearing and ripping until there would be nothing left but the scraps and shadows of the man he once loved. The only thing he could do now was make sure that his Adder was comfortable. As comfortable as a dying man could be.

And so, he sang.

Words of wine and women spilled from his lips into the night around them, the Slovak rolling smoother from his tongue than Czech or Polish ever did. He’d taught Adder this song once, when their friendship was still fresh and their love a thing of uncouth jokes and stolen glances. Simpler times. No wars, no traitors. Death an abstract concept rather than an old acquaintance.

Janosh sang until he felt the body in his arms grow slack and cold, and saw the face in his lap lose the lines of pain and fear. He sang until Death finished its feast, until his Adder's eyes lost their spark and his breath stuttered to a halt.

And Janosh didn't stop singing. Not when the grief finally came crashing down on him, sobs and tears wrecking his body and clouding his vision. It stole the air from his lungs and the warmth from his body, his heart, his soul.

He would not live without his Adder.

He couldn't.

–

When Erik stepped into the Ruthard’s courtyard, the first thing he heard was the low murmur of song. It carried through the silence easily, the language familiar and not all at once.

He was reminded of Istvan, how Slovak had sounded beautiful when it was spilling from his lips, as if that language of mercenaries and bandits had suddenly turned into one fit for poetry.

But this singing was nothing like his Istvan's language. It did not care for beauty or rhythm, the words harsh and broken up by sobs and hiccups. There was pain in its tone and grief in its cadence.

That, Erik knew all too well.

He drew closer to the source of the song with measured steps, sword drawn and senses focused. What he found, Erik knew all too well too.

The man, the one whose tortured voice echoed in the courtyard of Ruthard Palace, was holding the lifeless body of another man in his arms. And if the anguished singing hadn't been enough to tell, the gaping wound in the unconscious man's abdomen would make it clear that Death had taken him to either Heaven or Hell already.

“Who are you?” Erik found himself asking as he reached the singing man. He barely looked up at Erik’s appearance, merely continued to run his fingertips over the dead man's lips and brows, as if committing their details into memory.

“Broken man,” he rasped as the song eventually came to an end, the last notes fading slowly into the dark of night.

“And him?”

The Hungarian chuckled mirthlessly, tears glistening on his face as his body shook with laughter.

“Polish whoreson,” His voice quieted after that, the chuckle fading into a trembling sob. “My sweet Adder.”

Erik did not know these men. They had to have been of Žižka’s little band, likely friends of that whoreson Henry. He shouldn't feel sorry for them.

But he did know this. This grief, this anger, this pain.

“Where's the bastard who killed him?”

The man huffed and shook his head, tears dropping from his chin at the movement and landing on the other man's face.

“What matter? Revenge not gonna bring my Adder back. Revenge only bring death.”

A moment of silence, the truth in those words ringing through the courtyard, mirrored in the bodies rotting away in the dirt.

“What will you do then?”

There was nothing left but revenge in Erik's life. He'd either kill that bastard Henry or die in the attempt, knowing he gave his all for his love.

“Die, of course,” the man replied, as if the answer was something he'd been considering for a long time. As if the very thought of simply giving up didn't shake the very foundations of Erik's world-view. “You help Janosh out?”

“You… want me to kill you?”

A nod, and then the man finally looked at him, letting his eyes roam slowly over Erik’s face. Recognition bloomed somewhere beneath the grief and sorrow, but it never flowered into acknowledgement.

“Yes. Do me favour, boy. Let me die with my Adder.”

Erik didn't fully know why he agreed to it. But there was something about this Janosh, about the way he looked at the dead man in his arms, that made him ache with the phantom pain of never being given the chance to say farewell to Istvan. He hadn't even had the time to visit his grave, too busy chasing revenge to make time for his grief.

The sword pierced the Hungarian's heart easily in the end. His eyes widened, a gasp escaped his lips, and then it was over. He didn't struggle against Death's grip, after all, there had been nothing anchoring his soul to this earth anymore.

His love had been taken, and he followed readily into Death's embrace.

As the last breath left the man's lips, Erik made sure the bodies would lay comfortably. He closed their eyes and bowed his head, speaking a murmured prayer to the Lord above.

May their souls find rest.

Come dawn, he made for Trosky.

–

It was weeks later, as the sun set over a Bohemia temporarily free of war and Death, that a man rode along the roads of Kuttenberg after surviving a month of fear and hunger. His grey mare shuffled restlessly as soon as they came to a halt before the knacker's door, and the man's dog whined with sympathy, which earned him a pat on the head.

The man asked the knacker about two old friends, their graves outside of city walls, and the knacker pointed him to an old oak tree, where the men lay in eternal rest among the other bandits that died that day at Ruthard Palace.

The man bowed his head in thanks, and made for the old oak tree, where he spoke a little prayer, asking forgiveness for the sin he would commit.

He found the bodies easily, wrapped in burial shrouds caked in mud and grass, and slung them over his horse's back. There was a grave awaiting them on the clearing behind the Devil’s Den, the closest thing that any of them still had for a home.

It was there that they finally lay the two bodies to rest.

Together, just as they had been in life.

#salamiwrites #jadder #adder kcd #janosh uher #kcd janosh #janosh/adder #minor isterik #fanfic #tw: mcd #tw: death

9 notes · View notes

samsalami66 · 10 days ago

Note

idk how to word this properly but wrt the fanfic thing you reblogged earlier. Why do fanfic writers have such different expectations than any other content hosting platform?

Like lets take youtube as a point of comparison, Engagement like comments and likes largely exists to boost the works place in algorithm, thats why youtubers put in calls to action and other engament bait. Few with decent reach even read the comments and the audience shouldnt try to develop any weird parasocial relationship with the youtuber. Fanfic authors ask for likes (kudos, because the websites gotta use nonstandard language for some reason) and comments despite them not having any impact on an algorithm, and seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author based on tumblr posts like that one.

Why the radical difference in behaviour away from the norm? And honestly with all the (usually) metaphorical blood spilled online about parasociality why are authors really surprised that the audience tries to keep their distance as is best practice with any other content producer?

okay I am going to answer this as kindly and as calmly as I can and try to assume that you are asking this in good faith. because my friend, the fact that you feel the need to ask is, to me, The Problem.

[this is, for the record, in response to this post]

fanfiction writers are not *posting content.* (I also have reservations about engaging with the term "content producer" or "content creator" but let's put that aside for now, I'll circle back to it.) you say "they seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author" as though it is strange, off-putting, and incomprehensible to you, when in fact that is the point of writing fanfiction. it is a way of participating in fandom. it is a way of building community and exchanging ideas and becoming closer with people.

if authors wanted to solely ~generate content~ that would get them attention (?? to what end, the dynamic you have described seems to equate algorithmic supremacy as winning for winning's sake, as though all anyone wants to do is BUILD an audience without ENGAGING with them, which I cannot fathom but let's pretend for a moment that is, in fact, true) then like. if that were the case why on earth would they choose a medium in which they categorically cannot succeed and profit, because it isn't their IP?

you are equating two things that are not at all the same thing. to the degree that parasocial relationships are to be avoided, and "that person is not trying to be your friend they are trying to entertain you, please respect their boundaries" is a real dynamic -- which it is!! -- like. you have to understand that the reason that is true for the people of whom it is true is because it is their JOB. they are storytellers by profession, and they are either through direct payment, or sponsorship, or advertising, or through some other means, profiting off of your attention. i don't say this to be dismissive, many wonderful artists and actors and comedians and any number of a thousand things that i enjoy very much go this route but they do so as a *career choice.* and so when you violate the public/private boundary with them, you are presuming to know a Person rather than their Worksona. the people who work at Dropout or who stream their actual play tabletop games or who broadcast on TikTok or YouTube are inviting me to feel like i know them to the degree to which that helps them succeed in their medium and at their craft, but there MUST be a mutual understanding that that's a feeling, not a fact.

however.

a fanfiction writer is not an influencer, not a professional, and is not looking to garner "success." there is no share of audience we are trying to gain for gain's sake, because we are not competition with one another, because there is nothing to win other than the pleasure of each other's company. we are doing this for no other reason than the love of the game; because we have things we want desperately to say about these worlds, these characters, these dynamics, and because we *want more than anything to know we are not alone in our thoughts and feelings.* fanfiction is a bid for interaction, engagement, attention, and consideration. it is not meant to be consumed and then moved on from because we are NOT paid for our work, nor do we want to be. the reward we seek is "attention," but attention as in CONVERSATION, not attention as in clicks. we are not IN this for profit, or for number-go-up. there is no such thing: legally there cannot be. we are in this because we want to be seen and known.

like. please understand. i am now married to someone i met because of mutual comments on fanfiction. our close friend and roommate, with whom i have cohabitated for over a decade now, is someone I met because of mutual comments on fanfiction and livejournal posts. that is my household. beyond my household, the vast majority of my closest personal friends are people with whom I built relationships in this way.

you ask why fanfiction writers want THIS and not "the norm," but the idea of everything being built to cater to an algorithm to continue to build clout, as though the only method of reaching people is Distant Overlord Creator and Passive Receptive Audience being "the norm" is EXTREMELY NEW. this is not how it has always been!! please think of the writers of zines in a pre-internet fandom, using paper and glue and xerox to try and meet like-minded people in a world that was designed for you to only ever meet people in person, by happenstance, in your own hometown. imagine the writers of the early internet, building webrings from scratch to CREATE a community to find each other, despite distance. imagine livejournal groups, forums, and -- yes, indeed, of course -- comment threads IN STORIES -- as places where people go to *converse.* in the past, we had an entire Type Of Guy that everyone knew about, the BNF ("Big Name Fan") whose existence had to be described via meme because it was SO DIFFERENT THAN THE NORM. treating fellow fans like celebrities or people too cool for the regular kids to know was an OUTLIER, and one commonly understood to lead to toxicity.

in the past, I have likened writing fanfiction to echolocation. i am not screaming because I like hearing the sound of my own voice, though i can and do find my voice beautiful. i am screaming so that the vibrations can bounce back to me and show me the world. the purpose is in the feedback. otherwise it is just noise.

does this make any sense? can you see, when i describe it that way, why an ask like yours makes me feel despair, because it makes us all sound so horribly separate from one another?

perhaps I will try another metaphor:

a professional chef who runs a restaurant will not have her feelings hurt if you never fight your way into the kitchen to personally tell her how much you enjoyed the meal. that would, indeed, violate a boundary. professional kitchens are a place of work, and you have already showed her you enjoyed the meal by paying for it, or by perhaps spreading your enjoyment by word of mouth to your friends so they, too, can have good meals. you show your appreciation by continuing to come back. if a bunch of people sitting around randomly happen to have a conversation about how much they love the food, it wouldn't hurt that chef's feelings to not be included in the conversation. however: EVEN IN THIS INSTANCE, it is ADVISABLE AND APPROPRIATE to leave a good review! you might post about how much you like this restaurant on Yelp, and it would probably make the chef feel great to see those positive comments. but the chef doesn't NEED them, because the chef is, again, *also being paid to cook.* that's why she started the restaurant, to be paid to cook!

i am not being paid to cook.

i am at home in my own kitchen, making things for a community potluck where i hope everyone will bring something we can all enjoy together. some people at the potluck are better bakers, some better cooks; some can't cook at all but are great at logistics and make sure there's enough napkins for everyone; some people come just to enjoy the food, because that's what the party is for. and if I, as this enthusiast chef who made something from my heart for this reason alone, learned after the fact that a bunch of people got together in the parking lot to rave about my dish but no one of them had ever bothered to tell me while I sat alone at my table all night, occasionally seeing people come by to pick up a plate but never saying anything to me -- of course that would bother me, because I am not otherwise profiting off the labor I put in. this is not a bid to be paid, because if someone WERE to say "hey, great cake!! here's five bucks for a slice" i would say no, friend, that is not the point and give them the money back. i'm not trying to Get Mine. I am in it to see the look on your face. I'm in it so you can tell me what about it moved you, so that I can say back what moved me to make it in the first place. so we can TALK about it.

because what happened in the first place is this: one time I had a cake whose sweetness, richness, flavor, intensity, and composition moved me so much that I *taught myself to bake.* so I could see how much vanilla and sugar was too much, so I could learn how to make things rise instead of fall flat, so I could even better appreciate the original cake by seeing for myself the effort and talent and inspiration that goes into making one even half as good.

learning to do so is a satisfying accomplishment in and of itself, yes.

but I also did it because at the end of the day we should EAT the cake. and it's a lonely thing, to eat alone when a meal was always designed and intended to be shared.

so, to answer your last question: i'm not surprised, i'm just sad. because somehow two things that were never meant to be seen as the same have been labeled "content," and thus identical. and it diminishes both the things that ARE intended to be paid for AND the things that are not, because it removes any sense of intimacy or meaning from the work.

i hope you know i'm not mad at you for asking. but i'm frustrated we've come to live in a world where the question needs to be asked, because the answers are no longer intuitively obvious because we're so siloed.

#and herein lies the problem #fanfiction is not and will never be Content

6K notes · View notes