#[GHOST IN THE MACHINE]

[haunted-machines]

> Memory Files

> playback mem_js6aVns9DfuWosbV5kLabam2g0nSou4.mp4

> yes     > no

> preparing mem_js6aVns9DfuWosbV5kLabam2g0nSou4.mp4

> ...

> ...

> ...

> playing mem_js6aVns9DfuWosbV5kLabam2g0nSou4.mp4

A multitude of "Wily Castles" and other bases dotted the globe by now. Some of them were true castles, others could hardly be called the same. Little more than outposts, many of which were not even overseen by the Doctor himself. The second numbers had a habit of giving the Doctor an even worse name by proxy, though Shadow Man shook away the disrespectful thought as soon as it entered his mind. Their elders' work ensured later generations of Wily numbers such as himself had it far easier than they had, and he would be remiss to forget that.

Shadow Man had elected not to teleport to the location. Even though the castle had long since been abandoned and swept over by the Russian government, it was likely still monitored, not only by them, but by Dr. Wily as well. He had kept the coordinates logged in any case, so warping his way there when he had the opportune moment was all but effortless. The ninja arrived to rubble at his feet. The old castle had been thoroughly destroyed by Mega Man in its heyday, and then further ransacked over the past decade. The castle was not what he was here for, though. With his signal cut off from the network, he slipped past the debris entirely undetectable. No, it was what lied deep beneath the earth that interested him. Towards the back end of the massive structure was a small hatch in the ground, taking up no more than perhaps twenty square feet of space. It's lid had been torn from the hinges in what must have been the initial investigation led by Dr. Cossack, for only he and the Doctor could have known of it at the time. The entryway was little more than a mountain of rubble now. It had been strategically collapsed when the fort was compromised. Attempts to manually tunnel beneath the foundation of the castle now would surely only cause further collapse and danger, which was presumably why it had been left alone. Good. That was all he needed to know.

Shadow Man slipped through the ground and found himself stepping through the wall of the room beneath. It was filled wall to wall with dusty, abandoned computers and machinery. Where the entrance had once been now lied a crushed and thoroughly irreparable elevator unit. It had been hidden well underground, further than most sensors could reach. The room had once served as Doctor Cossack's laboratory, in which Shadow Man had overseen the modifications he had done to the Cossack numbers. Now it remained a suffocating casket to everything within. Even of the authorities had managed to raid the place, they would not have found anything of use. Any data stored within this room had been wiped clean when the Doctor fled. None of that old data interested Shadow Man, however. All he cared for was the machinery itself. Aside from the dust and sparse debris of the collapsed elevator shaft, everything was exactly as it had been left. Even the teleportation capsule that Dr. Wily had used to check in on occasion still sat in pristine, if currently inoperable condition. It was everything he could need, the thought came to him as if simultaneously his own and something he had just heard spoken aloud. He shook his head, unperturbed, and set to work refurbishing it immediately.

[pocketbelt]

they announced one of the main writers for FFXIV: Dawntrail is the one who wrote the Shadowbringers trial series, "Sorrow of Werlyt", and the amount of people going "ew no that's the one that redeems Gaius" drives me kind of insane

That storyline takes Gaius and says "Behold this idiot, watch and be stunned as everything he ever said to anyone turned out to be fucking obviously wrong. Watch as the fascist imperialist philosophy he ingrained into his beloved children makes them run to their deaths, even as he pleads them not to, and they tell him to fuck himself and do it anyway. Marvel as he watches them die by your hand, you, who destroyed Gaius himself at the peak of his life, and he can do nothing to stop it", and that's a redemption arc to people

The only surviving kid only makes it because her brother acts to protect her, she doesn't make it because of any act of Gaius'

The entire story is literally "In case you somehow missed it in ARR and most of Stormblood, everything Gaius believed in was horseshit and there's no such thing as a 'noble general in the evil empire'". All his meritocracy bullshit vanished the second he was gone, no-one but his own children believed it or held onto it, and the empire put someone directly opposed to that belief into his old seat when he vanished. No-one cared, no-one else "believed", the Empire was never about that, it was only propped up in his own singular legion by him being there and the second he was gone the legion dumped it and moved on and only Gaius was too naive and stupid to see it.

I mean for fuck sake, the Empire digs up the chemical gas weapon he explicitly had sealed away and destroyed all record of after he's gone and if it wasn't for a particularly dedicated and enterprising catboy and his comedy crew of hardcore engineers, it would have caused the eighth apocalypse

Even the follow-up in patch 6.4, of the family portrait, isn't some "aw he good now" thing. The family portrait you help organise for him has to have four of its six members be projected onto the scene via a machine's reconstruction of them as normal people because they're dead, they threw their lives away because the ideology Gaius taught them meant they could only think to die fighting and nothing else. That's his loving family portrait: four ghosts stood at his back as his last living child smiles through her pain.

"well the people of Werlyt didn't kill him for conquering them" they let him clean up the mess he made (which meant watching his children be killed) and as "thanks" they're letting him stay there to live out the last third of his life or so attempting to atone by fixing the damage he did.

He's 56 at the time of ARR; the Empire he gave 3-4 decades of his life to is gone, it's a smouldering ruin, all but one of the people he loved is dead, his surviving daughter is scarred by the path he led her down, and what few friends he had are also dead. He learned that his beliefs were all horseshit and pretty much everyone around him except for himself knew it, he must live knowing that those beliefs got his children killed, all that he achieved that he once considered "good" was for nothing, he learned that the cool old emperor he idolised who had no magic but built an empire by pulling up his bootstraps and who told him that magic and gods were bad was actually an ancient incredibly magical sorceror attempting to resurrect his own god.

That's not a redemption arc, he's the most owned man still alive in XIV

[emdotcom]

Man. The Herobrine really is summat else. We got:

A glitch of a ghost in the machine that causes every error in the game

The White Eyes character, stemming from a texture error, which becomes associated with the cave noise & eventually leads to the creation of the Herobrine myth

Transgender swag

The fucken. Brocraft stream that links to that ONE image & implies that either you or Herobrine are "asleep" & dreaming

The way that Herobrine myths kicked up due to the TF2 influx, after the devs made mention of the game

Every single unexplained structure in the game, all abandoned, all without a clear group that created them can & will be associated with Herobrine

The mineshafts. The ruined portals. The deep dark. It's kind of like a story, told in three arcs, if you squint right

Like something that used to live there, toiled in the soil along with the worms

Like something that got locked away, that wants to go back

Like something that needs to be kept out

Every single zombie looks like Steve. Does that say anything? Does it imply something about Herobrine, another reflection, but maybe a bit more sentient? With teeth that are a bit more sharp, with a malice that is a bit more cold?

Mojang putting the "Removed Herobrine" note in for YEARS, then one day dropping it, only to bring it back 3 years later

N*tch being scrubbed from the game's lore, so he's also (sometimes) scrubbed from Herobrine's lore, leading to alternate origins

He is the first player. He is the ghost of a fellow player. He is an architect, a miner, a builder. He is a friend to all the mobs, & an enemy to those that take all the trees & never replant the saplings. He is a curious onlooker, probably harmless. He is a deep loathing. He is a danger, a legend, just a myth, but is he?

The way that people's opinions of Herobrine have shifted through years, like a litmus test for Minecraft players as a whole

It starts with the eerie feeling of being in a room you KNOW should be empty, but feeling eyes on you, anyways & ends with a sad type of goodbye, a dreamer seeking a dreamer condemned

The way he's more quiet, more calm, less prone to the griefing & attacks he was once known for, like his fire has cooled with time

The Minecraft end poem. Maybe. Do you think Herobrine ever got to hear those words? "I love you," & "You have played the game well"?

The person with the Herobrine username, which has had the catboy Herobrine skin on for years o7

[transpoettryinghisbest]

One of my favourite things about Nerdy Prudes Must Die is that it never goes in the direction you'd expect. It's constantly throwing you for a loop and it knows that and revels in it.

It's a high school play. It has the jock and the nerds and the cool kids and the weird prudy one. Romantic relationships establish themselves quickly, but societal forces get in the way. So you think okay, it's gonna be about how they overcome society's judgement and teach everyone to love who you want to love and form unusual couples and live happily ever after, right?

WRONG. Max just straight up dies. Really early on. And Grace, the girl who was into him, is weirdly on board with just hiding the evidence and pretending it never happened. So they hide the body and he's just gone now. So you think, okay, the rest of the play is going to be about how everyone grieves for Max because even though he was a pain, they still miss him, right?

WRONG. Life is great without Max. Everything is going eerily well. And then? Max comes back as a murderous ghost. And you're like oh okay. This is the plot now. We went from teen romance to having to kill this unkillable killing machine who makes lame one liners and never learned from his actions cos he's basically 18 and hormonal forever now.

Everyone talks about Grace's slow decent into madness, and I love it too, but can we talk about Stephanie's arc really quick? She reminds me a bit of Paul from TGWDLM in that neither of them wanted to be the hero, they just wanted an easy life, but they adapt weirdly well to this strange apocalyptic plot to save the world from theatrical harm. She knows that this isn't how the story should've gone, but she's here now and she's just gonna do what she's got to do to save everyone.

Even if that includes summoning weird colourful eldritch beings to help them.

This play is fucking wild from start to finish, y'all.

[venomous-qwille]

My first stab at drawing Sol from Ghost in the Machine AU. Sol is my ('definitely not got the virus nope no virus here' 'Moon? Never heard of him' 'everything is absolutely fine ha ha ha') version of Sun introduced in the first arc of GITM! Soleil was one of the Daycare Attendants at the only Freddy's location in Canada, where he worked without incident until the company's liquidation in 20XX. As you can see, he is perfectly fine :) Ghost in the Machine AU is a DCAverse style AU set in the future, where an eccentric collector of Superstar Daycare memorabilia hoards the rarest and most elusive of treasures from the (long defunct) Fazbear Entertainment Company: the Daycare Attendant animatronic line. The story of the AU follows this motley group of DCA animatronics brought together from all over the world, as they try and figure out what living looks like. [ID: a digital drawing of Sol from Ghost in the Machine AU. He is standing hands clasped together, smiling at the viewer. He is mostly in shadow, giving a sinister edge to his expression. He wears a dress shirt, an apron embroidered with rays and clouds and two tone striped pants. There is a long yellow evening glove covering his right arm. /End ID]

[bitimdrake]

everyone in the mutual circle is already having smart opinions about the “if you had to make one bat character never have existed at all” poll (that people largely voted on without having any thought at all) but to add my two cents:

if you get rid of Bruce none of the other characters ever exist either. No exceptions. I love dunking on Bruce more than anyone, but come on, let’s be serious here. (However if you would like to get rid of the entire batfamily bar none, good news!)

if you get rid of Dick, there will never be a Robin. None of the following batboys will ever exist in any form. Batman might still get a partner of some kind, but it may or may not be a kid sidekick, so assume you will also lose any parent/child dynamics too. idk who would pick this option.

if you get rid of Barbara, none of the other Batgirls will exist either, and also it’s a 50/50 tossup if there is ever a significant presence of female vigilantes in Batman comics. Too risky.

if you get rid of Tim, you don’t get to be all “omg third robin steph!’ because Steph will therefore only appear in one story arc ever (her first, trying to get her dad caught) and never appear again, doomed to be a minor note in history instead of a recurring and eventually main character. On the other hand, there is a chance that Lonnie Machin becomes the new Robin instead soooo

getting rid of Jason the character doesn’t honestly impact that much (we’ll get some other Robin replacement in the 80s), but getting rid of Jason Todd, Dead Specter Haunting Batman, Eternal Ghost Of The Batcave changes the vibe of an entire era and risks losing or significantly changing every subsequent character. Living Jason is minor; Dead Jason is a keystone.

for such an iconic, popular, constantly appearing character, Alfred...really has almost no impact on the universe

if you get rid of Cass, you honestly aren’t going to cause a lot of ripple effects either. The universe will be fine. However, you will have to spend the rest of your life knowing you got rid of Cass, you monster

[sweeneydino]

*BIG INHALE* Hi! I’ve been rotating the Spikeangelo au in my brain for a while, and things might get incomprehensible real quick. Not all questions, some just comments... 90% of this is just musing as the train of thought jumps rails and causes massive casualties; no need to answer all if you chose to answer any.

1. The fact that Master Splinter lets Titan live with them BEFORE he knows that he’s a version of Mikey, even after the attempted murder… man will look at a mutated turtle, ask, “Is anyone going to adopt that?” and not wait for an answer.

2. In Turtle Temper, Splinter says, “Spike, chew on your leaf if you are in the mood for a story”. Ronin has a choice here: pest Raph by eating, or troll Splinter by not. What choice would he make?

3. It seems like during the Slash and Destroy episode, Titan already had his outfit. If so… where did he get the clothes? The little turtles don’t really wear anything (and their clothes would be much smaller), so unless Splinter has a secret goth wardrobe, the only thing I can think of is that Raph is Very Optimistic about how tall he’s going to get, and has stockpiled clothes accordingly.

4. A while back you mentioned Titan “chewing [Shredder] out” after Shredder kills Splinter during the Triceraton invasion. The image you drew made it look like a tirade, but the first thing that came to mind for me was… more along the lines of using Shredder as a dog toy.

5. You said that after Slash and Destroy, Titan hides for a while out of shame. When does he rejoin the others? Before the invasion, *during* the invasion, after? Does he join the farmhouse arc, or does he do as canon Slash does and defend NYC while the rest of the turtles are gone?

Ah... there's a very long part six that's just about the ghosts... I don't think I'll be bothering you with that today.

When I see these types of asks, I can never control the squeal that comes out of my mouth. I love detailed analyses about my aus

:D

I also love completing things, so let's do them all!

1) Yep! Idk whats with the Splinters, but if it's turtle-shaped and needs a home, well say no more!

When Spike turned to Titan, Splinter already sensed something off with him, something more familiar than a family pet, but he would never figure out why until their lair is attacked by the kraang at the start of the invasion.

It's hard not to realize that your son's former pet knows moves (and shows a strange amount of wisdom) that you're 90% sure you never taught or shown to any of your sons.

2)

I think he's still upset about the pizza. Or Raph's anger.

3)Dumpster diving?

I'll be honest, I forgot to write it down... So we will stick to this simple solution for now🗿

4)

Okay, well... Shredder ALMOST became a dog toy. Let's just say that (this will totally not be a future comic)

5) He reunites with them after the newtralizer arc! After a little convincing ofc

When the invasion begins, he's with Splinter and Leatherhead, having defended their home and now searching for the turtles. They find Shredder after they exit the sewer, and Titan isn't too pleased to see the old bastard, attacking him in a rage once he hears about Leo's possible "demise."

Unfortunately, when he gains the upper hand, Titan is the one caught off guard and knocked into the machine, crushed by the pipes.

Before Shredder could really begin his usual evil monologue, he becomes distracted with Leatherhead, allowing Splinter to check on Titan and help him out of the pile of metal. Despite the likelihood of having a huge bruise on his ribs, he'd be fine. Even better if he could get rid of all their issues right there in front of him.

The one wrestling an alligator. And somehow winning.

And when he sees that devil in that all too familiar armor toss leatherhead into the pit, he's all too ready to kill him.

Yet he can't. Because He's not the only one wanting to prevent the past from happening again.

Splinter sends him away to find his sons, Titan's brothers - well, sorta - and even if he wants to bring Oroku Saki, the worse pain imaginable, he's more concerned if they are okay.

...

Okay, well, if the rest of them are okay

COUGH COUGH.

He'd find them, with him.

And uh. I think Leo's perfectly fine.

So when they decided to leave for April's farmhouse, he stayed in the city to search for Splinter and the other Mutanimals after leaving Leo with the others.

Maybe he sees himself as a burden.

Then the rest you make up on the way 👍 /j

This was very fun! Maybe I should just write paragraphs or smol little chapters with much more detail and flow🤔

Nah, I'll just draw.

Can't wait for the looooooooooonnngggg part six :D

[wolfjackle-creates]

Ghost!Robin Arc 2 Part 4

Here's everything I shared during the ask game event with some minor edits. Most of the edits are around the results of the scan, I more accurately described what I was trying to say.

Story Summary: Everything changed the evening Jason met Jazz's brother. Danny introduced him and his entire family to the ghost that is, apparently, haunting him. The ghost of the Robin he had been.

The ghost of the person everyone he's ever known wishes he still was.

All he wants is to make it go away.

Arc 1: First, Last

Arc 2: First, Previous

Word Count: 1.7k

-----

Frostbite looked between them and hummed. “I should like a blood sample from you”—he nodded to Jason—“and an ectoplasm sample from you”—he indicated the ghost—“please hold out one of your arms.”

Jason sighed and gave his left arm. The yeti took out a syringe, thankfully a normal sized one, though it looked tiny in his giant hands. He watched as Frostbite carefully pierced his vein and filled a vial with blood. It went as smoothly as any blood draw he’d ever received from Dr. Thompkins or Alfred.

“You’re good at that,” he commented.

The yeti gave him an amused look. “I should hope so. I have been a doctor for many times longer than you’ve been alive.”

Jason flushed. “Sorry, it’s just… I wasn’t sure how many living patients you’ve ever had.”

“Many ghosts come to us for healing. And of those who were once alive, their ghostly bodies often mimic the ones they had in life. It is not so different, drawing blood from a living body as it is drawing ectoplasm from a ghostly one.”

“Huh. I guess that makes sense. I didn’t realize.”

Frostbite ruffled his hair and it took every ounce of self control he had to not pull away. “That is quite all right. You will learn in time.”

Jason had to bite his tongue to keep from saying he didn’t want to learn.

But the doctor was already turning to the interloper and reaching for his arm. Jason couldn’t help but watch as they made more of those chirps and trills at each other. The ones from Frostbite were much deeper than the ones from Danny or the ghost, but they were unmistakably the same sort of noises.

When Frostbite took the ectoplasm sample, it really didn’t look any different than a normal blood draw. Except the resulting fluid was bright Lazarus-green. He shuddered and looked away.

Frostbite pulled out what looked like a transparent tablet and typed something on it. “A technician will be along shortly to collect the samples and run a few tests on them. Now, Prince Phantom said he scanned you and it showed the two of you are tied together. I should like to repeat the process but with our own scanners.”

“What do your scanners do?” asked Jason.

“I will show you. See this machine?” Frostbite indicated a machine that was positioned in the corner of the room. It looked like an old-fashioned x-ray machine you might find at a dentists’ office. It was about the size of a standing shower and was mostly open. “This part here”—he touched a piece of metal that reached from floor to ceiling—“will circle around the two of you and track your ectoplasm. It serves a similar purpose in ghost anatomy to an x-ray of a human. From the readings, I will be able to assess your core, young Robin, and your liminality, Sir Jason.”

“Just Jason, please.”

“Are you not a warrior of your people? And you are courting Princess Jasmine. No, to call you anything else would be improper.”

Jason flushed. “Then what should I call you? Aren’t you the leader here? Is it King Frostbite?”

“You may call me Doctor or Chief Frostbite should you wish.”

“You’ve got it, Dr. Frostbite. So will you have to scan us together? Doesn’t look like there’s a lot of room in there.”

Frostbite hummed. “I believe three full scans, one of each of you alone and one with both of you together. I apologize for the size; this is the first time we’ve had to scan two individuals together like this.”

Jason scowled, but didn’t comment. He would do anything to get rid of the interloper.

Before they could start, however, a knock sounded on the door. Frostbite opened it to reveal two more yetis.

“Ah, Silverclaw and Snowfur. Thank you for getting here so quickly.” He grabbed the vials of blood and ectoplasm. “These are the samples I want tested.”

“Of course, Chief. We’ll get to work on them right away.”

“I know you will. Thank you.” Frostbite nodded his farewell. Once the two yetis had left, he shut the door and turned back to Jason and the ghost. “Which of you would like to get scanned first?”

Before Jason could even think of volunteering, the ghost let out a trill and flew to the machine.

Frostbite chuckled. “Very well, young one. I shall begin the process shortly. Please remain still as the scan is in progress.”

Jason watched, curious, as Frostbite pressed a few buttons. The machine whirred to life, blue lines lighting up along the metal. Then the panel Frostbite had pointed out before slowly rotated around the ghost. Five times it completed the circuit before stopping in it’s original position by the wall.

A screen lit up on the wall, also transparent like the tablet, and on it images very much like a human x-ray appeared. Only instead of bones, it showed a ball of red-orange light. Tendrils spread out in the shape of a humanoid body. A thick cord of light extended off the screen. The cord was mostly gray and it’s tendrils wound around the red-orange ball and mixed in with the branches that made up the rest of the ghost’s body.

Frostbite hummed, but didn’t comment further, and Jason didn’t know him well enough to know if it was a good or bad hum. “Sir Jason, it is your turn.”

The ghost flew out of the scanner and Jason entered. “Will it feel like anything?”

The doctor shook his head. “Indeed not. You may hear a humming, but the scan itself will not affect you in any other way.”

“So I just need to stand here for a minute while it goes?”

“Indeed. Simply remain still. Are you ready?”

Jason took a deep breath and stood tall, arms by his side. “Go ahead.”

Frostbite hit a button and the device lit up with the same blue light he’d seen before. Then the scanner began rotating around him. As the yeti had promised, he didn’t feel anything but the hum of the machine.

And soon enough, it settled back into its rest position.

Jason didn’t wait for permission before stepping out and taking a look at the results of the scan. The same cord of light that had been coming off the ghost seemed to be stretching to him. Tendrils of it wrapped around the areas where his heart and brain would be if the scan showed human organs. Thinner tendrils stretched through the rest of his body, but the majority clustered around his heart and brain. His light was mostly gray with the red and orange bleeding in.

Chills ran down his spine. The ghost had integrated himself entirely into Jason’s body. Would it even be possible to get rid of him without killing himself? But could he go on living knowing that the interloper, no, the parasite was tied so closely to him? He’d finally started to move on from his death and the anger!

“Calm down, Sir Jason.” Frostbite’s steady voice cut through his thoughts. “We have one more scan and then I shall explain my theories as to what is going on and how we might address the situation.”

Jason gave a single nod and unclenched his fists. He closed his eyes and took a few seconds to go through a breathing exercise Jazz had taught him. “Fine,” he said when he was sure he wouldn’t start throwing out cursed.

Didn’t stop him from stomping over to the scanner.

Frostbite rested one giant paw on his head for a moment. “I understand this is a lot for you. But I will assist you to the best of my abilities.” He glanced away from Jason towards the interloper. “Both of you.”

Jason frowned but didn’t bother mentioning that that was what he was worried about.

“Now, young Robin. If you could come here as well.”

Frostbite took a moment arranging Jason and the ghost within the scanner. This was the closest Jason had been to the interloper since he learned about his existence and the proximity raised goosebumps on his arm. Why did things like this always have to happen to him? He hated it. He just wanted to go back to arguing with Bruce and trading insults with Tim and pranking Dick. But he couldn’t do that if the ghost of who he’d used to be was following him everywhere.

Jason closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the creature’s stupid uniform or too-young face.

Then the humming started again and Jason could only assume he the scanner was running. He held entirely still, both because the scanner needed it and because he and the ghost were so close that if he moved, they might brush arms or touch.

He held back a shudder and didn’t open his eyes until the humming had stopped.

He couldn’t have said who evacuated the scanner first, they both rushed out quickly and set themselves up on either side of Frostbite while the image loaded.

As predicted, it was as if the two previous scans had been put together. The cord connecting Jason and the ghost was thick and strong. It originated from what Jason could only assume was the ghost’s core and spread out until it latched onto Jason’s brain and heart.

Frostbite hummed again. “I will need to ask both of you some questions that you may not want to answer. I apologize in advance for any discomfort my questions may cause. But let us get comfortable first. Afterwards, I shall explain my suspicions.”

Jason nodded and took a seat on the examination bed that Frostbite gestured to. Robin crossed his legs and appeared to sit in midair. The doctor pulled up a chair for himself and settled in.

Even sitting and with Jason on a high bed, they were roughly eye-to-eye due to the yeti’s large size.

“Young Robin, what do you remember of the time between your death and Sir Jason’s resurrection?”

The ghost, of course, only replied in the trilling language, leaving Jason out of the conversation. Asshole could’ve signed if he wanted to. Jason bit his tongue to keep from saying anything, though.

After a time, Frostbite nodded and turned to Jason. “And now, Sir Jason, I must know how you were brought back to life.”

-----

Ah, Jason really isn't going to like this conversation. None of it is fun, but this conversation will be his least favorite.

And look at Robin being just as petty back! Refusing to bring Jason in on the conversation.

How will they move forward from this?

If you want notifications when I update, please check out the Subscription Post!

[emilykaldwen]

The Maiden and the Drowning Boy | Aegon x OC | Chapter Twenty

Rating: Explicit

Ships: Aegon II Targaryen x Abrogail Strong (Lyonel Strong's Daughter), Jacaerys Velaryon x Helaena Targaryen

Summary: As the kingdom teeters on the edge of chaos, Alicent Hightower swaps the pieces on the board: Aegon will marry Abrogail Strong, Larys’ younger sister and heir to Harrenhal. Caught in the web of intrigue and political machinations, the pair must figure out where their loyalties lie, and what they mean to one another.

No tag list. please follow @emkald-fic and turn on post notifications for updates or subscribe on AO3

Tumblr Masterpost

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen | Chapter Eighteen | Chapter Nineteen

AO3 LINK

Author's Note: Happy Anniversary to Maiden! I'm so happy to those of you who've been on the journey from the start and those who have found this story along the way. We are in the final few chapters of this Arc! And to celebrate, I bring you amazing plot twists! All my love and thanks to @vampire-exgirlfriend for holding my hand and being with me every step of the way, and @darkwolf76 who loved this story first.

If you're reading here on tumblr, I'd love to hear from you! My inbox is open and I can't wait to hear your thoughts!

CHAPTER TWENTY - I'm In Over My Head

We finally arrive at Harrenhal, where you cannot escape the ghosts.

It was a fortnight by horseback and only six hours by Sunfyre to Harrenhal, but the royal progress along the Kingsroad took a moon. The people needed to see them, the queen had insisted, refusing to let them stay and ride out on dragonback. Instead, Helaena would stay, Ser Criston at her side, and the sworn sword would fly with the princess in a month’s time. Baela would fly out with them on Moondancer, Jace on Vermax, and Aemond would accompany the royal progress without Vhagar.

Harrenhal could only house so many dragons.

Abby was ready to be done with it all; her body felt like it would never stop jostling even when she was out of the wheelhouse. The days on horseback were better, but even those had left her aching from her inexperience. Aegon had whispered in her ear that it would be good practice for her, and how precious she looked bowlegged. The ribald flirtation had sent a rush of heat and anticipation through her, as well as frustration with him for making light of how uncomfortable she’d been. For his cheek, she’d bundled herself in the wheelhouse with the Crane twins, Merei Thorne, and Floris, the latter of which had her hold her tongue to keep from ranting.

She missed Wylla.

Wylla, she knew, would loop her arm through hers and recount all the wonderful ways they could make Aegon miserable. Jesting, of course, though the pair regularly snipped at one another.

Guilt roiled in Abby’s gut. After the betrothal announcement between Aemond and Floris, Wylla had taken the opportunity to flee to Stone Hedge to witness her brother’s nuptials to Lady Alys Bracken. It had been good that she did, Abby thought. She would be able to see her mother and other brothers, who had come down in order to attend her wedding, and Wylla did not know when she would see them next. Karhold was further north than Winterfell and her friend was giving up a great deal to come live at Harrenhal.

That said little of the other reasons why Wylla had eagerly left for Stone Hedge, and Abby thought of Helaena’s words all those months ago. ‘And I’ll be left alone while you and Aegon are busy making babies together!’ She felt like a poor friend and and even worse sister, unable to deny that as the weeks had passed, her focus had been less on duties she’d taken so seriously, of being there for those she cared for, and more focused on the making of her wedding dress, of the stealing time with Aegon with a desperate heat and wanting, of responding to well wishes and organizing a household… when she had promised to always be there for Helaena. When she had begun to foster a love and friendship with Wylla that had grown into its own sisterhood.

Jace had so easily comforted Helaena during her difficult days when Abby was pulled away or otherwise occupied. And Wylla had not even told her of the budding romance between her and Aemond - now brutally cut short in the wake of politics beyond their control. So consumed she’d been with Aegon, with everything else, things that, selfishly, were for her and her alone, and so easily she’d forgotten those she vowed to care for.

Abby would do all she could to make up for it. She would ensure that Wylla did not feel forgotten, that her and Helaena could indeed visit often. She would write, she would-

“Lady Abrogail?”

Desmera’s voice cut through the swirl of guilty words flitting through Abby’s head and she looked up at the Crane girl. Desma, Abby corrected herself. Desmera preferred Desma. She was holding the wool kirtle in her arms, the shade of green as lush and dark as the fields they passed through with red weirwood embroidery along the arms. The surcoat carefully folded on the table was half red and half blue and edged in silvery rabbit fur, among the other parts of her heraldic dress. She would not be in the wheelhouse as they came into Harrentown, and the parade that announced their arrival would be a large one. Already they had seen an uptick of traffic along the Kingsroad and the tents in the fields, the small inns filled to bursting the closer they were. With only a few hours until they approached the town, it was almost like they were approaching King’s Landing. Merchants were setting up along the way to hawk wares and Abby knew that the crowd would be thicker the closer they crept

The distant call of dragons echoed outside the tent and Abby and Desma poked their heads out the flap to crane their necks to look up.

“I can’t believe Ser Criston is riding dragonback with the princess,” Desma murmured, and Abby laughed. He had stayed behind with Helaena, and Abby knew it was to keep an eye on Jace. What Abby would have given to see the look on the knight’s face when he was told that he would fly with Helaena. Not even Queen Alicent had flown with her children, despite both Aegon and Helaena’s offers.

Abby knew how big dragons were, having been around them her whole life, but this was different. With no expansive sprawl of King’s Landing or the Great Sept to compare, they seemed even larger. Past the many tents of the camps, the moors of the Riverlands was all there was. No buildings, no great mountains or spires or monuments. Just the green, rolling hills surrounding the Kingsroad and the forest beyond.

Dreamfyre’s bulk was impressive, the blue and silver of her scales standing out in the morning light, her call warm and low, melodic in a way that was surprising for a dragon. Two smaller dragons were flying about, answering the calls, scales in shades of jade and bronze and silver as Jace and Baela danced around the great dragon.

There was another familiar call, the trilling echoing across the moor like a song. Abby’s heart swelled, hearing Aegon’s happy shout from somewhere inside the camp as Sunfyre gleamed as bright as the morning sun. How she missed him, how she missed being free in the air where nothing else mattered.

Desma tugged on her elbow, laughing. “Come back here, Abby, you’re still in your nightgown.”

Abby allowed herself to be pulled back in the tent, and was soon joined by Merei Thorne, who came bearing a plate of cold meats and bread and warm cider to break her fast.

“I’m ready to be done with all this mud,” she groused, dark hair loose and free about her shoulders, her swarthy skin flushed from the cool morning air. “Ser Rickard says the crowds up the road will be thick by the time we reach them.” Merei’s uncle was a member of the Kingsguard, and Abby was grateful that she had sought information before arriving.

She let herself be tugged out of her nightgown and a fresh chemise pulled over her head before Desma got her into the green kirtle and Merei shoved a piece of bread with ham into Abby’s open mouth. “Wylla’s sent word this morning with the rider.” Merei waved the scroll around. “Your rooms have been made ready, and Lythene and Sarra are settling in, so all you need to do is arrange things to your liking.”

Abby eagerly reached for the scroll as the girls laced her into the kirtle. It was a short message, but Wylla’s handwriting was comforting and familiar.

“Is Alys another one of your ladies?” Merei asked, moving the surcoat out of the way while Abby sat to eat. Desma opened the box of combs and ribbons and hairpins to get to work on her curls.

Wylla’s letter had mentioned help from Alys Rivers, and Abby shook her head before Desma pinched her to keep still as she carefully worked Abby’s curls.

“No, she’s a member of our household. A healer and sometimes ladies maid. She helped my mother when she was pregnant with me, but declined to come to the capital with us.” Her memories of the woman were fuzzy whenever Abby tried to look at them more closely. Dark haired with large grey eyes, Alys had been a fixture when she had visited Harrenhal over the years. “It’s good that she’s helping Wylla. I know Aunt Mya has her hands full with everything and my cousin, Deidre, is there to help.” Deidre, the future Lady Smallwood of Acorn Hall, had grown up at Harrenhal and would prove helpful in this busy time of preparation. Deidre’s younger sister, Cassana, lived at Runestone and would be arriving with Lord Yorick’s party soon.

Desma’s hands worked quickly to pull Abby’s curls from her face, winding a knot of braids along the back of her head, the rest curling down her back to her waist. It would be hours of riding, but also hours of being seen by the people who looked to Harrenhal, who looked to her family, as their liege lords. Merei pulled a delicate net of silver dotted with rubies, sapphires, and emeralds and pinned it around Desma’s delicate knotwork.

With her mother’s carnelian necklace around her throat, Abby shoved her feet into her riding boots and grabbed a last chunk of bread and ham before ducking out of the tent as her ladies oversaw the packing of her things.

The sea of black and red tents felt like a field of Targaryen poppies as she made her way through the camp. The ground was not as muddy as Merei complained, but Abby was nonetheless grateful for her sturdy boots. Already the grass was churning into a muddy mess in various places and she carefully stepped around them. Servants paused to offer quick bows and curtsies, which Abby felt awkward about. They did not need to pause in their duties to acknowledge her, but at the same time, it was strangely satisfying to be recognized, to be deferred to in some small way.

Abby was not sure how to feel about it, so she pushed the confusing feelings away and shoved the rest of her bread in her mouth.

She found Aegon where the horses were stabled, tethered to temporary posts and being fed their morning grain. The morning light turned Aegon’s curls a soft gold, his gray linen shirt tucked into a pair of high waisted, black riding pants, stripes of red embroidered with gold scales down the sides into a pair of tall, shiny black boots. He was without his own surcoat and she knew that it was just as ostentatious as her own heraldic gown: black and red and scaled as was the Targaryen way. She licked butter from her thumb as she approached, gaze raking over him appreciatively and the opened neck of his shirt, teasing the lightly freckled skin that she longed to kiss.

Kostōba was as brilliant as ever, pawing happily at the ground and rooting his nose against Aegon, clearly looking for more treats. His cream colored coat shone as golden as his master’s hair in the sun, brilliant against the caparison of red and black taffeta for House Targaryen. Aegon was busy stroking the snout of another horse, focused on checking the buckles of the halter and bit. The mare was a brilliant chestnut, so red that it matched her hair, it’s mane only a scant few shades darker. It pawed the ground beside Kostōba, nickering and also looking for treats.

“What’s this?”

Aegon turned, eyes wide as if he’d been caught, a sleepy smile on his face. She was no longer mad at him, of course, but the forced distance over their travels was frustrating, in addition to the misery of frequently having to sleep outdoors, no matter how comfortable the tents were. It made tempers shorter, and the stress of everything that was to come was fraying at her.

Aegon closed the distance between them, cupping her face in his hands, and the touch immediately had her shoulders relaxing and she sighed as he kissed her. Chastely, but it was Aegon and his teeth snuck in a quick nibble before he pulled back. She did her best to hide her pout, tasting the wine he’d had that morning on her mouth. Abby licked her lips, blushing at the look he gave her.

“Happy nameday!” he declared, gesturing to the mare. Abby blinked at him, owlish and momentarily confused.

“Nameday?” What day was it? Time had become an endless blur of bumpy roads and the creaking wheelhouse. He raised an eyebrow at her, taking her chin in hand and tilting her head to look up at him.

“It’s your nameday,” he repeated slowly as if she hadn’t heard him the first time.

Oh! It was, wasn’t it? She sputtered softly and he chuckled, pressing another brief kiss to her parted mouth.

“Happy nameday,” he repeated more slowly this time, snickering at her lapse of memory and dropping her chin to caress her shoulder and turn her towards the mare. “She’s from the same stock as Kostōba. Six years old and well trained. She’ll be gentle with you and give a hoof to the face of any who should try to pull you from her.” His grin brightened as he went on, lilac eyes crinkled in excitement as he glanced back at her. Abby could see the hope in Aegon’s face, the nerves and question of if he’d done well with the gift.

Kostōba snorted at Aegon’s shoulder, nudging at him more insistently. Aegon huffed and pulled another piece of carrot from the pocket of his black riding coat. Abby reached up to gently stroke the velvet soft nose of the mare and took the second carrot that Aegon offered. She eagerly took it with greedy teeth, and Abby giggled as the velvet nose tickled her palm.

“She’s beautiful,” Abby said, giddiness bubbling through her belly, swooping at the thoughtfulness of the gesture, and surprise at how exciting it was to be given a horse of her very own. “And she won’t buck me off?”

“Well you’ve proven to be a good rider already, on dragonback no less, though it’s different with a horse, obviously. And I think as long as you keep petting her and speaking to her sweetly as you do, provide plenty of carrots, maybe even some apples? Oh, I think you’ll be just fine.”

Abby scoffed, but her smile was bright. “Endless supply of carrots and apples and oats. Understood, my prince. I will endeavor to bond her to me.” The mare huffed softly as Kostōba’s head came near hers to bump it.

“They look good together, don’t they?” Aegon asked softly, casually.

“They do,” Abby agreed with a soft laugh. “She matches my hair.”

“Exactly. That’s why I picked her.”

“And your horse matches your hair.”

Aegon shrugged, cheeks flushed pink as he scratched around his stallion’s nose. “I have good taste. Do you like her?” There was a furrow now between his brows as he pointedly asked her, her words not doing enough to convey her thanks. It was a guileless thing - Aegon wasn’t trying to tease a deeper showing of affection from her in his usual, playful way. Abby handed him her gathered skirts and he took them, confused, and she reached up to cup his face with both hands, his skin warm against her perpetually chilled fingers.

“I love this gift, Aegon. No one else has wished me happy nameday, but you did, and provided me a thoughtful gift that I love very much,” she reassured him, teeth catching on her lower lip as the words visibly washed over him. She could feel the tension vibrating through him, as if he couldn’t quite believe she enjoyed the gift, or was waiting for something to drop, or a dozen other things. She felt him shudder and relax into her and Abby hummed, thumbs stroking along the apples of his cheeks. The furrow eased, the tension in his shoulders relaxed, his gaze grew softer as he turned his head slightly to nuzzle against her touch. Her belly was warm, fingers toying with the softness of his silver hair, affection surging through her. Abby pressed up on her toes to press a soft, innocent peck to his plush mouth. “I love you, Aegon.”

“I love you,” he whispered shyly as his cheeks flushed a deeper shade of pink. Satisfaction and ease seemed to fill him as she pulled away and took her skirts back from his hold. He cleared his throat, tossing his hair back from his face and reached up to stroke the little white star on the mare’s forehead. “Now we can go riding together - properly have a good race.”

“You want to race? Well then, we’ll have to come up with some good wagers then, won’t we?” The prospect excited her, the planning for things they’d do once the wedding was over and they could just get on with the rest of their lives; away from the Red Keep, away from the politics and the eyes that constantly watched them, away from everything that chased them in waking and in sleep.

Another bright call sounded above them and they both looked up to see Sunfyre circling, his chirps and clicks echoing down to them. The mare snorted and backed away, shaking her head at the closeness of the predator. Two of the stableboys came hurrying over to help calm her. Abby backed away, not wanting to be too close should she rear up, feeling foolish that she was unable to calm her horse, let alone understand how.

“He missed you,” she said, and Aegon laughed, bright and happy as he always was when it came to his golden boy.

“He’s a smart one, isn’t he?” Aegon grinned. “I was…” He trailed off, uncertain, and Abby pressed a kiss to his shoulder.

“He would not abandon you. That menace broke out of the dragon pit to get to you, remember?” Not that Sunfyre had caused any damage outside of freeing himself from his chains, and would not return until Aegon had gone to retrieve him before they were dragged back to the Red Keep all those months ago.

“He would most certainly not.” Confidence returned to Aegon’s voice and he cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting words of Valyrian and gesturing north.

Abby’s gaze drifted from the sight to look out past the horses to the rolling moors past them. The mist still hung heavy along the ground, slowly burning away as the morning grew, lending a murky sight of the forest that obscured the sight of the God’s Eye.

A twisting sensation spooled through her chest as she watched the trees. There were oaks abundant along the road, and as they drew north, there were pines dotting the landscape as well. But the great, dark forest beside them was different. The oaks here were giant things. Once, as a little girl, she’d ridden out with Harwin into the Red Wood. There were a few red oaks in the Harrenhal godswood - massive things that shot past the great height of the walls. Here in the forest surrounded by them, it felt like another world. The trunks of the trees were as big as the family dining hall in the Kingspyre. Uncle Simon said that the great round table had been cut from such a trunk.

Ancient trees that had survived the great heart wound of Harren the Black. Spirits lived in the weirwoods; she remembered those stories, and the ancient sentinels remembered too. They were here long before and would be there long after -

“Hey!”

Strong, warm hands gripped her arms and shook her. Abby blinked slowly, feeling tired and confused. Aegon was looking down at her; face pale, confused, annoyed. “What’s gotten into you? I was calling for you, Abby.”

“But…” As she meant to say she had not moved, Abby realized that she could not hear nor smell the horses, and that the sounds of camp were softer than they had been before.

“You kept walking and I thought you were going to show me something but then you stopped speaking,” Aegon went on, but his voice sounded odd - strangely muffled and then clear. She reached for him but her hand missed his arm and he reached for it, tugging her to him. “Abby, you’re freezing.”

She was always freezing.

The crowd was deafening and the drum beats of the parade only added to the din. The chestnut mare, now named Stranger, trotted smoothly beside Aegon’s stallion as the royal procession made its way through Harrentown. The scouts and messengers had not lied.

The crowd was large, not only the townsfolk but filled with those who had traveled far and wide to witness the festivities and hawk their wares. As they approached her family’s castle, the fields field with colored tents sporting the banners of the noble houses that had made their way to the God’s Eye.

Harrenton was not an exceptionally large town although little was when compared to King’s Landing. It was a trading post, a crossroads at the mouth of the Riverlands. Trade and travel that came south from Darry would stop here, as well as the trade from the south at the capital. The buildings were white stucco and plaster with the red oak timbers from the Red Wood, tiered three stories tall with steeply pitched, clay shingled roofs. Many of the ground floors were made from red bricks. Mud was in abundance here, and pottery and bricks were their foundations of trade.

Abby tilted her head up to the banners hung across the thoroughfare, the tri color streamers of House Strong interspersed with the black and red ribbons of House Targaryen. Those who could not find space along the red brick road hung out from the leaded windows, waving flags and banners, throwing out handfuls of flower petals from the winter flowers in swirling dances of pinks and purples, whites and yellows. Young children on their parents shoulders, too disinterested in whatever people were on display, giggled and reached to try to catch the petals. The people yelled for House Strong, they yelled for the name of her father, they yelled…

They yelled her name.

‘Lady Abrogail! Lady Strong! Princess Abrogail!’

Her cheeks flamed, her grin both shy and beaming, unused to the attention being paid to her. Abby glanced over at Aegon, who preened beneath his own attention, the petals that were thrown about the air catching in his silver curls.

‘Prince Aegon! House Targaryen! Lady Abrogail! House Strong!’

His lilac gaze found her, his grin broadening, all teeth and bright eyes, dimples creased in his cheeks. The breeze caught in her curls, fluttering the delicate silver veil around her face. The flower petals drifted and swirled between them, caught in his hair, in the silver and red manes of their horses, and everything felt like a dream.

Now they left the main thoroughfare and made their way up the switchback to where the castle loomed, and as they made the turn, the world dropped out as the vast, glittering expanse of the God’s Eye filled the horizon. Abby’s breath caught in her throat and beside her, Aegon audibly exhaled, momentarily halting his horse beside her to take a look. Behind them, Abby could hear Daeron’s exclamation of wonder.

The God’s Eye ate the entire horizon, glittering like an aquamarine gem beneath the cloudless blue of the sky. The only thing that interrupted the site was the distant, hazy sight of the Isle of Faces, obscured by the haze and distance.

“It’s bigger than the Whispering Sound,” Daeron breathed. “Uncle Gwayne-”

“Aye,” the elder sounded just as surprised, just as awed. “Large enough for the eye of a god, isn’t it?”

Seagulls called along with other birds along the banks and Abby could just make out a few fishing boats tiny on the water. She rose up in her saddle to take a better look, vowing that she would never tire of the spectacular sight.

“I didn’t realize how I missed this sight.” She laughed, unsure if she might cry from grief or joy.

“It’s the color of your eyes,” Aegon said softly, his gaze firmly affixed to the sight before them. He wasn’t even looking at her, just caught in wonder. It was a new expression for Aegon, and Abby was loath to draw him from it. She reached over and he must have seen her, or maybe he’d been reaching for her hand at the same time. “It’s endless, like the sky.”

He squeezed her hand and with a gentle command, their party continued.

Harrenhal was a scar against the landscape, the black stone stark against the green and blue of the landscape. With towers shooting up higher than the tallest of Maegor’s Holdfast, Harrenhal loomed as its maker always intended: Ominous and impossible to ignore. The twisted, melted stone that capped the towers were vicious reminders of the violence in the past, but life bloomed amidst the ruins. Sentinels and oaks, vibrant and lush, shot past the tops of the stone walls from the large godswood that butted up against the shore. Harrenhal held a small household guard and several called out from the gatehouse.

Making the final turn, their party was greeted by the half shattered statue of Harren the Black, only his legs and rearing mount left above the bridge. It started with stone and then switched to thick ironwood that spanned the dry moat beneath, and, as if to welcome them home, Sunfyre of all things perched above the gates like an enormous, golden hawk, calling out and declaring that this was now his domain. Stranger whickered nervously, hesitating in approach until Abby urged her on with a gentle hand against her neck.

“Seven hells,” Aegon muttered, barely caught over the sounds of the hooves on the wooden bridge and the creaking of the carriages behind them. Whatever else Aegon said was drowned out beneath the sound of Sunfyre’s trilling. The golden dragon was singing and it was a haunting tune that echoed along the stone like water over river rocks. The sound of it sent dozens, maybe even a hundred or more, bats bursting from the ruined tops of the tower. Distracted by the creatures that took to the sky, he pushed off the gatehouse, the horses rearing as stone debris fell in their path.

Abby looked at Aegon, eyebrows raised. “He can’t keep doing that.”

He frowned, half-offended and mildly concerned. “It’s not his fault the stone is crumbling,” he said, but the defense was half-hearted as he eyed the broken stone being pushed out of the way.

Aemond and Daeron, Ser Gwayne and a few of the Kingsguard followed them, the guards taking a station at the gate until the king passed through. The rest of the party in their wheelhouses were held back until the stone was removed.

The gatehouse was a great thing cut through the thick, black curtain walls. The way was lit with torches, the echo of the horses’ hoof beats giving an uncertain cacophony as the sound bounced around the tunnel. Abby’s gaze drifted up, the ceiling of the tunnel shadowed but she remembered Larys telling her the frightening tale of the dozen murder holes where they would drop oil and poisonous spiders and venomous snakes down onto those who tried to breach the castle. She’d had nightmares for weeks.

Aegon said nothing beside her, and the look on his face was one of bewildered interest. She bit her lip, a smile playing. He had only ever known King’s Landing, after all.

Tears pricked her eyes as the strange longing sensation that had harbored for so long in her chest eased. It didn’t go away, but she could feel the hooked edges of yearning, the grief, the feeling that she did not belong, that something was missing, smoothing out into something bittersweet. Beyond the great walls of the castle, Harrenhal was full of life. Beneath the great shadow of the ruined towers, a reclaiming had taken place over the years, and the notion soothed that bramble within her.

As the party passed through the gatehouse into the outer bailey, Abby’s eyes darted over the crowd that had begun to gather. Over the years, some of the ruins had been dismantled and turned into proper staff quarters. A new granary, the stables,meant to house a thousand horses, had partially been converted to a barn. Before them, the Hall of a Hundred Hearths loomed, rebuilt through the reclaiming of the ruined Tower of Ghosts, now only a few stories tall.

The focal point of the hall was the ornate, stained glass window above the colossal entrance. Along the top half of the circle, a weirwood tree was carefully placed, the red leaves a border around the top, the cream colored branches reaching wide, and the sun behind it sported the tri-color stripes of her family’s sigil. Below the roots was a mound with seven circles - each portraying the sigil of each aspect of the Seven.

The Andals had spread their faith when they had conquered, but here in the halls of her family’s seat, and through the Riverlands, folk noble and small alike found a faith made their own - to mourn the loss of the weirwoods in their subjugation, and the comfort found in faces old and new alike. Especially here, on the shores of the God’s Eye, where the last of the southron weirwoods still thrived, where whispers and tales of the Children of the Forest outside the North clung like moss to the stilts of the houses along the riverbanks.

Fluttering fabric caught her eye and Abby looked up to see the banners of their house strung between the towers, interspersed every two with the black and red House Targaryen, and every ten with the blue and red fish of House Tully, their immediate overlords. In the front of the hall, where the crowd was thickest, the short, white hair and broad frame of Uncle Simon stood out; he was clad in a rich, black coat, Aunt Mya beside him, her dark curls thickly streaked with silver, her gown red. Her cousins were there too; Garret, with his strawberry blonde curls, not much older than herself, holding his three-year-old daughter, Gwenys, just as ruddy gold as her papa. His father, Ser Edric, leaned heavily on a cane on the other side of Uncle Simon. As she went down the line, she caught sight of Wylla, clad in Abby’s colors in a gown of deep blue with a sash of green and red, beaming brightly beside Alyn Hull, who looked dashing in a jerkin of deep, blood red and black pants tucked into shiny, polished boots.

“Welcome to Harrenhal, Your Grace,” Uncle Simon greeted Aegon before his warm gaze found hers. “Welcome home, Lady Abrogail.” The title address to her felt odd, but this was a formal occasion. Two stableboys glad in House Strong livery reached for the bridles of the horses, Aegon dismounting easily as Abby frowned in slight annoyance at the yards of fabric of her surcoat. She’d shifted to side-saddle before they’d entered the town in preparation for an easier dismount but it was still daunting.

“Allow me, my lady.” Alyn was there, grinning at her, his green eyes soft and Abby returned his bright expression with a relieved one of her own.

“Thank you, Mister Hull,” she said, grateful, and let Alyn help her from the horse and set her safely on the ground. She caught Aegon’s brief annoyance at being denied his gallant moment and she patted Alyn on the shoulder. “We have some things your mother and a Miss Bri had sent up to the castle.” Alyn’s friendly expression moved to a grateful surprise, and she could see the red coloring his tanned cheeks.

“And I thank you, my lady. I am most appreciative.” Abby felt a giddiness at making a good impression with Aegon’s friend, and she left Alyn to embrace her great-aunt and uncle, uncaring if it was improper. This was her family, and even though she’d only seen a few of them not long ago, this was different.

This was a homecoming.

The warmth of her Uncle’s hug made her chest ache further, and Abby tucked her head beneath his chin, squeezing him tightly, eyes shut and for a moment, allowed herself to pretend that there was no pomp and circumstance and that it was her father who embraced her. Uncle Simon would never replace him, but he reminded her so much of him that she would not feel guilty for clinging to the memory. He seemed to understand, for she felt him squeeze her extra hard before releasing her with a paternal kiss to her forehead and then allowed Aunt Mya, who exclaimed, “A chroí! Tá cuma álainn ort,” before she was wrapped in a cloud of softness and the smell of lilies from her aunt’s perfume. Her hands, shaking slightly with her arthritis, carefully touched the veil she wore and the carnelian necklace around her throat. “You’ve got that Westerland poise to you,” she observed, and though the words might have been taken as a slight, there was a fondness there. “Like your mother and that Lefford blood, but oh, you’ve got the wild river in you, don’t you.” Her hands gently cupped her face, and Aunt Mya’s dark eyes shone with tears. “They haven’t taken that from you. Good.”

“It’s good to finally be home,” Abby said, her voice thick with emotion. Joy, sadness, grief, relief, and a swirl of other things she could not identify. She cleared her throat, turning in her Aunt’s embrace to gesture to Aemond, Daeron, and Gwayne who had dismounted. “May I present Prince Aemond and Prince Daeron, as well as the queen’s brother, Ser Gwayne.”

“Ser Simon,” Gwayne said, sketching a bow. “I hope you do not mind my squire and I joining the household.” His grin was bright and disarming, his hand coming to clasp Daeron’s shoulder. “My sister hopes for us to keep an eye on my nephew, but I think it will be a good opportunity for my squire to also learn from a renowned knight such as yourself, Ser.” Abby bit her lip to hold in her laugh, appreciating the look of surprise and pride on her uncle’s face. “And Lady Mya, these are for you.” He produced from his green leather riding jacket a carefully wrapped package. “Your lovely niece shared with me how you once loved lacemaking. While this could not compare what you’ve made, I do hope you find use for this.”

“From the lacemaker who made my wedding dress,” Abby chimed in as her blushing aunt took the carefully wrapped package of lace. Aunt Mya’s features shifted into amusement.

“Oh, I like this one, Simon. You can sit by me at dinner, Ser Gwayne.” Uncle Simon rolled his eyes while Daeron stepped forward, sending a look at his uncle.

“And I brought this for Lady Gwenys,” Daeron said, not to be outdone by Gwayne’s flirtation. He produced a doll from his own coat, made from soft linen with carefully made brown yarn hair, and painted blue eyes with a felt crown on her head.

“Thank you very much, my prince,” Garret said, shifting Gwenys in his arms. “Can you say thank you to Prince Daeron?” Gwenys’ eyes were large in her face, gnawing shyly on her lip as she snuggled into her father, unsure of what to make of all the strange people. Daeron held the doll up higher, taking the little hand to wave at the child.

“Hello, Lady Gwenys,” Daeron said in a silly voice, blonde hair falling into his blue eyes, his own cheeks pink at all the attention. “Will you be my new friend?”

That drew the little girl out of her shyness, bubbling with giggles and reached for the toy with grabby little fingers. “Fank you!” she shouted, squealing as she clutched at the toy. Abby felt Aegon at her back and shivered as he leaned down to brush his lips against her ear.

“Was I meant to bring a gift?” he asked, his whisper harsh with anxiety. Abby pressed her lips firmly together to hold back her giggle and turned into his hold, a kiss brushed to his cheek.

“You’re fine. There’s plenty of time. I think it’ll have more meaning after the wedding.”

Abby’s gaze briefly took in the arrival of the carriages that held the king and queen, and the small council absent Ser Tyland. He’d left court with her grandfather to Castamere where his wife, Elayna, was ready to give birth to their children. Twins had been born, according to the raven that Abby had received from her cousin, and Elayna was sorry she could not bring them, but it would be nice to see her. Lady Elayna preferred the freedom of Castamere, and Abby could not blame her, not when being here among the half ruin of Harrenhal had revitalized her in a way she could not describe.

The crowd all lowered themselves in deference as the king was helped from the wheelhouse. Travelling had been difficult for him, and the progress had taken as much time as it could in order to keep him comfortable. He clutched his cane, squinting in the afternoon sun, the light catching upon his golden crown. The expression on his pale, mottled face was difficult for Abby to read, and she wondered if he was thinking about the last time he was here, when the lords of the realm declared him king over Princess Rhaenys and her son.

Larys appeared from the next carriage with Lord Jasper Wylde and the Grand Maester, a placid smile on his own features. “Uncle, you’ve outdone yourself,” he complimented. Abby noticed then that her uncle’s smile tightened, no longer meeting his eyes as he regarded Larys.

“It has been some time since our house has something so wonderful to celebrate. Not since Abrogail’s birth, I think. After so much tragedy, these halls benefit from the festivities.”

“We are looking forward to them, Ser Simon,” the queen smiled, her hand fluttering to the king’s arm. “It has been a long journey, and the king needs rest and recuperation. We shall reconvene for supper?” It was not a request. Alicent Hightower could command with a smile, and all the authority afforded to her as the mother of the realm.

“Of course, your graces,” Aunt Mya said with a smile. She clapped her hands and there was a flurry of activity, the king’s wheeled chair being brought out while Uncle Simon explained they had easily accessible rooms for the king so his time here would be comfortable.

Then there was a flurry of raven hair and blue wool as Wylla’s decorum barely kept her from completely barrelling into Abby and she clutched her friend, embracing her tightly and burying her face into her shoulder. She smelled of cinnamon and spice, familiar and comforting.

“Oh, I’ve missed you,” she cried, Wylla giving her a tight squeeze.

“I’ve missed you too! You look beautiful.” Abby pulled back and Wylla pinched her chin with a playful look on her fox features, the little scar along her mouth pulling at the smile on her face. She pushed her hand away with a shake of her head, hooking their arms together.

“As do you! Is this a new dress?” Wylla hummed in the affirmative and led the way across the tightly packed gravel. Aegon and Alyn fell in behind them, and behind them, the rest of her ladies followed. The king and queen and the rest of their immediate party were being led into the closest tower - what was ominously referred to as the Tower of Dread.

It was where Athair and Harwin had died.

As she watched the king and queen enter the tower, something ugly curled in her chest. ‘Good’, she thought savagely, though altogether unlike her. She hoped the ghosts that slept there would haunt them. The queen would not treat her so unkindly if her father were still here. The king? Well, he deserved a good haunting. Let the ghost of Lord Maegor Towers terrorize him during his stay.

The main hall at the foot of the Kingspyre Tower was a bustle of activity. Servants in the House Strong livery hurried to and fro from the small kitchens beneath the tower, sending out refreshment to the new arrivals.

“As soon as we had word of your arrival, I had a bath readied,” Wylla said. “There’s the bathhouses, of course, but I thought you’d like some private time.”

“That does sound nice,” she sighed, heading up the staircase. The next floor above the hall held the galleries and the library. Precious things that her father had loved, and his father before him.

‘What if fire seeks to claim me here? As it had them?’

The fear was ugly and painful and squeezed the breath from her lungs with its sudden onset. Wylla’s voice was muffled in her ears as she stood frozen in the stairwell.

“In the black of night, the dragon did rise.”

“What?” she choked out, turning to look through the open doors of the gallery. It was not Wylla’s voice. Abby could not even be sure it was a woman’s voice. She tugged away from Wylla’s hold to the open archway but a firm grip on her arm tugged her back. Aegon stroked her cheek, drawing her attention back to him. Abby’s cheeks colored. “I heard… I thought…”

“It’s just the wind,” he told her.

“Unfamiliar sounds,” Wylla chimed in, coming to her other side, although her eyes narrowed at her friend’s discomfort. “Come, we’ll get you settled into the bath and you can lay down. A lazy lie in.”

Abby nodded, mouth shut as everyone stared at her with worry and confusion. Catching the brief look Wylla and Aegon exchanged, Abby tugged away. She felt judged, as she had felt that morning when Aegon had shaken her out of whatever haze had taken hold of her. It was one thing to have such a lapse in front of him, but now here she was in front of their household, so many eyes on her, confused and curious. Gathering her heavy skirts in her arms, she soldiered forward, desperate to get out of her gown. If she could, she would have stripped from the surcoat in the stairway itself, but she would have gotten tangled in the fabric and likely tumbled down the stairs.

What an auspicious start to the festivities; a tragic bride felled by a broken neck.

She ignored the call of her name behind her, climbing past Uncle Simon’s apartments and office to the landing of what had once been her mother’s rooms. They were rooms that might have belonged to Rhaenyra Targaryen in another life, or Sabitha Frey or Alysanne Blackwood, or any dozens of young women in the Riverlands her brother could have taken to wife.

None of this should be hers. This castle, these lands, were not her birthright.

They were drenched in ash and screams and the knowledge of this was grasping her tighter with every step she took before she burst through the doors of her apartments. Afternoon light streaked through the large doors that opened out onto the multilevel balcony that went from her rooms up to Aegon’s chambers. Beyond would be the beautiful sight of the God’s Eye, but for now, it was the brilliant blue sky and the roses that crept along the stone and woodwork. Low couches littered the space, plush rugs faded with age, and before the fireplace and its merry flame, was the large tub draped in linens and ready and waiting.

The shadows beside the fireplace moved and Abby stilled, fear freezing her limbs until the face of the shadow appeared. The woman was older, older than the queen, mayhaps, with inky black hair that hung to her waist, a square face and storm gray eyes. In her hands, she held a woven circle of twigs, and Abby looked at the stick figure coming to shape in the center of it.

“Lady Abrogail,” she greeted, her accent like Wylla’s, like her Aunt Mya’s. “Did you leave the rest of your chattering ducklings behind?”

Buzzing filled her ears and Abby pressed her hands to her chest, fingers knotting into the fabric. “I… I… I can’t breathe.”

“If you could not breathe, you could not speak,” the woman pointed out, discarding her wood weaving on the chair. She closed the distance and grabbed Abby’s hands. “You speak, therefore you breathe. I hear your gasping. So keep doing that.”

Hands joined the woman’s to help her out of the surcoat and work the laces on her kirtle. Her vision was dark and hazy around the edges and she continued to heave and gulp for air. She swooned and arms caught her.

“What did she say, Alys?” she heard Wylla ask.

“A tincture from my chest,” was the answer. “The one in the blue bottle. And the smelling salts.” Alys River tsked and her face shimmered before her as she backed Abby to the low couch. “If we shove you in that bath now, you’ll faint and are liable to drown. A bride felled by her bathwater. What a tragic end.”

Abby blinked, her mouth dry. “What did you…”

“Alys likes to be cryptic,” Wylla’s voice drifted to her through the buzzing in her ears. She let herself be shuffled around and moved as if she were no more than a ragdoll onto the chaise, her legs propped up higher than her head on a pile of cushions. Time passed in a haze as the dizziness and the rushing passed. Alys sat on the couch beside her, holding a goblet to her mouth and Abby grimaced at the strangely sweet and medicinal taste of the thin, red liquid. Her limbs tingled and the drunken feeling gave way to a more relaxed sensation. Alys’ large, slate-gray eyes filled her vision and the elder woman tilted her head, appraising her.

“I cannot call you Little Lady anymore, can I?” she asked, but Abby didn’t think it was much of a question. “Although, you are still littler than me, wee beast.”

“Oh, so she calls you that as well?” Wylla’s voice drifted from somewhere behind the couch. “Do you feel like you can get in the bath now?”

Alys helped her up and held the goblet to her mouth once more, feeding her the strange liquid. “Someone should tell the princeling that his lady is all right, I can hear him pacing.”

“Hear him?” Sarra Frey’s voice chimed in, confused. Abby smiled wanly at Wylla as the elder girl helped her out of her chemise and into the tub. The water was still plenty warm, but not the scalding, steaming heat that it had been from when she first came into the room. “But he’s so far away.”

“You’re just not listening close enough,” Alys said and passed her the goblet. “Make sure the coinín beag drinks all of this.” The door shut behind the woman and Abby settled against the back of the tub, Wylla’ pinning her hair up.

“Doesn’t Aegon call you little rabbit as well?” she murmured against her ear.

Abby did not answer.

The confused look the servant gave Jace when he asked where the family crypts were was not something that would normally bother him, but there was no reason that Prince Jacaerys Velaryon should be asking where the family crypts of his host were.

The look in Ser Simon Strong and his wife’s eyes upon seeing him still stuck with Jace, and he tried not to keep looking over his shoulder as he strode down the gravel pathway through the family gardens. Torches were lit along the pathway, servants and guests still milling about, and the gardens were beginning to bloom as the seasons shifted. Lady Celeste’s mountain roses crept like a great, dark beast, along the outside of the Kingspyre tower, up to balconies above. Jace stole a glance up there, at the distant, flickering light behind the windows.

Abby should be here. She should be with him. This was more her family than his. Did he even have a right?

Jace straightened.

He did. He did have a right. Ser Harwin was someone in his life he cared for, who cared for him and his brothers. He had been gentle and kind - to them, to their mother.

Ser Simon looked at him as if he’d seen a ghost.

Goosebumps bloomed beneath Jace’s black tunic. Perhaps he was one.

The Sepulcher of House Strong was largely underground, but the entrance to it was a stone gazebo, just over a story tall, with seven stone pillars carved to mimic the twisting boughs of the weirwood trees. The branches held up the circular roof, the torchlight casting long shadows over the carvings of strange creatures. There was no door, simply smooth stone stairs leading into the torch lit crypts beneath.

At the foot of the stairs were a pair of doors, heavy ironwood etched with more of the weirwood motifs and little creatures that Jace realized from this close distance were meant to be the Children of the Forest. They were different from the drawings he’d seen in his books. These were spindly things, some with fins in place of ears, with large eyes and sharp little teeth. He reached to undo the latch but the door was partially ajar. Had Abrogail come down to pay her respects? Should he leave and return another day?

His mother would be here on the morrow, and as soon as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen set foot in this place, Jace’s chance to come here would be lost.

The door made no sound as he pushed it open to slip inside and he blinked as his eyes tried to adjust to the deeper gloom. Braziers affixed to the pillars were spaced out every few dozen feet or so and as he quietly walked the path his ears could just make out the distant sound of rushing water, though he had no idea where it was coming from. Stone tombs were erected every few archways, and he paused in front of the tomb of Maegor Towers before he caught sight of the dragon relief nearby.

Targaryens were not entombed, they were burned on pyres, back to flame and ash from whence they came. But Harrenhal’s last lady was honored here.

In the stone alcove, a beautiful carved relief of Dreamfyre stood, raised on her legs, wings spread and her neck arched to call out to the sky. At her feet was a pedestal with an urn in the shape of a dragon egg.

Rhaena Targaryen, Queen of the Rising and Setting Sun. Mother of her beloved Aerea and Rhaella. Beloved by Prince Aegon, where their souls meet once more.

To always Chase the Sun.

The crack of a cane hitting the stone echoed violently along the walls and Jace choked on dusty air, panic taking over. The next tomb was that of Lord Osmund. There was just enough room to duck behind it and Jace crouched behind, his heart pounding in his ears.

“You are kind to accompany this night, Your Grace. I confess, when I extended the invitation, I was not sure you would accept.” The low voice of Lord Larys drifted through the quiet ghosts, otherworldly beneath the earth himself. Your grace… was grandfather also down here?

“Lord Lyonel was a good man,” the king rasped, his voice shaky with emotion. “The best of us, I think. No better servant to the realm than he.”

“Surely you yourself are the realm’s greatest servant, my king.”

“Mmmm, Lyonel offered good counsel. I did not listen to him as much as I should have.”

“My father served the realm with all the wise counsel of a Grand Maester and the knowledge of one of your vassals, my king. In the end, however… Even beneath his great wisdom, matters of succession were well out of hand.”

Heat burned along Jace’s neck and rushed into his cheeks. He pressed his face against the cold, stone tomb but it did little to calm him.

Driftmark. It always came back to Driftmark. It came back to screaming and blood. It came back to his words. Yes, the words of a child, but his words that he knew, without question, would prevent punishment.

‘He called us bastards.’

With such a simple sentence, Jace watched, clutched in his mother’s arms, as the king’s ire went from Aemond’s wound to the accusations that had chased Jace and his siblings all their lives. Words that he knew were cruel, that upset his mother, yet words that spoke true. Lord Lyonel had stood, struck and silent beside the Driftwood throne, and Ser Harwin had lingered by the door, unarmored and disheveled given the late hour it had been. As old as he was now, Jace knew. He knew. He knew.

Ser Simon had looked at him as if Jace were a ghost.

Jace reached up and gripped the edge of the tomb of his blood, feeling the burn of Vermax inside of him with every beat of his heart, loudly thumping in his ears.

“I did not want it to happen that way, Larys,” King Viserys finally spoke, his voice mournful and heavy.

“I know, my king. Only a Targaryen can truly master the dangers of flame. Mere mortals such as those who strove to follow your wishes could only wish to wield such understanding.” The sound of scraping metal grated on Jace’s nerves. He hit his head against the tomb and had to shove his fist in his mouth to keep from crying out.

“Only Ser Harwin-” the king began and then stopped. Jace could see the long throw of their shadows along the stone floor. They weren’t moving.

“Whatever tragedies befell, they have brought us here, my king. Have the wounds not healed as you had hoped? Your daughter and brother arrive here with their children after their long absence. Our houses will be joined in only a few days. The match you and my father discussed so many years ago is now far more advantageous, as is right, for the King’s first born son, given the unusual circumstances.”

“Perhaps you’re right, Lord Larys.” The scrape of two canes now. Jace pressed himself as far into the shadows as he could, straining to listen as the two men made their way back up the corridor beneath the eyes of the dead. He dared not breathe, he dared not make a single sound for fear of what might happen were he discovered. It felt like an eternity before the door shutting reverberated through the quiet.

Jace sat on the cold ground, frozen and still as Dreamfyre’s statue. His heart continued to pound in his ears as he tried to process exactly what he had just heard. King Viserys, a peaceful man, so afraid of any confrontation that his mother fled to Dragonstone to hide than maintain her presence at court. She’d sent him to do it for her.

He couldn’t escape the catacombs fast enough. His feet slipped along the damp stone as he raced towards the entrance. Ser Harwin would forgive him, he was certain. Now? Now, he needed to get away as fast as possible. He tripped hard up the stone stairs, his left knee and shin screaming in agony before he made it up and forced himself to slow down so as not to attract attention. What would it say to see the king’s heir racing through the gardens of Harrenhal? Jace’s lungs ached and he kept trying to remember to breathe. All he knew was that he had to get away.

How could he hold this? Should he tell his mother? What would she do? Nothing. She’d do nothing, forbidding them - forbidding him from speaking of Ser Harwin. Did he tell Abby?

It would destroy her.

Should he - Jace slammed into a figure, sending the two of them sprawling to the gravel.

“What the fuck, Jace!” Aegon snapped, aggressively shoving him off. He too was dressed for night in his own gray linen and breaches, dark circles beneath his eyes. It struck Jace, hard between his ribs, how much Aegon looked like Jace’s own mother in that moment. How much he sounded like his own mother. Jace’s palms scraped against the gravel and he heaved a breath. “What?” Aegon repeated.

Another breath and Jace felt the words strangling him, and could feel the tension in his face as he looked at his uncle, his childhood playmate, with wide, lavender eyes. Aegon stared at him and whatever annoyances were on his tongue fell. His brow furrowed. “What is it?” he asked again, less sharply this time.

Jace gulped once more for air and heard Aegon mutter something about panic attacks before the elder manhandled him up to his feet and towards one of the benches. “Get your head between your knees before you pass out,” he snapped, hand on his back to push him forward. In spite of Aegon’s annoyance, his touch was gentle, if firm.

Also like his mother.

“Breathe, you idiot,” Aegon said and sat down beside him, hand between his shoulder blades. Jace did as he was told, falling into the way things once were, where Aegon led and Jace happily followed. They could never return to those days, and Jace did not wish for it, but Seven Hells, it had been easier.

He did not know how long they sat there, listening to the lowing of dragon calls outside the walls and the shrieking of bats, the distant sound of water fowl amid the rushes outside the castle walls. He breathed in the cold air, let it ebb at the fire in his blood. He spat on the ground and finally sat up, aware that Aegon’s hand did not leave him until Jace settled against the bench.

“You said something but I couldn’t understand,” Aegon ventured with his brows raised in exaggerated curiosity. The quiet of the night filled the space between them, the gaps left when things had reached such a breaking point.

It always came back to Driftmark.

“The king…” Jace whispered, heat burning in his eyes. “T-the king, he… ordered the deaths of Lord Lyonel and… Ser Harwin.”

So... that was an ending. As always, I love that you're here, but the only way I know you're reading is if you comment! Comments let me know people are reading and are actively interested! So I'd love to hear what your favorite part of the chapter was, what your theories are, OR If you have no idea what to say, drop a tree emoji to let me know you were here <3 I promise, I'm glad you are. ALSO! I would LOVE to hear how you found this story! Was it through the AO3 search? Tumblr? Did someone recommend it? (if so, where?) (we might end at 24 chapters. I'm not quite sure yet, I'll have to see how the next few chapters go for pacing as I don't want to inundate y'all) Shoutout to @queen--kenobi for allowing me to borrow the lovely Elayna Reyne! Baby girl is here!

[ Next Chapter ]

[likeshipsonthesea]

i had feelings and wrote this post about shannon and i didn't wanna confuse it w eddie stuff but as she is ultimately a character in eddie's story i also wanted to go into the implications of this for eddie

do i think eddie was a bad husband? yes. does this make him a horrible irredeemable man who should take a vow of celibacy to protect the world from the burden of his romantic love? no.

but i think it's important that eddie actually deals with the reality of his relationship with shannon. i think we've got a start with this arc, and all the things he said to kim, but even then he starts out saying shannon was "the love of [his] life" when bestie, you didn't even know her.

they met in high school. they got pregnant unexpectedly and married just as fast. and then eddie left and they didn't know each other outside of a screen and brief visits for five years, then eddie was full of trauma and shannon's mother was dying, and then another two years apart, and then they were back together but didn't really talk outside of christopher.

by the time eddie re-proposed, he knew shannon as christopher's mother. that's it. he had no idea she wouldn't want another proposal. he heard "pregnant" and immediately went back to his 18-21ish self who knew nothing more than Responsibility. he didn't know shannon wouldn't want that. he didn't know anything about her--or at least, the audience didn't. where did she live? what did she do for work? what were her interests? from the beginning, the narrative--and eddie--treated shannon like a mother-shaped ghost to flit into and out of eddie's life.

and right as eddie was forced to look the truth of his and shannon's relationship in the eye, she died. how is he meant to consider all the nitty gritty rough edges and centers of their relationship through the rose-colored veil of grief?

i get why eddie hasn't tried to de-tangle all these feelings. it feels like he's shitting on shannon's memory. but i don't think eddie will ever be able to give himself to anyone until he realizes how formative his relationship with shannon was in all the wrong ways.

i'mma be bold here and claim: eddie didn't love shannon towards the end. he didn't KNOW her. he was happy to play family with her until she thought she might be pregnant again and then he immediately thought Pregnancy=Propose=Responsibility. it wasn't out of love for who shannon was as a person, it was out of responsibility.

and the shannon eddie married would've said yes, as she presumably did when they got married the first time. but the shannon of s2 didn't want that, a marriage of necessity. she knew herself enough to know she couldn't devote herself to eddie as a husband and christopher as a mom at the same time, and she chose christopher. i think eddie loves her for being christopher's mother, the way michael loves athena even though he isn't In love with her, but i don't think eddie knows the difference.

eddie thinks romantic love is responsibility and tradition and expectation and christopher's mother. he's learned how to live for himself and be better for himself but he hasn't learned how to LOVE for himself.

this doesn't keep him from making incredibly selfish decisions, like leading kim on or treating his love-interests like sex-giving mother machines, but i digress. eddie has learned how to break out of the roles he's played--perfect son, army hero, self-sacrificing single dad--but he's never stopped to think about the role he plays in a romantic relationship and the feelings that come along with it.

the kim arc is forcing him to look all of this straight-on and i love it. i hope they take it further. i need eddie to reckon with the fact that he and shannon failed each other, and that she wasn't the great love of his life because he didn't actually know her well enough to be in love with her at the end. i need eddie to look at how he acts as a husband/boyfriend and realize he's fucked up, to acknowledge how he's made bad choices and decide to make better ones.

eddie has so much to give, and i think he can make someone really happy if he manages to break out of the Husband role he's learned and really give himself truly to someone. and hopefully, it'll make him really happy too.

[flightfoot]

Top Ten Best Completed Miraculous Fics Of 2023

So I've made reclists for a ton of the Miraculous fics and series I recommend that finished in 2023, but as you may have noticed, those are rather expansive. So I decided to do a ranking of the ten best Miraculous fics from 2023 as well! (at least in my eyes). These naturally trend towards longer fics, though there are some that are on the shorter end. The shortest is under 30,000 words!

A lot of these you could swap around the order on, but the top fic... yeah the top fic is top for a reason.

Some of these fics were really popular, while others are virtually unknown, they run the entire gamut. I hope everyone checks these out though if they haven't already, there's both some hidden gems and some very well recognized gems in here!

All of these were part of earlier reclists that I made. All of those fics are in this collection I set up on AO3 called "Keyseeker's Choices For Best Completed Miraculous Fics of 2023". I really hope everyone checks it out, I've got commentary/reviews for every entry in the collection, and there are over 150 entries!

I'm gonna just be copying the descriptions I wrote for the fics on the earlier reclists, as I wrote those shortly after finishing reading the fics when they were fresh in my mind, and as great as these fics are, I don't have the time nor bandwidth to reread them all.

10.

Found by @trishacollins

Chat Noir and Ladybug need to tie up some loose ends. Unfortunately, one of those ends is Felix.

This is a fantastic fic! It’s part of a wider series wherein Adrien and Felix were friends with Nooroo and Duusu from a younger age, but Adrien’s memory was wiped of it by his parents, but this is the first fic you really need to read. Basically, after the events of Emotion, Chat confronts Felix about what he did, and Felix confesses to being a Sentibeing, and Duusu reveals to Chat that he is one as well, leading to Felix cooperating with the heroes. 

Of all the fics I’ve read that tackle the subject, this one does the best job of giving Felix a redemption arc for his actions in the season 4 finale, focusing not only on how he hurt the heroes, but the kwamis. I loved that he truly understood how much he fucked up with the situation he put the kwamis in, how much suffering he put them through, and that the kwamis were allowed to be angry at him for awhile afterwards, to be suspicious and untrusting towards him at first (and that Marinette was allowed to do the same). Felix screwed up and hurt people, and he had to really show that he understood what he did was wrong, why it was wrong, and try to help the people he hurt.

---

9.

The Ghost in the Machine by @jheqiawrites

As part of this function, Adrien knew about Monarch, the akuma butterflies, the victims, and, of course Ladybug and Cat Noir, the heroes of Paris. He was authorized to contact the Ladyblog as well as the citywide alert system if one of his platforms was active during an akuma manifestation, allowing his friends to get somewhere safe until Ladybug and Cat Noir could deal with the situation

While the necessity of these functions was disconcerting, it was programmed to be his routine so he gradually grew used to the inconsistencies. After all, humans tended to be selfish, highly inconsistent, and often flighty, but once you had observed them for a while an intelligence such as his could begin to see the patterns.

That is until she came online.

This is just a beautiful, though bittersweet story. I adore how Alliance!Adrien grows and changes throughout the story, how he develops as a person. He starts off not being able to figure out what he’s feeling, needing to make new modules in order to try to process the emotions he has welling up, and not totally understanding his own reactions. But as time goes on he grows and gets a better handle on himself. This isn’t an “evil AI” story, he’s just a person who’s slowly figuring out who he is and how to handle himself. 

Not that it’s entirely about Adrien Alliance figuring out his own emotions, there’s other things going on as well. He’s worried about why there seems to be weird surges in the Alliance Network right before akumas attack, for instance, and why the details about the reason for that seem to be hidden from him, making him more paranoid about the Alliance system the more he looks into it...

 It’s just... it’s really good and absolutely worth a read. 

---

8.

Kwami Magi Homura Magica by Crossoverpairinglover

After eighty-four loops in time, Homura Akemi takes a new path to Paris to save her friends.

The sixty-third loop after that, Homura arrived at the Agreste Mansion.

After clash after clash with the heroes of Paris and its greatest menace, events have reached a tipping point.

Ladybug faces someone verging on a second wish, a wish that endangers space and time to save a friend.

This was an absolutely AMAZING story that crossoverpairinglover dropped out of NOWHERE. Seriously, if you like Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Miraculous Ladybug, this is a real treat - but be prepared to sit down and binge, because it’s over 100,000 words and only has three chapters. 

Anyway, I adore the care that’s taken with going through Homura’s mindset here, she gets a lot of character focus. And the lore! There’s some good explanations here for the history behind kwamis and Incubators’ interactions, and the Order of the Guardians normally treats Magical Girls, and why the Incubators are wrong in their assessment of the universe needing more energy to stave off entropy (hint: it involves Plagg), and just... there was a lot of love put into this.

And the action! Most Miraculous fics don’t have much in the way of fight scenes, and what they do have is mostly just functional. This is one of the rare exceptions. There’s some really long, detailed fight scenes in this (roughly the entire second half of the second chapter has one between Ladybug and Homura), which are a treat to read! 

We also get some glimpses into a variety of other universes here, other timelines, alternate ways things could have gone down - I’m especially partial to the rather detailed view we get of one where Homura sent a message asking for help to the Ladyblog on her third time loop, and how things progressed from there. 

The ending I also thought was really good, a happy ending that generally made sense and dealt with the issue of the Incubators. 

If you can’t tell I’m really happy with this fic, it was incredible and unexpected. The length of the individual chapters can be daunting, but if you’re up for the task, I highly recommend giving it a shot!

---

7.

you made me a hero - reverse crush short stories series by @non-fantasy

This series is just plain fun! Like the title says, it’s a reverse crush AU, so Adrien’s head-over-heels for Marinette, while Ladybug’s smitten with Chat Noir. Which means that Adrien’s constantly trying to woo Marinette while Ladybug’s attempting to have normal conversations with Chat Noir (and failing), and both of them are oblivious to each other’s feelings. 

I love the way non-fantasy executes it, with Alya literally carrying around a spray bottle because of how eager Adrien is, and Ladybug being VERY SCARY if you ever lay a finger on Chat Noir (seriously akumas will literally beg for their akumatized object to be broken just to escape her wrath). 

Oh, also, Ladybug regularly stops by Adrien’s room so they can both lament how difficult of a time they’re having wooing their crushes, and just have fun together.

There’s a lot of entries in this series - 29 of them in fact - but most of them are pretty short, making it great if you want to devour some quick, cute, hilarious romcom action! 

Some stuff does actually change over the course of the series, it’s not just slice-of-life. Like identity reveals, dating, and even Hawkmoth’s defeat, so there’s clear progression and changes in circumstances as well.

---

6.

The Parable of the Caller by @nemaliwrites

A week after Hawk Moth’s identity has been revealed, Adrien finds himself with nowhere to go, nothing he can do, and worst of all, strange gaps in his memory he can’t explain. In a stroke of luck, he stumbles upon a burner phone filled with voicemails from one of the Saviors of Paris: Chat Noir himself, who disappeared following Hawk Moth’s arrest.

But with each new voicemail Adrien listens to, he’s forced to confront the fact that there might be some kind of connection between himself and Chat Noir — and discovering it might leave him more broken than before.

I absolutely adore this fic, it’s a fantastic character study for Adrien! Basically in this universe, Ladybug and Chat Noir talked about who should be Guardian, with Chat eventually convincing her that he should be the one to take it on, primarily due to the whole “the Guardian gets amnesia about Miraculous-related matters” situation, and wanting to protect Ladybug from that. Then he finds out Gabriel is Hawk Moth, they take him down, and he relinquishes the Miracle Box and his guardianship to Su Han - all without having a Reveal with Ladybug, since well, he’s not in the greatest shape mentally at the time.

It’s a real treat to see Adrien’s thoughts and feelings about one of the Heroes of Paris leaving him all these voicemails, treating him like this close friend for reasons he doesn’t understand, and just seeing Chat Noir as this outside person. He’s got a very different viewpoint on Chat when looking from the outside than he would from the inside, with being able to see his heroic and good qualities far more easily when he doesn’t know that he is Chat.

Also Marinette’s struggling in the background of the fic with the loss of her partner and guilt over sending Adrien’s father to prison. It gets touched on at various points, and you can tell that she’s having her own story off to the side that we’re just not entirely privy to, what with this tale being told entirely from Adrien’s perspective.

---

5.

Dreams of You by @chocoluckchipz

Dreams had long been his only escape. Dreams of Ladybug, the girl who had always been there for him.

If only in his dreams. And only while she was also sleeping.

Because with the first rays of sunshine gliding over her skin, with the first fluttering of her eyelashes, from the moment she opened her eyes in the morning, memories of Adrien would vanish from her mind.

She would go on living her life.

He would always be the only one who remembered.

At least until they meet in the real world and fall in love all over again, something that would’ve been easier to do if Adrien wasn't a prisoner in his own home.

Chocoluckchipz has some of the most beautifully executed lovesquare fics I’ve read, and this is no exception. Most of the fic is dedicated to Adrien wooing Marinette, spending time with her, with her own dream self acting as his wingman, giving her tips on how to get her to fall for him, all the while frustrated that she can’t share memories with her waking self, and that she and Adrien can’t share as much information as they’d like while asleep, due to limitations of the “curse” that allows Adrien to share dreams with his soulmate. 

It’s not all cute Adrienette fluff though. There’s a threat in the background waiting to erupt, as the weirdness of Gabriel’s ultimatum to Adrien about finding Ladybug or else being forced to marry Lila keeps on gnawing at him - and with good reason. This is a world with magic and kwamis still, and that fact makes itself very relevant in the last third of the story. 

It’s a well-written tale and very much worth a read!

---

4.

Accidents Are Also Miracles by @liiinerle

After a few turbulent days where four new people discover her secret identity, Marinette loses faith in her ability to keep the secret hidden. Wracked with doubts and insecurities, she pleads with Alya to take over as Scarabella, but she still can't let those worries go. Especially not once Monarch starts taking a particular, and personal, interest in her.

Along the way, she also starts to date Kagami, and has to deal with changing feelings about herself, Adrien, Alya, Kagami, and the idea of being Ladybug. At the same time, Alya works to uncover Monarch's secret identity, while Kagami struggles against a controlling parent, and a girlfriend who seems bent on destroying herself - with or without Monarch's involvement.

Fantastic Marigami fic here! You’ve got three major POVs in this fic: Marinette, Kagami, and to my delight, Alya. I loved getting to see Alya cope with taking over as Scarabella especially.

But of course, this fic centers more around Marinette and Kagami, with Marinette struggling with Monarch targeting her, and Kagami struggling against her abusive parent, as well as both of them trying to navigate their relationship together when they know that not everyone will approve. 

There’s also some other plots going on in here, like Sabrina breaking away from Chloe and becoming more independent (and closer to Adrien in fact), as well as a Lila takedown plot, though thankfully not one that involves demonizing other characters. While there are conversations about people believing Lila and siding with her, no one’s actually attacked for it except for Lila herself.

Oh yeah, and while this fic may not have much focus on Adrien, he’s still treated fairly and with respect, even when he messes up. He can make mistakes, but people understand where he’s coming from, and are still kind to him and want things to be okay, and to help him escape his abusive circumstances.

---

3.

Between the Heavens and the Embers by @readersmoon

Everyone in Paris remembers the fateful night of January 16, when the city was attacked by the most powerful and destructive akuma ever created. The assault, which lasted for hours, resulted in the death of 439 people.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng was among the casualties.

Years later, Adrien hasn't been able to move on, haunted by the memories of her broken body. So, when the opportunity to leave Paris for a while presents itself, he doesn't hesitate. But this trip might end up giving him more than he ever dreamt of.

This is a fantastic fic, though a serious and a dark one - make sure to mind the tags, and it’s M-rated for a reason. Vee - or rather, Marinette - is going through a horror story here. Imagine finding out that your life is a lie, that everyone you thought you could trust was manipulating you, that you were just being continually gaslit for years. 

As for Adrien, Alya, and Nino... well, none of them took Marinette’s “death” all that well, especially Adrien. Finding out that she’s been alive all this time, in these horrible circumstances, and they had no clue... it’s hard on them as well.

I love how this fic goes into how much trauma everyone has even after the immediate danger’s dealt with, you don’t just walk off this kind of experience, especially with how many years this lasted.

---

2.

drowning (in plain sight) by @buggachat

Everybody had expected Monarch's defeat to be a moment of triumph. Nobody had expected Gabriel Agreste, unmasked and mind frayed from continual abuse of the miraculous, crying out to all who would listen and making Paris certain of one thing:

His son, Adrien Agreste, is one of his sentimonsters.

And now he's missing.

Nobody can find him— not even the superheroes, and not even his closest friends. But Marinette, Nino, and Alya aren't ones to give up so easily. They'll find him, no matter what it takes.

(But, geez, would it kill Chat Noir to lend a hand?)

I’m sure everyone saw this one coming. If there’s one thing buggachat’s good at, storywise, it’s capturing raw, tumultuous emotions, frantic breakdowns as the characters desperately try to navigate bad situations. This was a real treat to read, as I’m betting most people reading this will agree, given just how popular the fic has been. It also has a ton of fanart, both by buggachat and by random fans, if you go looking for it (there’s a drowning in plain sight tag which I’d advise perusing). 

---

1.

one does not love breathing by @wackus-bonkus-maximus

All of Paris watched as Hawkmoth murdered Chat Noir, taking the Black Cat Miraculous for himself. Ladybug swears revenge, but her enemy—and every miraculous in his possession—disappear without a trace.

Six years later, a new team of villains launches an attack for the last remaining Miraculous: Volpina, armed with new powers; Queen Bee, with questionable loyalty; Argos, the new holder of the Peacock Miraculous; and Cat Walker, who Ladybug hates the most.

Takes place after S4 - Strike Back.

This is a simply phenomenal fic. You get to explore a lot of different perspectives, like Felix, Kagami, Marinette, and Adrien’s, just to name a few, and see their different thought processes and plans and priorities, and how it can cause their plans to collide with each other, even when they all ultimately are aiming for a good outcome for everyone. The characters are pretty complex and can mess up at times, even when they’re doing things (or not doing things, looking at you Luka) with the best of intentions. It was a joy to read and a real nail-biter the whole time, I actually wrote a fic for it halfway through just to resolve some of the tension for myself, One Does Not Love Shadows.

It also features the version of Luka I’ve connected best with to date, as he feels like Luka, but also is a lot more fleshed out, and can make some major errors while simply trying to avoid missteps. It’s helped me get a better handle on a character who I’ve generally had a lot of problems with really understanding.

It is an M-rated fic, though I think Wackus is being overly cautious on that front. There’s no sexual content and I wouldn’t put the violence or gore above a T-rating, so I wouldn’t let the rating scare you off.

---

So that's my list! I'm sure many people will disagree with me (especially since most of these fics haven't even cracked 1000 kudos, so there are a lot of other fics out there that people have read more of), but these fics made the biggest impression on me this year, and I hope they make an impression on you as well!

[haunted-machines]

uhh...hello?

[gremlinmodetweeker]

You're A What Now?

Just some silliness and then angst with Ghostbusters König because I can't commit to one genre.

TWs: Discussion of Nazi occupation of Austria, Nazis, Graphic Descriptions of Violence

Wordcount: 1.75 K

Story Below the Cut

Visuals [1] [2]

You're A What Now?

“DUCK!”

You dropped to the floor with a thud as the phantom screamed overhead.

“SHOOT”

ZAP!

You could see the electricity arcing overhead in great bright branches of lightening, scouring the wallpaper a charred black as Horangi wrangled the proton blaster under control.

“Nikto she’s coming your way!” Roze screamed over the sound of crackling lightening.

“On it,” a heavy Russian accent called back as a hulking machine of a man barrelled down the hallway, “south entrance clear!”

Horangi spit and hissed like a barn cat as he leaped over a broken chaise-lounge to dart after the phantasmal spectre, nearly tripping over you in the process. He looked down at you and barked, “On your feet, recruit!”

You scrambled to get your limbs under you as you watched the posse careening down the hall. You leaped to your feet and ran up behind them.

Okay, so, as of your first day on the Ghostbusters team, you can officially say that you believe in ghosts. Damn your lifelong skepticism, you weren’t going to fuck around and figure out just how bad a possession was gonna be on your first day.

You slammed into the wall before crashing into the kitchen where Roze, Nikto and Horangi were all running around like they’re heads were lopped off. You nearly missed it, but König was ducked in the corner with a screwdriver in his hand, cursing under his breath in his other tongue as though he could peel wallpaper with his venom.

“König where’s the trap at?” Horangi ducked under a piece of antique china being thrown his way.

“I-Verdammt-There’s a problem!” he called back.

“We don’t got time for problems, big guy,” Roze bellowed as she zapped the ghost with another blast.

“Then make time!” he spat before turning back to his tech.

“I thought Germans were great mechanics!” you yelled as you joined Roze with your own proton stream.

For just a brief moment, everyone in the room stalled. A plate crashed against the side of Horangi’s head, breaking the tension.

“Did you just call me German!?” König rose up to his feet as though he were a wraith himself.

“No no no not the time König!” Roze growled as she wrestled with the ghost.

“Now’s the perfect time!” König crossed his arms as he widened his stance, “I will not tolerate this clear display of intolerance and xenophobia from our newest recruit!”

Nikto took the opportunity to snatch the trap from König and got to working on it himself.

“I am not a German! I am not of such inferior breeding!” König crowed proudly as Horangi jumped over a flying chair.

“I thought you said the recruit was the xenophobe over here,” Horangi ducked behind an overturned table.

“Germany is a country of thralls and ignoramuses! The entire nation is devoted to blood and genocide!” König stamped his foot for emphasis, “I will not allow such a people to overrule my homeland any longer!”

“It was a brief occupation during Nazi Germany,” Nikto was barely legible over the sound of the spirit being slammed into a wall.

“And we will never forget!” König pumped a fist into the air defiantly.

“I’m sorry!” you wailed as you threw yourself behind the table with Horangi.

“Sorry is not enough! What, do you think I am some sort of Nazi!?” König spat.

“Your grandfather nearly was,” Horangi drawled blithely as he ducked behind the table to avoid a flying toaster.

You, Roze and Nikto all stopped what you were doing to look at König. Even the spirit stopped her struggling to watch the 6’10 scientist turn redder by the second.

“YOU SWORE TO NEVER SPEAK OF THAT.” 

And with that, König vaulted the table to lunge at Horangi.

“Get off me fatass!” Horangi growled as he hoofed König in the gut.

"Shut up you slimy little shit!"

"Tasty," Nikto drawled sarcastically.

Seeing an opportunity, the ghost quietly phased through the back wall of the kitchen while Nikto and Roze were distracted. You only noticed because you were watching Nikto drop the trap to try and haul König off Horangi, only to trip on the slime left behind and fall face forward onto the others in a cluster-fuck of legs and arms.

“Get off of me you commie bastard!” Hornagi howled as he thrashed at the bottom of the pile.

“Stop your squirming, I can’t get up!” Nikto snapped back as he tried to extract himself from the group.

Roze dropped her proton blaster back into its sheath before lumbering over to help Nikto get back to his feet while you stooped to extract Horangi from König’s grasp.

Once the group had all gotten to their feet, Roze sighed and stepped back before tapping the side of her headset, “Okay so, we lost track of the ghost.”

“What?” Hutch’s voice came through the static, “how? You were right there.”

“König had a shit-fit,” Roze grumbled as she stalked down the hall, “can you follow the readings through the house?”

“I’ll get right on it,” Hutch replied before the line cut.

You watched as Horangi wiped himself down as he shook the dust from his back. He looked at you, one of his spectacles cracked but somehow miraculously intact. He looked at König, who was doubled over wheezing while the adrenaline left his system and the pain from Horangi’s kick sunk in.

“You owe me a coffee,” Horangi joked, clapping your shoulder before following Roze and Nikto to the next room.

This, of course, left you alone with König.

You awkwardly nudged over to the door, worried that the man would clobber you next but he stopped you with one raised hand.

“Ah, recruit, I’m sorry you had to see that,” König huffed and puffed as he slowly drew himself to his full height again, “Gott in Himmel I’m getting too old for this.”

“I mean, you still seem pretty young,” you offered him politely.

“You’re too nice,” König hacked and heaved, “mein Gott, I thought he was a physicist, not a damn kickboxer!”

“Yeah, it looked like it hurt pretty bad,” you chuckled.

“I think I might need a minute,” König righted a fallen chair and plopped down onto it. Without a word, he pulled up a second and patted the seat, leaving it empty for you. You tentatively took the seat, a bit concerned the man beside you might keel over any minute.

“Sorry about getting so upset,” König sighed, “I just… Ever since coming to America, everyone here calls me German! Everyone! It’s not too hard to notice the difference, is it?”

“I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever met an Austrian before,” you told him.

“Really?” König sat up to look at you, “how long have you been in this city?”

“Long enough to know there’s not many Austrians here,” you laughed.

“Well, then consider me your first,” König determined, “but yes, um, I’m sorry about making such a fuss. I just… I cannot stand being called a German. Those damned Germans…” he shook his head, “never forget.”

“Never forget what?” you asked.

“The occupation,” König said, “Austria used to be a part of Germany, but it separated in 1866. Then Hitler comes around and he drums up all this Nazi support and tricks my people into falling for his lies. Then, he comes and steamrolls my country.”

“So there’s still a lotta tension, I’m guessing?” you tried to make a joke, but it fell flat on its face.

“Like you wouldn’t imagine,” König said, “but I guess I don’t hate them that much. I just hate how everyone calls me German! I’m not a damn German, I’m an Austrian! My family’s been in Austria for generations! It’s like no American knows how to look on a damn map.”

“Maybe,” you shrugged.

“And how would you feel being called a citizen of a country that once tried to crush you beneath its boot? My poor Opa… Well, you heard Horangi,” König spat.

“He was a Nazi?” you cringed despite yourself.

“Nearly a Nazi,” König swiftly corrected you, “he was a good soldier once, but he didn’t respect the Germans or what they stood for, so he broke his own leg to stop Hitler's men from sending him to war.”

“Wait, really?”

“Oh ja, but he was worried that might not be enough. So, he took on a new identity and moved across the country,” König explained, “he first tried to be an accountant, but he couldn’t do math so good so he went to go be a mechanic in my village. He used to be a panzermensch, so he was able to take some of those old skills he learned to get by.”

“Did anyone ever figure out who he was?” you asked curiously.

“Only one person,” König shrugged, “my Oma.”

You chuckled, “So he married her to keep her quiet?”

“Not then and there, but he did promise her that he would one day,” König snickered, “so they stayed low until Austria became independent again. Then my Opa took back his old name and married my Oma.”

“That’s really cute,” you smiled brightly.

“They were very cute,” König agreed, “but ja, if it weren’t for the Nazis, my Opa could have been a much richer man. The work in the village did not pay well, but he could have earned good money in the army. Mein Vater did not grow up with much, and he didn’t make much more for us when he married meine Mutter.”

“So Germany really fucked up a lot of your life,” you concluded.

“And then people go and call me German! It’s…” König sighed, “I do not like it very much.”

“Makes sense,” you nodded and leaned forward on your knees.

The silence between you stretched on forever, but a part of you never wanted it to end. There was something comfortable about being able to just enjoy the quiet with a man like König. Something about how he filled the space of the room left little space for conversation to try and shake the solid grounds you both stood on. It wasn’t like you often had a chance to talk, and when you did it normally was curt and strained in tone. This moment was a welcome break.

“Alright you two,” Hutch’s voice crackled through your headset, making you nearly jump a good five feet out of your seat, “the other guys need some help setting up that trap.”

“On it,” you replied as you dusted yourself off.

König stretched up beside you, hitting the ceiling with his hands before slumping back down.

“You ready?” you slipped the safety off your proton blaster.

König nodded and pulled his goggles back over his face.

“Alright,” you grinned, “let’s go bust some ghosts.”

AU Masterlist

[questforgalas]

Now that I've played the MW campaign and am even more unhinged about the MW3 campaign, here are my completely unasked for thoughts on how Activision should've mapped out the games for an at least 6 game story arc

MW

Absolutely no changes. Kyle is a precious muffin. Price is a precious muffin. Alex is a precious muffin. Farah is a queen.

Interesting campaign. Diverse levels. Dynamic and well thought out storyline.

MW2

My baby. The love of my life. My most precious muffin. That campaign? That storyline? Chef's kiss. Ale and Rudy? The best additions. Valeria?? Fucking wonderful. That plot twist?? Grasping my pearls

No changes

MW3

More 141 levels, make the intro levels 141 as a well oiled machine, digging up the intel telling about the prison break. Give more background to what Farah is in the middle of instead of dropping right in especially with fucking Graves suddenly chilling on the comms, bridging that gap between MW2 and here. Take out a good chunk of the Makarov cut scenes and give more levels chasing intel, letting the player put together the pieces with every cold trail Makarov leaves behind, getting frustrated along with the team. Keep the flashback once the team reaches boiling point, but make Ghost less inclined towards Johnny to keep more inline with their reluctant start in MW2.

Shepherd and Graves go off the grid after they give their intel, they disappear. Makarov is making moves in Urzikstan so 141 goes to help ULF (did I mention more 141?). It was a distraction, they uncover Makarov's plans for London, scramble back, it plays out, Price ends up dead (it's a military game, people are going to die, and Price dying had the most potential impact. Come along, I'll explain), Makarov gets away.

Final cut scene is a funeral send off Price deserves, montage of the boys back on base dealing with the aftermath, and Laswell finding Ghost, explaining how he's the Lieutenant, he's the obvious next choice to take up the mantle and Ghost simply says "I'm not the obvious choice" and the final scene pans on Gaz, the Robin to Price's Batman.

The levels will be meatier, longer, and at least 5 more added to deepen the story. Diversity of the play style will be more than just standard campaign and online-layout. The Makarov plot will be discovered by the player, not told to them, adding more intrigue to the character. The final level will be multi tiered, hopping between the two pairs. Actually 8 hours of gameplay instead of the measly 3 they gave us (yes, the MW3 campaign is 3 hours of gameplay compared to MW and MW2s 8 hours each)

MW4

Open to 141 arriving on mission, Soap tapping Gaz on the shoulder and says "Ready when you are, Captain" with that cheeky smile. Makarov's gone dark, eerily quiet the past couple months, but they have a lead on Shepherd and Graves so they're going in. It all points back to Mexico, Graves accepting his military career is fucked after Las Almas and turning Shadow Company into full mercs instead of PMCs now, specializing in weapons dealings. He recognized the advantage a deal with Valeria could have and they've been working together.

CUT TO LOS VAQUEROS/141 REUNION. More Alejandro and Rudy background (just let Alain Mesa, the BAFTA Game Award Nominee for this freaking role, fucking shine). Dive into the Valeria background, make the raid mentioned during her interrogation a flashback level in Valeria's POV. The team has to go undercover to get close to the intel, Rudy gets picked, gathers the intel, but gets compromised. Now its a race to rescue Rudy. Ale and Gaz go after Rudy while Soap and Ghost follow the lead Rudy got them. Ale and Gaz raid a cartel base/prison, let Ale take Gaz under his wing recognizing the young captain's feeling the pressure, some banter, some advice, wholesome Ale and Gaz bonding.

Soap, on the other hand, is barely being contained by Ghost. He's in full attack dog mode with Graves scent nearby and Ghost has half a mind to let the demolition expert go completely feral, but the lieutenant part of him keeps his sergeant in check. Further their dynamic, more banter balancing right on the edge. They clear out the compound, find a gold mine of intel around the dealings, and Johnny gets to put the bullet right between Graves' eyes.

One line in the intel catches their eyes - Makarov

MW5/6

Make the Makrov storyline a 3 game storyline - MW3 intro and back-to-back MW 5 and 6. Now with ties in Mexico and ULF, all established teams and beloved characters can be brought in in some aspect throughout both games to take him down.

Ale and Rudy are cleaning up El Sin Nombre's ties in Las Almas, cutting each line of Valeria's arms dealings, trying to cut off the courier of Makarov's destruction.

Farah continues to lead ULF to free Urzikstan, Makarov taking advantage of the dissent and chaos and placing a foothold there, ultimately dividing forces and efforts from his background machinations.

With Makarov's trail warm again, the 141 are out for blood. Could take the plunge and make GhostSoap canon through subtle dialogue options or touch gestures in cut scenes. The end is possibly near, they're all allowing themselves to think about the future, why not take the plunge Activision? Or they stay vague/platonic and the dynamic is further developed. Dialogue options and cut scenes show further bond with Gaz as well who's stepped into being Captain a little more, easing into the shoes.

MW5 is cat and mouse. Makarov leaves little treats and traps and the team is chasing after their tails, always 3 steps behind him. Give Makarov more scenes, not telling the player his plan but let his character development fly. Let the unhingedness flourish.

Finally, they catch a break at the end of the game and MW6 is the final chase. 8 hours of them hunting down Makarov. Ale and Rudy cleaned up Las Almas and can join them, bringing the whole gang together internationally (bonus points to make one a cold weather mission and the two Mexicans are just bitching the whole time just for Soap and Ghost to tease them back about payback for having to deal with the Mexican desert for a whole week). Two characters would die (not in one game, over the course of the two) - Farah (she's been a fighter her whole life, it would be a full circle for her to heroically go out with a gun in her hand) and either Ghost or Soap.

Soap dying here would be so much more impactful. He'd be more established as a character, have deeper relationships with all members of the game, and it's highly possible to have a situation where a charge isn't going so he's the only one who can pull it off (reminiscent of Hevy in TCW). Going out in a blaze just like he's always imagined.

Ghost dying would be another full circle option with his canon (it would be a sacrificial choice, dying on his own terms as his own choice) and with his long career, it would be heartbreaking but understandable. This also leaves the 141 in the hands of the two youngest, the Captain and the new Lieutenant, tasked with bringing in the next generation of the best soldiers.

And if there just happens to be a cut scene where Johnny has an extra pair of dog tags and a modest ring dangling from his chain? Then you know I infiltrated the Activision writers' room.

Oh what happened to Shepherd you ask? End credits role on MW6 and another cut scene begins. A lone cabin in the middle of nowhere in the woods, smoke trailing out of the chimney. Cut interior, a haggard Shepherd bent over a desk, mumbling to himself, scribbling on something. He tacks the paper on the board in front of him, revealing Gaz and Soap's pictures amidst a mess of strings and maps and notes saying "Traitors". Then it cuts black

Boom, there you go Activision. Enjoy all of your awards and record breaking sales. It could've been that easy

[oinonsana]

The big ol' first Arc of the dharmacore bladepunk Maritime Asia/Monsoon Marketplace/Nirvana Path inspired fantasy web serial THE KNIGHT VAGRANT is out on the patreon. if you're into nonstandard genders, wuxia/xianxia/xuanhuan, elden ring, breath of the wild, or slick buddhist violence, perhaps you will enjoy this one

here's a spiel

Death held them, once, for the quickest second.

Until the Adamantine Path reaped its due. Raxri Uttara the Once-Dead walks again, rejuvenated by the Medicine Awoken. Arisen, without memory, they must wander again this Wheel of Wandering. They must seek revelation from their past, understand again the vaunted world of the Utter Islands, and choose, ultimately, between vengeance or enlightenment. And within that moment, let their enlightenment be that such a duality is delusion. THE KNIGHT VAGRANT is the first volume of THEY WHO DANCE AGAINST THE HEAVENS, a highest fantasy web novel set in the weird dharmacore bladepunk world of WANDERING, arising from mindbending Esoteric Buddhism and Maritime Asia. Inspired by the likes of the Abhorsen Series, Jin Yong's Demigods and Semidevils, Florante at Laura, Elden Ring, Tears of the Kingdom, Wuxia, Westerns, and Vagrant Story, the web novel explores themes of vengeance, memory, being, violence, peace, forgiveness, and emptiness in the face of betrayal, wrath, and war. THE KNIGHT VAGRANT follows RAXRI UTTARA, a once swordgendered being now having forgotten all their accomplishments in the past. They must needs wield the flame of remembrance to burn away the dirt of forgetfulness, so that they may arrive again at the truth. Upon that peak, will they choose the right blade? Giant cats turned into apartment complexes, ghost horse steeds that tire not, walking giant mechanical armors turned into public transportation, charnel wizards summoning the long-dead, witches wielding the Pureflame of Creation, dancing celestial avians who provide background soundtracks for events too epic to imagine, the Machine God beginning its slick advance into forever progress... the Age of Furor is upon us. The Latter Day of the Law. As you walk your Path, Kill God Yourself. Until all beings are free.

[tgammsideblog]

One thing i really like about the episode ¨The (After) life of the Party¨ is how it addressed that Scratch isn't a good friend to Geoff and often treats him poorly.

At the start of Season 1, Scratch would usually scream at Geoff, ignore him and trick him into doing things he himself didn't want to do. He would take advantage of Geoff's good nature, without giving much in return.

It isn't that he didn't care about Geoff to some extent. Even in the first episodes he let Geoff hang out with him in ¨Howlin Harriet¨, talked to him about his issue with Molly in ¨Not So Honest Abe¨ and helped him return to normal form after he got stuck in a candy machine (The Turnip Twist). The issue was that Scratch took a lot more than he gave in when it came to Geoff. It was something that wasn't addressed properly, only brought up in some moments by characters like Molly.

And look, this type of dynamic can work if your character is intended to be a villain. Since in that case it isn't intended to be seen as something good and we understand that the character's manipulative tendencies are supposed to be morally wrong based on their role in the story. But, Scratch is written as a character who is supposed to change and become a better person over time, he isn't a ¨villain¨, he has his own arc and he learns from his mistakes. That's why his initial dynamic with Geoff only works in the few first episodes from Season 1 when Scratch was still a very selfish and inconsiderate character who didn't care that much about how he made others feel. At some point you may want to see this imbalance in their friendship beaddressed and explored properly since you want Scratch to become a better ghost over time.

Cut to Season 2 ¨The (After) Life of the Party episode, Scratch is invited to go to Jeff's party since he is the chairman of the Ghost World now, meaning that he now can fit in with the elite ghost class. He is a respected ghost (or at least a lot more than he used to be), to the point others allow him to cut line when he is waiting for his turn in the cafe.

However, going to this party means that he will be skipping Geoff's party, leaving Scratch conflicted in between going to his friend's event or going to the ¨popular guys club¨ party. So Scratch fakes being sick in front of Geoff and lying to him about how he can't go to his party. Geoff buys this and hopes that Scratch is able to get well from his ¨sickness¨.

Moments after that Scratch goes to Jeff's party. He is having fun until he realizes that Geoff is in this party too. As result he spends most of his time trying to hide away and avoid Geoff, because he doesn't want his friend to find out that he lied to his face.

So in this episode is brought up how Scratch is letting Geoff down, how it was wrong for him to lie this way (brought up by other characters) and Scratch spends most of the episode feeling guilty about skipping Geoff's party to the point he feels that he has to avoid him.

Jinx also serves to make Scratch feel more conflicted as she does everything she can to trick the blue ghost into meeting with Geoff, leaving aside how her intentions in that situation were for her own gain and being pitiful.

Near the end of the episode Geoff finds Scratch and he explains that the party is Jeff's and his 100th anniversary of them being together as a couple. Scratch admits that he faked being sick and apologizes to Geoff for lying to him. He even admits how ¨you are good friend Geoff, better than i deserve¨. Of course, Geoff quickly forgives him, since he is in general easy to let things go.

This whole episode was crucial to Scratch and Geoff's relationship because it actually explored how Scratch was being a bad friend to Geoff and has Scratch fully admitting and regretting his actions for how he wasn't honest with his friend. Until this episode Scratch was never shown to feel guilty about the way he treated Geoff. This was a good step for his character development, realizing how he took the green ghost's friendship for granted. While it didn't fix everything in their relationship, it was a good start for Scratch to stop trying to take advantage of Geoff all the time and treat him more as an equal than someone to order around.