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iwrestlenow · 4 years ago

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Many More To Die, Chapter 10

TITLE: Many More To Die (Chapter 10)

FANDOM: Sanders Sides (Necromancer AU)

SUMMARY: So many questions, a few answers--and the identity of the assassin is revealed.

SHIPS: Logince (Logan/Roman), Moceit (Patton/Janus) and Dukexiety (Remus/Virgil)

WARNINGS: CW for gore--please skip to the end for specific warnings that are spoilery.

This chapter may be garbage, but I've been STRUGGLING with this one (REWRITTEN FOURTEEN TIMES I AM NOT JOKING) so I'm posting it before I can change anything. The next one will come much sooner now that this ASSHOLE of a chapter is done.

If you've been waiting, I'm sorry and I love you. It's unbeta'd and uncooperative, so it's my fault if it sucks, but I WILL be making it up to you with a side story I'm now writing--Remile, anyone? >.> XD

Also, the content warning is for @elliot-orion, 'cause it's a loving nod to a lovely hooman. We morbid nerds gotta stick together. They are just the literal best. <3

NOTES: This is based on the gorgeous piece of art by @gretacticdraws that can be found here. I ended up writing a ficlet for it, and then my brain got swallowed up. Breathe at me wrong, and I’ll write more…hell, who am I kidding? I’ll write more anyway because this? Is self indulgent drivel. XD

Also located at AO3 over here.

Lazari.

The word rattled around in twenty two year old Logan Berry's head the same way the word Necromata had in the empty skull of twelve year old Logan Crofter.

He was lucky, once again—to be alive, and to be supported. Lucky to have some of his memories, at least, to have his blood by his side...

His blood, and something more. Something that scared him and thrilled him and made him ache for the years and the empty hole in his head that kept him from it. Something that blotted out the world and turned the word into...something else.

Lazari. Lazari. Logan.

Lazari.

“Logan.”

There was a hand on his arm, breaking through the blood roaring in his ears and the dim haze that had fallen over his vision—not like the Loom of Memory, but something sick and frenetic and shaking.

...so this was what Virgil's panic attacks were like. Interesting.

The hand slid down to his wrist, then down further to mesh their fingers together.

There's something under the skin, itchy and trembling, and it makes Logan want to pull away because it's just too much...

The Green Man never lets him.

“...Roman?”

“That's right, Starlight. Just...hold on. Don't let go—not this time.”

Logan tightened his fingers in Roman's, trying to find a rhythm to get his breathing under control. It was more than just the panic and fear and confusion, his heart was racing and he couldn't breathe and his limbs were sore...he'd been running. Running away, running—towards?

Running through the tunnels, running through the dark, running away...

Roman's thumb ran along the side of Logan's index finger, slow strokes back and forth. Logan tried to time his breaths around each gentle sweep...and it helped, at least a little.

“I never have.” he managed to reply after a few minutes of just standing, clinging, breathing. “I never will.”

Roman's face was finally in focus again. Logan's chest felt raw, scraped by sandpaper and flayed by knives—he was tousled dark hair and tanned skin and eyes of emerald, handsome and compassionate and so painfully kind, this prince, this king—

--and Logan loved him. He had loved him for so many years. Logan's mind had been stripped of the knowledge, but his heart was an open wound that knew, that remembered every second of that separation. It had clung, it had beat steady...it had waited for him.

“You did last time.” Roman pointed out with a sad smile. His free hand found his way into Logan's, leaving them standing there in one of the unused sewer tunnels, holding hands like besotted children as they stared into each other's eyes.

“You swore you wouldn't...and you let go.”

Logan shook his head. “No, I didn't. I was pulled away.”

“I...remember.”

Logan watched Roman frown at that, as if surprised by the knowledge of his own recollection—then watched the light in his eyes die a little.

“I can never forget.” he breathed, his eyes falling shut, lashes shimmering in the low light with the tears trying to escape. “The sound of your screams as you were dragged away...the door shutting, and how quiet everything got--”

“Why were we there?” Logan asked softly, stepping closer against his will. Everything in him was screaming for more, closer, all. He was starving for Roman, for his beauty and his smile and his laughter, for his wild optimism and boundless determination.

“Hmmm?”

“Why were we there? Why...why was I arrested? What did I hide?”

Roman opened his eyes, causing the tears to spill while his expression melted from pain to puzzlement. Logan reached up with hand, without letting Roman go, to wipe away one of the tear tracks with his thumb.

“What do you mean?”

“I remember being taken—my last glimpse of you. Before you grabbed me, I was hiding something.” Logan explained.

And that was...important somehow. He just couldn't put his finger on it...

Roman leaned into Logan's touch, shifting his grip so he could hold Logan's hand to his face, palm curled against Roman's cheek while he thought.

“I—I have trouble remembering.” he admitted softly. “We were looking for one of the Tomes. To...prove...”

Logan nodded. “I reconstructed a portion of that memory earlier—but something stopped me from finishing it. That was why I was so...confused when I left the Loom of Memory.”

Roman nodded. “I felt it. I couldn't see the memory, but when you were channeling from me, I...sensed what you were doing, and I tried to help. When you were thrown out of that trance, it felt—wrong. Painful.”

“But you can't remember?” Logan asked, something worming through his brain as he turned it over in his head. “That doesn't make sense. Why would...”

...he hung on until the grip on his collar finally yanked him out of the fourteen year old prince's grasp...

He stilled, something in the pit of his chest trembling.

“...I made sure of it.” he realized aloud.

“Made sure of what, Logan?”

Looking into Roman's eyes, Logan remembered that younger face, the desperation and fear, that glimpse of jewel green in the dark and that was all he wanted in the world before...before...

“When I was taken—I didn't let go, I was pulled away. I made sure of it.” he replied with more confidence.

Logan stared down at their remaining joined hand, lifting it up between them. He shifted his grip, unlinking their fingers until he had his wrapped around Roman's digits in a death grip. Roman's hand curled into it, clinging like he had that night.

When he'd been trying to drag Logan to safety.

The hand at his collar yanked, and Logan's fingers slid free, throbbing—

Only then did Logan feel the bite of the ring.

“What's this, Roman?”

Releasing his hand, Logan showed him the ring he was wearing—heavy silver, wrought with strange symbols that Logan did not understand anymore, but called to him in a way that made him think he'd known how to read them once upon a time. The ring was set with a stone blue as lapis lazuli and Patton's eyes, but rather than being flecked with gold, it was dotted red.

Roman stared at the ring on his hand, then at Logan, fear in his eyes.

“Remus.” he breathed. “He...he put it on me the night you were arrested. I was holding it, and he put it on me—Logan, why didn't I remember that? Why are there things I don't remember?...”

“Because I was wearing it.” he replied, running his thumb over the stone. Removing his other hand from Roman's cheek, Logan cradled Roman's hand between both of his and inspected the ring more closely. It was warm to the touch, and he felt a flare of power in his gut that terrified him. The ring was bespelled...

He'd been wearing it the night of his arrest—and Logan was still working the spell wrought into it.

“It's enchanted...I think the spell breaks if the wearer removes it.” Logan replied slowly, uncertainly. “I...I made sure I didn't take it off myself. You...you pulled it off my hand, I remember it wrenched my finger.”

He stared at the ring, then up at Roman again.

“I think...I think the fact that I never broke my connection to it means that it's spell is affecting both of us. Some spell affecting perception, or...memory.”

Roman gaped at him, then at the ring. Logan watched his brow furrow, then his jaw set with an anger he didn't recognize, but one that felt painfully familiar.

“Well then—let's see which it is.”

There was something Logan was missing...something about where they were standing...

Over Roman's shoulder, Logan spotted a steel ladder leading up.

He recognized this tunnel.

“Roman, no--”

Tugging out of Logan's grip, Roman removed the ring.

********** “...sorry, guys.”

“For the ninth time, Patton—it's okay.” Virgil soothed, scrubbing his hands over his face. “I didn't even expect him to spook when you told him he was a Lazari. That's normally my job.”

“I'm assuming that's why the prince is hanging on you?” Janus replied dryly.

Virgil looked over his shoulder—and wrinkled his nose when his face smooshed into the side of Remus's, who had his arms cinched around Virgil's waist and his chin on Virgil's shoulder.

“Not really.” Remus chirped brightly. “Though that's a fair point—physical contact does wonders for anxiety. Nah, I'm just copping a feel is all.”

Rolling his eyes, Virgil faced the other two again—and resisted the urge to lay his hands over the ones pressed to his stomach, to lean back into the solid line of warmth behind him that made everything feel smaller and quieter and safer. It was a larger, more intense version of the warmth that cradled him as he'd fallen into Logan, giving up his mind to expand his brother's...

It hadn't been that intense in a long time—coming back to himself was usually hard, shook him up, but...Remus helped. Weirdly. Sort of.

...fuck it: Virgil folded his arms across his chest, but leaned back into Remus and ignored him aggressively. Especially when he pretty much cuddled up to Virgil's back even harder.

“So how did this happen?” Virgil asked Janus and Patton instead. “Both Pat here and my brother—you said Patton's a Lazari?”

Patton shook his head. “Only Weavers can become Lazari—I'm a Herald! I was a Black Dog before I got my soul.”

Virgil blinked at that. “You are a Black Dog? You're nowhere near violent enough.”

Janus let out an abrupt laugh at that as he regarded Virgil with a raised eyebrow. “When you went through basic training, did your instructor warn you about gagging prisoners?”

“Yeah: not to do it alone. He told some story about a cannibal in the dungeons who took three of a private's fingers off.”

“Hmph.”

Virgil blinked, looking at the source of the huff—namely, the tiny curly haired cherub of a necromancer who was sort of...hugging Janus's bicep with both his arms, cheek pressed just below his shoulder with a petulant little pout on his round features.

“You...What? You...no. No, you did not--”

Patton huffed, holding onto Janus tighter as he straightened primly.

“He was mean to Logan.” he insisted. “And I didn't eat them, I spat them out and fed them to the rats. And that was just his fingers, he gave up his nose when he tried to kill Janus--”

“And this is why I had to arrange to make him Logan's cell mate very early on—sharp teeth when he's mad.” Janus sighed, all while casting Patton a look so warm and so infinitely luminous that it could only be called tender. “He was safer, and far less of a troublemaker, with companionship.”

Virgil's stomach turned dangerously, and as if he knew, one of Remus's hands pressed flat to Virgil's belly, like he was trying to steady him.

“Oh, Seven Hells...” Virgil groaned, shaking his head. “I can't—know what? Fuck it. I believe you, and I'm sufficiently terrified of the cannibalistic Black Dog.”

“Herald.” Patton protested. “And I did not eat his fingers! The tip of his nose was an accident, he shoved me after I bit him and I swallowed on reflex--”

“Can we please get back on topic?” Virgil protested.

“Oh, come on, toy soldier.” Remus laughed. “This is good stuff! If you weren't so cute and Pattycake there wasn't so gone on Lord Janus, I'd be checking out his ass right now!”

Virgil sputtered and blushed, trying to refocus on the conversation and not...the crap coming out of Remus's mouth. While he was currently a literal monkey on Virgil's back.

“So...that's how it's done? You...get a soul? But the Animata were the only ones who could give necromancers souls, and they don't exist anymore.”

“Actually...”

Virgil glared back at Remus. “What the hell do you know, you walking trash can?”

“Oh—you say the sweetest things!” Remus cooed, reaching up to boop the tip of Virgil's nose before grabbing onto him again.

“Seriously, Remus...”

The warning note in Virgil's voice clearly did something, because Remus finally sobered and lost some of that manic gleam in his eye. Instead, the green eyes he shared with his brother glinted more like blades carved of pure emerald: razor sharp, precise, and deadly.

“My big brother's a half-twin who got hung up on a necromancer. I did some digging.” he admitted. The nasal whine in Remus's voice softened as he spoke, turning his tone into something smooth and impossible to ignore: biting enough to catch the ear, pleasant enough to make listening enjoyable.

“In the few records we have of Zero—the first year of the time cycle we use now—there are documented mentions of the Animata. You have to lie, cheat, steal, and fuck to see those volumes of the Tomes, even if you're a member of the royal family, but luckily I'm good at all four of those things!”

“So the Animata are real?”

“Very. We just know them by a different name now.”

“What name?”

“...that's what I'm not sure of.”

“I am.”

Virgil looked to Janus sharply. “How?”

Janus glared at him, then Remus...then slid a look at Patton, who snuggled closer and nodded in encouragement.

“Animata is a word from the language of the dragons.” Janus finally admitted. “Even drakes are born knowing how to speak it. The word means 'life giver.' However, according to my mother, it was also the root of a pejorative—a slur directed at the entire race due to the crimes of one. A slur that means 'death giver.'”

He paused, then looked Virgil square in the eye.

“The slur was necromata.”

“What the actual fuck are you talking about?” Virgil asked—no, wheezed...no, something else, because he wasn't sure he had enough breath for that.

“I'm talking about the fact that your people never needed to be controlled, Virgil. You were—are the life givers. You animate the dead—give back life that was taken, remember the forgotten, grant warning to the condemned so they can meet their end without regret. The power your people possess is a gift granted you by the Fates, one the Animator turned his back on.”

“How do you know any of this? Who is your mother that she knows--”

“My mother was the Dragon Witch of Kolar!”

Virgil's mouth snapped shut as silence fell. For a long moment, he couldn't bring himself to speak as he thought about all the Festivals of the Forgotten past, of his grandmother's grave that Grandpap visited every week, and the one nameless child's grave in the celebratory fields, forbidding anyone to touch it for literal years...

“What'm I missing, toy soldier?” Remus murmured in his ear, making Virgil shiver reflexively—and also bringing him back to the present.

Oh, nothing. Virgil wanted to say. Only I think that Lord Janus, captain of the royal guard and the assassin's corps is my dead uncle, that's all.

Instead, Virgil just shook his head and sagged into Remus a little more, letting his steady warmth stave off the panic attack he could feel coming on.

“Then...what about the race of twin souls?” he finally croaked, dismissing the subject.

“There's no race.” Patton replied after a moment before looking up at Janus with an expression so soft, he half expected the drake to transform into a baby duckling. “Just...well...soulmates. In that they have two souls, and one of them belongs to us. Janny gave me mine.”

“You're a twin soul?” Virgil asked incredulously.

Janus raised an eyebrow. “I'm a drake—half human, half dragon? The duality is more than just tragic backstory, sweetie.”

Virgil tried not to think about the implications of that 'tragic backstory'--then his blood ran cold as he twisted to look Remus in the eye.

“You weren't hiding Roman because of his extra soul.” he breathed. “You were hiding the fact that he gave it away.”

“An extra soul? He—what?” Janus sputtered.

“King Thomas Roman II isn't a conduit, he's a twin soul. The princes are half-twins, split between the cusp of days.” Virgil explained. “When twins are born on two separate days, they get two different souls—not the one they were supposed to be linked to. It means that--”

“One twin gets a normal soul, the other gets two, his and the one his brother should have had—and the power of a completely unsullied soul is the kind of power that can easily ensure someone is mistaken for a conduit.” Janus realized aloud, cursing. “This is not the kind of thing you hide from the captain of the guard! How did that even happen, anyway?”

“Because Roman doesn't know.”

Virgil watched Remus's face as he spoke, strangely shaken by the look of regret on his features.

“What do you mean he doesn't know?” Janus protested. “That's not something that's easy to hide.”

“...unless he doesn't remember.”

Patton's sweet, gentle voice piped up, and Virgil watched as he left Janus's side to step closer, his eyes on Remus.

“He doesn't, does he?” he asked softly. “That's how Janny didn't know. That's--”

Patton was cut off by a distant cry of alarm that sounded suspiciously like...

Remus's arms tightened around Virgil. “Roman.”

Virgil looked to Janus, who was already staring in the direction of the voice. Looking to Virgil, he nodded in silent understanding.

The king was in trouble, and Logan was with him.

Janus swept his cape back, glancing at Patton. “Darling?”

Patton nodded, features screwed up in determination...

...and before their eyes, the diminutive young necromancer had melted, reshaped itself, until a hound roughly half Janus's height stood befor them, with a sleek, coal black coat and eyes that glowed bright, cheerful sky blue.

Patton's nose hit the ground like a shot, sniffing and snuffling before he whined and took off at a trot.

********** “Loganberry!”

A few turns down the tunnels led them towards a steel ladder leading up to a hatch that led somewhere into the lower levels of the palace. Just a few feet away from it, a prone figure was on the ground, unconscious.

By the time Virgil reached his side, Logan was sitting up, rubbing his face.

“Get him up.” Janus ordered. “We need to get you all to the king's chambers for safety's sake.”

Virgil nodded, facing Logan—Logan, who was staring at the steel ladder like it was some kind of phantom.

“Logan...where's Roman?” Virgil asked softly.

Something crossed Logan's features, an emotion so painfully intense Virgil couldn't quite identify it—then went cold and dead with an emotion Virgil knew very well.

One that could easily be mistaken for neutral in its total absence of feeling, but with the subtle curl of Logan's lip, Virgil could easily identify as pure, undiluted rage.

“The king has been taken.” Logan declared, rising to his feet and stalking towards the ladder.

“By who?” Remus asked, startling Virgil with the fact that he was directly behind him with Virgil never realizing he was there.

“The assassin.” Logan replied—just as he began climbing the ladder.

“Logan, get down here!” Janus snapped.

“You'll want to join me, Lord Janus—this leads to the dungeons. Please instruct Patton to resume his human form.”

Virgil could hear a snuffle somewhere behind him, but he was unable to tear his focus from Logan as he ascended the ladder. There was something about his voice, that look on his face, something that was making Virgil's chest tight and his ears buzz with a funny droning sound...

He followed Logan up the ladder.

At the top, Logan was there to help him up, grabbing his hand to steady him as he emerged in the middle of a dungeon hallway. The pair of them did the same for Remus, Janus, and a Patton now in human form.

“...this is the barricaded section.” Janus realized as he straightened, dusting himself off before turning to Patton. “This portion of the dungeons was shut down eight years ago.”

“Correct.” Logan replied, facing the four men and gesturing down the hall. “There is an office down the hall--”

The buzzing in Virgil's ears grew louder, and the world started to get a little washed out on the edges—sort of gray and blurry.

“This is where you were taken.” he wheezed, feeling a line of heat at his back when he started to sway.

Logan nodded, then turned away from them and knelt beside the open sewer hole. He thought Logan was going to slide the cover back in place, but then watched him reach inside. Only then did Virgil realize the hole had some kind of channel around the edge, slim but deep, possibly for some kind of drainage component that was never put in.

Logan reached into it, fished around, then pulled out a slim bundle wrapped in a faded, careworn child's coat.

Heaving a sigh of relief, Logan's shoulders slumped.

“Roman is still alive.” he sighed to himself, distracted and not quite soft enough to keep from being heard. “He never found it.”

Virgil felt his knees buckle. Arms wound around his waist again, and some of the gray edges in his vision cleared a little.

“You...you...Lo, you have...”

Logan replaced the sewer cover and stood, facing Virgil with a neutral, but softer look.

“My memory back, yes.” Logan replied. “It's a long story, but its restoration is the very reason Roman was taken from me. The assassin has him—that is why you should be here, Lord Janus--”

“Try uncle.” Virgil muttered—however, Logan heard him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Ma'am-Ma'am was his mother, so he's Geni's brother.”

“Just how old do you fuckers get?” Remus huffed behind Virgil.

“The life expectancy of the average Necromata is about a hundred and twenty years—but the dragon blood in the Crofter family tree means we get triple that.” Virgil muttered as Logan regarded Janus with new interest. “My geni was born, not hatched, and they didn't meet Pari until they were a hundred and forty.”

“How do you know the assassin was the one that took the king, Logan?” Patton asked from his place at Janus's side.

“Because he tried to kill me when I was nine.” As quickly as possible, Logan relayed his memory of how he first met Roman, resuscitated after being found nearly drowned in a river.

“He is also the one who arrested me—and the one who just broke out of the dungeons.” Logan finished. “That is why I brought you all up here, Lord Janus. And this...”

Logan stopped to unwrap his precious bundle, revealing a small, leatherbound volume.

“...will prove his guilt, as well as provide us a means to stop him.”

“Logan...who is the asassin?”

Logan's features paled then, bright blue eyes dulling with remembered horror.

When he spoke, Remus's arms around Virgil tightened, and Virgil distantly heard Patton choke out a strangled noise that might have been a sob that echoed the sudden lump that was making it hard for Virgil to breathe.”

“The man you arrested yesterday, Lord Janus—the assassin is Colonel Mori.”

* * * * Specific CW for gore: mentions of cannibalism, both in general and specific--erring on the side of caution with graphic depictions of it, mostly discussing the details of a bitey little manpuppy being bitey. And a manpuppy. XD

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do-what-the-knight-tells-you · 5 years ago

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Blood is Rare (and Sweet like Cherry Wine): 6/8

Short Ficlets in a Witcher!AU for Sterek Valentines week

Beginning: tumblr / Ao3

5- All Lovers are Poets, No?

Derek had tried to come back to baseline with Stiles after Bath Night, but apparently that little frisson of reciprocation was all it took for Derek to crash headlong into the feelings he’d been avoiding. Their rapport had gotten so easy, Derek had to catch himself several times, before he might have crossed an unspoken line, said too much, and blown the whole thing.

Just looking at his journal filled him with enough emotion to try to fill the whole thing with nothing but poetry and drivel, rhyming, nonsense, searching for the best analogies, descriptions, ways to immortalize the exact up-turn of the Witcher’s nose, and angle of his smile, likening the little dots that covered him to stars, and scars to clouds, and other such nonsense.

There were hunts still, and Derek found himself both more terrified to loose Stiles every time, and also more sure that nothing could possibly separate them, in this life.

Some of the verses were beginning to shape up into something, and he began to intersperse his tales of valiant derring-do, with frankly embarrassingly honest romantic pieces. He wondered if these pieces were going to make the rounds, be picked up by other bards, as his first ear-worm about a bard and a Witcher, carefully arranged to be catchy but false, to stir up support and buff out dents in reputation, while not exposing the little cluster of elves to further scrutiny… as that piece had. If his new stuff made it home, would Laura be able to tell? Would his mother? Would they know what he had found? What the back of his mind whispered that Stiles was to him?

And then came a night where Stiles didn’t go inquiring after contracts. Where he stayed. And listened. And Derek had to play for him.

And Stiles was... Breathless.

Stiles hadn’t expected this. He’d noticed the tempo of some of Derek’s recent pieces was very different from all the hero stuff, but he hadn’t thought, hadn’t let himself think, about why that might be.

But this night, he’d lucked into a promising sounding hunt early, and decided to treat himself, to have a drink and sit, and enjoy the polished versions of some of the things he usually only heard in rough pieces and starts.

And it was gorgeous. Stiles almost couldn’t bring himself to be jealous over whatever lost-love or courtesan Derek was clearly using for inspiration, he was so captivated.

“Oh but she burns, like rum on a fire, hot and fast…”

Partway through one piece, Derek spotted him, caught his eyes, faltered. Stiles smiled encouragingly, and Derek resumed, never looking away from Stiles.

“Her fight and fury’s firey Oh But she loves Like sleep to the freezing. Sweet and right and merciful I’m all but washed In the tide of her breathing

And it’s worth it It’s divine I have this Some of the time”

When the piece ends, and the applause dies (because he’s captivating enough tonight that there is applause, people are watching him, as if they’d come to this particular establishment for no reason other than to listen to Derek play.

Derek finally looks away, and Stiles can breathe again, takes a deep pull from his tankard, tries to decide if he’s strong enough to sit here through any other songs like that.

Thank Melitele the next piece is a light Witcher Ballad, but right after, he almost seamlessly transitions into another slow smooth sweet piece, playing with the silence as much as the sound.

“I’m so full of love I could barely eat. Nothing’s sweeter than my lady, I’d never want once from the Cherry Tree My Lady’s sweet as can be, Gives me toothaches from but kissing me…”

And as Derek drops into a heavier, more driving chorus, Stiles can almost smell brown sugar and honey on the air. The song is beautiful one, sweetness balanced with the darker, sadder themes, and then washed in love and joy again, as Derek and his lover are rejoined, redeem each other, wash each other clean.

Stiles is transfixed, jealous, overjoyed, heartsick with envy, bowled over with so much emotion. The idea of love that feels that way, of a lover with whom you can be that open and honest, is so foreign, and Stiles has been fine, all the decades, with little more than occasional paid company, and occasional comradeship, and he’s always been firm with himself, insisted that he didn’t want that anyway, that the life of a Witcher was inconstant, so he could never promise an adult, that is was dangerous, so it was just as well he couldn’t father a child… and never did he let himself consider his parents, and what they went through to get him, and how much it cost, and the ways in which John still hasn’t, and probably never will recover.

Stiles doesn’t know if he will ever be prepared for or open to a love like that, but he thinks it might be too late to avoid one.

Damn bard.

[Next]

#Teen wolf #sterek #sterek ficlet #sterekvalentineweek2020 #my stuff

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nexstrik · 6 years ago

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Adora Kisses (almost) Every Girl

A/N: A series of unrelated ficlets where Adora kisses (almost) every girl in She-Ra. Some platonic, others decidedly less so. Adora Kisses: Catra, Mermista, Lonnie, Glimmer, Entrapta, Perfuma, Scorpia, Razz, Angella, Frosta, Shadow Weaver, Netossa + Spinnerella, Castaspella.

You can also read it here on my AO3!

Catra

Years later she wondered why Catra never hid it from her. The chances Adora would've snitched were high, and there was no way Catra didn't hear her footsteps in the hall, or recognize it when Adora slipped into the barracks for a nap. She lay on their bed, chin in her hands and her tail waving lazily, all her focus on something in front of her.

Adora was accustomed to being ignored by Catra. They spent too many years together to always need to fill the silence. The only greeting she got was a flicker of her ears, and so Adora didn't see the book until she slipped into their bed and curled around Catra, face in her hair.

"Hey, Adora," Catra said, distracted even as she nuzzled their cheeks together.

"Whatcha doing?" Adora was already close to passing out. Last night she'd gotten very little sleep, and today her chore list was blessedly small. No one would mind if she got some quiet time, away from the others.

"Reading."

Adora sat up a little bit. It was unusual for Catra to study anything, even if her status next to Adora was on the line. Curious to see what had Catra focused for once, she checked out the book and frowned. It wasn't immediately familiar to her, and she always knew when the library had a new book. It was important for a Force Captain-in-training to be familiar with all manuals and instructional texts. "About what?"

A low rumble of frustration built up in Catra's throat. "I don't know. It's got a lot of illustrations but they don't explain much."

Sliding the book over to Adora, Catra wrapped her arms around the other girl's waist. She rested her head in the crook of Adora's neck. "Read it to me."

Not an unusual request. It was an open secret in the ranks that Catra had difficulty reading. It wasn't that she was stupid, she insisted, it was something about how the letters were spaced together. They got all jumbled up. She would stammer when asked to read aloud, consistently flipped her d's and p's.

But this wasn't like any book either of them had ever seen.

"Once upon a time," Adora started, then frowned. What did that mean? She read it again to see if maybe she'd messed up. "Once upon a time there was a girl named Snow White."

Frowning even deeper, Adora flipped to the back of the book to get the identification code. If she could figure out what subject the book was in, that might give her useful context. But there wasn't one.

"Catra, there isn't an ID number anywhere on this thing. You got a broken book." A realization scooped out her insides and replaced them with something cold. "Or contraband."

All books were organized by usefulness and subject. Anything that didn't, meant it hadn't gone through the rigorous publishing standards of the Horde, and might even be illicit literature propagated by rebels and maladapts. If anyone caught her with this, it might cost Adora her promotion.

Catra's ears flicked straight up, quivering with excitement. "Whoa, really? Now I gotta read it!"

"Where did you find this?" Adora demanded, certain now that this was illegally published drivel and not a proper book.

Arching backwards, Adora kept the book at arm's length. Catra threatened to clamber over her shoulder, black claws wriggled eagerly, grasping for it. "I found it in Kyle's bunk, okay? Now gimme!"

Adora pushed Catra's face away with the heel of her palm. "I'm putting this in the incinerator where it belongs."

Catra slumped weakly against her. "Adorrraaaaaa. You never let me do anything fun. Aren't you the least bit curious about what's in an illegal book?"

Falling quiet, Adora found she couldn't respond in any way that wasn't an outright lie. "It's just a lot of pictures of animals and princesses." She snarled the last words, flipping through the book again. "It doesn't even tell you how to build anything."

"If it's about princesses...." Catra's eyes rolled, as if searching the room for something she could utilize. "Mayyyyybeeee it was written by a princess?" She latched onto the sentiment, voice firming up with certainty. "We could get inside the enemy mind!"

Trust Catra to know just how to spin things. Adora decided she would read it first and discern if there was anything useful to glean from the material. But as she quickly tore through the scant text, she realized it was worse than useless.

It was boring.

"Adora? Hey, Adora?" Catra was prodding her now, demanding Adora's attention. "What's it say? What is it about?"

"It isn't about anything," Adora said, and read the whole book to Catra. It didn't take long at all. "It's a fable, I think. But it doesn't teach anything."

"Ummm. It totally does. Come on, Adora, you're not that stupid." Catra grabbed the book, frowning. She cuddled against Adora again, her back to the other girl's chest so Adora could rest her chin on Catra's shoulder. "It teaches you not to trust weirdos giving you gifts for no reason. If Snow White hadn't taken the apple, she wouldn't be in so much trouble."

Shrugging, Catra tossed the book onto Lonnie's bunk. "Duh-doy."

Adora wasn't convinced. "Why make a whole book about that?"

"Who cares?" Then she turned around in the circle of Adora's arms and held onto her, tail flicking quick and fast. "Pet me."

Rolling her eyes, Adora indulged in her demands. Catra purred loudly, rubbing her head harder against Adora's palms when she needed more pressure in a certain spot. Even though she insisted she never took naps, Catra always fell asleep eventually when Adora had her hands on her ears.

A gentle rumble in her chest accompanied Catra's every sleeping breath while Adora remained awake, her mind racing. Despite its simplicity, something about Snow White latched onto her imagination.

Maybe there was a cypher in the text, a secret code known only to rebels. Or maybe it was a spellbook. Maybe there was dark power in the words, hidden by the story of an orphan girl running away from her cruel master, the secrets she found in the woods. Maybe it was a metaphor for something else. Maybe it was the ramblings of a drug-addled artist, someone who got a kick out of making books that didn't follow the rules.

Catra's mouth on her neck brought her thoughts back to the present. When they were both little girls, Catra had gone through a painful teething period. More often than not, she used Adora's ankles or wrists for relief. These days, Catra only ever did it at night, some base feline instinct taking over. It was a bad habit that never fully went away.

"Psst." Adora nudged her. "Catra. You're sleep-nibbling again. Knock it off."

Catra did, mumbling something unintelligible as she rolled onto her back. Even though she'd been exhausted just a moment ago, Adora stayed awake a while longer to watch her bunkmate.

And they lived happily ever after.

The words kept circling her skull, wrapping tighter and tighter.

Something about that book made her feel the way she always did when she was close to Catra.

Adora propped herself up on one elbow, concerned now for Catra's safety, wondering if she'd done something to hurt her without realizing it by exposing her to that book. She hesitated. Maybe there was subliminal messaging in the fable after all, a secret only she could unlock. So she leaned down further, pressing her lips against Catra's in a kiss.

Nothing happened.

Disappointed, Adora laid down next to her and tried to get some sleep. Clearly all-nighters were no good for her. They filled her with fanciful thoughts.

She stayed close to Catra, their legs linked together and their arms nothing but a tangle. One finger curled around a lock of her coarse hair, her face pressed against Catra's skin, breathing her in. The way they always slept, when they shared a bunk. The way things were when they were still knit together tighter than steel chains, when she didn't know where she ended and Catra began.

Adora never kissed her again.

Lonnie

No one else noticed. Maybe someone with a better nose would have smelled it.

But Adora was always sharp-eyed. She saw the speck of blood on the floor and tracked it like a hound on the hunt. When she threw open the supply closet and flicked on the lights, it was with a sense of triumph at what she discovered.

Lonnie scrambled to hide it, to put away the bandages and the medicine, but Adora was soon on one knee, joining her on the floor.

"When did this happen?" she asked, setting a careful hand over Lonnie's bare thigh. A nasty cut drew a jagged spike up her dark skin, and Adora hissed in sympathy. "I'll get disinfectant."

Lonnie bull-dozed right past indignation at being caught, right into frustration. "I'm already applying disinfectant. Don't baby me."

She didn't have time to soothe Lonnie's feelings, which were often more fragile than she let on. "Does it hurt?" Adora asked. "I have some leftover painkillers from when they took that shrapnel out of my arm."

"It doesn't hurt," Lonnie said.

Raising an eyebrow, Adora responded by sinking her fingers into tender flesh. Lonnie bit her lower lip, a tremble working its way through her body.

And finally, a low, desperate whimper.

"I won't tell anyone." Adora reassured her, cupping Lonnie's face in one hand. That was always how affection worked between them, between everyone in their squad. Everything colored with cruelty, with pain. Otherwise, how could you trust it to be true? "Stay here."

It wasn't like she could go anywhere else. She left Lonnie in the supply closet and flew down the hallways, returning shortly with the painkillers. When she settled down next to Lonnie, she saw the other girl had already dressed the wound. Adora handed her an ice pack, a canteen, the painkillers, and then threw a blanket over the both of them and cuddled her.

She kept Lonnie's arm over her. One palm was pressed to Lonnie's hand, keeping the ice pack in place to reduce any swelling.

"What do you want from me?" Lonnie said after a while.

"Be nicer to Catra," Adora responded, and then kissed her cheek. "Please?"

The other girl shifted. Then she sighed. "Anything else?"

Adora kissed her again, tilting her head so that their lips met. "Be nicer to me."

Then she bit her, just hard enough to maintain pecking order, just to let her know it was sincere. Lonnie inhaled sharply, then kissed her back, one palm on the back of Adora's skull.

"...No promises."

Glimmer

There was a part of her that would always be different. The Horde took years from her life, stripped her willpower down until she didn't know what a healthy boundary looked like, much less how to establish one. There was no privacy, no secrets allowed, no personal space, nothing that could establish personhood.

Still, she should have known better than to stroke her fingers down Glimmer's naked back.

"Have I ever mentioned how pretty these are?" she said, tracing the shape of wings on each shoulder blade. Everything about Glimmer was pretty, from the way she spoke to the way she shone in the darkness, bright, glimmering like gemstones were embedded into every inch of her golden skin. "Are they tattoos? Or were you born with them?"

Glimmer didn't respond at first, standing there with her towel in hand. Her hair dripped, heavy and dark after a bath. Only clad in shorts; Adora wondered if it ever made her feel vulnerable. They'd been naked together before and neither of them had minded.

"Wh-when did you get in here?" Glimmer said, still standing with her back to Adora.

"I've been waiting in here?" Adora withdrew, glancing away. "You're dripping."

"Uh. Yeah. Thanks." Glimmer threw on a robe, towelling her hair dry. She refused to look at Adora. It slowly dawned on her that she'd done something wrong, but Glimmer wasn't going to admit it to spare her feelings.

Sighing in frustration, Adora averted her gaze. She hated playing this particular guessing game. "Should I not be in here without permission?"

That snapped Glimmer out of it, somewhat. Distress colored her voice as she quickly reassured Adora. "You can come into my room whenever you like! Sorry if I'm acting weird, you just surprised me."

She winced. Adora knew she could be quiet. It came from years of navigating the Fright Zone after-dark, when she should have been in her room. Being where she oughtn't, getting punished if she was caught. It made you careful what noises your feet made, what with how every lesson was literally beaten into her. Not even She-Ra's powers could heal scar tissue.

"Sorrryyyy," she sang, lifting one foot to point at the sole of her boot. "Got ghost feet."

"And ghost hands," Glimmer agreed, under her breath. Then she swung right back to normal, smiling brightly at Adora. "So what's up?"

Speaking of marks on her skin. Adora grimaced, pulling at her collar to show Glimmer what was wrong.

The smile dropped from Glimmer's face. "It's acting up again."

Adora nodded, then undid her jacket. She turned around, pulling her shirt over her head. Besides the scars of her childhood, a more recent development was causing the squad to worry about their friend.

It had been a careless mistake. Ever since the catastrophe that had broken the Black Garnet Runestone, she'd spearheaded recovery missions to try and fix what she had shattered. Reports had come in that there were Horde forces gathering near a large deposit, and so She-Ra had gone ahead of the advance party. It was a trap, and she'd gotten too close to shattered fragments of the Black Garnet, and ever since then...

Lightning forked down her skin, angry-red like something had slapped it onto her. Tree-like branches strained against her skin, every nerve and blood vessel mapped out and glowing faintly red.

Always breaking things, she thought. Everywhere you go. Always leaving it shattered behind you.

Glimmer confirmed her fears. "It's definitely getting worse." This time Glimmer was the one touching her, though not with appreciation. Pressing her palms flat against Adora's back, Glimmer stepped closer. Her forehead was a comforting pressure right on the center of her back. "I'm so sorry I wasn't there, Adora."

"I don't feel sick." Adora wanted to protest, mainly because she didn't want her friend to worry or feel guilty for something that wasn't her fault. "I just wish I knew what it means when my body starts flaring up like this."

Glimmer pulled back, but Adora could sense she hadn't retreated far. "What'd my mom have to say?"

"Queen Angella said it might be best to call upon Mystacor's sages for aid."

Adora could hear Glimmer wince. "My mom? Willingly working together with my aunt? This must be more serious than I thought."

"Mmm." Adora covered her stomach with both hands, smiling weakly. "Just what I wanted to hear. Love having weird Runestone etchings on my skin! It's just so great."

Then Glimmer's voice dropped down to a tease. "At least they look pretty sick."

Adora huffed with laughter. "Oh?"

"Yeah." Warmth again, over Adora's hip. There was a splash of black ink there, a messy coverup of her old Horde tattoo. Now it meant nothing at all. "You look dangerous."

Adora flexed, unable to resist. Especially when a mapwork of red veins pulsed up her arm with every idle movement. "These guns are pretty lethal." Forcing a straight face, she looked at Glimmer over her shoulder with concern in her voice. "And completely unregulated, so probably a safety hazard for the operator."

Glimmer tugged on her ponytail. "Dummy."

A moment of hesitation. Then Glimmer's fingers went down the nape of her neck, where Adora knew for a fact there were no marks. The fresh buzz of her haircut made it all the more sensitive, and she found herself wanting to rub against Glimmer like a cat.

She went lower, echoing what Adora had done to her moments before. A light stroke on either shoulder, tracing the outline of wings. When Glimmer touched her again, without reason, without inspecting the marks, a shiver went up her spine.

Belatedly, Adora realized her mistake. She must have made Glimmer feel like this. "Sorry for touching you earlier without permission."

The careful exploration halted.

"...You don't need permission to touch me, Adora."

So she turned around, curious and completely unselfconscious. It didn't matter to her that she was still bare from the waist up, though she felt maybe it ought to. Reaching out, she thumbed against a stray water droplet on Glimmer's cheek. "Good."

Then she squished Glimmer's face in between two palms.

"Because I can't get enough of your cute, round face!" She pulled and pinched, sighing in satisfaction. "Ugh, I just want to play with it all the time."

Glimmer waved her arms frantically, trying to escape as Adora pulled her closer with a squeal. "Adora!"

An eruption of sparkles filled Adora's palms. Reappearing on her bed, Glimmer peered at Adora angrily over the edge of the mattress like a small, angry bird hiding in her nest.

Adora set one foot on the first step up to Glimmer's bed, grinning up at her. "Aw, Glimmer. Don't be mad." An exhale of exertion left her as she leapt up to the second step. "It doesn't mean I don't also think of you as a fierce and powerful commander!"

"Okay, well, that wasn't the kind of touching I meant!"

A pillow hurtled towards her. Adora ducked, windmilling her arms to keep her balance as she flipped onto the third step. "Then what kind of touching did you mean?"

With another leap, she grabbed the edge of Glimmer's bed. Hanging off the frame, she let the whole thing swing slightly, peeking up at Glimmer with a smile in her eyes. Glimmer was sprawled out, arms wide and palms braced against the mattress as it swung from side to side.

Adora reached in, one palm cupping Glimmer's calf. Her left arm burned with the effort of holding all her body weight, but these days She-Ra's strength was as easy to tap into as her own. And it was worth it to touch Glimmer. Everything about her was soft, her skin silky and unmarred, so unlike Adora. Her touch shifted down, gripping Glimmer by the ankle as she rubbed her thumb in circles over the dome of her talus.

(Complete knowledge of physiology and anatomy was a useful skill to have, especially when you were mostly interested in breaking bones.)

"Get up here and find out," Glimmer breathed.

Perking up, Adora clambered the rest of the way inside Glimmer's bed. The princess was still off-balance, half-sitting up. Her lips pressed tightly together, every stray beam of moonlight making her shimmer in the dark. Both hands went up to her neck, unfastening her robe and pulling it off. Then they were equal again, naked from the waist up.

It wasn't anything Adora hadn't seen before, but that didn't mean she ever got tired of it. Then she remembered Glimmer evidently wanted to be touched, not looked at, so Adora crawled closer until she was sitting on top of her.

She took Glimmer's face between her hands again, but not as roughly as before.

Still. "Squish," she sang, gripping Glimmer's ears in between her knuckles and rubbing them like coins, for good luck.

"Oh, come on!" Glimmer complained.

Adora squished her cheeks again. "I'm getting to it."

Glimmer's face burned red-hot under her fingertips as she petted and stroked over her cheeks, her brows, the ridge of her nose. Then she sank her fingers deep into Glimmer's thick hair, massaging her scalp until the other girl let out a pleased groan.

"Adora," she said, covering Adora's hands with her own, eyes closing. "I- I love you."

Adora stopped, the back of her index finger brushing over the swell of Glimmer's lower lip.

"I love you too, Glimmer," she said, an unexpected ache growing inside of her at the admission. They'd said it hundreds of times before, and each time carved at her like a knife, leaving joy instead of pain. "I wish you knew how much I loved you."

She pulled Adora closer. Adora barely had time to register the shock of pleasure that blew through her at the sensation of skin against skin. She would have been entranced just by the pounding of Glimmer's heart under her ribcage, but then Glimmer kissed her, winding both arms around Adora until they were locked tightly together.

Adora rose up with a gasp, bracing herself above Glimmer. "Oh!" she said, breathing heavily. "That kind of touching. Okay. You could have just said so."

"Adora?!" Glimmer sounded panicked, now, and Adora was pretty sure it had nothing to do with the kiss. "Wait, time out. Are you okay? You got all glowy!"

They both sat up. Adora looked down at herself to see her veins had lit up again, the lightning bolts curling and twisting down her sternum. "Huh," she said, examining the mapwork of black and red pulsing down her forearms. "Weird, but not painful, so I'm not too worried."

Glimmer dragged her hands down her face in distress. "You are way too casual about this."

"I dunno. I guess I figure at this point we've been through worse, and I'm all out of energy to be freaking out anymore." Adora glanced up, brow cocked. "Besides, you're shiny too."

Like shimmering stardust, all over her body. "Well I'm supposed to look like that."

"Oh yeah?" Adora grinned, head tilted to the side. "Does anything ever turn it off?"

"Maybe. A girl can't reveal all her secrets at once."

So Adora tackled her down to the mattress, kissing her all over her face. The chain holding up her bed groaned in protest, swinging from side to side as the sound of giggling filled the room.

Entrapta

When the world spun, when the complexities of people and their lies and the webs of relationships and society threatened to cut her circulation, when Adora just needed something that had clear cut answers, she liked to fix things. The Fright Zone had no shortage of damaged vehicles in need of repair. Even if it was beneath her station as a Force Captain, no one ever dared question her.

And it helped in the war effort.

Sweat trickled down her forehead, her arms straining from the effort of keeping still. Steady, she had to remain steady as she plugged in the electric engine to the delicate steering machinery.

Steady.

Steady...

"Force Captain Adora!"

Adora yelped, shocking herself and banging her head against the hood of the transport at the same time. Sucking on her fingertips, Adora pulled out of the vehicle to glare at Princess Entrapta.

Shadow Weaver insisted that the princess didn't get any special treatment, but that clearly wasn't the case. Even if she was useful, even if she single-handedly raised the standard for all machinery in the Fright Zone, even if she was... oddly friendly, Adora wasn't sure she was worth the stress of her rescue.

Catra, Scorpia, and Adora had been stuck in that labyrinth for weeks trying to steal the princess.

I guess it didn't hurt that she turned out to be a willing captive .

All they had to do was give her a bit of scrap and access to their tools and she'd gone nuts. The conflict between their lands didn't even seem to phase her, when she could be bothered to remember it at all. Catra of course took wicked delight in corrupting a princess, and spent a good amount of time shadowing Entrapta wherever she went, studying her carefully. Meanwhile, Adora couldn't help but be slightly disgusted that someone could exist without any guiding principles at all, no allegiances or loyalty at all, floating through the world without a single thought in her head that didn't service herself and her amusement.

"Can I help you?" Adora muttered, slamming the hood shut. She turned around, leaned against it with her arms crossed, and regarded Entrapta with nothing but cool indifference. "...Princess?"

"Yes, actually," she said. The princess pushed herself off the ground a few inches, closing the distance between them so they could speak at eye-level. "It's regarding a fascinating social experiment I've observed among the ranks!"

"Uh-huh."

Entrapta spun around her, a measuring tape emerging from one of her many tool belts. She stretched it this way and that, studying Adora carefully. "And, well, it seems to center around you, Force Captain!"

Curiosity took ahold of her, despite herself. Her frame relaxed slightly, and Adora nodded for Entrapta to continue. "Yeah?"

"Yes, there's been a circulation, a rotation, you might say, of certain Horde members and their romantic relationship with you!" Entrapta lifted herself even higher, starting to shout with excitement. "I was wondering if there was maybe like a code you guys were following or maybe if it was going by lunar cycles, I keep trying to find a pattern but there's no rhyme or reason to— mmmhmhpph!"

Adora grabbed the princess by the mouth, shushing her and bringing her back down to ground level in one motion. "Be quiet!" Adora said, her cheeks heating up. "Who I'm dating is none of your business. Okay?"

A short pause. Then Entrapta nodded, pulling Adora's hand down with her hair. "But I was wondering if I could join in?"

Taken aback, Adora let her hands drop to her side. "What?"

Again Entrapta loomed in, invading her personal space. "I enjoy the seemingly casual and noncommitted nature of Horde relationships," Entrapta said. "It looks less complicated than what the other princesses get up to!" Her head rolled back as she loudly lamented. "Soooo much drama."

"I bet," Adora muttered. Then, a beat. "Wait, is this a prank?"

She shook her head. "Prank? No! I want to engage in an experiment with a willing participant, and you especially are unattached at this point in time and unlikely to become emotionally dependent on me, given your history!"

"...Thanks."

Entrapta beamed. "You're welcome! Shall we engage with a kiss, just to start?" A notepad and a pencil appeared in her hand, notation beginning already. "I also appreciate a gift from time to time of useful or necessary mechanical components."

"You can't demand someone give you gifts just because you're dating," Adora started, already offended. "Also, I didn't say I would be your girlfriend!"

"Oh." Entrapta sank down again, this time without Adora's help. "Oh, of course. Right." Her mask went down, red gaze focusing on her shoes. "Sorry. I just got excited by the prospect, I didn't fully plan this through."

Deep inside her, past all the barriers she put up over the years to protect herself, Adora's heart twinged. She fought it. She really did. But in the end she had a hard time being mad at someone who had never really tried to hurt anyone.

Am I seriously letting someone guilt trip me into a relationship?

Adora shook her head to clear it, rubbing her palm against her forehead. "If you just want gifts and kisses, you don't have to date me." Uncomfortable now, Adora crossed her arms and looked away. "Honestly, I can just...give you those things. If you really wanted them. As a friend."

"Really?" Entrapta gasped, her hair pushing her mask up as she clasped her real hands together in joy. "Would you really be my friend? I've never had one of those either so this whole encounter is turning out to be an absolute net-positive for me!"

"Sure." It wouldn't be hard to requisition anything Entrapta needed. As Force Captain she could sign it away as being necessary for the war effort. And as for the rest... she glanced around quickly, finding the hangar bay mostly empty. Then Adora sighed, rolled her eyes, and pulled Entrapta close.

It was not entirely chaste. They pulled apart with a soft wet sound, and Adora lingered close, and she wasn't sure why. Entrapta's breath on her lips felt better than it had any right to.

"Was that good?" she asked softly.

"Oh, that was excellent," Entrapta said, breath hitching. A dozen hands, both real and conjured, coiled around Adora's every limb. Gentle, yet demanding. "But just to be sure, I'm going to need to run a few more trials.”

Mermista

Slowly, a trickle of boats returned to Salineas. It took time for word to spread out that the Sea Gate had been repaired, and time on top of that for the inbound voyages of the city's scattered people. Adora couldn't be more proud, standing next to Mermista on the docks as they surveyed the reconstruction.

The loud chatter of many languages, port-patois, hammers and saws, the clatter of iron-shells harvested from the bottom of the bay, construction and decoration. There were children. Adora didn't realize how much she missed the sound of happy children until there weren't any.

Most of her friends didn't share the sentiment. Of course, she didn't like handling children. She just liked knowing they were around. She liked the steady undercurrent of noise that only peace in wartime brought.

"Anyway," the princess of Salineas said, "I'm bored. Do you wanna makeout, or something?"

Hearing another unfamiliar word always put Adora off-kilter. The people of Etheria were always throwing around terms and ideas and concepts completely alien to her. What was worse was how the same concept could mean any number of radically different things from kingdom to kingdom.

There were few things she missed about the Horde. One of them was order. Enforced through cruelty, always, but at least it was predictable cruelty.

"Uh, sure," Adora said, one arm across her waist in an instinctive, defensive fidget. She glanced around the port again, then down at the wood underneath her feet. It must be some kind of Salineas tradition. Probably fun, if Mermista was suggesting it, even if she pretended she didn't want to do it. "Why don't you go first?"

Mermista rested her cheek on one fist, staring at Adora with flat irritation. Immediately, Adora knew she had said the wrong thing, had once again been caught flagrantly displaying all the gaps in her knowledge of social norms.

"It's not the kind of thing you take turns doing," Mermista said after a while. "Ughhhh, you're so depressing."

"Why does everyone keep saying that?" Adora muttered.

"Tch. Whatever." Mermista's eyes darted aside, back towards the sea. "It's not like I really wanted to do it or anything. I'm not gonna kiss someone who still needs to keep the training wheels on."

Training wheels! Finally, a term she understood, at least through context clues. Something about being unable to operate certain vehicles unassisted or without safeguards. Clearly it was being used as a metaphor in this situation... unless Mermista was offering to take her on a voyage in one of her skiffs. Adora thought she might actually enjoy that very much.

She was about to say so, until the rest of the sentence went through her filters, coming back with a red alert:

"Wait," Adora said. "Kiss? You want to kiss me? Why?"

To her surprise, the tips of Mermista's ears turned ruddy. "Drop it. I already told you, I changed my mind. You don't know left from right, it'd be like making out with a toddler."

There was that phrase again, making out. Adora wished the people of Etheria would speak plainly for once. "I know how to kiss people," she grumbled, rubbing her arm.

"Okay," Mermista said. "And?"

"And I just don't like people pretending I'm totally ignorant."

"So prove me wrong," Mermista said.

Adora mentally cursed herself. Then, before she lost her nerve, she yanked Mermista closer, scrunched up her face, and kissed her on the cheek.

"See?" she said upon drawing away, aware that they were both scarlet-faced now.

"Ohhhhh," Mermista said, both hands covering her eyes. "It's even worse than I thought. You don't know anything."

"Wh- I know things!" Adora sputtered as the princess shook her head and walked away. "Hey! Wait! Mermista! I know things!"

Perfuma

"I'm glad you were able to see Plumeria in her full glory."

Adora was glad, too. She rested her head on Perfuma's lap, the sword of She-Ra held in her open fist. Occasionally she glanced over at it, just to reassure herself it was still there. But as time went on, she worried less, and less, and less...

Adora's head tingled as Perfuma strokes her nails through her hair. It felt so good to be touched, especially now, without the edge of cruelty lining over every action she took.

She tilted her head back a bit, staring up at Perfuma with wide eyes. The princess smiled down at her, fond and faint. "You're so pretty, Perfuma."

It should have bothered her. She didn't mean to say that out loud. The thought kept crowding her head, though, from day one, and suddenly it didn't feel so important to let it stay inside her head. Now it was outside, and Adora was lighter, and free.

Perfuma bit back a smile. "Oh?"

Solemnly, Adora nodded. "I was too nervous to say it before."

"And are you nervous now, sweet pea?"

Fragrant plumes of smoke curled around the room, filling her with tranquility. Her whole body tingled in pleasure when Perfuma raked her nails through blonde tresses again. "I'm always nervous."

Hit by the absurdity of that, Adora started giggling, and then Perfuma started giggling, and they were both sprawled out in her tent, laughing like a pair of fools. The back of Adora's hand brushed against Perfuma's stomach. Perfuma laced their fingers together. Then Adora was inching closer, kissing her cheek. And then her forehead. And then Perfuma's lips.

She was so sweet, so giving, so gentle, so willing. Adora's mouth opened to the kiss, lazy and indulgent. They coiled together on the floor, the temperature in the room rising alongside the burning embers in the corner, billowing out bright yellow and purple tendrils with whatever magic made Adora feel so relaxed.

Perfuma had to break the kiss first, reluctantly, her face flushed with desire. "We probably shouldn't go too far," she said, toying with a lock of Adora's hair. "Not while you're like this."

"Go too far where?" Adora mumbled back, reaching for her again.

Laughing, Perfuma pushed her hands away. "Yyyyup. I think that's a cause for a break." She turned a complaining Adora in her arms until they were spooned comfortably together. And that was good, so Adora settled down. Especially when Perfuma started touching her hair again, pulling it free of the ponytail so she could comb it. "Who'd've thought the legendary She-Ra was such a lightweight?"

"I'm a welterweight," Adora said, sounding self-important. "Three year champion in the Horde amateur league."

Perfuma hummed as if she was very impressed. "Ohhh, I see. Well, maybe we can convince Miss Champion to drink some water in a bit?"

Adora thought about it. Then she nodded. "Water sounds good."

A few hours later when Glimmer came to collect her, she was not pleased. While Bow tried to saddle up a completely wasted Adora into her saddle, Glimmer let Perfuma know exactly how many missteps she'd made.

"I'm sorry!" Perfuma said, wringing her hands. "I thought the lowest dosage wouldn't..."

"Save it, Perfuma!" Glimmer clutched her skull, groaning in distress. "Aughh, my mom is gonna have my head if I bring Adora home like this."

"You could always spend the night...?" Perfuma suggested.

"If I'm not home by sunrise she'll flip even harder!"

After a hushed conversation on what might sober Adora up, Glimmer returned to the horses. She could hear Bow speaking soothingly to their friend, his low voice a warm comfort.

"Yup, there you go, Adora. Nice and easy, just hold onto the saddle. I'll be up there soon," he said with a smile, a smile which dropped completely as he turned to Glimmer and hissed, "Dude, she's tripping balls right now."

"I can see that, Bow."

It was a long, woozy trip back home.

Scorpia

"Adora!"

Nestled comfortably in her reading nook by the window, Adora twitched at the familiar crack in Bow's voice. Something was wrong; she was on her feet in an instant, buckling her belt and swinging the sword over her shoulder.

"What is it?" she asked, pausing when she noticed Bow and Glimmer were both fighting to get through her door first to deliver the news.

"It's not an emergency," Glimmer said.

"It kind of is," Bow countered.

"But it's not like a huge deal," Glimmer insisted. "And it's definitely not my fault!"

Bow squished Glimmer back and then stepped into Adora's room, hands outstretched in a plea. "We lost the prisoner!"

A shower of sparkles made Adora flinch back a half-step as Glimmer appeared in front of her. "No, we didn't! We just don't know where she is!"

"The prisoner?" Adora glanced back at the window. "You mean Scorpia? She's fine, I saw her by the lake just a second ago."

The two of them paused. Then they crowded Adora near her window, peering out to confirm what she'd said. Sure enough, there was a vaguely familiar red dot by the shore. She'd been going there the same time every day; it was pretty testament to how lax their supervision was that they only just noticed what started a week ago.

"We can't let her stay outside the palace too long," Bow said, sounding nervous. "Not until... Well I mean things are still so... I mean it's just probably not a good idea!"

"I'll go get her, Adora offered. "You two stay here."

A large outcropping of rock disrupted the river just outside Bright Moon. It looked like the aftermath of some great impact, the echoes of it still felt centuries later. The end result was a small lake, and Scorpia sat on the edge with a wooden rod in hand and what looked like hand-made bait lying next to her. From her vantage point high up in her room, Adora didn't know what Scorpia did out here every day. As she drew closer, she heard Scorpia humming, and the splash of water.

Adora watched, at first. Some small part of her wondered if there was more than met the eye with their captured Force Captain. Maybe she was sending secret messages in bottles down the river to where reinforcements were waiting.

Or maybe she was just fishing.

Adora ensured her feet made noise as she approached, mindful of how quiet she could be.

So Scorpia's head tilted a bit in greeting, though she didn't turn around. "Hi, Adora. It's a nice day for fishing, isn't it?"

Adora sat down next to her. "I wouldn't know. I've never done it."

Now Scorpia finally looked at her, her mouth shaped into a little o of shock. "No way. Really? I used to go all the time with my dad." She flicked her line out, humming in satisfaction as the bait bobbed in the deeper waters. "It's also a nice thing to do alone. Just you and the fishies."

The empty summer sky beat down on them mercilessly, though Scorpia seemed to relish in it. Her joints creaked, looking a little baked, and her fair skin had started to take on a healthy sun-kissed glow. Adora had brought something cool to drink. She offered Scorpia some of her juice.

"How are you holding up?" she asked, unsure if there was a more delicate way to approach this.

Scorpia beamed. "Peachy. Retired life suits me."

"You're not... I mean, it's..." Adora couldn't look at Scorpia any longer, and the sun was winking painfully against the lake water. So she could only stare at her own hands, watch how the corruption of the Black Garnet made her veins glow faintly, even in the daylight. "Despite the fact that I destroyed your Runestone?"

And possibly your whole kingdom?

Scorpia got a bite, or she thought she did. The pole flicked, empty. Those claws were surprisingly quick, as Adora knew from experience. But watching them nimby untangle the fishing line was still fascinating. Scorpia learned from hard experience how to be careful, and even if her claws weren't sharp, they could snap through anything. Even flesh and bone.

She flicked the line out again. "Oh, that. It hadn't belonged to me or my family in a long time. Wasn't really much of a kingdom anymore at that point, either."

A rattle of scales as her tail shifted.

Scorpia sighed. "Every day I woke up over there I thought about breaking that Runestone myself."

"Really?"

"Mmhmm." When Adora dared to look up at her again, Scorpia still had a brilliant smile on her face. "You see an animal dying and in pain long enough, and little piece of you wants to just put it out of its misery. You know?"

She did know.

Scorpia's eyes dropped down to Adora's exposed shoulders, her neck, the back of her palms. The remnants of the Black Garnet left their mark on her, and even now, she still didn't know what would happen to her in the long run.

The line twitched, this time for real. With an excited shout, Scorpia pulled a shining mass of scales out of the upset water. Reeling it in, Scorpia whistled in appreciation. She freed the hook from the fish's mouth, holding it in between her claws. Carefully, just enough so that it couldn't wiggle free.

"A real beauty," Scorpia said. He was beautiful, especially in the sunlight. The fish twisted and turned, and what appeared pure silver actually rippled bright blue, in the right angles. "You wanna hold him?"

Wincing, Adora lifted up one palm. "Uh, no thanks."

She shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Carefully, Scorpia knelt at the water's edge. Then she let the fish go, letting him slip out of her claws and thrash back into the depths.

"You don't keep them?"

"Heh. Nah." Scorpia waved at the waters. "Poor things've got it rough enough what with everything else trying to eat them. I just like looking at them flop around sometimes!"

Scorpia had finished her juice, but Adora's remained mostly untouched. So she nudged her, gesturing for her to finish it off, if she wanted.

Unexpectedly, Scorpia flushed.

"Are you okay?" Adora asked. "I think maybe you should wear a hat if you're going to be out in the sun like this."

"Um." Scorpia mumbled something just under her breath. Adora didn't quite catch it, but it sounded like indirect kiss. Whatever that meant. "No, I'm fine."

Scorpia took the glass, hesitating over it a moment before drinking it down. Then her tail snaked out, pulling an umbrella out from behind the rocks. "I brought this," she explained, propping the umbrella up over them both. "There's enough room for two, if you want to hang around. But I only have one fishing pole so you might get bored."

"I'll be fine." Adora reassured her.

So they stayed together for a while longer, enjoying the silence and the occasional splash of water when Scorpia caught a fish.

"I wish I'd known you sooner," Scorpia said. "Before all of this happened. I wish I'd met you in the Horde. It would've been so nice to have a friend."

Privately, Adora agreed. Even if it would have been frowned upon. Even if Scorpia was a princess, and back then Adora would have loathed her for it. Even if it hadn't stayed a friendship, maybe.

They covered the rules of fraternization within the ranks during Force Captain Orientation, right?

Madame Razz

"Mara, dearie, have I done something to offend you?"

With her arms ladened with more of the clutter Razz kept in her house, Adora took a moment to find her balance.

"Hmm?" she said, focusing mostly on the chipped bowl hanging off her elbow. Springtime had arrived, and of course Razz wanted to clean house. This happened every year, and yet somehow every year there was just as much clutter as the last.

Still, Adora wanted to help. Razz couldn't and shouldn't be lifting heavy objects alone.

Razz's big eyes stared at her, distorted by the lenses of her spectacles. "Why, you never ask old Razz for her blessing anymore," she said, wizened face melting into a frown. "Maybe I've lost your respect in my old age. But that doesn't mean I don't still worry about you."

Even though she had no idea what Razz was talking about, she rolled with it. Half of hanging out with Razz meant practicing her improv game. "Uh, the blessing. Right." Adora deposited all the garbage into a cloth sack just outside the door frame. "I guess I've just been too busy to ask. Can I have a blessing please, ma'am, if you're not too busy?"

The old woman shook with glee, dancing from foot to foot. "Oh, Mara. Of course you can! I'm so happy you asked!"

Gripping her hand tightly, Razz smiled up at her before kissing the back of her palm. There was a spark of light, and warmth. Then Adora wasn't sure what to do, so she awkwardly said, "Thank you, Razz."

"No, no, dearie." Razz had her clutch in both hands now. So small, so thin. Adora could feel her bones right through the flesh. "Thank you. It's a great honor to know someone still wants my blessing after all these years."

"Well, of course I do." Adora reassured her, putting an arm around her shoulder in a brief, fond hug. "Who wouldn't?"

Queen Angella

She swept through the palace of Bright Moon. In the dead of night, with her hood up, she got stopped only once. But she lowered the fabric, eye glinting in the moonlight, and the guards let her pass without another word. Her boots had tread this same path so many times over the decade that she sometimes thought there ought to be a trail left behind, grooves in the marble from the twist of her heel as she went to Queen Angella's chambers.

They were empty, so there was only one other place she could be.

Heroes and villains loomed over her. Adora's steps always slowed in here, cat-quiet, because it was a place of reverence and history. Precious gems and etchings, carved into the walls. She passed her old room, empty for years, and followed faint traces of light until she came around the corner and there Angella was, gazing at her.

Or, an etching of her.

Adora's eye flicked upward, scanning over Adora's likeness from thirty years before. She stepped closer, smiling wryly at the serious expression on Angella's face, the way she pored over the carvings like she was searching for something.

"Come now, Angella," Adora said. She slipped one hand across the small of Angella's back, palm resting under the graceful arch of her wings. "I'm not dead yet."

Centuries of learned composure couldn't erase base instinct. Angella flinched away, only for Adora's hold to tighten and tug her closer until they were chest to chest. "Adora?"

Adora covered those soft pink lips with her own, muffling whatever she was going to say next.

Soft hands wound behind her neck, fingers sinking into the hair at the nape. Angella held her tight, wings flaring out and around them both protectively, like the translucent white feathers could shield them.

"You're a very wicked girl," Angella said when she pulled back with a gasp, nails tracing the lines on Adora's face. Angella was the only person who called her a girl still, but then again, Adora supposed they were all children compared to her.

On the wall, hammered starmetal shone in the shape of She-Ra's sword. Adora caught a glimpse of her reflection in the polished surface, and contrasted herself against that old portrait. The scar tissue that bubbled up around her missing eye, the weatherbeaten face. More silver in her hair than gold. More or less the same height. When she changed into She-Ra she didn't grow much taller, either. That had been an affectation of her youth, her desire to seem larger than life.

Shifting these days was a much less dramatic transition. She'd grown into the mantle of protector, no matter which form she took. And when she shifted back into Adora, she didn't feel quite so much like she was shrinking into something small and weak and less-than. Both sides of her held their charm and their strengths, and Queen Angella had memorized every single one.

"When did you arrive?" Angella demanded. Then she followed Adora's line of sight, to the etching of She-Ra carved into the wall, and her face colored slightly.

"I missed you, too." A single flight feather floated down. Adora caught it between her fingers, making it dance. "If only I had a life-sized likeness of you to cart around with me on my journeys, Your Majesty."

Adora tucked the feather into her pocket, to join the collection in her trunk. She thought eventually she might have enough of them to weave into a pair of wings for herself. A cloak to match the queen for formal events. Unbearably bold, and cheeky. No one would dare question her for it, though, least of all Angella.

Physically, the queen had not changed at all. But Adora's perception of her had. She remembered the queen seemed so adult when they first met, severe and wizened.

Looking at her now, Adora thought Angella seemed desperately young. Barely older than her only daughter. The pressure of ruling weighed on her and it looked heavy, too heavy for her slight frame.

Stepping back from the queen, Adora regarded her own likeness. She rubbed her chin thoughtfully, smirking at the image of herself as a youth. That moment, immortalized forever. Angella on her throne, vindicating and blessing Adora. The champion kneeling before Angella, the sword of She-Ra offered in both hands like a sacrifice.

"When you look at this, do you remember me as I am?" she wondered. "Or do you envision the girl I was when I first started courting you?"

Angella's gentle fingers drew Adora's attention away from the portrait and back to her.

"Whether I look upon your face or just a likeness, or when you come to me in dreams, I always see every aspect of you, Adora. Like facets in a gemstone." She traced the lines on Adora's face again, mapping them out, committing them to memory. "And I wonder if I knew then what pain I would force you to endure, if I would still allow you to serve me."

That just made her grin wider. Flaring her cape out dramatically, Adora fell down to one knee. She kept Angella's palm over her cheek a moment longer, then she drew the queen's hands to her lips.

She kissed her delicately, every fingertip, before planting one last kiss on the back of her palm.

"Your Majesty," she said, "I wouldn't change a thing. I'd endure it all a thousand times over if it meant I still earned your heart."

Angella's brow quirked up, her lips flat completely unamused. "You've been reading trashy poetry again, Adora."

Adora lunged, sweeping the queen off her feet so that she was forced to hold onto Adora by the shoulders or lose her balance. "You love it," she declared, and then carried Angella back to her chambers.

The guards knew better than to interrupt them.

Frosta

The two of them observed the melting snow, Adora with fascination and Frosta with resigned satisfaction.

"These glaciers have been forming for centuries," Frosta said, watching them shrink. "The resulting meltwater will flood the lands south of us for miles."

And take out the entire fortress Hordak had set up. Once Mermista got ahold of all that fresh water as well, it would be game over.

"Are you sure about this, Frosta?" Adora asked with concern. "It will take generations to restore the ice again."

"Don't underestimate me," Frosta said. "My line has a long memory. The task will continue on through my descendents and beyond, as I carry on the will of my parents."

As always, hearing such somber declarations from a form so small made her own heart melt like icewater. Unable to help herself, Adora leaned down and kissed her cheek. Frosta glared at her, rubbing the spot with a mitten-clad hand.

"Thank you," Adora said, meaning it. "I won't forget. My descendants won't either. I'll make sure of it."

"Hmm." Frosta waved her aside. "See that they don't."

Shadow Weaver (tw for parental abuse)

"Come here, Adora."

Shadow Weaver extended an arm and Adora ran to her, tucking herself against the woman's side and hugging her tight. A hand rested briefly on top of her head, stroked through her hair and remaining there. It was easy; Adora was barely tall enough to reach her waist.

Above them, the clouds parted as if god had punched a hole through the sky. The endless mire and murk of the Fright Zone vanished for a single radius, allowing the empty sky to shine down on them. Another brief spell fell over them, and in that space, the flickering image of star patterns imposed itself over the clear sky.

"Remember this sight," Shadow Weaver instructed her, fondly petting her head once again. "The Winter Solstice is when the constellations shine brightest. It's my favorite time of year."

"What's a constellation?"

"A pattern of stars." She waved her hands and the mirage vanished, and the smog coiled up like water draining down a pipe, and the sky darkened again. "But they don't shine anymore, my dear. Not anymore."

"How come?"

Shadow Weaver inhaled, ready to explain, and the entire world shattered around them. Two decades passed in the blink of an eye, another Solstice, another night, another Shadow Weaver and another Adora.

She was screaming, or trying to, pinned to the wall by a massive, billowing plume of smoke. It crawled down into her lungs, choking her until her eyes burned and watered, and no matter how hard she thrashed Adora knew she was going to die here and everything she worked for would be over.

Adora's feet kicked out at nothing as she rose, higher and higher. Hangman's noose gone wrong. There was no quick snap of vertebrae here. She was going to suffocate slowly and Shadow Weaver would enjoy every second of it.

"One last kiss goodnight," Shadow Weaver hissed, choking her harder.

Of course. After all this, death would be like falling asleep, maybe. No more pain.

That was some comfort, even if it was overshadowed by one terrible thought: she would die with Shadow Weaver consuming every inch of her. She would die overwhelmed by her, unable to see or think or feel anything else but the smoke in her lungs and her stomach, claws tearing her apart from the inside out.

She reached for the sword of She-Ra, trying to fight with her last scrap of life. Even if it was useless, she had to try.

Adora awoke drenched in sweat, her arm thrown over her head and her blankets kicked off the bed and onto the floor.

It was another Solstice and it was another night and another Adora, years later, and Shadow Weaver was dead.

Outside she could faintly hear the sounds of celebration. Usually on this night, Adora would turn in early. It wasn't out of grief, she was fairly sure. The anniversary of Shadow Weaver's death just happened to fall on a holiday she didn't enjoy. The longest night of the year. A dark so deep that every year she wondered if the sun would ever rise again, and she shivered and trembled until rose-fingered dawn relieved her and she could pass into a dreamless sleep.

Rolling out of bed, Adora went to the trunk at the foot of her bed and dug through it until she found what she wanted. Wrapped in tarp, a broken red clay mask. Adora dug her thumb into the forehead, where a fragment of the Black Garnet had sat. Sister to the shard that lay nestled in her own spine, that made her veins sing with unearned power.

Throwing her cloak over her shoulders, Adora went outside, slipped past the revelers, and exited Bright Moon to the Whispering Woods just outside.

She knew if the situation were reversed, Shadow Weaver would not spend an ounce of regret mourning her. So Adora lit a candle anyway and she propped the mask against a tree and she knelt before it, hands on her lap.

Maybe this would grant her some peace of mind. A vigil. Ritual. Things like that had rules, didn't they? Adora still liked rules, all these years later. She craved them as often as she bucked against them, a rebel at heart no matter how carefully Shadow Weaver had shaped her.

"If I give you the longest night of the year," she whispered. "Will you finally leave me alone?"

The mask did not respond. It was the only thing that survived when Adora had killed Shadow Weaver. It would have to serve, in place of a body.

Adora started digging. Thankfully it didn't take long. The dirt wasn't rigid with frost yet, and she was so much stronger now than she'd ever been before. Lingering over the grave, Adora held the mask in her hands one last time, wanting to remember something other than pain.

It took Adora a long time to understand that becoming She-Ra meant facing her own flaws. At first, after years of being told she was special, it had felt like confirmation of everything Shadow Weaver had told her she was. Perfect. Infallible. Meant for greater things. Shadow Weaver had built her to be perfect. And as much as she was idolized now, Adora never experienced anything like that again. Being the center of someone's universe to the point of unhealthy obsession.

Hot tears trailed down her face, falling onto the mask. She wiped them aside with her thumb, leaving a faint smear in the dust.

"This would be so much easier if I hated you," Adora said. "But I still— I s-still—"

The mask dropped from her numb hands as Adora covered her face with them both, weeping so suddenly that it caught her defenseless. It was frighteningly loud in the wake of so many years spent in silence. It left her screaming, the sound ragged as if she were about to be sick.

She'd never cried like this, not even when she was a little girl. Overwhelmed with everything she'd been pushing down, she was left with no other outlet except shrieks of pain. Like a dying prey animal. Like a fox in heat. Like something dark in the woods that didn't have a name.

Why did you do that to me?

Biting it back down, Adora took a deep, trembling breath. She scooped a handful of dirt over the mask, wiping her tears off on her shoulder. As the night stretched on she tried not to scream again, not wanting to draw too much attention to herself.

Why did you do that to me?!

It wouldn't have taken much. All Adora needed was a reason to not run away. She needed to know that she was doing good. And yes, she knew how stupid that sounded, how childish, how naive, how juvenile.

Then she burned, because who had taught her those things were frivolous? Who had taught her that? Who convinced her softness was weakness? Who convinced her that her heart was a liability?

Yet every lesson beaten into her skin seemed true in that moment. If her heart wasn't so soft, she wouldn't be in so much pain.

Why did you hurt me?

Stopping halfway because her vision was too blurry and her hands too uncertain to do the job well, Adora let herself sob a little more. Her breathing hitched and she allowed it, because her whole chest ached when she tried to stifle the whimpers.

The grave was half full. She needed to finish this before dawn.

Why didn't you love me?

That was the worst part, the part that she refused to say out loud.

Despite it all Adora could never bring herself to believe that Shadow Weaver didn't love her.

She hated how much Shadow Weaver still lived in everything she did. She hated how the first expressions of love she ever knew came from a hand that only ever wanted to hurt her. She hated how there were still inside jokes that she couldn't share with anyone, because the only people in on the joke were dead and she had murdered them. She hated how she could still taste her in every stray wisp of smoke. She hated how much she still craved that touch, to be stroked like a pet, her face caressed or her hair brushed or the center of her back rubbed.

She hated the Solstice, and she hated Shadow Weaver so, so, so, so much, and she would never, ever forgive her.

She hated how much she still loved her, and when the grave was filled Adora sat holding her knees to her chest and she cried wretched heaving sobs until there was nothing left.

The only way to survive this going forward, she tried to remind herself, was to understand that Shadow Weaver lied. There were people in her life who cared about her. Adora's big heart and all her flaws were what made her a person and not a tool, groomed to obey orders without question. There was still goodness in the world that desperately needed defending, and she would continue to fight for her ideals in spite of all the cruelty life had handed her.

And yet.

On nights like this, all alone, it was so hard to remember that. It was hard to believe anyone cared about her or needed her at all.

"No one will ever love you as much as I do, Adora," Shadow Weaver had promised her, full of warmth, full of affection.

And on the longest night of the year, Adora could only weep, terrified that it might be true.

Netossa and Spinnerella

She heard them before she saw them, cautiously creaking open the meeting room door to reveal the two princesses in the middle of a heated argument.

"Me?" Netossa was saying, offended at the very thought. "I'm not going to repeat myself. Obviously it's you, Spinner."

"This is the problem," Spinnerella pointed out, stomping one foot. "You're so stubborn! I can't say anything without you immediately contradicting me!"

"Is this a couple's thing," Adora said, reluctantly stepping in. "Because we're about to have a meeting now and we really can't be having a couple thing in the middle of that."

Netossa's eyes alighted on her, triumphant. "Excellent timing, Adora." She addressed her wife next. "We'll just let the She-Ra mediate this. Will that satisfy you, my love?"

Suddenly, Spinnerella deflated, all her arguments dying on her lips. "We can't ask the She-Ra for help with this," she said. "It wouldn't be right."

Adora sighed. Another problem for the She-Ra to solve. "I don't know how much help I'll be," she said, "But if will get you two to stop arguing, then I have to try. What's up?"

"My wife won't let her humble, pious act drop long enough to admit she's the better kisser."

"Netossa!"

"Well, you won't!"

"And you think each of us kissing the She-Ra will solve this how?"

"She's a neutral third party," was Netossa's reasoning. "Unbiased. What do you say, Adora?"

A long pause. The two of them blinked, realizing the space next to the door was suddenly very empty.

"Adora? Where did she go...?"

Adora booked it back out towards the throne room, thinking that this was one problem she could reasonably ignore.

Castaspella (suggestive!)

The mages never slept in Mystacor. Adora found that while the noise and bustle of scholars and wizards settled down with the darkening skies, she could always count on finding some quiet company in the meditation rooms, the public baths, the murmuring beaches. Usually introverts, like her. Nose deep in a book, ignoring her completely. Probably awake for different reasons, but at least she wasn't completely alone.

You know if you ever need someone to talk to, we're here.

She knew.

Unfortunately, there was no easy way to explain to her definitely virgin and probably innocent friends that what she needed was to be fucked to within an inch of her life.

It had been so much easier in the Horde. There were no strings attached unless you were setting up something transactional.

She knew Catra had often been tempted to try seducing her way towards more favors, but the cons outweighed the pros. Sleeping with superior officers was good if you wanted to stay safe and protected, bad if you wanted any chance at rising up in the ranks. Once you tied yourself to someone more powerful than you, it was very hard to sever that dynamic.

As much as Adora loved her new friends, and loved being around them, she knew she could never, ever, EVER sleep with them. They were too precious about sex, for one thing. Adora didn't quite understand it, but she respected it, and she knew that she could never give them what they needed out of it. Same with Catra. Everything about their relationship was defined by strings.

Before, her needs were carefully dissected and easily met. She'd had it down to a science. She'd find someone in another unit, of her own rank. Study them for a few weeks to make sure they weren't too dangerous. Engage in some quick surveillance to see if they were unattached and of compatible orientations.

Quick, no mess, no feelings, just an easy way to vent steam.

Now, the next best thing was to hang around where other people would completely ignore her. To know she wasn't the only quiet, living soul awake at night. Whatever kept them all from sleep, they shared this in common, and Adora found a measure of satisfaction in it.

Until someone sat next to her, midnight robes spilling out over the sandy beaches.

"You're up late, Adora," Queen Casta said, looking out of place in the mists and shadows. She had a bright personality; it shone when she smiled. There was something girlish in it— that smile made her think of Glimmer, artless and wide and bubbly. Adora imagined Glimmer's father must have been much the same way.

Adora found herself sitting up a little straighter, hands on her lap. "Your Majesty."

The Queen of Mystacor clucked her tongue, waving one hand at Adora. "None of that, now. You can just call me Casta, you know."

"I absolutely cannot do that," Adora responded without meaning to. She hadn't gotten a lot of sleep still. That, combined with the oddness of the hour and the tension of this meeting, made her tongue more loose than she liked. "Uh, ma'am."

Queen Casta lifted one shoulder in a shrug, eyes closing as if to say oh well.

Tension coiled up at the base of Adora's spine. She felt wound up suddenly, not prepared to make small talk, not now when she was quietly simmering in the dark.

She wasn't sure whether or not to be thankful that Queen Casta cut right to the point. "Have you been able to relax at all since your encounter with Shadow Weaver?"

No. "It's been uneventful."

"That's not the same thing, Adora."

A wisp of cloud wrapped around her ankle. Adora pulled her legs up higher, wrapping her arms around her knees and staring out into the twinkling, star-shining sea. The last thing she wanted to do right now was talk about her feelings. She'd done enough of that to last the whole month, thanks.

Beside her, she felt Queen Casta shift, a soft sigh escaping her. "Do you mind if I try something? Just to see if it might help."

Adora glanced at her, out of the corner of her eye. She didn't like staring too long at people. Even though she often wanted to, she rarely had the chance to do it without seeming like the outsider she was. Broken, and different, and odd.

Patiently, with no expectation at all, Casta waited. As the time stretched on, Adora waited for her grin to spoil, to be lashed at for denying a display of power over her. Casta reminded her of Glimmer in more ways than one, and so Adora waited for the queen to bluster her way through what she thought was the best course of action.

But instead, Casta leaned closer, her breath low with a conspiratorial whisper.

"You can say no, Adora," Casta said, biting back another smile. "I promise I won't be offended."

I can say no.

The idea alone was freeing. Something inside her unshackled, a weight dropping from her shoulders. She agreed before she could change her mind, nervous still as she sat with her back to Casta, and felt a cold hand on the vulnerable nape of her neck.

"Let me know if you feel uncomfortable at all," Casta said, spreading her fingers over Adora's scalp.

There would be no danger of that. If anything, it felt a little too good to be touched by the queen, warmth slowly seeping through her fingers as they searched for something in the whorls of her hair. Adora bit her lip to avoid groaning, a subtle vibration trembling through her whole body.

"Ahh," Casta said, "Right here. I found you."

What happened next was hard to describe. It was as though a rod of pure ice lanced through her head, clearing her anxieties in an instant. This time Adora really did groan, a helpless noise that made Casta laugh.

Shivers rolled up the back of her neck. "What did you just do?"

"There's physical pathways in our body, where energy flows and rests." A nail scraped down her spine, stopping just short of the collar of her shirt. "Think of them like, mmm, rivers. They do get blocked up from time to time, and it can wreak absolute havoc on our health."

The top of her head pulsed, and Adora could suddenly feel what Casta meant. It was worse than any knot in her muscle or strain in her joints. It was like a besmirchment on her entire soul, one that she never even realized was burdening her until the weight had been lifted.

Casta gripped her whole skull next, index fingers rubbing slow circles around her crown until they focused right between her eyes. Another hit, this one much calmer, cooler. It felt more like gas expanding and releasing, a puff of smoke into the air that vanished in a stray breeze.

This was better than any massage Adora had ever received in her life, and so far all Casta had done was smoosh her head a little.

Magic is awesome.

"Tilt your head back?"

From someone else it might have been an order. Adora obeyed anyway, eager to see what would happen next.

Casta lingered over her neck, reaching around to stroke the front of Adora's throat. Something shone, flickering and cold blue, even when she closed her eyes. There was no relief; if anything, her throat constricted more, tightening like it was drying up.

"Oh, dear." Casta's influence retreated as she rubbed her palm over Adora's throat. The tension dissipated some, but there was no sense of true relief. "I might not be able to do anything for you in this area, Adora. But that's probably for the best, we should stop here."

Her heart sank. Twisting around, she tried very hard not to sound like she was sulking when she asked, "Why?"

A rueful grin. "The energies blocked here are concerned with truth, and lies. The only cure would be something similar to a truth spell, and I would not subject you to something like that." Casta tapped a finger under Adora's chin, plucky and teasing. "You're a woman in a position of power. We must keep certain things secret, hmmm?"

"Well," Adora mumbled, "Would it be a permanent spell?"

Casta shook her head. "Nothing in this world is permanent."

"Then keep going. I don't have any secrets that might hurt anybody else, and I'm a lousy liar, anyway."

Adora could feel Casta's hesitation, an odd tension growing in the silence. Truth and honesty were hard won luxuries once you reached a certain level of influence, it seemed, because Casta was definitely trying to protect her. "Well if you change your mind, just tell me. I can end the spell at the drop of a hat, okay?"

She nodded, and to her surprise, Casta forced her to turn around entirely. The sand shifted under her like a living thing, easing the movement so that she was staring up at the queen with wide eyes. "Say you understand."

Her heart started beating a little faster, most of her attention on how Casta's hands were warm now, gripping her shoulders so tight. "Um. I understand."

"Good."

She kept Adora facing her for the next part, and Adora didn't know where she should look. Into Casta's eyes, dark and focused? Her lips, mumbling in a language she didn't understand? The crease on her brow? The divot of her throat, the spill of white flesh in the v of her robes, the curve of her shoulder, the—

Blossoming, billowing, thrumming blue light.

"Oh," Adora whispered around the lump in her throat, the one being smoothed out by Casta's thumb. Her eyes were closed, bliss throbbing through her. "That feels good."

"So I've been told." Casta straddled the line between amused and smug. "Ready for the next one?"

"There's more?" Adora said, delighted. "Thank goodness. I was already trying to come up with an excuse for you to keep touching me— uh!"

Adora's eyes shot open. She covered her mouth with both hands, flushing bright red.

"The one after the next deals with shame." Casta's hand rested over Adora's chest, burning white-hot now. "If you think you're being honest now, wait until you see yourself without that holding you back."

Again, she wasn't sure whether to be horrified or pleased that Casta did not waste any time with false pretenses, or by politely ignoring what Adora had just said. It helped that Casta was still grinning cheekily, laughing in a way that made Adora feel part of the joke rather than being the punchline.

"Okay. Well that's, terrifying, cause shame is the only thing that kept me from doing more than study you for weeks now." Adora clapped a hand over her mouth again, muffling a swear. "I didn't mean to say that!"

She was red from the tips of her ears all the way to her chest, her shoulders burning even hotter under Casta's palms. It was true, she had been studying Casta. Ever-vigilant, Adora kept notes on every leader she interacted with, finding comfort in the studious nature of having reports and observations that she could touch. And if she'd been watching Casta extra closely, it was just because she was Glimmer's aunt, connected to the throne by blood.

That was all. Probably. Maybe.

(So technically Casta and Adora were the same rank and from different units, if you really wanted to look at it this way.)

"It's perfectly normal. People usually get sleepy, hungry, or horny when I'm done with them. I think we can tell which way you're leaning, dear."

"I'm sorry," Adora reflexively said anyway. "...What do you normally do? When someone responds like this?"

"I relieve them, if they're amenable to being taken care of. That usually means feeding them or letting them sleep." The way she spoke balanced a fine line between brisk and candid, like a doctor, and comforting like a friend. "How are you feeling, other than that?"

She swallowed around a nervous knot in her throat. "Fine. Good." She wanted to be honest; when she hedged the truth, her neck felt tight and constricted, her mouth drying out. "So much better than before."

Half of her was undone, floating serenely above her. Every so often she saw a flicker of lights in Casta's eyes, mirroring the shards she saw behind closed eyelids. Leftover magic lingered in the air, hesitant like a bird unsure where to land.

Making a fist, Casta's knuckles pressed hard against Adora's sternum. She kept her in place with her other arm around Adora's back, palm flat so that Adora could feel herself being squeezed, impurities pushing their way out like a splinter. This one didn't feel as good as the others, and Adora found herself resisting, tears pricking the corner of her eyes. As much as she tried to sit still, she squirmed, kept only in place by her lingering discipline and Casta's firm hold on her.

"It's okay," Casta said, "It's okay."

A wave of grief rushed through her when Adora surrendered. It felt wet and sticky, emerging from the mire for Casta to take and polish and put away. In its wake was a bittersweet release, not warm and pleasant like the others but deeper, like the sore sting of a cut under medicine and sterile wrapping.

More grounded now, Adora lifted up a palm to her face and brusquely wiped away her sudden tears. "Didn't like that," she managed to grunt.

"Love always hurts." Casta didn't elaborate. Instead she pushed harder, knuckles biting now. "I'm going to put it all back now that we've cleansed them. Okay?"

Adora grit her teeth, bearing it until something slid back into place with the same surety and satisfaction of a teacup in a saucer, or a bolt in a lock. Piece by piece, Casta slotted back what she'd taken away, undoing the laces around Adora's throat and rubbing away the lingering tension between her brows.

"There," Casta said, sitting back and clapping her hands as if to rid them of dust. "All done."

Adora thought with her mental restrictions back, she'd feel heavier. That she'd miss the freedom of only telling the truth. But she flexed her emotions mentally, checking to see if everything was still working the same. There were no constraints at all; in fact she felt refreshed to have them all back after they'd been fluffed and stretched and polished in Casta's hands.

She tested her ability to lie, waiting for her throat to constrict as she puzzled over what to say next. Nothing hurt, so she went with the truth because she'd liked her pure honesty. "So you're not gonna do the shame one?"

One dark brow arched all the way up. "I didn't think you wanted me to do the horny one."

"Not in public." It took considerable effort now to tell the truth, but Adora was accustomed to hard work. "Not if you're going to relieve me."

Casta covered a shocked laugh with the back of her hands, eyes lighting up with amusement. "I see! Well, there's nothing I love more than taking care of the weary, soul-burdened heroes who walk through my doors."

Magic flowed through her again, the sands pushing Adora up to her feet. She stumbled forward into Casta's arms, held in a loose embrace. Taking her hand, the queen lead her away, hopefully to somewhere private.

"One condition," Adora said, strangely soothed by the simple act of Casta linking their fingers together. It felt innocent. She'd never realized she liked that kind of touch.

They stopped outside a solid stone door, taller than both of them stacked together and just as wide. It had to weigh thousands of pounds, but the massive hinges swung open easily under Casta's feather light touch, magic coursing through her fingertips and into the marble. The open doorway revealed carpeted floors, lamps casting a soft teal glow, crystal desks and shelves furnishing the queen's quarters. "Yes?"

Adora lifted their linked hands, resting it over her neck. "I want you to take this off again."

"Gladly."

Another murmured spell sent a frisson of pleasure over her whole body. Casta's thumb brushed over the swell of Adora's throat, and again that lock against dishonesty fell away, leaving nothing but the truth.

"After you," Casta said, bowing slightly and stepping aside so that Adora could enter the room first, with Casta a comforting shadow behind her.

Casta shut the doors behind them with a careless wave.

Catra, One Last Time

Catra awoke with a ragged gasp, heart thundering. She wiped her palms roughly against her face, chest heaving as she struggled to come to her senses. The last thing she remembered was Adora, which wasn't a surprise. She was always thinking about Adora, and their soured, bitter rivalry had not changed that fact. Instead of leaning on her, she pushed her away. Instead of loving her, Catra hated her. But no matter what she did or where they went or how they changed, one thing stayed the same. Catra would always compare herself to Adora, would always weigh herself against her actions. Becoming her enemy hadn't changed that, not one bit.

Despite it all, Adora was still the center of her universe. And the only way to change that would be—

Pain lanced through her skull, the whole world turning bright. Shouting in surprise, Catra gripped her own head and curled into a ball. Instinct made her want to become a smaller target for whatever was hurting her.

The only way to change it would be if Adora were simply gone.

"I killed her," she said, whole body throbbing now. "I killed her, I killed her!"

It took awhile for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but as the shapes around her made more sense, so too did her memories. It had all been so nightmarish, but one thing stood out sharp and clear.

She'd watched Adora fall, and she hadn't done anything to stop it.

Why does everything hurt so much?

Catra tried to get to her feet only to stumble and fall. She'd been lying on something, a stone slab. And when her knees stopped shaking, she pulled herself up and looked across the room.

And Adora was there, asleep in a similar position.

Then it all clicked. It had been a nightmare, some kind of invasive spell or illusion of First One technology. Catra's body rebelled as if she had been asleep for a week, and briefly she wondered if she hadn't been.

She dragged herself over to Adora's table, draping herself across the other girl.

"Hey, Adora?"

Shaking her, she coughed a few times to get the rust out of her voice.

"Adora, it's not real. You're in a freaky nightmare. Wake the hell up so we can—"

Again her head screamed in agony. This time Catra bore it with patience, eyes closed.

So we can what, exactly?

Catra slumped down next to the table, head in her hands.

Goodbye, Adora.

She hadn't known it was an illusion when she gloated over Adora, watched her scrabble and scramble and fail, yes, fail! Not perfect, for once in her life. That mental hellscape had been like every one of Shadow Weaver's lessons injected directly into her spinal column, family is holding you back, love is holding you back, personal attachment is holding you back.

It had reverberated inside her like a heartbeat, so loud that she couldn't ignore it any longer or she would die.

Was Adora still in there, being beaten with the same lesson?

Was she refusing to give in? Because now, looking at her with a clearer head, that's exactly what Catra felt she'd done.

"Wake up," she hissed, not wanting to alert any more security systems. "Get out of there!"

She could tell by the pull of Adora's skin that she was severely dehydrated. They'd been asleep for eons, maybe, Rip Van Winkles to emerge disoriented into the sunlight. The idea sparked another memory, and Catra took another few steps back to look at Adora again.

This time, really look at her.

No way. Even if her eyes told a certain story, she refused to believe it. It's just a fairy tale. It didn't mean anything.

"Unless," Catra said.

She was running out of options. And time. And common sense.

Adora was lying on her back, so still and pale she seemed dead.

Catra decided she had to at least try. Maybe this was what the book meant, all along, all those years ago. Maybe it really was a set of coded instructions for this heinous princess tech. Maybe there was a ritual to turn off the spell. Maybe there was still a chance to fix this.

Adora would forgive her. Adora always forgave her.

Leaning down, Catra pulled Adora's limp body higher and kissed her, hard. When nothing happened, she waited, perched on the edge of the table with Adora's head on her lap.

"When you wake up you'll see it wasn't real, right?" she said, stroking a hand through her hair, not sure who she was trying to reassure. "If you wake up." Catra kissed her, once, twice, then shook her again. "Why won't you wake up?!"

How long were we in there?

Catra had a feeling it didn't matter. Because she didn't know it was fake when she did what she did.

When she wakes up, Catra realized with dawning horror, She's going to kill me for real.

There was no room in her mind for any other outcome. Maybe once she'd had the luxury of doubt. Not anymore, after everything Adora had already done to betray her.

More pressingly than that, Catra needed to know how much time had passed. She needed water, she needed to get out of here.

"I figured it out," she said, "You will too."

She let Adora go, setting her back on the stone table and stepping back.

"Or rot here. I don't care."

I don't care, I don't care, I don't care.

She didn't. It was only the stress of emerging from that nightmare that even fooled her into thinking she did.

Catra clutched her head, the pain in her skull so overwhelming she wondered if she might pass out again.

If she left Adora behind this time, she really would die. No more monsters in her head. No more tests, with that strange alien voice in her skull murmuring constantly let go, let go, let go of it all, let go.

There was a clatter of stone in the darkness, a shape pacing back and forth. Black claws clicked against the floor, waiting for hours, waiting for forever.

She tried one last time. Kissing her to wake her up, like in the story. It didn't work.

And an exhausted voice, limp with defeat.

"You're on your own."

Then there was only silent, even breathing as the dark figure slipped into the shadows and left.

Catra never looked back.

#she ra #catradora #fanfiction #glimmadora

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spacklefritz · 6 years ago

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Becoming - A Trollhunter ficlet

A/N: Another drabble-ish thing! I really should space these out. This one is from Strickler’s POV

Rating: K

Summary: Stricklander was a changeling through and through, but life and humanity, continued to surpise him. Can be set any time after Part 3.

Stricklander had lived a long time, had seen civilisations rise and fall. He had become different people, and all for one purpose.

Impure.

The whispers of Trollkind echoed constantly in his ears. Their disdained looks followed him everywhere. The trolls spat upon his kind like they were beneath them, or looked on in horror as they cried abominations! Impure! Unholy and everything that went against the law of nature.

There was no safe place for changelings back in the day. Not, unless you could find a yourself a familiar, and even then, things got dicey. But Strickler was tired of hiding. Tired of having to look over his shoulder, tired of having to be less. A new order would usher in a change in the hierarchy. Having a familiar was no longer just a means of hiding, but it would be a way to completely overturn the balance.

They would be able to walk in daylight and night, never having to worry about trolls. Soon a new era would be wrought. He would never be looked upon as less, as impure.

The problem with having a familiar however, was that it meant, becoming. Now, if the becoming wasn’t human, that would be no problem. But humans were tricky beings. They came with tricky emotions. They wanted, they loved, they hated, they desired, they yearned, they hoped, with all the ferocity one would never expect from their tiny lifespans. They were naught but a tiny flicker in the grand scheme of time. It was as if, to compensate their lack of time, lack of meaningful impact on the world, they crammed all those emotions in their fragile bodies. It was those emotions, those feelings, that Strickler found himself seeing much more of the world than what he meant to. He participated in wars that did not further his cause, and he climbed mountains just for the sheer reason that he could.

Eventually he arrived at Arcadia Oaks.

An unassuming town, if not for the fact that the battle of Killahead Bridge was held here. Unassuming people, if not for the fact that his own cover was unassuming, and people were much more than they appeared to be...Despite their otherwise, senseless, mundane drivel. Teenagers, were one such example, despite their seemingly insignificant concerns, they did sometimes manage to come up with something inspiring, and their young minds were a sponge, soaking up information (if they every decided to apply themselves).

In all his yeards, he’d honestly thought he’d seen it all. Until he found the trollhunter. A human trollhunter. A young man who was Merlin’s Champion. What was the decrepit fool thinking? He was a boy! Made up of flesh and who bled red! Still, he would do what had to be done. The plans had been put in place long before this trollhunter had even been born.

Yet, he was only a boy, who had to juggle high school nonetheless. A boy who had a mother who was worried sick about him, who worked hard to keep close her family consisting of two. Only, her normally open son was being closed, despite how she tried to reach him. Barbara was a surprise to him. How one woman could hold so much strength in her fine bones, he would never know. Humans, were, surprisingly resilient he thought. And she, she was where Young Atlas got his strength from. Everything good in Jim, was on account of Barbara.

And for the first time in centuries, Strickler found another way to just be. Of course, he found a way to muck things up. He supposed trying to kill her son and trying to bring back the scourge that was Gunmar would do that. But he came back, and Barbara had an unfathomable capacity for love and forgiveness.

Sometimes he still remembered the whispers. But that was of a past long ago. In the here and now, he was Walter Strickler, changeling and husband to Barbara, teacher at Arcadia Oaks High, and occasional grilling buddy of Javier Nuñez. The world was a much different place than it was years ago. He was a different person. Not too different. He was always up for a good fight, but there was certainly a little more...lightness in his being.

Nomura once said that it was feckless hope that was the humans’ downfall. But it was hope, they had come to realise, it was hope and the promise of a better day that allowed them to have courage, and be much stronger than they ever thought they could be.

#stricklander #tiny bits of stricklake #trollhunters fanfic #spackle writes #my fic #i was going to wait to post #but i have no willpower

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ttime42 · 7 years ago

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2018 Advent Ficlet Challenge

Read this here or on Ao3

Chapter 2: Christmas Traditions

John was sitting on the sofa, a glass of cold eggnog in his hand, a favorite old Christmas jumper keeping him warm. He laughed at the television when hapless buffoon Clark Griswold realized he'd forgotten to bring a saw into the woods to cut down the family tree. His and Sherlock's own little Christmas tree was in front of the window on a small table they'd dragged out from behind Sherlock's chair. Mrs. Hudson had a merry time decorating the little plastic tree with John. They'd had to coax Sherlock to hang even one ornament but John had seen him in the evenings, staring at the glowing, sparkling tree while lost in thought. John was sure he enjoyed it, even if he pretended not to.

"What are you watching?" Sherlock muttered from the kitchen. "That's the fourth time you've laughed since turning on that silly thing." He dripped a pipette full of purple liquid onto a glass slide. Sherlock had heard the opening credits of the film, the jingling bells and word "Christmas" repeated over and over. He was hardly a fan of John's type of films, much less sappy holiday ones.

"Christmas Vacation." John said, finishing his eggnog. "You know, Clark tries to have the perfect Christmas and fails at every turn." He watched the movie every season. He and Harry could quote entire chunks of it back and forth to each other.

Sherlock was silent and John raised his brows. "Tell me you've seen it."

"Alright, I've seen it."

"Have you though?" John put his empty glass on the table and leaned forward to see him in the kitchen. "Really?"

"John, you know such drivel tires me."

John pointed at the screen. "This is funny though. You might even like it."

Sherlock didn't move and John sank back into the cushions, watching Clark fiddle with the decorations for the house.

The chair scraped the floor in the kitchen and Sherlock, decked out in his usual loafing-around-the-flat attire of pajamas and dressing gown, appeared in the room and stared at the screen, brow furrowed as if identifying clues on a case. John rolled his eyes. "C'mere and sit." He patted the sofa cushion. "Grab the blanket and let's cuddle."

Sherlock obeyed, picking a folded blanket up by the corner and dragging it to the sofa. He curled up, leaning into John's side. They arranged the thick sherpa throw over themselves and John put his arm around Sherlock's shoulders. They watched the various bickering family members and minor disasters and by the time cousin Eddie showed up, Sherlock had snickered three times and nuzzled into John's neck twice.

"Want tea?" He mumbled.

"Please." John said. Sherlock peeled himself out of the warmth and disappeared back into the kitchen. John was certain he'd stay there, tired of the movie and drawn by another experiment, but he returned bearing two big mugs of tea. "What do you think of the film? Cheers." John took an offered mug.

"It's tolerable."

"It's okay to say you like it." John blew across the tea's surface. "It won't hurt."

Sherlock shrugged. "The experiment was boring and this is as good an alternative as any." He stuffed himself back under the blanket and they leaned into each other to enjoy the rest of the film.

#2018 advent ficlet challenge #ao3 #bbc sherlock fanfic

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vateacancameos · 8 years ago

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Here We Are As In Olden Days, Part 17

Day 17 of @missdaviswrites December Sherlock ficlet challenge.

17 December, Stuck at Home

Sherlock | Developing/Pre-slash Johnlock| Ficlet | ao3 link Best read after Day 15 and 16.

“John.”

“Yes, Sherlock?”

“Bored.”

“You’re not calling Lestrade. You’re still ill. You need to stay home and rest.”

“Jaaawwwnnn.”

“Sherrrrrloooockkkk.”

“Boooorrrreddddd.”

“Telly.”

“No.”

“Book.”

“No.”

…

“What are you doing?!? John, why are you– What are you–? John?”

“Sit. It’s now a film day.”

“Oh.” … “I just did that yesterday.”

“And you enjoyed it.”

“I can’t take any more of that holiday drivel.”

“That’s fine.”

“What are you doing now?”

“Finding this.”

“Star… Wars? Is that the one with Sir Patrick Stewart?”

“You know who that is?”

“His work on the stage is well known.”

“True. But no, he was on Star Trek.”

“Oh. Is Star Wars the– no, that’s Stargate… Ah, must be the one with the man in black.”

“What? No, this isn’t Princ– oooh, right. Darth Vader. Yes, that’s the one.”

“I don’t like sci–”

“Don’t care.

“I’m the convalescent. Shouldn’t I get to choose the film?”

“I’m putting up with your convalescing arse. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the worse end of the deal. We’re watching what I want. Maybe it’ll put you to sleep, and I’ll get some peace and quiet.”

“This font crawl is rather dated, isn’t it?”

“It’s iconic. Now shut up and pay attention.”

* * *

“Why are the robots humanoid? They’re far less efficient that way.

“It makes them likable.”

“But why do they need to be likeable? They’re robots.”

“They’re droids.”

“But–”

“Hush.”

* * *

“This man obviously knows Luke. Must they broadcast everything before it happens?”

“It was made in the ‘70s. Complicated plots weren’t a thing in science fiction then.”

* * *

“A science fiction film has magic?

“The Force isn’t magic, really. It’s midichlo– nope. Even I thought that was a weak and ridiculous retcon. Yes, it’s magic.”

“Preposterous.”

“Gah! Your feet are like ice. Put some socks on, man!”

“You’re warmer than socks.”

* * *

“Han shot first.”

“Is there a reason you’re stating the obvious, John?”

“Just making sure. There’s some debate.”

“About whether one fictional character shot another one first? This is why no one can observe real life. They’re stuck in fantasy worlds.”

* * *

“That’s no moon.”

“Are you going to quote the entire film?”

“Might do. Problem?”

Sigh. “I suppose it’s part of your…charm.”

“You think I’m charming?”

“Not right now.”

* * *

“Really? A space station so large and complex has such an obvious weak spot? Who engineered this thing? I mean, that’s only one of the many, many bits wrong about this space station. There’s also the–”

“If you don’t shut up, I will find a way to do it for you.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

“Are you so sure about that?”

“I’m not frightened of you.”

“Fear is not a requirement. I could surprise you into silence.”

“Oh, John. There’s nothing you could do that would surprise me.”

…

“John?”

“Never mind. Watch the film.”

* * *

“As if anyone was surprised when this Hans character showed back up.”

“It’s Han.”

* * *

“Well. That was… a film.”

“Want to watch the next one?”

“There are more?”

“Two more in this series, and then three prequels that were terrible.”

“You mean this one is considered good? Dear lord. No wonder humanity is as hopeless as it is.”

“Is that a no then?”

Sigh. “I’ll put it on. You make tea. My throat hurts.”

* * *

“Oh!”

“Sorry, am I too close? I can move.”

“No. It’s– it’s fine. You’re. Warm.”

“Good. My patient should be comfortable.”

“He is. Very.”

* * *

“Sherlock.”

…

“Sherlock.”

“Hhmmm?”

“You fell asleep. Do you want to go to bed?”

Contented sigh. “No. ’m fine.”

“My shoulder can’t be that comfortable.”

“You’re lovely.”

“Oh. Well. Umm. Maybe. How about we…”

“Tha’s nice.”

“Good. Good.”

“John?”

“Yes, Sherlock?”

“Star Wars isn’t so bad.”

“Not bad at all.”

“Thank you. For today.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m going back to sleep now.”

Chuckle. “You do that.”

Beginning | Previous | Next

#sherlock #johnlock #fanfic #ficlet #sherlock december ficlets #stuck at home #illness #movie day #christmas #winter #meagan writes #ao3

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tsunderin · 7 years ago

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Getting Pounded In The Ass By My Inability To Express Emotional Intimacy [A Dungeoning Ficlet]

((Warning for discussion of NSFW topics. The story itself is not NSFW.))

“I wonder,” he spoke coyly, knowing too well the answer to this riddle that stood before him, “what you would do in my situation. To be tempted as such. Knowing the sweetness of honey nestled within your comb...”

A breath left me like an arrow, futilely plunging itself within the air surrounding us--thick with desire--leaving no puncture with which to relieve the mood. “I can have no other.” Ain growled, the raspiness returning to his voice, instinct taking over as he cornered me against the stone wall. I knew I couldn’t escape him--he had my scent. I knew I didn’t want to escape him. I wanted him to take me here just as he had done during Lady Nesterly’s hunt.

My voice came out low, the words leaving like syrup from my lips, hoping to push him over the edge. “Say please.”

His gratitudes were not so verbose; a boon onto itself. Where once I complained of the sensation of stubble against my skin, I now found the prickles enticing, for what lay beyond them was a ruthless barrage of heat and tongue drawing me ever deeper into him and his ken. Forest, sweat, and dusk swirled around me, not even the moon daring to shed her light on our tryst. The dark can spawn such sweet secrets.

The gentleness with which Ain moved my dressings aside cooled my flame. The beast--my beast--content enough to light it once more with a mere meeting of eyes. “I can bear it no longer.” He spoke the words not to the air around him nor himself, but to me this time. A gasp of pleasure escaped me as the head of his… of his…

“What’s another word for ‘cock’?” The light clicking of heels against wood abruptly stopped, the train of thought likewise stopping as though it’d hit a brick wall.

A sigh came from the nearby desk, stacked moderately with papers and various other knicknacks. “I already told you all the ones I knew. What’s wrong with ‘cock’, anyways? ‘Cock’s fine. ‘Cock’s’ reliable.”

“Yes, darling, but I’ve already used it. I’m bored with it and everyone else is too,” the pale slim eclipse of a woman motioned to all the non-existent people standing beside them in their hovel of an inn room. Turning on the ball of her foot, she returned to pacing, this time lacking the staccato beat keeping her narrative flowing. Through all the humming, her companion--lanky and roguish--kept his eyes on the ceiling, more interested in keeping the quill balanced in the space between his nose and upper lip than the seeming issue at hand. “What about….” she drew out the vowels longer than necessary, “meat staff?”

“Don’t use that. Nothin’s sexy about meat.”

She huffed. “Then stinger.”

A soft clatter echoed behind him, the pen finally taking its inevitable plunge. “Isn’t that a little too on the nose? You know, honey, bee, stinger?”

“That’s! The! Point! We’re keeping on brand.”

“Uh huh,” Tom sounded less than impressed. “Noticed you used ‘bear’ earlier too. Hate to say it, but it sounds a lil’ cheesy, Syne.”

“He is a bear, Tom. It’s a very clever and well-thought out callback to his mythical roots. Frankly I’m disappointed that you don’t understand that.”

“I’m just sayin’.”

“And I am “just sayin’”. Who’s the expert here?” The pause that followed after filled with nothing but silence, long enough that if anyone else had happened to be in the room they may have believed that writer and transcriber were competing who could be silent the longest. The battle ended with a sound not unlike steam leaving a teapot. “Fffffffffine. Fine! We’ll take it out!” Syne threw her hands up, stomping back the three steps it took to be as opposite as Tom as she could be. “Does the greatest author of our time of mythical and otherwordly romance have any further knowledge to bestow upon me?”

“Ignoring that I did technically write those books… yeah, I do.” The expression Syne shot him was inscrutable. Mostly because her eyes were covered by her hair. “Writing dirty books is all well ‘n good, but we’re trying to get this out for The Feast of Cups. Don’t you think something more, I ‘unno, romantic would sell better?”

“Oh, Tom. Oh sweet, darling Tom.” She sauntered over to his desk bending slightly potentially looking at him eye-to-eye. “It is a shortsighted folly to aim for one day of glory. Certainly we could entice all lovers and those seeking the fantasy of love with a tale of two hearts overcoming their differences and learning to grow in their affection. But what then?” Her mouth waxed into a crescent moon of a smile. “Remain forgotten on the shelf as another, less worthy tale of princes and bodyguards or some such drivel takes our place? No!” Tom barely flinched as Syne’s palm slammed against the desk.

“We push the envelope of mortal desire not because we want to, but because it. Is. Necessary! ….And also because I want to, yes I’m not denying that, but this is also what the people want. Their underlying promiscuity laid naked and writhing in front of them! Romance is, after all, temporary, while scandal--”

“Lives forever,” Tom finished in a flat tone, all too familiar with this speech. A scrape droned against the floor as Tom pushed out his chair, his knuckles cracking like the spine of a freshly printed book while he stretched. “I’m not invested in it either way. Just thought it’d be fun to shake things up a bit. Like a limited edition kind of deal.”

She watched him curiously for a moment before turning her attention to her own fingers, examining them, moving them around in lieu of anything else to fidget with. “I didn’t realize you were such a romantic, Tom.”

He shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a sucker for happy endings.” He grinned at nothing in particular before moving towards the door. “I’m going out for a bit. You need anything from… uh, the woods, I guess?”

“Find me the smoothest stone from the bottom of the river, and perhaps I’ll forgive you for your slight against my brilliance.” It took only moments for Tom’s chuckle to dissipate into the air around her, leaving Syne alone with only her thoughts. It’d been a bad year for writing, but a good year for selling. And an all around good-bad year for ghost hunting. As much as she hated to admit it, there was a nugget of sense in what Tom had proposed. The only problem was that the dear fool didn’t realize it was impossible. Not impossible for her, of course. Nothing was impossible for she who had molded her own space in mortal society with the help of no one else. It would be impossible for her audience to fully comprehend the depth and beauty of a tapestry of romance woven from her lips. There would be an epidemic of wailing across the land. Businesses would be closed! Crops would not be harvested! ...Frankly, it would be annoying and Syne would not stand for it.

Yet Tom remained a much valued companion. It wouldn’t hurt to gently show him how much of a failure his idea would be. Holding more intelligence than the average mortal, he would catch on soon enough. Once reaching her conclusion, they would speak on such things no longer, and would return to more important topics of conversation like why mortals had no appealing dirty words for vagina. Or why candle wax was apparently a proper tool to use in the bedroom.

Night had remained firmly settled when Tom returned to the small room finding Syne lying backwards across the meager mattress, her body half on the floor as if she had melted and a low groan emanating from her as though she were still in the middle of the process. She all but jolted up--rather, rolled over on her side and pushed herself to a standing position pretending that her elegance had remained in tact during his absence--the moment the thumping of produce hit the wooden surface. “Ah! Tom. How good of you to return.”

A strange, uncomfortable quiet fell over them as Syne had no other comment to add. “...If you have something to say to me, say it.”

“Patience!” Syne hissed. That non-combatant tone of Tom’s almost made this whole thing worse. Her hair fanned out behind her, unable to maintain eye contact with her friend. “I have decided that this year, we will scandalize our readers in another way! We will boil their hearts into a paste and watch as the remains ooze out onto the grounds below.” Tom’s nose wrinkled in disgust, but he remained quiet. “It’s a brilliant idea, I know. There’s no need for adulations.”

Taking one final satisfying stretch, Tom slid back into the seat and resumed his writing position. “So once more from the top?”

“Yes, yes! Exactly! ...Where were we again?”

“Let’s start from that I wonder speech.”

“Very well. Please steel yourself, darling. I’d hate to find you a quivering mass of feelings, unable to even hold your pen.�� Several times Syne opened her mouth to start, and several times no words came to aid her. Yet just as soon as one may have worried, her pacing began and finally words hit the air once more.

“I wonder,” he spoke coyly, knowing too well the answer to this riddle that stood before him, “what you would do in my situation.”

Syne stole a look at Tom. So digilant. Ever focused on the page in front of him. Oh. Oh, she had to keep going before--

He, uh, gently grabbed a lock of my hair between his fingers, inspecting the strands as if scrutinizing a masterwork of art. “Do you know how I yearn for you? How I have yearned for you?” Without warning his lips crashed against-- “No, no. Forget that last part.” Syne’s thoughts felt as unorganized as Tom’s scratches on the paper.

“How I have yearned for you?” I leaned into his warmth as his finger ghosted across my collar bone, aching for his lips to grace more than just my hair. “Hyacinth… you have undone me. I fear… no… I regret… no! ...I remember that night beside the raspberry bush as if I were reliving it each time my mind wanders. I could live without you, b-but the thought of it makes... Makes me…”

“...Are you okay?” Tom looked up, faced with the image of Syne’s forehead pressed against the adjacent wall, arms bracing herself for what looked like a good vomit.

A weak reply barely reached his ears: “I want to die.” She hadn’t even been able to make it through an entire paragraph’s worth of content! These characters weren’t even real! What care did she have that they were exceptionally sappy and in love?! All mortals were that way! Foolish and open with their feelings, ready to be destroyed by their wayward emotions and then having the audacity to be surprised when it was used against them! It was terrible. How were they alive?! Syne could hear her blood pounding in her ears, feel the heat radiating off her face like a stovetop. Nerves clenched her throat shut as she heard Tom’s heavy footsteps draw ever closer and she desperately wished she could phase through the wall and away from him.

Her shoulder blades tensed as his hand heartily landed on the horizon of her shoulder. “I’m starving. We should eat somethin’ before we head out tomorrow morning.”

An off-kilter laugh was too easily managed, and barely shoved aside by Syne clearing her throat and saying actual words. “Yes. Yes, that is a marvelous idea. We shouldn’t rush the muse, after all.” Steadying herself with a breath, Syne’s eyes widened seeing Tom holding not food out to her, but a pale grey thing.

Catching a whiff of her confusion despite the inaccessibility to half of her facial features, Tom again shrugged. “Doubt it’s the smoothest, but it’s pretty smooth. The rock. From the river. Like you asked.”

Long fingers wrapped around the small, oblong stone, running up and down its sides. ...It was pretty smooth. A genuine smile flickered across her mouth--a shooting star for a wish to be made upon. “Such a devoted one you are,” Syne mused quietly before returning to her more typical bombastic mannerisms. “You are forgiven, Tom! Remember my kindness fondly!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he scratched the back of his neck. “Anyways, got an orange and a pear. What do you want.”

“I’ll--” she stopped herself. “You may choose first.”

The look of surprise on Tom’s face was just as fleeting and just as precious. “Suit yourself.”

A romance novel to shake the ages may have been off the table for an indefinite amount of time, but what was such a thing compared to watching Syne eat a mortal orange for the first time, peel and all.

#Rin's Magenta Prose #OC Parade #The Ferryman's Toll #The Dungeoning

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angstmongertina · 8 years ago

Note

Ooh, can I throw a writing challenge in your general direction? I'm wondering if you can think of anything angsty for "we're out of time" with Jihyun/Eunbyeol? I can't think of anything, so if you can't, don't worry and do what's comfy. It's also cool if you don't want to do this idea!

I am always happy for writing challenges and such. And hey, if you’re gonna challenge me to write something angsty, I GOTTA. I wasn’t called Queen of Angst at one point for nothing!

Disclaimer: I claim no responsibility for sad feels born from this ficlet.

Is this canon? Is this an AU? Who knows? Not me!

She’d never thought that there would be a deadline for them, nor that she would be the one to decide it. After all, she’s waited for two years for him, even before they were ever officially together. After that, surely they could make it through everything.

Except…

Except she’s never expected this either. Not for date nights to be pushed back time and time again, between his work and her studies, between his trips and her rotations. Between collapsing next to him in bed and instantly passing out at some random hour of the night and waking long before it’s bright out to start the same process all over again.

She knows that it’s just a phase of her life, of their lives, but that doesn’t change the fact that it stings, sharp and bitter, when she flips through the news on her phone only to find photos from a recent gala, featuring Jihyun with another woman on his arm. The fact that she had a huge exam the next week, that she told him to bring a friend from the painting community, who can understand the event far better than she ever could, does nothing to quell the jealousy and self-recrimination that plague her at the headline, wondering who this mysterious lady being escorted by the potentially now-eligible Jihyun Kim is.

He only laughs when she shows it to him, one of the very few times they’ve been able to see each other while both fully conscious. She’s not sure whether to be annoyed or thankful that he takes the news with such flippancy and her ambivalence must have shown on her face; he pulls away to face her fully, frowning just a little. “You don’t actually believe that drivel, do you? It’s just a silly gossip rag trying to get attention. The next time Zen’s in another production, they’ll forget about me and whatever this is.”

And she knows that too, but it doesn’t change the fact that she hasn’t seen him look as happy, as spirited, as he does in the photo in months.

Or at least, not with her.

She trusts him. Of course she does. She knows that he would rather die than cheat on her, that he, with his endless patience, is willing to wait however long it takes.

But at this point, she’s so tired of waiting, so tired of forcing him to wait for her. So tired of the circumstances that makes it feel like she just so happens to live in the same place as him, instead of being in a relationship.

So tired of feeling like she’s unable to give him everything he deserves, with no end to the circumstances in sight, like she’s holding him back from something better.

She sits at the kitchen table, hands folded in front of her to prevent them from fidgeting. When Jihyun enters, turquoise eyes widening in shock at seeing her, poised and serious, she can only offer a small, grim smile.

“Eunbyeol…? Is something the matter?”

There’s hesitation in his voice already, as if he knows, and she closes her eyes for a brief second, steeling herself for the inevitable as she decides to forgo any small talk.

After all, it hurts less to pull off a bandage all at once, doesn’t it?

“Actually, yes. We need to talk, before we’re out of time.” She takes a deep breath; there’s no going back now. “I’m sorry, Jihyun. I think… we need to take a break.”

#Anonymous #Jihyun Kim #v (mystic messenger)#Mystic Messenger #MysMes #Tina writes stuff.#Tina plays MysMes.#my sun my stars #otp: a new muse #YOU ASKED FOR IT NONNY.#Do they break up or don't they?#¯\_(ツ)_/¯#Eunbyeol Lee

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sincerely-chaos · 8 years ago

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“Psychiatry To-Day” - ficlet

Part one of Not Otherwise Specified - based on the discussions that originated from this post after we’d been let into 221B with Google Maps, and four different textbooks on psychiatry were found in the shelves.

“You’ve read all these?” John asks and nods at the seemingly endless supply of haphazardly placed books that already covers most surfaces in 221B.

“No, I mostly use them to press flowers in… Of course I read them! What else would be the purpose of having them?”

Sherlock is aware that this probably came out sounding more testy than intended, but the state of the flat is still somewhat of a sore subject for him. It’s only been a week since John came to look at the flat and declared that the place would be very nice once all the rubbish had been cleaned up, and Sherlock is yet to make an effort to actually do something about it. There is, after all, nothing wrong with 221B. In fact, it’s the only place that Sherlock’s ever lived that has even the potential to be anything more than ‘tolerable’.

“How did you get all these?” John wonders, clearly ignoring Sherlock’s peevishness. “‘A Beginner’s Guide to Airsports’? And this… ‘Psychiatry To-Day’. I mean, ‘To-Day’? It’s from… 1952!”

John is amused, and while it was obvious when they met that feelings of anything bordering on amusement were something John hadn’t experienced for quite some time, Sherlock has seen no less than 19 different expressions of mirth in the past eight days.

(That he’s also observed at least 29 different variations on exasperation is beside the point.)

“Yes, there might be a few passages that are moderately outdated in that particular book,” Sherlock distractedly acknowledges.

“You do know that they’re not currently treating anyone by inducing insulin coma, don’t you?” John inquires, his voice perfectly serious. “But seeing as you also have a phrenology poster on the floor next to our sink, your knowledge on this particular field of science might be in need of a a brush-up.”

“‘Science’,” Sherlock huffs. “I’d hardly qualify the so-called findings of this particular field as ‘science’.

After all, fields which Sherlock considers as ‘scientific’ are those that have from time to time been able to provide him with some at least moderately useful answers of a fairly definitive and consistent nature.

Possible answers gained from the field of psychiatry, on the other hand, have so far failed to be either definitive or consistent.

Or indeed comprehensible.

Sherlock is twelve when he takes the book from the child psychiatrist’s office.

It’s not the first time he’s been to a psychiatrist, but it’s the first time that Mummy doesn’t protest or drag him out of there before the evaluation has even begun, tight-lipped as she apologised to him for having given into his teacher’s plea to have him tested. After that first time, when Mummy sat silently beside him, not arguing with the psychiatrist even as the questions became more and more ludicrous, Sherlock declared that he would only agree to attend the next appointment if she wasn’t in the room with him. He’d gotten his way without much of a fight, which was perhaps the most worrying thing in this whole business.

On his way out from his second appointment with the child psychiatrist with the yellow teeth and the questionable hang-up on Sherlock’s relationship with his own mother, Sherlock decides that if there is in fact something wrong with him, then he ought to be the first to know, not the psychiatrist. He should at least get the chance to be on slightly more even ground with the so-called professional if they are to keep discussing his ‘developmental delays’ and ‘oppositional behaviours’. He grabs the first book he sees on the nearest shelf that has ‘psychiatry’ in the title and puts it in his school bag as he follows the nicotine addict out of the office.

When he gets home, he locks himself in his room. “Psychiatry To-Day’ seems somewhat promising, until Sherlock opens it and notices that the book was printed in 1952. Thinking that the human brain certainly couldn’t have developed in any significant way in three decades, he continues to read.

After finishing the last page, Sherlock unceremoniously throws the book at the wall, hoping that its spine will crack and all the hateful, patronising drivel written in incomprehensible medical jargon will be smashed as it falls to the floor.

Sherlock returns to the psychiatrist for his next appointment, but by then he’s already made up his mind. If there is something wrong with him, then he doesn’t see the point in finding out what that is. If he were found to be mentally ill, then his future would be on a par with that of a leper, and Sherlock has enough things going against him as it is. Therefore, he spends the next three sessions not saying a word, and eventually Mummy puts a stop to the project all together.

Sherlock knows that there’s something wrong with him, not only because he’s incessantly reminded of it as soon as he leaves his home and even his mother had ceased to protest the constant urgings to get Sherlock evaluated (which, in the end, didn’t matter when Sherlock himself didn’t chose to ‘cooperate’), but because he’s always suspected as much.

The blue Pelican paperback, thought it remains on his floor for several weeks, can neither confirm nor dismiss what Sherlock knows to be true.

Psychiatry, thinks Sherlock, is a sad excuse for a medical speciality.

The other three parts will follow soon, as Sherlock progresses through life (and progresses in his view of the field of psychiatry, I might add...)

My beta and partner in psychiatry-related crimes were none other than @pennypaperbrain - because we feed each others’ obsessions.

#Sherlock and Psychiatry #ficlet #mental health issues #sherlock #the books of 221B #sorry not sorry #campydetective #vogelia

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iwrestlenow · 4 years ago

Text

Many More To Die, Chapter 6

TITLE: Many More To Die (Chapter 6)

FANDOM: Sanders Sides (Necromancer AU)

SUMMARY: Logan knew, for a long time now, that he had a brother--but now, he remembers who his brother is.

Virgil joined the royal guard to bust Logan out. Logan's a stubborn creature, so instead Virgil tells him about his powers--and accidentally helps Logan realize that someone hasn't been totally honest with him.

SHIPS: Logince (Logan/Roman), Moceit (Patton/Janus) and future Dukexiety (Remus/Virgil)

WARNINGS: Plot is happening, way too much exposition--also, who let me have nice things? I DO MEAN THINGS. >.> But the next chapter will be adorable. And come way faster.

No beta, no problem--I'm sorry I'm so hung up on lore and world building and shit, but I'm just having a lot of fun okay? Okay. >.>

Also, no betas, we die like men.

Also located at AO3 over here.

Logan was running.

Clutching the book against his chest with one arm, clinging to his little brother's hand with the other, he was running for his life as the looming figure pounded down the corridor after them. Everything was dark, too dark...

There. Light. Souls Eternal, what in the Seven Hells was he still doing there?

Stopping dead, Logan faced Virgil. Briefly, he wished he could feel the little hand in his—because if he was here, there was only one way this could end.

Looking around furiously, he realized there was no other choice. Facing Virgil, Logan gripped his shoulder and held his gaze in the dark.

“That open door—go hide behind it.”

“No.”

“The Spider does not question, he spins for his Weaver—just this once, Stormcloud, I'm begging you, do as I say without arguing!”

He gave Virgil no other opportunity to argue—shoving Virgil towards the sliver of light, Logan watched him stumble forward, then look over his shoulder.

“I'm right behind you.”

The little boy scowled, but his figure swiftly moved, and his footsteps pattered against the stone.

It was the first lie he'd ever told his brother.

Turning away, lest he lose his resolve, Logan frantically tried to remember what he'd been told. The corners, the crevices...the hidden secrets of--

--yes. It was perfect.

Bolting down the corridor, Logan frantically shed his jacket and wrapped the book up as tightly as he could, dropping to his knees with enough force to bruise them. Pulling up the grate, he lowered his precious cargo into it...

Two hands grabbed him at the same time��one from the sewer, the other the back of his collar.

Panicked, Logan blindly grabbed the hand in the sewer, the one he knew, fingers gripping his with a desperate force that was painful...

“Hold on.”

He coughed, gagging as his collar cut his throat. His back hummed with the proximity of the larger body behind him, but the hand in the dark...

He strained to see into the shadows, lookin for that glimpse of light—just one look, just one...

“Loganberry!”

There was no other way.

“Do not let go.”

The moon was slow rising in the sky, a sliver of light moving to illuminate the dark for just an instant—and it was enough.

“I never have. I never will.”

The hand at his collar yanked, and Logan's fingers slid free, throbbing—

“Logan?”

Logan blinked—and the world had changed. Gone was the dim light of the war room, gone was the dark, muffled nightmare he'd been momentarily caught in. He was in a corridor of polished stone walls and pale marble floors. What little light that numerous windows didn't provide, lamps mounted on the walls did, casting soft white light into the space from the magically created luminary globes set in each one.

“Hey, you back?”

He turned towards the sound of his name, disoriented. His movements felt slow, encumbered...

Looking down at himself, Logan realized he was clinging to a blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cape. It glimmered with a film of energy he couldn't pinpoint—until he realized it was connected to him. He was the one creating it, could feel his magic woven through the fabric. His awareness was caught in the stitches and the heavy beads of glass within...

Glass? No...not glass. Crystal...just under his fingers, clear quartz beads for calm and comfort, drawing away the fear and the panic...

All at once, the heavy haze started to settle over him again, the half sleep he'd been in before—but he knew what to do now. Some part of him had always known, even without a Name to tell him how it worked.

Shutting his eyes, Logan bowed his head and let the haze take him over, dragging him back into the dark until he could feel it, glossy wood biting his fingers as he held on tight, thick warm spider silk touching his fingertips.

“Logan—wait, here.”

He couldn't feel the hand that slipped into his, but his fingers tingled, and pulled him swiftly back into the dark.

“Loganberry!”

The little boy, his voice in the dark, screaming Logan's name...his little brother...

Virgil. That was the name of the fragment, and suddenly it made all the sense in the world. There was something else, something bothering him, something stopping him from finishing the picture but he could fix this. The shoddy weaving, the places where the thread had torn when he was ripped away from his work too soon.

He labored for hours. For seconds.

Logan let the blanket fall and opened his eyes as the glittering film of energy vanished.

Immediately, his eyes locked with the dark ones from his...dream?...even through the dark, he recognized them. The face was older, the fear less intense, hope now sitting where blind panic had once been...

It wasn't a dream. It was a memory.

“Stormcloud.”

He watched the cadet's face crumble just before Virgil launched himself at Logan. He caught the younger man easily, wrapping him up tight and greedily running his hands over his arms, his back, unable to feel his warmth or his presence but relishing the faint hum of proximity, the resistance that wouldn't let his arms close fully—reassuring himself that Virgil wasn't just safe, but that he was really here.

Four years old and terrified, cuddled up to Logan's side to watch the needle and thread. Seven years old, cloaked in fear as his ceremonial garb, every thought clear and sharp as the razor's edge. Eight years old, spinning silk for Logan's loom, bound to his side as Logan reaches for the Tome...screaming his name in the dark as Logan is dragged away by the man with the sword...

“It worked.” Virgil gasped, drawing back to grin at him with fresh tear tracks on his face. “It worked, it really worked, Souls and holy shit it worked--”

“Not completely, but enough to know that I'm going to kill you myself if you're not executed for engineering a jailbreak.” Logan snapped, clutching Virgil's face between his hands. His own cheeks felt wet, his vision blurry with a stream of tears he couldn't stop, and he had to stop because his powers had to stay in check...

Virgil. Virgil, Virgil, a cadet of the royal guard, a criminal, his baby brother, his Spider.

Logan pulled Virgil close again, pressing his nose to Virgil's temple. His hair still smelled like damp stone from sleeping on the floor all the time. The shoulders Logan had his arms around were lean, but powerful—how old was he now? Nine years old when Logan was imprisoned...

“You're nineteen.” he realized aloud, finally letting Virgil go so he could look into his face again. “I didn't know, I knew I had a brother but I didn't know...I didn't know you...”

“Shut up, you can pretend you aren't all emotional and shit later.” Virgil soothed, stepping back to grab the blanket off the floor. Logan couldn't quite remember making it, but he knew he had. He could see Virgil with his thumb in his mouth, feel the tug on the half finished blanket as Virgil pulled one end to rub the soft fabric against his nose and cheek, feel the sting of the needle as he pricked himself...

“OW!”

“Wha' happen?”

“I stuck my finger with the needle—there's blood on the blanket now.”

“We can wash it.”

“No, we most certainly cannot.”

“Loganberry! Tha's so gross!”

“Falsehood. This is advantageous—we must let the blood dry first. See where it fell? It will soak through and charge the crystal pocket with my personal magic. That way, when you need it? You can wrap up in the blanket, and you'll feel me there with you.”

“...promise?”

“I swear it.”

“Lo...you gotta do it.”

“Souls—how is a few drops of blood more inherently disgusting than a spit handshake? Fine...”

“The crystals that made this a healing charm—my blood charged them with my personal magic.” he realized aloud, staring at Virgil in shock. “You snuck this in here hoping to restore my Name with it.”

“At least some of your power, but looks like I didn't have to go to the trouble.” Virgil shot back.

“You could have been killed! If the nature of the power had been discovered—oh, I am going to murder you myself once I—“

“Souls, Lo, do you have to go full bloodlust all the time?” Virgil laughed, grinning as he grabbed Logan's arm to pull him along while he started walking down the corridor. “Even after ten years, nothing changes.”

“I will take your word for it, as my memory has not been restored.” Logan replied, planting his feet as he gave his surroundings more serious consideration. The opulence of this area, the magical lighting instead of standard torches...

“All I have back is you, Storm—that said, where are we? How did we get here?”

“The residential wing of the castle—you brought us here.” Virgil explained, gesturing to the end of the corridor he was still trying to pull Logan away from. “You were channeling in the war room, but Mori tried to kill you by taking the blanket off...I thought he was gonna strangle you. Then you woke up, but your eyes were...weird. You just...stood up and bolted.”

Logan started to move towards the door, pulling Virgil with him. “Where is the king? And...the others? I was in and out of consciousness...Emile and Remy?”

“The heart-healer and the prison mage, yeah—couple members of the royal council spotted you heading this way, and word's out that Colonel Mori's been arrested. Roman's doing damage control with Prince Remus, I don't know where the others are. Doesn't matter, though, Logan will you stop and let me get you out of here?”

“No.”

“Loganberry, what the actual fuck?!”

“I'm not leaving. I have to resurrect the king.” Logan reminded him, head twisting around to regard Virgil with genuine confusion. Did Virgil really not understand this? He was Logan's Spider, he...

...didn't know where that came from. Didn't know what it meant.

The Spider does not question, he spins for his Weaver.

“Okay, one? You couldn't even if you wanted to, his Barrier is still open—you try to raise him now, the wrong soul could end up in his body. For another? He's the king and you're a necromancer. This is a jailbreak, remember? We're getting you out of here.”

Virgil emphasized his point by tugging on Logan's arm again, but Logan didn't move.

There was something else, something he wasn't seeing. Something about this...it felt off.

“Logan, we don't have time to fight about the life of a royal, okay? You don't remember why they can't be trusted--”

“Yet you trust him.” Logan pointed out. “You call him Roman, not 'His Majesty' or 'King Thomas Roman.' He...said something in the war room...”

Virgil finally let go of Logan's arm to start pacing back and forth in front of him. With a practiced flick, he draped the blanket around his shoulders—a petulant gesture Logan recognized. He recognized it, remembered it...the feeling was so alien to him.

“Yeah, I do—Souls help me, I trust him.” Virgil replied. “He swore on the Spider's Thread.”

“And?...”

“And...you're a Weaver.”

“You realize I do not know what that is.”

Virgil stopped pacing, then sighed and removed the blanket to drape it over his arm.

“Can we get out of here first so I can at least pretend I'm taking you to your quarters?”

Quarters?...their rooms. Patton.

“That is acceptable.” Logan relented, relieving Virgil of the blanket so he could walk unencumbered, as a guard ought to with a prisoner in tow.

“The Necromata aren't necromancers—they're a tribe.” Virgil explained as they walked, keeping his voice low as his gaze darted furtively around. “We're a tribe. Not every necromancer can raise the dead, some can foresee it or forestall it. The seers are the Black Dogs, the healers are the Reapers, and the resurrectionists are the Weavers. That's what you are.”

Logan thought of the magic he'd worked on instinct, the strange trancelike state that brought him the image of the shuttle, wound with spider's silk.

“The shuttle and thread...” he murmured.

Logan's stride faltered as Virgil crowded closer unexpectedly.

“Yes. So it worked, then?” he hissed excitedly. “We're connected?”

“I...believe?” Logan hedged uncertainly, the phrase echoing in his head again. “'The Spider does not question, he spins for his Weaver.' Are you...”

“Your Spider, yeah. I'm your familiar.”

“My what? Familiars--”

“--aren't stupid animals, idiot stick, that's for outsiders. Familiars are Sensitives that are connected to other necromancers, a perfect match to the power they wield. A Sensitive that's bonded to a necromancer as a familiar can actually do a little magic in tandem with their partner. You're pretty powerful on your own, you always have been, but when we realized we were matched? You got scary good.”

“So...Weavers raise the dead. And Spiders help them do it.”

“More or less. We were bonded when you got your True Name—it means you can draw focus and some small amount of magic from me, and I can communicate with ghosts. The souls you restore to life.”

“My...True Name?”

“Yeah—Loganberry. Every one of the Necromata has one.” Virgil replied, his features softening with a strange mixture of grief and gratitude. “Necromancy is rooted in memory, that's why being stripped of your Name wipes it out—makes you powerless. Your True Name, though, is rooted in identity. There are stories that say a True Name has the power to undo the Cleansing...I guess it's kind of true, since you have your powers.”

Logan fell silent, despite lacking certain answers. That feeling that something was off, it was only growing stronger. Something about names...

“So, the Spider's Thread?...”

“The oath Roman swore? Yeah—it's a reference to the Animata. Outsiders say they kept the Necromata in check? It's total bullshit. The Animata weren't life manipulators, they were a tribe of twin spirits—a being born with two souls. The Spider's Thread is the bond that exists between Animata and Necromata...necromancers don't have souls, but one that finds their Animata lays claim to their second soul, and...well, it's basically immortality. For both of them. That's why the familiars of the Weavers are called Spiders, 'cause we provide the thread that lets Weavers return souls to the Living Tapestry.”

Immortality...an immortal necromancer.

...like the Animator, the First of their kind. The necromancer so powerful, he still marked the passage of time.

A.A.--After Animator.

“How does he know about that, anyway?” Virgil asked. “That's not common knowledge outside the tribe—Logan? Logan, talk to me. What's wrong?”

Virgil's voice was fading. The world was going dark around the edges of Logan's vision again.

In the dark, pulled in two directions. Choking at the hands of one, latching onto another for dear life.

Grabbing blindly. Fingers gripping his, fingers he knew...

“Loganberry?...Logan!”

Gripping with a desperate force that was painful.

“...stay here, okay? I'm gonna get someone--”

Logan grabbed Virgil's hand as hard as he could. He looked down at their joined hands, watched Virgil's knuckles turn white with the force he was using to hold on in return.

Logan couldn't feel it. He wouldn't even feel it if Virgil broke his fingers.

The hand in his memory hurt, burned, seared...

He could feel the hand in his memory.

“Hold on.”

Logan strained to see into the shadows of the sewer, prayed for one final look.

The moonlight shifted.

Green eyes glittered in the momentary illumination.

“Loganberry!”

“He knew.” Logan breathed, releasing Virgil's hand. “He didn't come out of kindness, he came because he knew.”

“Knew what? Logan, who are you talking about?”

His voice was strangled, barely audible, but the words echoed in Logan's ears and cut out the heart he wished to the Souls that he did not have.

“Do not let go.” he demanded, begged through clenched teeth.

If he pulled Logan down, the man behind him might follow. Then they would both die.

There was no other way.

“Maybe he thought I'd remember, maybe...maybe he thought I'd escape...”

“Logan, who?”

Logan squeezed Prince Roman's hand as tightly as he could. He burned those green eyes into his brain, hoping he could carry them with him into the Void when he was gone.

“I never have. I never will.”

He never did—he hung on until the grip on his collar finally yanked him out of the fourteen year old prince's grasp.

“Roman—Virgil, I knew him. Before. I...I think he might be the reason I was arrested.”

#necromancer au #sanders sides #fanfic #ts logan #ts roman #ts logic #ts creativity #logince #dukexiety #moceit #ts virgil #ts anxiety #this is all the artist's fault i'm just a hapless writer that stumbled across it #my name is liz and i swear to god i will fic again

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iwrestlenow · 4 years ago

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Many More To Die, Chapter 7

TITLE: Many More To Die (Chapter 7)

FANDOM: Sanders Sides (Necromancer AU)

SUMMARY: The secret history of Logan and Roman begins to come to light while little pieces of Roman's world start to fall apart around him, resulting in a late night confrontation that exposes Roman's role in reuniting Virgil with his big brother.

SHIPS: Logince (Logan/Roman), Moceit (Patton/Janus) and future Dukexiety (Remus/Virgil)

WARNINGS: MORE CHAPTERS INCOMING, ‘cause this was getting super bloated. IDK, I just have a lot of feelings, and I’m rushing ‘cause I want the boys to kiss and be happy so I can start my series of smutty one-shots...I mean, what? >.> <.< XD

Also, no betas, we die like men.

Also located at AO3 over here.

1020, A.A.

“Hold on...just hold on...”

It took all his effort to stay calm, keeping the rhythm of his compressions steady the way Remus taught him. It was different, watching his twin tap-tap-tap the chest of a tiny kitten and blowing a careful stream of air into its snout—this was a boy, an entire person and his skin was pale as marble, lips tinged the blue of Father's lapis ring...

The body under his hands spasmed, a gush of water suddenly erupting from his mouth. Thinking as quickly as he could, Roman tipped the boy's head to the side so he could spit the water on the grass beside the river that ran behind the palace, and not swallow it back into his lungs—but you couldn't swallow things into your lungs, could you? Was it wrong? Was he doing this wrong?

...pulse. He should feel for a pulse, right? That's what Remus said...

Roman pressed fingers to the boy's throat, sagging when he felt the rapid flutter of a heartbeat there...at least until the boy twisted away and scrambled back, still hacking and shaking from the chill air and his sodden clothing.

Blue eyes met green, and eleven year old Prince Roman Sanders was struck breathless by the most beautiful person he had ever seen in his short life.

“Careful—it's all right, I won't hurt you.” he soothed, raising his hands and remaining on his knees. “I just want to make sure you're okay.”

The other boy blinked, water dripping off clumped eyelashes like diamonds falling to roll down his wet cheeks. He had jet black hair, plastered to his head, and even with his heart beating again, his skin was still so pale. His eyes sparkled like the river water itself, clear and bright and so blue it almost hurt to look at them.

“I...was dead.” the other boy hiccuped, bringing a hand to his chest as his brow furrowed in confusion.

“I...well, yeah. I mean, your heart wasn't beating, so I used the vital breath to make it start again. My brother taught me.”

The boy blinked, his thin but well formed lips drawing into a curious pout that made him flinch, made him reach up and touch his lower lip—sporting a shallow cut that matched one on Roman's, where he'd been a little too forceful pressing his mouth to the boy's so he could force air into his lungs.

“You...you brought me back from the dead.”

Roman blinked—but when he said it like that, he supposed that he had. Wow.

“I didn't use magic.” he said instead of...literally anything else. “I swear it.”

“On the Spider's Thread?”

“What's that?”

“The bond that unites souls.” the boy explained. “It's the most sacred oath in the world, 'cause if you break it the Fates will tear you from the Living Tapestry.”

“What's the Living Tapestry?” Roman asked, shifting to edge closer to the boy.

“The world.” he replied through chattering teeth. “And all the people in it...and you stopped them. You stopped Fate.”

“But—I didn't use magic. I didn't...really stop Fate, I...I just...you were floating in the river, and—I had to try.” Roman explained, feeling strange with all this talk of bonded souls and raising the dead, and how pretty the boy was.

“Is...is that okay?”

The boy watched him with a look Roman couldn't make heads or tails of...but after a moment he nodded.

“It's okay.” he assured him, shifting onto his knees slowly.

“Good.” Roman replied, then winced a little when the clickclickclickclick of the boy's chattering teeth became audible.

“You're so cold—you'll catch your death without some dry clothes.” He looked down at himself—equally wet from diving into the river to pull the boy out. “I could bring you back to the palace to dry off and--”

“I can't go there.”

Roman flinched at the forceful way he said it, harsh and tinged with fear. He didn't need to be his brother to connect the dots.

The boy knew a lot about death magic, and he was afraid of the palace. He was Necromata...but he was small and beautiful and shivering, and he wasn't sure anyone so awestruck by the vital breath, of all things, could be as evil as he'd been raised to believe.

Could they?

Roman thought for a moment, then struggled to his feet and started pulling off his tailored white tunic, leaving him in a simple black cotton undershirt.

“What--”

“I'm going to walk you home.” Roman insisted. “You're in no shape to be by yourself—and if I'm dressed like a citizen, no one will recognize me as a prince! You'll be safe.”

The boy watched him as he finished stripping off anything that would mark him as nobility, even discarding his boots so he was walking barefoot. When he was done, the boy was still kneeling on the ground, just...staring at him.

“What?”

“You said 'citizen.' Not 'commoner.'”

Roman made a face. “I don't like the word. I don't think people are common—I like to watch the roads from my bedroom window and imagine all the stories that the people who travel them have to tell. Common people are boring, and how can anyone with so many stories be boring?”

The boy hesitated, but finally started to get to his feet.

“Thank you...apologies. I don't know which prince you are.”

“Roman. I'm Prince Roman.” he offered, extending his hand to the boy to help him up. “And I swear—by the Spider's Thread—that I will see you home safe.”

Regarding the hand thoughtfully, the boy reached up to take it.

“Salutations, Your Highness. I am Logan Crofter.”

Their fingers touched—and Roman's heart froze when the other boy screamed.

********** 1033, A.A.

“At the end of the day, Your Majesty, the truth will come out: you're not merely a pawn of the necromancer. You're in league with him—and the Sanders line will fall from power. After all, twins don't long survive the death of their other half—or so the stories say.”

The words were going to haunt Roman long past the resurrection of his father—then again, so was the broken hand that still throbbed where he'd punched the court mage in a fit of blind fury.

“Roman!”

He stopped in his tracks, finally allowing himself to take stock of his surroundings: he was storming down the corridor that would lead to the north wing, where Patton and Logan were being kept. Head still spinning with the angry shouts and protests of both royal advisors and soldiers loyal to Colonel Mori, he'd fled the crowded throne room after breaking the mage's jaw with only the sound of his brother's cackling to comfort him.

Without his permission, his feet were trying to carry him towards the necromancer—towards Logan.

The one who was depending on him. The one who was helping him...the one...

Footsteps pounded behind him. His eternal, steady awareness of his own twin was all that kept Roman from being startled by the hand that grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.

“Roman.”

Remus stood there in front of him, hands on his shoulders, wearing an uncharacteristically sober expression. For one moment, in his mind's eye he saw Logan and Virgil, somewhere in the palace, having a similar encounter—the image had clung to the back of his thoughts since a discreet intrusion from Remy let him know that Logan was okay, his hope for both of them a fantasy he couldn't stop himself from willing into reality.

Logan had his brother back. Virgil had his...the notion of it made Roman ache, brought him dangerously close to thinking about things he couldn't entertain. Not a hint, not even a memory.

Hold on.

Do not let go.

I never have...I never will.

Roman was clutching at Remus's hands on his shoulders before he could stop himself, staring down his twin. For a second, Remus's eyes widened and his gaze grew distant—looked at him like he wasn't there, didn't seem to see him through whatever wheels were turning in his head...

Then the wall came down, his hands slid away from Roman's...his arms opened, and Roman collapsed into them. He felt the tears fall, then stream, then shook with sobs torn from his marrow. The dangerous memories fell away, replaced instead by the chill of the king's lifeless body, the stillness in Roman's arms, the stiffness of rigor setting in as he held him close before the guards forced him back into the castle.

His father was dead.

Father was dead.

In the heart of the palace, Roman came apart, and Remus gently put him back together with strong arms, soft words, and shared pain.

********** 1021, A.A.

“You're sure this is all right?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why am I here?”

“Because I wish it.”

The pair were walking by the river, Logan's request. He wouldn't tell Roman anything more than that he had to do something as part of his training, and that he wanted Roman's help. Logan's Grandpap didn't know he was doing it, Roman lied about being sick to get out of his lessons and sneak out for the afternoon...

It was confusing as hell, and Roman would be a lot more afraid of the chances he was taking if it were anyone but Logan asking him to do this.

“But what if your Grandpap finds out about...whatever we're doing, and you get in trouble?” Roman protested.

“Then he can...”

Logan trailed off and stopped walking with a frown before fumbling with uncharacteristic clumsiness to reach into his pocket for the vocabulary cards that had been a staple since Roman started teaching him outsider slang. The clumsiness came from reaching into his right pocket with his left hand—because his right hand was busy being firmly enmeshed with Roman's.

“...'deal.'” Logan finished once he'd pulled the cards out and read the top one. Glancing up to meet Roman's gaze, he offered him the small, triumphant smirk that anyone else might read as arrogant confidence. Roman knew it was all Logan allowed himself in moments of triumph—pride in the hard-won victories.

“You've been studying.” Roman observed, doing a miserable job of hiding a smile.

Logan stopped in his tracks, released Roman's hand, and shuffled through the vocabulary cards for another one, speaking as he displayed it for Roman's evaluation.

“'Duh.'”

Roman dissolved into giggling, and on impulse reached out, pulling Logan into a hug. The ten year old boy immediately tensed, breath stilling at the unexpected embrace.

Roman didn't let go, but he did loosen his arms for Logan's benefit. He waited to see if he'd bolt or...

Roman watched the vocabulary card flutter to the ground as Logan let them go, and very deliberately wrapped his arms around Roman's waist, laying his cheek against Roman's shoulder. He was still tense, but held on.

“Too much?” Roman asked softly.

“Yes.” Logan replied.

“Hurts?”

“Yes.”

“Should I stop?”

“...no. I...”

“Breathe, Logan. Remus says it's important to breathe—and important to take it slow 'cause you're touch starved.” Roman reminded him. “I'm sorry I didn't ask first, but I really don't want to hurt you. I'll let go if you ask me to.”

“I know, just...”

“What is it, Logan?”

“...more.”

The way his voice fractured and his arms reflexively tightened broke something inside of Roman as he did as he was asked: held tighter, pressed his face to Logan's hair, stood still and gave hugging his best friend his whole attention.

That was the moment Logan let out a shaky sigh and sagged in Roman's arms. He didn't know what it was, but he had to be thinking about touching Logan for it to stop hurting. Sometimes it was still too warm and too overwhelming, but it didn't seem to hurt him as bad when he was just standing there, willing his whole attention into Logan.

“...it's the Warping.”

Roman frowned a little, lifting his head just enough to rest his cheek against Logan's hair instead of his whole face. “What?”

“The Warping.” Logan repeated quietly, his breath puffing warm against Roman's neck. “I must commune with the dead as part of my training. The fiber strung onto the loom for weaving is called the warp, while the fiber that is strung across this is called the weft. The Warping is preparing myself to learn how to find the Loom of Memory—a state of consciousness where I can work my power properly.”

Roman nodded against Logan's head. “What do I need to do?”

“Just be with me...technically, I am supposed to do it alone, but I researched the ritual, and it is believed that, in the Old Times, a Weaver could bring their Animata to the Warping.”

“But I'm not an Animata.”

“No, but the Animata's defining characteristic was that they were twin souls—and you are a twin. I believe your presence will be acceptable.” Logan replied. “I...am supposed to acclimate myself to the emotions of the dead. It's not really my strongest area—feelings—and...”

Logan didn't finish. Just held on, tensing a little, then relaxing—leaning into Roman's embrace.

“You're afraid.” Roman finished for him softly.

“Fear is an emotion. I feel nothing.” Logan insisted petulantly—and it was petulant with the way he huffed soft against Roman's neck. “Necromancers have no souls with which to feel.”

“So you keep saying.”

“It's true.”

Silence fell again.

“...if I had a soul, however...I would entrust it to you.”

Roman felt something in his stomach tremble at that, soft and shivery and bright.

“Swear it on the Spider's Thread?” he asked softly.

Logan didn't answer right away—as he did with things he was never terribly sure of.

“Grandpap says that the Spider's Thread is woven by Fate, not by magic.” he replied instead of a real answer.

Roman fell silent at that, just holding onto Logan and trying to ignore the way that having Logan close like this, pledging him his non-existent soul, quiet breaths on his neck and head on his shoulder made his chest warm, made his heart do pleasant, squirmy things in his chest.

“Do...you believe in Fate, Logan?” he asked softly, not sure why he suddenly felt like holding his breath. Fortunately, he didn't have to.

Like most things Logan knew—which was almost everything—he answered immediately.

“I have since I met you.”

********** 1033, A.A.

Roman couldn't sleep that night—which was a good thing, seeing as how his room was invaded at three AM.

It happened silently, but he was emotionally raw and vaguely paranoid after what had happened to his father, after the threats made against him and all he cared for by the members of his own guard, his own court—or, perhaps, he just felt Logan's magic still teeming in his veins, keeping his heart beating and his lungs full of air. Maybe the nearness of him set something off, magic calling to magic.

One moment, the dark was empty and gaping like the hole in his chest that lingered ever since his breakdown in the halls with Remus, and the next it opened wider before filling with a presence that teased him with both the promise of danger and comfort.

When the blade touched his throat, he already had his hand under the pillow.

“Virgil, don't.”

Roman expected Logan's voice—he did not, however, expect that Logan had company.

Snapping his fingers to call to life the luminaries in his room, Roman sat up and pulled his hand out from under his pillow, a dagger in his hand and pressed to the hollow of the cadet's throat. Virgil hissed—actually hissed out loud—and backpedaled, his own dagger dragging a thin line against the side of Roman's throat.

“OW! You venomous little shit!” he spat, touching his bleeding neck as he blinked against the onslaught of light.

His hand was jerked away, and cool fingers probed his throat with deft, clinical precision. Abruptly, his head grew foggy with something akin to sleep, but cold and light...Logan's magic working, taking control of him again.

“Relax—I'm not taking your mind, I'm healing you.”

“You're what?! Logan, you're a Weaver! You can't heal!”

Roman had to work at it a little, but his free hand lifted to rub his eyes. When he let it fall again, he had Logan sitting on the edge of his bed, hand pressed to his chest just below his collarbone, eyes lit up with that dazzling blue-white, misty light again.

“Apparently, I can when I'm animating someone.” Logan pointed out, lifting his hand and running it along Roman's throat. The touch, with Logan so close, raised gooseflesh on his skin—and there was a lot of it, given Roman slept only in loose trousers and nothing else.

Virgil leaned in as he sheathed his dagger, his eyes going wide. “Ohhhhhh, shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit...”

Roman reached up, following the trail Logan's palm had taken—and found no trace of the wound. Not even a scar remained.

What troubled him was that Virgil was right. It wasn't something Roman was allowed to know, something he couldn't glean from the things he read in secret or the tidbits Remus shared from his Anima lovers...and he couldn't communicate how he knew.

Logan looked at Virgil pointedly over his shoulder, then turned back to Roman when his brother fell silent again.

“I apologize for the unexpected arrival, but Virgil insisted on secrecy once he realized he'd been exposed.”

“E-exposed?” Roman stammered, his head still spinning with surprise, the lingering effects of Logan's power, and very genuine confusion. “I don't understand.”

“Yeah, you do.” Virgil snapped, folding his arms. “You knew who I was before Master Picani felt my connection to Logan and outed me in the war room. That's how I got in, and with a shard of Necromatic magic hidden in a healing object, no less.”

Roman felt his blood run cold, and in a manner that was anything but light or misty like Logan's magic.

“Don't deny it: I asked around after Logan got back to Patton this evening. You personally cleared me when I applied to join the guard. Pair that with the fact that Logan remembers the night he was arrested? And you're lucky he stopped me from killing you.”

The world stopped turning in that instant. Everything came to a halt, from the spinning of the earth to the beating of his heart as he met Logan's eyes—those crystal blue depths that he barely kept at bay, the swirling tempest that he restrained for ten years...

Roman balled his hands into fists and tried to remember how to breathe again around the nameless emotion trying to claw its way out of his heart.

“You...remember me, Logan?”

Logan just stared at him, features inscrutable. His brow furrowed, his lips pursed—he was thinking, he was...uncertain.

“I was half conscious in the war room.” he finally replied. “The Spider's Thread—Virgil told me what that oath references. I...I don't remember you, but I feel certain you swore that oath for a reason.”

The nameless feeling in his heart grew claws, ripped and tore and drew blood.

“I did.”

“...how long have we known each other?”

“Ten years. Since the night we met in the dungeon.”

“And in total?”

Roman shut his eyes, bowing his head to avoid that look, those eyes that would unmake him.

“...thirteen. We've known each other for thirteen years.”

#necromancer au #sanders sides #fanfic #ts logan #ts roman #ts virgil #ts remus #logince #this is all the artist's fault i'm just a hapless writer that stumbled across it #my name is liz and i swear to god i will fic again #logan sanders #virgil sanders #remus sanders #roman sanders

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