#also I have all my beloved mutuals here. I’ve known them for over two years maybe more so.

[hauntedreputation]

kinda want a new blog... but like... I still want it to be this one... just new...

[tartglias]

Xiao, Zhongli and Venti with an immortal s/o

“Sooo 👀 can i request so some fluff hc for venti, xiao and zhongli with an immortal s/o?”

thank you so much for requesting!! this is my first time writing for more than one character at a time so it was a challenge lol thank you sm!!

Xiao

Xiao never understood the importance of time. Days, months, even years feel like nothing when you’re immortal. What a funny thing that is, immortality. He knows normal humans would do anything for it, and he despises them for that. Nothing so great came free, he knew that well. He was freed from tortures, only to get tormented by karma. He could still hear the voices and screams calling for help from tortured souls, these still haunt him daily. But the worst moments come when he sees that figure, that person who he once considered close. So close he could use the human word “soulmate”, if he believed in those, to describe who that person meant to him.

Many centuries back he met you, such a gentle person who got to break down his hard walls. A smile, a touch, a kiss. That’s all it took. So many meaningless years, and he never once encountered a person as kind yet strong like you. Someone who made the daily nightmares cease, with a simple smile and brush of fingers.

He remembers your last words like it was the day before. You were on top of one of the tall stones in Huaguang Stone Forest, Xiao laying his head on your lap and you placing small qingxin flowers on his hair. He wouldn’t allow anyone do that to him ever, but in the end, you were you. And you were different.

“Xiao” you called, once you were done placing the flowers. He opened his eyes and muttered a “hm?” in response. “I have to leave soon. Mondstadt calls me”

He sat up.

“What do you mean?”

“By tomorrow morning, I’ll be on my way back to Mondstadt” you said, quietly standing up.

He stood up too.

“When will I see you again?” he asked, now not being able to look at you.

“I don’t know” you said, reaching out for his hand and taking it. You placed a soft kiss on his knuckles, and he felt himself calm down at the gesture for a moment.

“I meant it when I said I’ll love you forever, Xiao” you said, finally locking eyes with him. You had teary eyes, he dreaded to see you like that. If it were up to him, he would swallow every bit of pain in your body and soul, just to see you smile.

And with that, you disappeared. As quickly as you broke down his walls, you disappeared just as quick the next day. Days, months and years became even more meaningless, but somehow he felt them longer. He missed you every day, he whispered to the moon every night, wishing that some archon would hear and bring you back to him. He knew you were like him, but he never heard from you again. Were you able to finally cross to the other side? He tried to erase those thoughts from his mind.

He later found himself in that very same stone, the one in which he last saw you. New Qingxin flowers blossomed, and they reminded him of you. He sat down, staring at the horizon. But then, he felt a strange swift of wind, and a presence behind him. He quickly stood up, ready to put his mask on and kill whoever dared to interrupt his solitude. But he didn’t. The mask in his hand dropped to the floor, next to the flowers.

“I’m back” you said, with a shy smile.

“You’re back” he said, more to himself than to you. Were you really there?

His question was soon answered, once you stepped closer and pulled him in a hug. He found himself wrapping his arms around you, holding you as close as he could, while trying to hold back his tears.

“I’m sorry I took so long, my beloved” you said as you locked your eyes with his. You grabbed his hand and held it, but you never once let go of the hug.

“I’m here to stay now” you whispered.

Zhongli

“You need to stop playing with people’s hearts” Zhongli said, as he sipped on his tea and looked at you questioningly. You rolled your eyes in response and put your focus back on your potion. A few petals from the most exotic flower in Teyvat, a little bit of juice made from vines and a teaspoon of slime condensate.

“Sometimes mortals need a little push in the right direction” You said, finishing up the mix and transferring it to a small bottle made of glass. “Plus, we’ve been here for centuries, I’m bored and I need a hobby”

“I don’t think that messing with human’s love lives can be considered a hobby. I don’t think it’s morally correct” he said.

“You’re very dramatic. I can feel the true desires of every being that touches the soil in Teyvat, and if I sense that the desire is mutual, I simply work my magic” You said, sitting back on your chair next to the tall man.

“Can’t you let them figure it out by themselves?” He asked.

“That’s no fun Zhongli” You said, finishing up the sweet perfume-potion you were creating.

You and Zhongli have been friends for centuries. You met when you moved to Liyue as the representative of the Dendro Archon, someone you really looked up to. Zhongli was kind enough to make you feel at home, and soon became friends with the Geo Archon. Though you must admit, you always wished it was something more.

Maybe that’s why you picked up this “hobby” of yours. Unrequited love is something painful and mortals only live a short life, you believe they should live it fully, if possible.

“Are you alright?” Zhongli asked, interrupting your thoughts with a concerned look on his face. You didn’t realize you had a sad look on yours.

“Oh? Yeah of course” You said, quickly brushing it off and proceeding decorating the small glass bottle.

“Y/n-“ he started, placing a hand on top of yours in order to get your attention. “I’ve known you for a long time. I know when something is wrong”

It was funny. He knew you like the back of his hand, he knew how to read you since the first time he laid his eyes on you. Yet he never found out how you truly felt about him, how your heart made like a million flips whenever he did something as simple as hold your hand, or brush a hair away from your face. All these little things and gestures, have been making you swoon over your closest friend for years, centuries even.

“Time and love are strange concepts, aren’t they?” You asked, looking straight at him. Here goes nothing, you thought.

“I believe those are rather simple concepts”

“You can spend a lifetime with someone, know every habit and expression but you don’t know how they truly feel about you” You said staring at him, searching for any hint that indicated he knew what you were talking about. But you saw nothing. Who were you kidding? He’s just your friend, has been for a long time.

You let out a defeated laugh, standing up and letting go of his hand. “Forgive me, I don’t really know what i’m saying” you said, grabbing the potion and starting to leave. But you felt his hand on your wrist, stopping your movements.

“You said you felt the desires of every being that stepped foot on Teyvat’s soil, am I right?” he asked, looking at you. You nodded. “Does it work on me?”

“You wanted to get close to me, as a friend”

“My apologies my dearest y/n, but I think your blessing is wrong” he said, standing up and holding your hand once again. “I did want to get closer to you as a friend at first, but not any longer. I’ve been observing mortals for a while as well, on my daily walks through Liyue Harbor, and I think I finally understood my feelings”

You were sure that if Zhongli listened close enough, he would hear the fast beating of your heart.

“I’ve been waiting for you to use your love potion on me, my dear y/n. I’m sure it wouldn’t have worked anyways since I believe it would take a lot of effort to make an effective potion that could work on me. But it would have given me the excuse to tell you how I really feel” he said.

“How do you feel then?” you asked him, looking up at the tall man.

“I think I’m very lucky to have you by my side, and it makes me want to travel to the Dendro nation and personally thank the Archon for assigning you to Liyue. I also want you to still be by my side for the centuries to come, if you’re okay with that” he said, lowering his voice by the end.

You acted before you could process your thoughts. You stood on your tippy toes and kissed his cheek gently, never letting go of his hand. He liked you, he felt the same way about you. It was real.

“I’m okay with that” you replied.

Venti

It was almost noon, almost an hour after the original time you accorded with Venti to meet. You planned a picnic date by the big tree near the statue of the Seven, your favorite spot. The same spot which later, became Venti’s favorite spot as well.

He wasn’t a person who would jump straight to conclusions. You were late. Maybe you fell asleep, maybe you couldn’t find the guitar you promised to bring so you could play a duet. Being late doesn’t mean something bad happened, right?”

He decided to wait a few more moments, but once the sun set, he had enough. He went out to try and find you. He went to your house, but noticed the door was locked and no one was inside. “They left” he thought.

He slowly but surely started to get desperate. Where were you? Were you hurt? Did you get lost somehow? He went to Angel’s Share, and not even Master Diluc had seen you. If Venti wasn’t in such a panicked state, he would have noticed the rare concerned and worried look Diluc had on his face.

If any traveler walked by literally any road in Mondstadt, they would soon encounter a big rush of wind. Venti went from here to there as fast as he could, trying to find you.

He soon enough found you in Stormbearer Mountains, fighting hilichurls and two pyro mages. You looked tired, sweat covering your body and your clothes were dirty. It was obvious that this has been going on for a while. You gripped your sword as hard as you could, and kept fighting. Why didn’t you call for him? With no exception, Venti tells you daily to call for him if you ever encounter a problem. It’s not that he doesn’t think you’re strong, oh no, he believed you were the strongest mortal in Teyvat. But in the end, to him you were still a mortal. Fragile and over-sensitive. He often told you to call his name, that the wind will carry it and he will appear there to help you out. So why didn’t you?

“y/n!” he screamed, once he laid his eyes on you. You turned around and saw a rush on wind, and felt his presence. What you didn’t feel though, was the pyro attack coming from one of the mages. The mage summoned three pyro artifacts that surrounded you, and burnt you. You felt your energy slip away, your head dizzy and your body burning. Then, you felt the cold wind, Venti quickly finishing off the mages and the remaining hilichurls.

Venti thought it was over. You were kneeled down, burnt skin, gasping for air. It was over, you were going to die. He felt his eyes water and fear running through his veins. He wrapped his arms around you, making you lean on his chest.

“Don’t leave me” he begged. “please”

“My dear, I don’t think I can” you said, letting out a short laugh.

“Please stay strong, I think I can carry you to the cathedral but you need to hold very still so-“ he started saying, now fully crying but you interrupted him by putting a hand on his cheek and wiping his tears with your thumb.

“I’m serious, I don’t think I can leave anyways. Venti, I literally can’t die.” you said, with a laugh and slowly standing up.

“You... you’re immortal?” he asked, looking up at you, not being able to leave the floor.

You nodded. “I thought you knew”

“I hate you” he said, standing up and wiping away his tears. “I do”

“No you don’t. But you’re cute though!” you said, grabbing his face and kissing the tip of his nose. “I’m very sorry I’m late though, my commission took longer than I thought but let me compensate you with dinner and a bottle of wine”

“But you’re still burnt?” he asked you, concern still in his face.

“Oh don’t worry about that, it will rip out when I start walking. I have healthy skin underneath” you said, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“Why do I feel like this is not your first time getting so hurt?” he asked letting out a soft chuckle, suddenly feeling lighter now that he knows you’re okay and will probably be okay for a long long while.

“Eh, been there done that a few times” you simply said, taking his hand and walking back to the city of Mondstadt.

[alkaysani-archived]

You had an assigned seat next to them at a wedding for a mutual friend. + andromaquynh

oooh thank you for the patience on this kayla! this also has some joenicky in it, i hope you don’t mind!! you can also find it on ao3 here

the setup

“Nicolò, I am so happy for you.” And Quynh was, to the point that she couldn’t stop grinning that her face hurt so much. And her lovely Nicolò smiles at her, and leans into her arms, pressing close and she squeezes him tight, burying her face into his shoulder. “The ceremony was so beautiful! I can’t wait for the reception—” she starts, and Nicolò pulls away then with a smile, then a slight grimace.

 “I’m sorry again for the mix-up. I know I said you’d be with my Nona, but then my aunt showed up, with my uncle, and—” Nicolò rushes out, and Quynh just snorts and squeezes him.

 “It’s one table over, and it’s going to give me a chance to get to know Yusuf’s friends,” she says, just as said man wiggles his way in between the both of them, an arm on each of their shoulders.

 “Oh you’re going to love them, Quynh. They’re almost as terrifying as you,” Yusuf tells her, with a small kiss on her forehead that makes her feel warm. He glances at Nicolò and finds her best friend staring at his newly minted husband with the softest look in his light eyes, a small, crooked smile on his face.

A look of utter adoration. She couldn’t be happier for him. Quynh puffs up her chest and tugs down her suit jacket with a proud smirk at being called terrifying, nodding.

 “Maybe I’ll meet my match,” she says with a grin, making a soft noise when her ring catches on her shirt, missing the sly wink Yusuf gives his husband, before looking down at her hands, and reaching over to help. “Here, don’t tug,” Yusuf says softly, and Quynh drops her other hand to let the man do his thing. In the four years she’s known Yusuf, she’s learned the two most important things that she can learn about the man:

 One, he loves Nicolò with everything that he has, and has loved him since they started competing for study space at the library in their last year of college, that more than once have ended with Quynh making her way to campus to pull them apart. It reminded her of all the times she’d have to pull Nicolò by the back of the shirt when they were so much younger, away from any fight that he was willing to get into. Except that time, he didn’t end up dating them, or eventually marry them.

 And two, Yusuf makes everything he touches, better. That included his art, his writing, the people that he helps through his voluntary outreach, Nicolò’s life as a whole, especially his relationship with his family, Quynh’s appreciation for her job as the lead art curator at the university museum, and now delicate chiffon shirt, that her ring is most definitely stuck on. How did she even manage that? Yusuf takes his time, making sure not to tug and ruin her shirt, and Quynh waits, impatiently, because that’s who she is, and Nicolò moves to wrap an arm around her shoulders, squeezing.

 “Keep still, Quynh.” “No. I can just pull it, and if the shirt is ruined, take it off.” She definitely can. Quynh has a cropped, black tank underneath that’d still look great with her dark red suit.

 Nicolò makes a soft noise the same time as Yusuf lets out a soft “Yes,” and puts up the ring, smiling at her then. Her shirt looks completely unharmed. “No need to for a wardrobe change, though I still think you’d kill it,” he says, giving her the ring, that she slips through her finger with practiced ease.

 “Yusuf, do not encourage her.”

 “She’s not gonna be with Nona anymore, beloved,” Yusuf says with a wave of a hand. “I’m sure her new table companions would appreciate it,” he says, and Quynh squints at him then. What did he mean by that?

 “Either way, Quynh looks lovely. And her shirt is fine, so there’s no need to change,” he says, taking her hand then and pulling her along. “Come on, we need to get to the venue now. I’m sure they’re all waiting for us.”

 ***

 Quynh gets to the table at the reception hall first.

 The rest aren’t there yet. According to Yusuf, they couldn’t make it to the ceremony, and are looking to celebrate thoroughly when they all get there.

 “Have you met them before?” Quynh asked Nicolò softly, just before he left her, and Nicolò just gave her a smile, and a nod.

 “Remember those few years after college when Yusuf was away? When he was still volunteering overseas?” he asked, and Quynh nodded, remembering the two years after their graduation that Yusuf had left. “These are the friends he made from that. So, I’ve only ever met them when I was on video calls with Yusuf, and then when they’re on with Yusuf now. They’re still doing the same thing, even after Yusuf came home.”

 Came home to Nicolò, to build a life with him. When Yusuf had first left, Quynh had been angry, because how dare did Yusuf leave Nicolò to do this? To do good work, yes, but she was home to see how sad Nicolò had been, even though he himself was doing his own good work back home. He had missed Yusuf something terrible, and was never angry at the man. “He misses me just as much, for we love each other just the same,” Nicolò would always say to her when she’d get too upset. Still, it didn’t stop her from reaching out to Yusuf once or twice, asking him to consider coming home. And all he ever said was that he was working on it. And he did, and now he keeps his voluntary outreach at most, at a national level.

 “They’re good people then,” Quynh said, after a beat, and Nicolò smiles, nodding. “I think you’d get along with them, you know. You have something in common,” he replied, and Quynh blinks, tilting her head, just as they got to her seat. He smiled, and kissed her forehead.

 “They told him to come home to me, then helped him do it.”

 Yeah, that’s definitely going to be a plus on Quynh’s book.

 She’s fiddling with her ring and turned on her seat, conversing with one of Nicolò’s aunts when she hears the chairs on her table move behind her. Particularly, she feels the chair beside her move, and so she turns. And finds a tall woman pulling out the seat, in a sleek white suit, her dark hair stark against it. Quynh stares up at her and her breath hitches.

 Fuck, this woman is gorgeous.

 “Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” the woman says to her, and Quynh blinks, wondering if she had said her words aloud, her face heating up, a smile creeping across her lips.

 “Smooth, boss,” she hears, and she glances at a tall blond man looking at the woman with a shake of his head, slipping into his own seat with a snort, a black man sitting beside him, then, flashing Quynh a bright, gleaming smile.

 “Her name is Andromache, and she’s got no filter,” the man says, reaching over the table to shake her hand. “Lykon,” he says, nodding.

 “Quynh,” she says softly, taking his hand into a firm shake. The first man smiles at her then, taking off his sunglasses. “Booker,” he says simply, and Quynh gives him a soft nod, before turning back to the woman, standing up now.

 “Andromache?” she says, voice soft, and the woman smiles, tilting her head.

 “You can call me Andy,” she says, extending her hand to her, and Quynh smiles then, taking her hand, and shaking it.

 “Quynh,” she says softly, and smiles when Andy starts to seat, and she does the same, facing her completely now.

 “You’re Nicky’s best friend,” Andy says, and she feels her back straightening at the fact that she knows that. “Joe tells me you’re scary,” she says, and Quynh tilts her head before leaning over, raising an eyebrow.

 “Only when I have to be,” she says, and Andy smirks, then laughing.

 “Oh, I love a challenge.”

 Damn. Quynh joked about finding her match, but this definitely feels like she has. Andromache feels different, already. She commands the room, but more importantly, she tugs something in Quynh.

 Probably her loins.

 Andy smiles at her then and winks at her, and Quynh feels like she’s going to melt into a puddle.

 Most definitely her loins.

 “Ugh, I can’t believe Nile wins the bet,” Booker groans, after a moment and Quynh turns to her then, Lykon laughing and already taking out what looks like a 100 Euros. Quynh raises an eyebrow.

 “What bet?” “The bet that Andy was going to make a move on you the moment she saw you in person. Joe’s been hyping you up since we met!” Lykon exclaims, and Andy shakes her head then, rolling her eyes.

 “That’s why Nile’s taking over for me, because she’s smarter than the two of you combined,” she says, before looking back at Quynh. “Nile’s going to be here in an hour or so. She’s finishing a call with her mom and brother,” she says with a smile, and she sounds soft-hearted at the whole idea. Quynh feels like she’ll like this Nile too.

 However, that’s when it hits her what they had just revealed. This has been a setup. She then looks over to where Yusuf was, currently holding two of his nephews in his arms, dancing around with them, while Nicolò rocks their baby sister in his own arms gently, conversing with their mother, Yusuf’s cousin.

 “That little shit,” Quynh says with pure affection in her voice, and when she looks back at Andy, she’s grinning, extending her hand gently to her.

 “This was a setup!” she gasps, and Andy just smiles at her still.

 “You interested?” she asks, bluntly, and honestly? Quynh adores it.

 She takes Andy’s hand then and nods, squeezing it, letting herself be tugged forward, standing with her then.

 “I most definitely am,” she says, and Andy smiles, before nodding to Lykon and Booker, who both stand to flank them. Lykon snorts, putting up a fist for Booker to bump, Andy and Quynh looking at the two of them now.

 “The al Kaysani-di Genova setup, complete,” Lykon says, and Booker nods, as they bump fist.

 “One for the books.”

 Andy snorts, and shakes her head, but Quynh can see that she is fond, and happy as she turns back to her.

 “Good,” Andy says with a soft smile. “I can’t wait to get started, but first, introduce us to your best friend?” she says, grinning. “They’ve no idea we’re here yet,”she reveals, and Quynh grins, then she’s moving back to go the other direction. Lykon and Booker make a soft confused noise, but they still follow, and Andy looks at her then.

 “Where are we going?”

 “We’re just going to go around. Go from behind, scare the crap out of them,” she says, and they all cheer in glee at the idea, but all Quynh can see then is Andy’s beautiful smile as she throws her head back in laughter.

 “You’re something else, Quynh,” she says, and Quynh laughs when Andy starts to take off her heeled boots, just as Quynh’s start to take off hers.

 “Seems like you are too, Andromache,” Quynh says, smiling at how easy her name rolls off her tongue. She squeezes her hand, before letting go, taking her shoes and leaving it at the hallway, before re-entering the banquet hall through the other door, Andromache right behind her.

 “Booker, Lykon, flank,” Andy says.

 “Got it boss,” Quynh hears, and she sees Lykon and Booker moving forward, still hidden and honestly, she’s impressed.

 Quynh looks back at Andy then, and smiles.

“Our first mission together?” she says, and Andy smiles, iridescent and beautiful even in the low light.

 “The first of many, Quynh,” Andy says simply, nodding.

 “We’re just getting started.”

[likearecordbb]

about your post on the recent discourse...

it's honestly so confusing to me because like,, you say that ppl pointing out how members of this fandom will make neil very stereotypically 'feminine' is reinforcing the idea of 'masculinity' as one thing and 'femininity' as another.... and i get that we should get rid of these labels. but at the same time... the content itself that ppl are criticising (the ones that 'feminize' neil) are already doing just that. that's why they're criticising it.

i can't point out how ppl are reinforcing the idea that a relationship should have a 'man' and a 'woman', without... saying that that's what they're doing. the writer themselves already sees relationships this way and 'masculinity' and 'femininity' as two different distinct things. that's exactly *why* they're writing neil this way while keeping andrew close to canon.

there's nothing wrong with neil being stereotypically 'feminine' of course. but to act like it's somehow misogynistic for me to go to these ppl and be like 'hey, u shouldn't view mlm relationships through the lens of a hetero one! it can be very harmful' is weird to me... *especially* considering these stereotypes that ppl are pushing onto neil come from misogyny themselves. (ppl making neil much much more emotional than he is in canon while keeping andrew very stoic)

idk, like... ur simultaneously saying that we shouldn't view relationships as needing a 'man' and a 'woman'... while defending people who are doing just that and creating content which reinforces just that.

it's one thing to say 'we shouldn't view masculinity and femininity as two distinct and different things!'/'we should get rid of these labels all together cause they're meaningless'... but if i look at the content that u make/consume and it's practically, if not entirely, all andreil conforming to heternormative stereotypes... then i can't help but feel like ur not as detached from the idea of 'masculinity' and 'femininity' as u would like to believe... i trust the ppl who say these ideas are meaningless while not changing the canon characters because they seem to be sticking to their words.

people will just say that they prefer writing andreil is this heternormative way... they'll just say it what they like or what they're most comfortable writing without ever questioning *why* they prefer it this way.

and if they're projecting.. well then, *why* this couple? why pick an mlm couple to project what is often the experience of a cis woman in a relationship? why pick this mlm couple when there are others that do fit the stereotypical heternormative dynamic? idk. like,, u can do this ofc, but ppl can also call u out on ur shit.

there's an undeniable reason that neil is exclusively the one that ppl pick to make more stereotypically 'feminine'. and there's a reason this type of content is also so popular. and it's certainly not wrong to point this out.

You know, I can see all of these points that you're making. For me, the overall issue of this is very complicated. I am also super uncomfortable with the imposition of heteronormative roles onto...well, onto any relationship, regardless of the identities of the people who constitute it. I was raised smack dab in the middle of the gay community by lesbian moms (together 38 years now, jfc, can you imagine??), so that "man/woman" thing was never something that I grew up internalizing or normalizing. I can recognize that this may give me a bit too much of a sense of objectivity.

However, I'm also like...I've been ruined by grad school. The "feminizing" word makes me really uncomfortable because it starts to stray for me into gender essentialism territory. It also seems to foundationally differentiate between "masculine" behaviors and "feminine" behaviors and I just really hate that? Lesbian moms, trans daughter, bi (and late-in-life trying to see where on the ace spectrum I might fall) self, I've just met so many people with so many expressions of gender and sexuality and I just... Idk, I automatically resist anything that feels like it's upholding "masculinity" and "femininity" as real (as in, not constructed) things. And then I also am like, well, I've known SO MANY gay men who behaved in the ways that the discourse constructs as "feminized" and then I start to feel like, what about these men? Are they less 'men' because of it? How would it feel for that man to read these things saying his identity expression was a problem or a bad stereotype? Do I read *Neil Josten* within that context... no, not really. I think Neil has a 'not enough emotional expression' problem way before he has a 'too much emotional expression' problem.

I'll say here what I often say to my students in complex discussions: I don't have answers. I don't think I'm right and anyone else is wrong. I just have complicated thoughts and feelings and concerns about some of the things that sometimes seem to be left uninterrogated.

So, I do 100% get the need to be vigilant about the imposition of a "man" (dominant, emotionally constipated, sexually driven, stoic) role and "woman" (emotional, needy, teary, dependent) role onto relationships with two (or more!) men or women. I would also argue that we need to get rid of that idea in hetero relationships, too, because it's super damaging. I just wish we could find a way to talk about that that didn't feel like it was accepting this idea of femininity as a given? And I definitely agree that it's problematic when the 'bottom' in a relationship is depicted as the one who's soft and silly and weepy. (Have you read TJ Klune's Tales from Verania series? A VERY fun world that does that not at all and it's great). I'm not saying these things are not worth confronting--I'm just really uncomfortable with the way the conversations are often framed around a concept of femininity/feminizing. It feels like shrapnel, I guess? Like, 'ugh stop feminizing Neil he's not weepy and uwu he's a badass' feels inherently to me like it's making femininity and badassery mutually exclusive? Maybe I'm just looking for a caveat or footnote in the argument that acknowledges that that is constructed *for women too*? And is a part of, like, a larger heteronormative patriarchal structure? And not something that we can just all obviously agree is the way the ladies (should?) behave?

One other question I've been dying to ask, though, is: where are these fics? I don't think I've ever read something where Neil is crying over Jack being mean to him or anything. Maybe if I start to see hints of that characterization, I just close the tab and never end up getting to the 'worst' of it?

Although, if what you said earlier about the "content that u make/consume and it's practically, if not entirely, all andreil conforming to heternormative stereotypes..." was referring to me, then... idk what to say to that. I don't think that's what I do. The heteronormative relationship that you're describing isn't one that I enjoy, desire for myself (or anyone else), or have any interest in reproducing.

Does this clarify what I'm trying to say? I guess it's a really long way of saying, in the old insufferable grad school tradition: well, first we have to define our terms. Because I'm not sure we're all coming up with the same thing when we use the word "feminizing" and that probably has a lot to do with why we keep having this exact same conversation over and over and over again.

If I missed any specific point you'd like to pick at in more detail, please let me know--my very sad platonic life partner (who had to put her beloved 15-year-old poodle to sleep yesterday) and her mom are waiting for me to drive them to the stores for a distraction, so I'm feeling a little time pressure.

[elizabethvaughns]

get to know me tag game

tagged by @willowstea. thanks! :) 💙

why did you choose your url?

i've said this before in a previous tag game but. it's from "ain't no man manhattan" from if/then, also known as one of my favorite songs :)

"all of eight point two five million on the run, / a different way for every single one, / all turning and returning, fast and slow. / and we somehow find each other, even so."

i felt these lines were especially beautiful, so yeah :)

any side-blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them.

yes! @ifthen-headcanons. many popular/semi-popular fandoms have headcanon/incorrect quotes blogs, and i felt that if/then deserved one. so one fine april wednesday, during a particularly boring math class, i decided to make this blog.

how long have you been on tumblr?

i don't actually remember making this account(i probably made it sometime in 2017 or 2018), but i actually started using it sometime in january 2020. i started posting in april 2021.

do you have a queue tag?

yep! #queue don't need to love me.

why did you start your blog in the first place?

why did i start my blog? i genuinely don't remember it's been years.

why did i start posting? well, in march 2021, i watched a recording of if/then and immediately fell in love with it. over the next few days, i started browsing the tumblr tag for it and blogs with it. hilariously enough, i finished the whole tag within two days. over the next month i fell more and more in love with this musical. so much so that i had to get over my parasocial anxiety and post about my appreciation for this musical. things...spiraled from there, and now we're here! :)

why did you choose your icon/pfp?

jackie burns's beth, my beloved(...in hindsight, i may have a small crush on elizabeth vaughn lmao).

why did you choose your header?

my header is a blue-orange gradient. if/then colors--blue-green is the main color scheme of beth-verse and pink-orange is the main color scheme of liz-verse. so, blue-orange.

what's your post with the most notes?

the trina/mendel (falsettos) gif-set i made in honor of may 27th at 8 (30 notes).

how many followers do you have?

18 followers

how many people do you follow?

147 lmaoo

have you made a shitpost?

honestly, 50% of the stuff i make is a shitpost.

how do you feel about the 'you need to reblog this' posts?

...not a big fan. a lot of them are blatantly note bait. some of them are genuinely funny, which i will reblog. if they're meant to spread awareness and have useful links/information, i'll reblog it. but...a lot of it is just reblog bait that feels a lot like guilt-tripping.

do you like tag games?

yes!!! i overshare a lot and i love an invitation to overshare :)) one misgiving i have about it, though, is...i just don't know who to tag! all my mutuals? the one or two mutuals whom i interact with the most frequently? no one?

do you like ask games?

again, another invitation to overshare. except, if your askees have anon on, they won't know it's you (; (;

(i have anon on, if you're nervous like me :))

which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

i...genuinely don't know. sorry :(

do you have a crush on a mutual?

people have crushes on mutuals?

huh.

no, no i don't :)

tagging:

(if you'd rather not be tagged, tell me, please. in converse, if you're okay with being tagged in this, also tell me. it'll spare me a lot of anxiety)

@icouldcrackyourfeet

@miyacantdecide

@yunostar

@pianonotforte

+ any of my other mutuals/followers who want to join in :)

[zkfanworkweek]

ZFAW Content Creator Interviews: OwedBetter

Hey everyone! We hope you’re all excited for ZFAW, and to honor (ha!) ZFAW’s commitment to supporting and celebrating fan content creators in the Zutara fandom, we’re going to be rolling out a series of interviews with well-known and widely-beloved content creators over the next few weeks. We’ve got artists and fanfiction authors, some names you recognize as well as a few phenomenal up-and-coming talents, and we can’t wait for you to meet them all!

I’m super excited about this one! For the sixth (incredibly delayed, I’M SORRY) interview in the cycle, we have Jo, aka @owedbetter. Best known for the absolutely iconic Zutara fanfiction “I’m Still Here,” Jo’s works can be found at: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12312357/chapters/27990618

Tell us about how you came to ship Zutara. What does this ship mean to you?

To use one of my favourite lines from Jane Austen, "I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun." I started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender when I was just a tiny little baby child at 10 turning 11 years old. I do know for a fact, however, that Zutara had simply always been it for me from the very beginning. I believe it was during "The Storm" that I just knew that there was more to Zuko than what was at surface level. As a brown girl trying to make her way into positions of leadership as a child, Katara's strength, rage, and bravery paved the way for me to survive in the way I have. As a survivor of child abuse myself, Zuko remaining kind and gentle and good was of paramount importance. Together, they were the joining of two souls that met in conflict and chaos but through merit, equal standing, and forgiveness, they were exactly what each other needed. They are not opposites nor two halves of a whole; they are the sky and between them is only the world. Everyone has the need to feel truly seen and understood as they are by another, and Zuko and Katara do exactly that. Other stories come and go, but they're the story I come back to and will continue to call home every single time. I will never tire of them.

2. What inspires you to create Zutara fanworks?

 I've been a professional writer for the last ten years. It's my job to imagine and create stories. I also love consuming stories through every medium possible. The well never dries when you keep it full to the brim. When you do the work I do and you consume as many stories as I do and you've lived a long enough life and paid attention to the life around you as I have trained to do, to be inspired is second nature. For Zutara, however, these are voices that have lived in my brain for fifteen years. When I get an idea for a story, literally any story, it's like my subconscious is naturally attuned to their dynamic that every prompt I come up with is automatically a Zutara prompt. Such is the way. If I ever publish a novel and/or lead my own show/movie, you can bet that it's probably Zutara if you squint.

3. Be selfish - if you could request one fanwork based on your own art/fanfic, what would it be? What would you absolutely love to see someone create? 

To this day, "i'm still here" is probably the single greatest thing I've ever done in my whole stupid life. It would be the greatest honour to see my work interpreted visually. Genuinely, I'd love to see certain scenes as comic panels or something. Katara's realisation at the beach over who she is and she thinks about Yue, her mother, and her grandmother. Zuko and Katara's mutual understanding. The scene that started it all: baby Zuko taking care of baby Azula at the beach. Katara and Iroh talking in Chapter 7. Toph meeting fear for the first time. The entire ending of Chapter 6. As of writing this, I haven't updated the sequel yet but I would love to see visual interpretations of incoming Original Characters because they've been fun to create. I don't even know. If anyone wants to draw something from "i'm still here", I would like to see it. Please let me see it. I will cry. But also, I would like to see visual interpretation of Zutara in my modern quarantine pandemic AU because I would like to see long haired 28 year old Zuko wearing autumn-wear in a public park filled with flowers with 26 year old Katara basically wearing anything I wear because I am projecting in that story for a reason. 

4. Any words for people who are new to the fandom and/or nervous about sharing their work for the first time?Buddy, we're all just a bunch of nerds who are creating things for our enjoyment and the enjoyment of likeminded individuals. Do things for you and because they bring you joy, first and foremost. Everything else can be ignored if you want to ignore it. You're doing great. 

5. What is your favorite Zutara-related thing you’ve made and why is it special to you?

 Again, "i'm still here" is literally the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. Something I get commended for a fair amount with ISH is how I handled Zuko being a child abuse survivor, and his conflicting emotions with his violent abusers because he's still a child who wants his family to love him. That comes from an extremely personal place for me and it means the world to know that other survivors out there resonated so well with it. Also, Masterchef Zuko with that chicken adobo meant me getting a LOT of people saying they tried out the recipe themselves and I can feel my grandmother radiate with pride over knowing I'm so great a cook that I can convince people to want my dish just by writing about it. I'm so proud of everything I did with ISH. I worked really hard on it and I'm so happy to know it means a lot to other people too. 

6. What’s an idea for a fanwork that you have but haven’t gotten around to making?

I have this one modern AU involving dogs that I've put on the backburner since 2017. One day... one day!!! I'm a bit of a workaholic, though, so most of the things I want to do, I just do 'em. 

7. Are you participating in ZFAW? If so, want to give us a hint as to your plans? 👀

I am! I have a draft ready based on one of Hayley Foster's animatics and I'm very excited. Tumblr user hayleynfoster, I owe you my entire life. 

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Untamed TAZ Balance AU? Don't have to write anything, just consider that (is Wen Ning Lucretia in this or is he too nice for that)

NHS IS LUCRETIA, NHS IS ABSOLUTELY LUCRETIA, I HAVE THOUGHTS, my girlfriend yelled at me for these thoughts.  Hell this got long, I’ve literally been saving it in my drafts until Tumblr fixed the Read More issue.

WWX is Taako, JC is Magnus, WQ is Merle, JYL is in the umbrella (became a lich to keep her brother from doing it), WN is the Red Robe (became a lich because he thought it seemed reasonable), NHS is Lucretia, XXC is Davenport, LWJ and LXC are mutually Kravitz (LXC sets his bro up with the death criminal wizard), Wen Zhuliu is John Vore, LSZ is Angus but also a baby Reaper

ONE

So Wei Wuxian isn’t really a wizard, is the thing.  Like, he does the wizard magic, and apparently he has strong Wizard Vibes because wherever he travels, people ask him if he can solve their magical bullshit problems, but he’s, like, barely a wizard.  He’s an inventor, technically, except that a few years back some stuff went explosively awry while he worked with this traveling show and–yeah.  So he’s working as a wizard because, hey, he can cast Magic Missile and he needs to eat and he’s an Evocation specialist, anyway, so it’s not like he’s out here making food from rocks.  He’s hired on with a couple other random jackasses, a fighter who took a dislike to Wei Wuxian right off the bat and a cleric with a bad temper and an itchy Sacred Flame finger, and they’re doing a job for some dwarf, or whatever.  The dwarf has a guy hired on as muscle, but he doesn’t look like much, all wide eyes and baby face.  He calls himself Qionglin, no last name, and stares at Wen Qing like he’s never seen a cleric before, and Jiang Cheng spends the entire trip to Phandolin messing with his whip, which is the stupidest weapon Wei Wuxian has ever seen.

Well, then everything immediately goes horribly wrong, though, and turns out that Jiang Cheng is pretty okay with that whip.  Qionglin (Wei Wuxian spoke to the man all of one time, but he was sweet, if a little awkward) gets himself kidnapped by a bunch of goblins, and their employer is gods-know-where with whatever a Black Spider is, and suddenly this very boring escort mission is a very not boring rescue mission.

There’s a skeleton in the cave.  Wei Wuxian takes an umbrella from it, and it crumbles into dust beneath its red robe.  There’s a very annoyed man with a sword who calls himself Song Lan and speaks in static, and he’s somehow not the weirdest part of this whole day.

Phandolin doesn’t survive its brush with the Zidian Gauntlet, and neither does Qionglin.  Wen Qing screams when he dies, and Wei Wuxian grabs her under the arms with Jiang Cheng and books it for the empty well in Song Lan’s wake, and they just hide.  

And then they go to the goddamn moon, apparently.

TWO

The goddamn moon is run by an older man with hair still a glossy black, toying with a beautifully painted white fan in his hand.  He calls himself the Director and–after some testing–hires them more or less on the spot.  Something flickers over his face when Wen Qing, bemused by her own upset, makes an offhand mention of a man named Qionglin who died when the Gauntlet brought down so much lightning that it turned Phandolin into black glass.  But it’s not Wei Wuxian’s problem, so he doesn’t worry himself over it too much.  He takes the payment offered to him by the Director’s aide, a blindfolded, stunningly handsome man in Bureau blue and white who rests his hand on his own chest and says “Xiao Xingchen” and not another word.

The Bureau is–weird.  They’ve got a giant jellyfish and a store run by–something Wei Wuxian Does Not Trust and a dorm.  Wei Wuxian laughs and kicks Jiang Cheng cheerfully in the ankle and says “Just like college, huh?” and Jiang Cheng gives him a dark look and snaps “I never went to college.”

“Yeah,” Wei Wuxian says, blinking.  “Me neither.”

Whatever.  They go on a train adventure and there’s a kid, a kid who blinks and stares at Wei Wuxian like he’s seen a goddamn ghost and immediately walks up to introduce himself as Lan Sizhui, boy detective.

Wei Wuxian fucking loves this kid.  He’s not sure why this wide-eyed fifteen-year-old latched onto him so hard, but he’s smart, funny, loyal, and extremely easy to pick on.  13/10 child rating, in Wei Wuxian’s book.

(Sizhui, for his part, more or less kicks down the door to his father’s offices in the Astral Plane the second the Reclaimers are gone and shouts “I HAVE A LEAD ON WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WORLD.”)

(His father, Lan Wangji, the Grim Reaper, is very interested to hear all about it–especially when his son casually name-drops three of the biggest bounties that the Raven King, his adoptive elder brother, has ever sent him after, with the exception of that absolutely insufferably sweet-tempered lich Wen Ning.)

THREE

So…the Crystal Kingdom.

Is it Wei Wuxian’s finest hour, shouting obscure tentacle-related threats at the second crystal construct they’ve seen in the past twenty minutes?  No, probably not.  But it’s been a stressful day, they’re already down one Regulator and Song Lan is fuck-knows-where with Mianmian and, again, this is the second menacing crystal construct they’ve seen in twenty minutes.  Or maybe it’s the same one? 

Whatever, doesn’t matter.  They’re here to hunt down Meng Yao, a scientist who’s been dicking around with some seriously ill-advised necromancy and also the Philosopher’s Stone, and a crystal construct or two isn’t going to stop them.

Wei Wuxian actually physically cannot help himself, though, when the Reapers appear in the mirror, a matched set of beautiful men, and he grins broadly at the one glaring at him most viciously.  They get let go on a technicality, along with a conduit still containing Meng Shi’s memory of a vision beyond the cosmos, and Meng Yao leaves with his life and not much more.

Later, Lan Wangji is absolutely betrayed by the realization that his brother willfully set him up to be the primary go-between for the completely breathtaking deeply irritating wizard-by-way-of-death-criminal.  And that’s before the whole lich revelation.  (He does get a kiss, though, after he watches his brother pulled under by the Hunger.  That’s nice.  He hopes Wei Wuxian will mitigate the death crimes now that they’re dating.)

FOUR

The seven Relics are as follows:

The Zidian Gauntlet, which can generate a lightning blast so powerful that it can obliterate an entire city.  (Jiang Cheng–he watched the others try to lay in protections, try to make their Relics harmless, and he knew it wouldn’t work.  All the Gauntlet does is damage.  It can melt a city down to black glass, but it can’t be twisted, it can’t be made into any more of a nightmare than it already is.  He’s a fighter.  He knows all about damage, knew all about what he was making.  That doesn’t mean it didn’t kill him by inches to watch it leave a path of destruction–so much that his beloved jiejie tried to seal it away.)

The Oculus, which can make any construct real.  (Xiao Xingchen–Nie Huaisang didn’t take everything.  He doesn’t remember the mission, or his own past.  Something strange got confused in the process, and he lost most of his speech.  But he remembers how to fight, handles his sword as cleanly and effectively as ever, and he remembers that he doesn’t think much of Nie Huaisang’s combat skills.  Or maybe it’s just really obvious that Nie Huaisang isn’t much of a fighter.  Regardless, Xiao Xingchen insisted on accompanying him, before–before.  Then they went into the Felicity Wilds, and…Xue Yang is honestly delighted.  He’s never managed to ruin someone so badly on the way into Wonderland before.  It’s just a shame that Nie Huaisang sent Xiao Xingchen away before they reached the doors.)

The Healer’s Sash, which can manipulate natural forces like the wind, the tides, and tectonic plates just as easily as it can manipulate a heartbeat or a pair of lungs.  (Wen Qing–she prays to Pelor, the Dawnfather, the healer and Lord of Light, but she’s long since lost her faith in him as anything but a contracted boss.  It’s a shock to everyone including her when she’s granted a right arm made of glass and magic after losing it.  She was so determined to make a Relic that could be used for good, but–well.  She supposes she should have known better.)

The Philosopher’s Stone, which can more or less transform anything into anything.  (Jiang Yanli–she’s a Transmutation wizard, she’s been feeding the crew of the Starblaster for a hundred years on whatever she can pull together.  If the right person found the Stone, it would have ended world hunger.  The wrong person found the stone.  Jiang Yanli tried her damnedest to hunt it down, but she found the Gauntlet first, and, well–she already became a lich to stop one younger brother from doing it.  It’s not a struggle to decide that she’s going to take responsibility for saving Jiang Cheng from his own guilt.  Then things go horribly wrong, and she spends the next twelve years in an umbrella.)

The Temporal Chalice, which offers complete control over time.  (Wen Ning–he was a strict scholar until his sister was contacted about the IPRE’s creation, but he always did want to travel, and his theories about bonds were too good for Xiao Xingchen to pass up having on his crew.  Everything he’s done since they lost their home system has been about trying not to leave his family, about trying for second chances, he became a lich for them, he’s done everything to stay with them, of course his Relic is a second chance generator.)

The Animus Flute, which offers control over the spirits of the dead and, in the hands of a sufficiently competent expert, the living.  (Wei Wuxian–he’s watched his brother, his sister, his friends, die so many times.  He’s terrified of immortality, but he’s most terrified of being alone.  He meant to make something that could keep the dead present, so that they would never have to fear being left behind again.  Watching it rip Jiang Cheng’s soul clean out of his body in Xue Yang’s hands is the worst thing Wei Wuxian can remember, even after everything is over.)

The Bulwark, which Nie Huaisang never did explain to anyone, but took the shape of a hand-painted fan.  (Nie Huaisang lost the only person who mattered to him when the Hunger ate their home, and then as he slowly, painstakingly, rebuilt something like a family, he had to watch them suffer and die for a hundred years.  And then he watched them win, and grieve like dying all over again for the winning.  He’s sorry they suffered for his actions.  He’s not sorry for what he did.)

FIVE

Wen Zhuliu didn’t mean to make his whole plane give up.  But he had spent his whole life being used, and it all just seemed so pointless.  It all just seemed so pointless.  There was always someone stronger, always something bigger, always a rule he couldn’t break, always something, and he started talking, started telling people as much, and--

Wen Qing is about the farthest thing in the fucking world from a peacemaker by nature, if you ask her, but she’s a healer first, last, and most of all.  And, she thinks as she watches the sun sink with a very tired man crumbling away at her side, she might be the only person in the worlds who ever noticed that Wen Zhuliu needed a healer.

(They aren’t from the same plane, but--some of the others have found distant family, on their new home.  It’s an unanswerable question, if they might have been family, a few dimensions removed.  Wen Ning still thinks about it.)

[deniigi]

MORE POLYCULE SHIT

here this is mostly Sam/Ned from Matt’s POV. (this piece assumes Matt didn’t know about the negotiations until later)

Title: soda bottles

Summary: Matt finds out about Sam’s involvement with Ned and then with Peter’s polycule. He tries to talk to Sam about it, but fails. On like, every front.

---------------

The apprentice told him to stay out of his room and his life and his business and he should have known better by now, truly.

Matt knew that voice. And he also knew that what Sam, Samuel, Sammy-my-darling was doing right now at this present moment was giggling.

Unacceptable. There would be no joy in this house.

Matt removed himself from the door and declared war in silence.

 ---

 The dogs were instrumental in luring Samuel out to open space. And by luring, Matt meant knocking on his bedroom door with leashes in hand and asking Sam if he wanted a walk.

In no time Matt had zero leashes and zero dogs and, while he was at it, zero apprentices.

In fact, he had been abandoned.

In his own house.

Again.

How did this keep happening?

 ---

 Foggy told Matt to let Sam have his little crush on Ned. Ned was a good boy. Foggy had maintained this for years. He skirted around the fact that he’d grabbed Ned’s shoulders when he was 17 and had told him to stare him in the eyes and to never fall in love with his best friend.

Matt pointed this out to him and got a pillow to the face, then a huff and an uncalled-for reminder that he was a fucking idiot and no one loved him.

This was Foggy’s love language though, so Matt didn’t take it to heart. Instead, he abandoned him for the only person in the world who truly understood him.

Jenn.

 ---

  Jenn had to spend fifteen minutes cooing over the fact that Matt had acquired an apprentice and then she had to spend another ten being an asshole about it and then she spent a solid 5 making dad jokes at him when he tried to talk and so he waited until she was done with her cackling and personal jabs.

She told him that it was cute that Peter’s bestie was gushing over Matt’s apprentice.

She told him that he should be happy for them.

And Matt was. Happy for them, that is.

He was thrilled.

Sam’s track record with long-term partners, as far as Matt could tell, was a solid nil for nil. The boy refused to be attached to anyone, which Matt totally got.

But it was like standing by, watching your own young moronic self making a series of unfortunate decisions that were not only whole unnecessary, but also had solutions within easy reach, like headstones in a damn cemetery.

Sam had a string of guys and girls that he’d picked up at clubs and bars and fuckin’ hipster literature readings downtown who were literally, actually falling over themselves to be with him. And he texted them and laughed about them and joked with Leilani and Achara about them, and then never spoke of them ever again.

Matt got it, okay?

He’d been that guy.

Maybe a little more on the jock side of things and maybe a little less, say, refined than Sammy—but he still got it. A slightly longer relationship was good for Sam. And Ned was a good egg—no, a great egg.

But he just couldn’t shake this feeling, Jenn.

He didn’t even know what it was, but it made him paranoid and want Sam to go back to the self-destructive nonsense, because at least Matt knew what that felt like. He could push back against that after dumping the kid out of the ring in training.

“Matty,” Jenn said affectionately, “You’re trying to protect Sam, Ned, and Peter. But you don’t have to do that. They’re all grown. Let them make their decisions.”

Ooooohohoho

How dare she.

Matt knew they were grown. Sam was nearly 25. Peter was almost 27—oh god, Peter was almost 27. FUCK. Jesus. Lord. Someone—Christ.

Sammy was a baby.

He couldn’t be playing with these big kids, he’d have his heart broken.

What if Ned got bored of him, Jenn??

Matt couldn’t beat the shit out of Ned. Ned was a good boy. And Peter would lose his damn gourd and that was how Matt would end up under two tons of concrete and rebar with an angry spider perched on top, stomping and spitting.

“Matt,” Jenn said soothingly. “Peter learned how to be polyamorous from you, dear heart.”

Oh shit.

Oh right.

Oh no.

“I’ve gotta go,” Matt said. “Lovely talking to you, next time you’re in town, come around for a foursome or a twosome or a three if Kirsten’s down—okay BYE.”

Jenn laughed at him when he hung up.

Matt clutched at his chest.

 ---

 He’d inadvertently taught Peter what polyamory looked like by flinging himself down on many disgusting surfaces and moaning and writhing in agony and despair about Foggy being monogamous and everyone in the world being unspeakably brilliant and strong and no-doubt gorgeous.

Fuckin’ Kirsten.

Fuckin’ Wade.

Fuckin’ Karen.

And Heather and Marci and ONE TIME ONLY Frank.

UGH.

Disgusting. Matt needed Lysol to scrub that moment of weakness from his brain.

The point was that he’d been a chump, and baby Peter had observed these various moaning sessions and had apparently, at some point, started taking notes.

Gah.

Peter. Why?

Stop loving your friends. Stop copying me. Get your own breakdown material.

Uuuuuuugh.

Okay, okay. Rally, Murdock. It’s fine.

This is simply a conversation to have with Sammy about how to negotiate such--hng. Actually maybe this was a Kirsten conversation.

 ---

 He went to visit Kirsten.

He got a little distracted because Kirsten was Kirsten and she required thorough smelling and like, minimum two kisses and she deserved to have at his bare chest if she wanted it—who was he to deny her—THE POINT.

The point. Was.

That he told Kirsten about things and she told him not to talk about work when she was taking her shirt off, and he told her to leave it on for just like, five minutes longer and that came out wrong and she was insulted and Matt had to backtrack for half an hour.

But he got there in the end, alright?

Kirsten said she didn’t know that Sam was polyamorous.

Matt said that he didn’t know if he was, but he sure as shit was flirting with Ned like, constantly.

Kirsten said that that explained why Sam kept telling her that he couldn’t come to dinner with them because he already had a date. Kirsten then went rigid and said, “Wait, you mean Ned-Ned?”

Yes.

Yes, Matt did.

“Oh.”

Correct reaction.

“Is that—do you think that’s –hm.”

Correct reaction maintained and appreciated. Matt no longer felt like a monumental ass.

“That might be a little, uh, cuttin’ it close there,” Kirsten said. “Does Peter know?”

Presumably. Ned couldn’t lie for shit.

“Maybe we should ask Peter what the negotiations there are. He’s pretty on top of that stuff.”

Shockingly, that was true.

Good plan.

“If Sammy’s gonna get involved with them, then he should at least know what he’s getting into,” Kirsten said.

Yes, but also—why is this feeling happening, Kirsten, beloved life partner number 2?

“Oh, that? That’s called ‘you’re a territorial dick,’” Kirsten said. “Get over yourself.”

“But he’s 24,” Matt said. “A child.”

“He’ll be twenty-five in a few months, Matthew,” Kirsten said. “That’s bad-decision-making prime-time. This is inevitable. My concern is that he’s not going into a relationship with Ned, thinking that he’s the primary partner there.”

Okay, fair.

“Are we done with this conversation now?”

Yes.

“Thank god. I hate your dad impulses. Cleanse yourself of them and get on the bed.”

Would do.

 ---

 Kirsten made Matt call Peter and be awkward for the both of them which, Matt would like it stated for the record, was extremely unfair and manipulative of her.

Peter told him that Sam was fine.

Peter told him that he and Sam had maybe fooled around a little bit without Matt and Foggy and Kirsten’s knowledge which was. Hm.

Troublemakers. Stop laughing, Franklin. This is nothing like the time we inducted Kirsten into our life and lied about it to everyone we knew for 3 years.

Nothing.

Peter thought not. Peter thought that Sam had told Matt about this whole thing. He then got a little huffy and said that Ned was the one who had swept Sam off his feet while Peter had been standing right there, man. As Spiderman. Primed for feet-sweeping.

That was satisfying.

Peter took the next ten minutes to complain about how Sam didn’t want to talk to him as much as he wanted to talk to Ned and how Ned was always begging off dinners with Peter and MJ to go have dinner with Sam and how Peter and MJ had to make do with Johnny in his absence.

Matt would never understand why Peter pretended that he and Johnny Storm were nothing more than fuck buddies, but okay, sure. If that’s what helps you sleep at night, little lion man.

Peter went on to say that the worst part of Sam and Ned’s mutual obsession was how fucking cute it was.

Disgusting, Peter maintained.

There were matching bracelets and drawn out decisions about matching sneakers. And there was nattering on until past midnight about Transformers lore and there was non-stop texting and complaints about various tools and coding languages and all this shit that Peter’s own flavor of nerd had diverged from about six years ago.

Kirsten made a little squeak that told Matt that she was highly entertained by Peter’s ‘complaints.’

It sounded more to Matt like Peter and MJ were hunkered down behind the couch, narrating all Ned’s behavior to Johnny (the totally uninvolved fuckbuddy) in whispers.  

Foggy curled up on the edge of their own couch to muffle his wheezy giggles.

Exhausting.

The youth were exhausting. How had no one just shot Matt straight through the heart at 27?

“I will speak to Sam about emotional repression,” he promised Peter only to receive a “NO WAIT” from both him and, from the sound of it, MJ and (only fuckbuddy) Johnny a little ways away.

Peter hurriedly explained that Sammy was really shy and skittish about being around their polycule and had just connected with Ned as the least threatening member and it had taken ages, so please don’t say anything and destroy all of the rest of their hard work.

This hit a strange note.

Foggy and Kirsten weren’t snickering anymore either.

Sam?

Wasn’t?

Shy?

Like, if anything, Sammy was shameless. Always lying in people’s laps and snatching their open hands to swing back and forth.

Sure, he was teasing. But shy? Shy?

Sam was sick.

“No,” Peter said. “Double D, he’s not sick.”

Very sick. Terminally ill.

“DD. He’s not sick.”

Bullshit. Matt was taking him to the doctor. Too bad, Sam. You couldn’t avoid it forever.

“Matt. He’s just. Emotionally. Repressed. You should recognize it because its your whole way of being.”

Wow, hadn’t this conversation been going on for a while now? Time to go.

“MATT. Leave him alone,” Peter said. “I’m looking after him, okay? Chill.”

Chill. Yes. Okay, fine. Matt would chill.

For now. Goodbye, Peter.

 ---

 Matt hadn’t chilled about anything in his life and he didn’t intend to start now. So instead he confronted the apprentice.

The apprentice leaned very hard against his door and told Matt that he would rather die than speak of such things, so Matt told him to bare his neck.

Sammy was convinced. But only just.

He made himself frighteningly small and grumpy on his bed and allowed Matt to sit only on the last four inches of it. Matt kind of wanted to take the opportunity to teach him how to hiss.

But alas. That was a skill for another time.

“I talked to Peter,” he said.

Sam mumbled.

“He says you’re shy. Are you feeling okay?”

Sam mumbled in a more prolonged, growly kind of way. He was muffled by something. Probably jeans. Or sweats. Hard to tell.

“Why are you being shy? We both know you’re not shy. Ned’s a nice boy,” Matt told him. “You can trust him.”

Sam jerked his body in some way strongly enough to make the bed shake.

Matt sighed.

“Sam,” he said.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Sam said.

“Listen, kid,” Matt said. “You’re gonna do what you want. You’re grown, those are your decisions to make. But if you’re ever uncomfortable or you want to spend time with one person in particular, you’ve gotta communicate that to the others. I know that’s not like, smoothly done or whatever. But it’s what you’ve gotta do in these kinds of relationships.”

Sam made an unhappy sound.

“I don’t want a relationship,” he said quietly.

Ehn.

Same, pal.

They’re a lot of work.

“They’re worth it,” Matt promised him. “And it’s okay to be a little in love, you know. I’m in love every day. It’s not shameful. You don’t have to hide it.”

Sam huffed.

“People’ll stare,” he finally said. “If we ever went out. People would stare.”

Ahhh.

“That’s what you think,” Matt said. “But then you go and do it and it turns out that no one actually cares. People are very self-centered, Sam. You spend all this time worrying about how others perceive you and, at the end of the day, 90% of people literally don’t care. You don’t have to talk to Ned in your room all the time.”

Sam did something with his body that concentrated it even further into a dense mass.

“I like him,” he admitted. “He’s nice.”

Matt hummed.

“He’s a peaceful person,” he said.

“He talks so I don’t have to,” Sam said.

Aw.

Matt felt across the bed and eventually found Sam’s cheek to pinch.

“So shy for such a loudmouth,” he teased.

Sam bit his hand. Matt snickered.

“It’s okay, when I met Fogs I was shy, too,” he said.

Sam grumbled.

“It’s true,” Matt said. “Could not fathom having another human around who I didn’t have to put on an act for.”

He waited.

Sam didn’t even seem to realize that his heart was slowing down.

“I don’t like talking all the time,” he said after a long few beats.

Matt ruffled his hair.

“Ned knows a lot about Star Wars,” he said.

“And computers,” Sam added.

“And code,” Matt said.

Sam’s foot shook a little. Matt schooled his face. Sam crunched into a tighter ball.

Adorable.

Matt got up.

“Long distance is rough,” he said. “Maybe you guys can watch a movie together.”

Sam made a disgruntled sound. Matt left him to be miserable.

 ---

 “You’ve sure turned your opinion around.”

Yes, Husband. Matt had indeed. But that was because Sam was clearly and obviously suffering as a result of this crush, which was precisely where Matt needed him to be.

Misery was familiar. Resentment was nearly as good as spite in terms of skill development.

Dopey-ness was asking for trouble.

“Matt, you cannot be serious.”

Oh, but he could.

“Matthew, what did you tell that boy?”

Nothing he didn’t need to know.

Foggy abandoned him at the table. Matt sipped his coffee. It tasted oh-so-sweet.

 ---

 Things did not change until Matt got a text from Peter that said simply ‘when the fuck is Sam’s birthday?’

In February. Why was he asking?

Peter said ‘damn. Okay, thanks.’

Peter then said that he’d seemed a little sad lately and Ned was freaking out about it and fixating, so they were collectively looking for an excuse to cheer Sam up a little.

Oh, Matt realized. No, that wasn’t sad.

The night nurse had given Sammy the good drugs after last week. He was high as a kite, bless him. Kept running into walls and shit. Matt had dragged him up out of the dog beds twice now.

He informed Peter of the damaged elbow and got nothing but keyboard smashes in return.

This was followed by Sam stumbling out of his room and half up the stairs to make pitiful sounds when he couldn’t make them stay still long enough to climb the rest of them. Foggy shook his head and told Matt to go “strap that kid to the bed, for god’s sake. He’s gonna tear more stitches. And go text for him before he drops his phone again.”

Sammy was coming along great.

He held his phone out to Matt when Matt came down to stand over him on the stairs.

“They’re yellin’,” he slurred.

Yeah, Matt figured.

“Bed,” he said.

“It’s too hot,” Sam said.

No, pathetic ball of humanity. That was the fever, bud.

“Open the window,” Matt said.

“I have a window?”

Bless.

“Up you go,” Matt said.

“DON’T TOUCH ME. Nooooo. Teach, noooooo.”

 ---

 MM: Peter stop texting him. he can’t read his texts rn. Zero tolerance for opioids.

PP: for WHAT

MM: he’s fine. lightly stabbed. Fractured elbow.

MJ: MATT

MM: yes?

MJ: tell him to get better for us

NL: ;__; please?

MM: he will be fine. He’s supposed to be sleeping this off.  

MJ: can you keep us updated?

MM: why

PP: he’s our partner?

MM: ?

MM: I thought he was Ned’s main

NL: AJDF:AKSDFJASDFa

NL: DOES HE TALK ABOUT ME??

MJ: dude

NL: my b my b sry sry

NL: does he talk about me DD?

MM: no

NL: cool cool cool that’s fine

PP: ned

NL: it’s casual that’s cool

MJ: oh my god

NL: it doesn’t mean anything. That makes sense.

MM: peter what is happening?

PP: ned has decided that no texting means that sam hates him and no longer wants to be part of our relationship

NL: TELL HIM IM SORRY

PP: remember how you told me I have rejection issues?

MM: Ned he’s fine. He’s not mad. He’s high.

NL: [pikawat.png]

MJ: *coughs*

NL: oh shit my bad. I mean.

NL: what do you mean?

MM: I mean he likes you. He just hates talking about weaknesses. Ergo he hates talking about you.

MJ: ah, yes. I see now. The superhero logic. The forest has reappeared before me.

NL: OWO

MM: what does this mean?

PP: it’s a face. Like a super interested cat

NL: shut up

NL: so he likes me back?

MJ: no

PP: no

MM: I presume so? I don’t know kid. I just said he doesn’t talk about it.

NL: DD I will pay you in computer repairs to find out for me

MM: to find out if Sam likes you??

NL: yes

MM: what part of his obsession is confusing you

MJ: ASHDAF:SDF

PP: harsh

NL: all of it.

NL: okay so here’s the thing. We got like, matchy matchy stuff, right? Cause that’s what couples do. But he never wears his?? And like, we’ve been playing these games online, like, trying to beat each other, but he just stops playing halfway through? And if we’re watching a movie, it’s fine for the first half, but then he gets quiet and I just end up nattering away about nothing for like an hour and I can’t read the silence DD. I can’t read it. And Peter’s a liar

PP: okay no it is WELL established that I can’t lie what are you even talking about

NL: and he keeps going on about how sam’s shy, but he’s NOT shy. And we were fine until this week, but like, obviously, he’s high and not reading his messages and stuff, but idk am I making this into a big deal? From your end?

MM: What was that face, Peter?

PP: OwO

MM: OwO

MJ: ASDFAeirwieawewdflajwe

MJ: NED LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO THE OLD MAN

NL: SHUT UP. DD, please. Help me. Should I apologize? Is he bored of me? Does he want more time with Peter?

PP: what

PP: no pal I’m just a piece of ass in this situ

MJ: as you should be

PP: awwww

MM: ned Sammy’s fine?

NL:  omg ‘sammy’ that’s really cute do you think he’d mind if I called him that? You know. If he ever speaks to me again?

PP: DD just tell him everything is fine so we can all go to sleep without being woken up every 20 min for a crisis.

MM: I literally don’t know. He doesn’t talk about any of you.

NL: can you sneaky-ninja ask him?

  Matt could not with these children. Sam’s heartbeat was evening out. He was nearly back to sleep. Matt’s back couldn’t take hauling him up off the stairs in another half an hour, so he was going to stay right where he was, that was for damn sure.

“Samuel, you are dating three different flavors of spazz,” he told him.

Sam wriggled over and snuffled into his duvet.

Matt decided that that was an affirmative.

  MM: he says you’re all dramatic and to leave him alone to sleep.

NL: ;__;

PP: ned that is not rejection

NL: ok

MJ: this is embarrassing

NL: I’m just gonna crawl under the floorboards and waste away👍

PP: for fuck’s sake this is me-levels of drama

NL: DD can you tell him that if he’s ever down to just watch shit as friends that’s okay too?

MJ: NED. Matt’s literally out of this loop. And Sam’s probably unconscious.

MM: can confirm is now unconscious. I am exiting your drama.

PP: Dude remember when I said I was gonna drown myself in the sea? You are reaching those levels

NL: I JUST LOVE HIM

  Oh, aw.

  NL: And it’s okay if he doesn’t feel the same way, that’s okay, I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t like uncomfortable. I can text him less and let him do his work things and we don’t have to organize shit on the weekends. It’s totally fine

  These fuckin’ kids.

Matt grabbed Sam before he cracked his head against the wall and felt around for something to put between his forehead and it.

He fumbled out his phone in the meantime.

“Samuel,” he said into it, “When you wake up, come upstairs before taking the next pill.”

 ---

 Sam was in pain and grumpy as shit and his mood did not improve as he read through Matt’s messages.

“Two days and everyone loses their goddamn minds,” he said.

Pretty much.

“Ned loves you,” Matt teased.

“Ned needs one of those happy pills,” Sam deadpanned.

Hm. How about no?

Sam groaned and carefully melded himself to the table.

“Why don’t you wear the matchy-matchy stuff?” Matt asked, setting a bag of icy water on Sam’s shoulders. He made a soft sound of relief.

“I don’t want to get ‘em dirty,” Sam hummed.

Hm.

“Maybe if you wore them out a little bit, Ned would like that,” Matt offered.

Sam mulled this over.

“Nah,” he said. “I’ll just tell him I wear it to sleep.”

Matt was so proud.

He missed Foggy coming in halfway through that discussion.

He did not miss the lecture Foggy laid on both of them about lying to loved ones.

 ---

 Matt decided that Sam was far, far more emotionally repressed than he’d given the kid credit for. He was tickled pink.

Kirsten and Foggy were not. They called this ‘concerning behavior’ that needed ‘to be monitored in case of hidden injuries and self-harm.’

And like, man, it was as if they’d hard experience with this shit or something.

Matt decided to bypass their waffling and cornered Sam by trapping him in his duvet and demanding to know if he was hiding any injuries or self-harm.

Sam told him to get out of his room. His heartbeat did not react to the accusations, but rather to Matt’s ‘giant, heavy, albatross body’ assaulting him in his safe place.

Matt decided that this was proof that the emotional repression was, as he had always argued, doing exactly what it needed to: making Sam three times more functional as a human being.

Foggy took from that explanation that Matt was lying to him again.

Which, like, obviously.

But did Foggy need to know any of that?

Fuck no.

Only happy times with Matt Murdock here.

Smiling was somehow the wrong answer.

Smiling resulted in yelling. And then lots of loud heartbeats. And then something that looked a little like a fight, probably, to people with working eyes. But Matt knew that it wasn’t that.

It was just Foggy being hurt that Matt couldn’t tell him that Foggy’s homesickness was digging holes in his own resolve and mental wellbeing.

Sam popped up when Foggy went to go lay down to calm down and asked if everything was okay.

Matt told him it was.

Sam’s heart was not convinced. It started beating faster somehow.

Matt fully anticipated the texts that arrived later that night.

 ---

 PP: yo DD, you guys okay?

MM: why

PP: ‘cause Sam’s freaking out saying that you and Foggy were shouting again?

MM: ah

MM: no we’re okay. No biggie

PP: I smell bullshit

MM: carry on smelling then

PP: Matt do you ever think about how you’re like, an example to us all of how not to live?

MM: beg your pardon?

PP: I just mean like, you do shit and we all learn from your shit. Like, every day.

MM: ?

PP: Sam like dumped a pile of lies he’d been telling Ned in his lap and started crying for like half an hour and apologized for another 40 minutes and then hung up and won’t answer his phone.

MM: what was that face again? The cat one?

PP: OwO

MM: OwO

PP: lol

 ---

 The apprentice was perhaps absorbing too much too fast. He flat out denied having had any emotional crisis.

His heart was dead even when he said it. He was getting too good at out-maneuvering that trick.

“Peter seems to think that you had one the other night,” Matt mused.

“Peter needs to mind his own business,” Sam sniffed.

Aha.

“You like Peter,” Matt pointed out.

“He’s fine,” Sam said.

“Fine or fine?”

“That’s nasty, Teach. Don’t be gross. That’s like your little brother.”

Oh, sure it was.

“If Peter is sussing out your lies, you’re not doing a good enough job,” Matt said. “What you need, kiddo, is an aura and a starting point.”

Sam paused in making a horrible grating noise with some tool in his hand.

“A starting point?” he asked.

Why yes, apprentice.

As in, if you start off with your walls up and don’t let them buckle so easily, so many of these problems can be avoided.

“Isn’t that, like, the opposite of what Foggy said to do?” Sam asked suspiciously.

Well, technically. The husband might be correct for normal humans, but they weren’t normal humans. And as much as Matt loved him and thought he was brilliant, Foggy would never truly grasp that Matt needed those lies.

He needed the repression. The bottling. The anger.

He needed all that shit to be shaken up in him and then capped by the helmet every night.

Doing that kept Matt safe. It kept others safe.

It wasn’t fun and it wasn’t pretty and yeah, Matt was pretty fucked up because of it.

But Stick hadn’t been wrong about everything.

Not even he could be wrong about everything.

“It’s called balance,” Matt said. “Think about it like this. You’re a teacher. You’re about to walk into a new class. You need to establish a respectful relationship between yourself and these kids. How do you do it? Do you start off nice? Or do you start off strict?”

Sam said nothing.

“I start off strict,” Matt said. “Because it’s infinitely easier to become nicer and to keep respect than it is to start off nice and get meaner.”  

Sam processed this.

“This sounds like an anti-Foggy sentiment,” he said.

No. It wasn’t anti-Foggy. Nothing was anti-Foggy.

“It’s nuance,” Matt said. “Intrapersonal relationships? Minimal repression. Interpersonal relationships, maximum repression. Don’t give them something to use against you”

Sam’s teeth clicked together as he worked his jaw.

“Talk to Ned and Peter,” he said. “Walls up to everyone else.”

Everyone else. Yes.

“I can do that.”

Yeah, Matt knew. Sam did it to pretty much anyone he didn’t immediately take a liking to at the firm.

“I can do that,” Sam repeated.

Woah. Wait. Hold on there, slugger. Nuance, remember?

“I’m just gonna hate the entire world,” Sam said. “Thanks, Teach. That’s a big help.”

 ---

 PP: Matt

MM: Peter

PP: you know that Sam fucks with you daily right?

MM: …I forget sometimes

PP: lol you guys are funny

  That little shit. Fine.

Do whatever. See if Matt cared.

Goddamn kids and their goddamn love affairs.

Whatever. Fuck ‘em.

Let them learn the bullshit on their own time. Matt had better things to do.

 ---------------

Matt and Foggy and Kirsten have their own polycule goin on with folks entering and leaving it as need be. And sometimes you just have to make Sam/Ned content because it is unerringly adorable.

[hearmeouteliza]

So here’s the scene that’s come so far from this post where I’ve been thinking out loud about Pepper’s origins and the Phantom Blot bonding with her and wanting to help her.  For once, I actually do know where I’m going with this (LOL, instead of getting started with an idea and then just winging it), but I want to catch up with some other stories I have out there before taking the full tale on...

Though he’d worked his way into the upper echelon of the organization, Phantom Blot had no real love for F.O.W.L.  They were a means to an end; they gave him the most accurate intelligence regarding significant sources of magic and the resources to track them down. Plus, they weren’t fond of Magica DeSpell either, so they wouldn’t stop him from eliminating the threat she posed once he had the chance.  His working for the organization was an arrangement of mutual benefit and nothing more.  Frankly, after he captured Magica and destroyed all magic to avenge his village – and, more importantly, his family – he didn’t care what F.O.W.L. did or didn’t do.

Over the years, however, Blot had learned a number of the agency’s secrets.  The Eggheads, F.O.W.L.’s grunts and resident fashion disasters, had mostly been the products of one of F.O.W.L.’s earlier projects.  They had taken in a number of orphaned and abandoned children, raising them to become loyal to the organization and join its workforce.  Whether it was truly rescuing them was debatable; many of them might have been adopted by actual families had they not been claimed by F.O.W.L. And the ethics of raising a child for the express purpose of filling a job were questionable.  But, on the other hand, though they had been raised in a very institutional environment, the children had never been abused and the Egghead’s wages were reasonably competitive when compared to similar positions in the outside world.  Blot had decided he had no real opinion on the program one way or another.  Was it ideal?  No.  But the children had been safe and secure, something their so-called families certainly hadn’t worried about when abandoning them.  The orphans were a different situation, and he felt for them, but they hadn’t had any family step up to claim them either.  As someone whose own children had been stolen from him, their lives snuffed out before he could stop it, he had absolutely no tolerance for anyone who would abandon a child to the whims of an often-cruel world.

Something else he’d learned and didn’t particularly care about was that ducks and other species with a predisposition to imprint upon their initial caregivers had something known as an “imprint memory.”  It was a vague memory of their early moments after hatching, involving the caregiver they’d imprinted upon.  There were rarely specifics, just general feelings and a sense of what had been going on around them at the time.  If the initial bond with their caregiver was broken, another could be formed with a different caregiver, provided the child was given the time and support needed to do so.  Those who suffered from what psychologists termed “fractured imprinting” that had never built a subsequent bond in their formative years tended to have significant adjustment and mental health issues in adulthood.  That certainly explained why majority of the Eggheads were so…well, cracked, as the slang went.  They would have probably had those issues anywhere else, especially if they hadn’t been lucky enough to be adopted, but while their physical needs had been met, they hadn’t been particularly coddled.

All of that had been in a mental file Blot had labeled “Not My Problem” previously; it was a broad category that encompassed most things that had little to do with his primary mission.  However, one particular Egghead had wormed her way into his life with her boundless enthusiasm.  She also happened to be a “graduate” of the program.  Despite himself, Blot had become fond of Pepper, even beginning to consider her a friend.  He certainly hadn’t had many of those since his village had been destroyed so long ago. He had insisted to F.O.W.L. she become his permanent mission partner, something Bradford Buzzard had immediately agreed to since there was literally no one else volunteering.  (Why did that bother him?  He’d never cared who liked him or not before.)  And now, between tasks, they’d begun to talk about topics that had previously been off-limits, such as his family.  Pepper’s eyes were wide and sympathetic as he told her of the joy they’d brought him, his beloved wife and their two little girls.

“They sound pretty great,” she said quietly.

“They were,” Blot agreed.  He watched, mildly amused as she toyed with her blonde curls that refused to be contained once she took her helmet off.  With a name (or was it a nickname?) like Pepper, he’d expected her hair to be red the first time he saw it, but that only went to show how far assumptions got anyone.  It occurred to him he knew little about Pepper, other than that she’d been one of F.O.W.L.’s foundlings.  Before she’d snuck her way into his heart, he wouldn’t have cared.  “Do you know anything about your life before you came here?” He wasn’t sure how else to pose the question.  The odds were that her story wasn’t a happy one and he didn’t want to push her to share it if she wasn’t ready.  However, given the way she opened up to him like a flower at the least little bit of affection (or even attention), he suspected she’d tell him.

Pepper shrugged.  “F.O.W.L.’s the only family I’ve ever known…you know, like most of us.  I guess there are a few Eggheads who answered a want ad – bet they had no idea what they were signing up for – but the rest of us were rescued.”

“I don’t know that my opinion will count for much,” Blot told her, “but I find it despicable that anyone would abandon their own offspring.”  He was still trying to figure out this whole “friendship” thing, but sympathizing with her situation was a start.

Pepper grinned.  “Oh, it does count.  And thank you.  It’s…well, it does help, at least a little.”  She sighed, her gaze trailing off to gaze at nothing in particular.  “It’s just…”

Blot frowned, even if Pepper might not have been able to see it beneath his cloak.  One thing Pepper had never been was at a loss for words, so whatever she had on her mind had to be significant.  “It’s just what?”

“Well, we’ve talked about our imprint memories before, me and the others.”  Pepper twisted her fingers together as she talked.  “Most of the others, they’re what I’d guess you’d expect – lonely, sometimes cold…just sad, really sad.  And I feel a little bad that mine…isn’t?”

“You shouldn’t feel bad for that,” Blot insisted, but he wasn’t surprised that she did.  She was the most empathetic of all the Eggheads he’d spent any significant amount of time around; perhaps that had to do with the fact that she might not have had as rough a start as her peers.  Had she been one of the orphans?  “Did you want to…talk about it?”

Pepper nodded enthusiastically.  “It’s really…nice, actually.  I remember a woman – she must have been my mother – holding me and singing to me.  Just…safe and warm.”  Her smile quickly morphed into a frown, however, the rest of her face falling with it. Blot had never seen her look so dejected and he found he hated it.  “I don’t know why she left me.  They said they found me in a box, just a few days old.  Was I a difficult baby?  Did something happen where she couldn’t take care of me?  Or was she even my mother?”

“I’m sure it had nothing to do with you.”  That, Blot could promise her, even if he had no information to answer her other questions.  “You were an infant.  There was nothing you could have done to deserve being abandoned like that.”

Slowly, Pepper’s smile returned, tentative though it may have been. “Thanks.  That’s…really nice of you to say.”  She shrugged, her expression a little sheepish.  “Sometimes when I got lonely, when I was little, I used to pretend she realized she made a huge mistake and was looking for me.  Or…I was really a princess of some country somewhere and she had to hide me away to protect me from an evil sorceress.”

Given that Blot had dealt with more than one evil sorceress in his time and was currently in pursuit of the most menacing one of all, he couldn’t exactly call her fantasies ridiculous.  “Perhaps she did.  Or…perhaps you’re an orphan after all and she never meant to leave you behind.”  It was still an unhappy ending, true, but maybe it would sting less for Pepper to consider.

“Yeah, maybe!”  Pepper perked up.  “You know, you try to be all tough and menacing, but I think you’re a real softie underneath it all.”

Blot glared at her, but it lacked the heat he usually summoned for those who had irritated him.  “I am not.”

“I think you are,” Pepper teased, her voice becoming more singsong.

“Am not,” Blot insisted.  Childish as it may have been, she had goaded him into playing along.  He couldn’t help but be reminded of similar arguments his girls had…and the memory was a balm instead of a dagger to his heart.  This ridiculous little duck just seemed to bring out that sort of thing in him.  Privately, he resolved to do some additional research into Pepper’s origins.  Surely there would be files that could help him put together the pieces and give her some answers.  

It was nice to have someone to care about again.

[thespookyintrovert]

When beauty calls

1,294 words ● Canonical, post S11 ● Just a short little scene ● Notes at the end ● tagging @today-in-fic

I hope this makes you smile and sigh as you read, just as it made me smile and sigh as I was writing it. I don’t pronounce it to be good, but I’m happy I wrote it. 

____

There is an exalted kind of beauty. It’s the beauty of starry nights, whether painted by divine hands or composed of swirling strokes on canvas. It’s the beauty of woodnotes, a natural symphony which exists only for the attentive ear; and the beauty found in a concert hall, made up of haunting notes rolling into a crescendo.

Then there is understated Beauty. It seldom reveals itself, choosing instead to remain enshrouded in banality, brushing only against those who dare call it by name. That diaphanous Beauty belongs only to the commonplace, weaving itself with ease into the everyday movements that make up the course of a lifetime. It is there, if only one knows where to look.

“Mulder, this is ridiculous.”

Ah, if couches were ever rewarded for being the silent witnesses to so many of these domestic disputes. If only the reliability of worn leather was ever a consideration to couples such as this, mindlessly counting on its strength to hold up their bodies and their words. But alas, an ode to furniture was the farthest thing from Dana Scully’s mind this chilly night.

She was focused on one thing with steady intensity, and that was ending a stalemate that had been going on for months. Ever since they had discovered the tiny human currently dancing around her womb was a girl, she hadn’t known a moment’s peace. It should have been simple enough to choose a mutually satisfactory name, but it turned out to be a matter in which they both had strong opinions. Opposing ones. With a sigh, she contemplated how the world kept turning and turning and some things never changed.

“Nag on me all you want, Scully, I’m not backing down.” Mulder’s smile was impish, his tug on her toe fond. She remained, however, unmoved. The bulging stomach between them, currently obscuring her own feet from view, was but one reminder that they had four weeks left to come to an agreement. Aching back, swollen ankles and perpetual indigestion added to the effect of a generally less than sunny disposition. She was no longer in her thirties, and every year of her 54 was felt this pregnancy.

Still, her fingertips traced adoring circles around her belly button, every kick to the ribs met with a grunt and a smile. Yet she kept it to herself, leveling on Mulder the stern gaze he had claimed from her as his own over twenty years ago. She did not want to let him do away with the argument this time. 

“Do you know why it was so easy last time?” He gave her a mock skeptical glance before turning back to his Sasquatch documentary, but it didn’t deter her in the slightest. “Because I picked the name, and you couldn’t argue with me about it.”

He actually laughed a little. “Scully, I’ll go out on a limb here and say that given our family histories, the chances of William having a different name were slim to none.”

She held back a longing sigh and proceeded to ignore him. “My point stands.”

A quiet snort, followed by the gentle clasp of his fingers on her swollen foot. “No, it doesn’t.”

She felt less inclined to argue as she savored the feeling of his fingers massaging the aches away, but still refused to surrender the attempt. “Don’t think you’ll distract me from this. Mulder, I’ve already proposed a perfectly reasonable solution: I get the first name, you get the second name; everybody’s happy.”

His look was wry. “Or I get the first name and you get the second name. Admit it, Scully, the second name only exists on paper, no one will even know it’s there.”

Her head fell back against the couch, for a moment fancying herself a long-suffering saint singing her frustration to the heavens. If only age had softened Mulder’s stubborn edge as it had softened the angles on his face; it was unfair, wrestling with the spitting image of his thirty-year-old self when she wasn’t even sure she’d recognize herself from twenty years ago. “Sure. Fine,” she said, head still stretched back, “you can tell your daughter whose fault it is that she doesn’t get a name until her 18th birthday. Assuming we both live to see it.” The last part was a dry murmur, meant only for God.

“Mhmm.” She felt his lips on her stomach, then, curving around its roundness with the stretch of a smile. Her gaze didn’t acknowledge him, but one of her hands landed amidst the softness of his hair, sweeping off any residual harshness with gentle strokes. This was their rhythm — the never-ending cycle of verbal spars that was as comfortable as it was challenging. No matter which one came out on top, in the end they knew their places to be side by side; with every smile and every touch the slate was once again wiped clean, no scorecards kept. Beneath the frustration, her whole being still hummed to this tune that was all their own.

And thus came Beauty, summoned by the unwitting siren call of a heart that chose love.

Finally lowering her eyes, the scene before Scully seemed to stretch until it wrapped around her entire world. She saw Mulder, face on her belly, alternating between nuzzling with his nose and sending whispers to the baby in a hushed baritone; they were not meant for her, but she basked in the vibrations of his voice, watching every crinkle on that beloved face as it shifted and pressed words into her skin. She saw her hand in his hair, noticed how it felt the same between her fingers as it did twenty years before. She saw past and future entwined around her finger in gold, glittering as it ran between strands tinged with grey. 

She drank in every detail as if at any moment she might be called upon to paint it from memory. Never before had that corner of the world seen such loving gaze; never before had the night breeze found fingers gentler than its own, or the cackling fire eyes that could match it in warmth. They were all silent witnesses to the most mundane of miracles; they, who had beheld for roughly two thousand years these rippling echoes of another miracle, one even more singular in its lowliness.

She knew they’d be arguing about this again tomorrow. She also knew they’d be lying like this again tomorrow, after all had been said and done, chasing away small everyday annoyances on the leather couch. Mulder raised his head to look at her, hooded eyes smiling, and her own lips melted into a soft curve. At the end of the day, their life together was all the more dear for being made of all these little contradictions, the seams an ever-present reminder that they were two individuals bound together by choice as much as fate.  

Perhaps it had taken them over twenty years to find their place in the world, to craft a life dictated by will instead of circumstance. And perhaps many, upon looking in through any window of the little house, would have concluded that the life they chose didn’t amount to much. But as blue met grey over the belly that protected this second chance they never thought they’d get, they both knew it amounted to everything.

Beauty left a little piece of itself in that unremarkable little house, nestling inside two hearts determined to see it in the little things, to call it by name, to touch it with the hands of love. It swept into the creaky floors and through the drafty rooms, kissed each smiling face on the mantle — each of them precious, so many gone. It blessed the little white crib and the old rag doll lying expectantly upon it.

______

Notes: 

1. I chose not to address the whole William mess because a. CC doesn’t deserve my efforts and b. this was really not supposed to be complicated. 

2. Let me know if you caught the little easter eggs sprinkled in there!

[bellemorte180]

The Howling

They just knew the moment their eyes locked and suddenly the full moon made sense. No longer was Caroline going to have to suffer through a heat with no partner to calm that urge; having refused to take another to her bed since the incident. No longer was she going to have to run wild through the woods, searching for the other half that was to belong to her; only to come up empty. Caroline always knew that one day she would find her mate.

She just never thought it would Klaus Mikaelson.

Written for June 2020 Bingo- Prompt "Mates" @klaroline-events

A/N: Before we begin, please note that there are sensitive things discussed in this story that could be triggering for some. Mentions of sexual assault do occur in this story and if that is something that bothers you, please keep that in mind.

The Howling

“That tickles.” Caroline muffled in a chuckle as Klaus’s lips trailed down her side. She could feel his blonde stubble from his chin on her skin; a sign that he had not shaved in days. Caroline did not care. She enjoyed the scratching the prickle of his hair caused; knowing that it would leave red marks on her skin. She wanted to be coated in his scent; for the rest of her pack to know that she was his. That he claimed her, marked her and would stand by his side. More importantly, she wanted her scent on him. “But don’t stop.”

“I’ll never stop Caroline. You’re mine. As I am yours.” Klaus’s husky voice trailed over her, causing her to quiver. She let out a moan as his tongue took a long lick of her center, causing her to cry out his name. She could feel his smirk against her, enjoying her reaction to him. He continued to eat at her, inserting two fingers inside of her and curling them to touch that specific spot that always made her come. “I’ve claimed you, Sweetheart. Over and over again, I have marked you.”

“Klaus!”

It came as a surprise to Caroline that the Alpha of the largest werewolf pack in the continental United States would be the one her wolf would choose. Of course, no wolf really knew how mates were chosen; they just knew when they met. They just knew the moment their eyes locked and suddenly the full moon made sense. No longer was Caroline going to have to suffer through a heat with no partner to calm that urge; having refused to take another to her bed since the incident. No longer was she going to have to run wild through the woods, searching for the other half that was to belong to her; only to come up empty. Caroline always knew that one day she would find her mate.

She just never thought it would Klaus Mikaelson.

Caroline came from a small pack located in an out of the way town in Virginia. The founding families of Mystic Falls were all made of shapeshifters who transformed every full moon into a pack of wolves. Packs were scattered all over the world and each pack were territorial of their land; Caroline’s pack was no different. When Klaus informed their pack Alpha, Caroline’s mother Liz, that they were coming for a visit; it set the town on edge. He ensured that he meant no harm but wanted to meet but his reassurance did not sooth the packs worry; Caroline included.

Klaus was known for his brutality and willingness to kill anyone who dared cross him. However, he was also fair and beloved by the wolves that followed him. He took care of his people and took offenses to them seriously. Klaus did not venture far from his home in New Orleans often, nor to simply come and decimate a random pack in the middle of nowhere but it did not settle their nerves.

“What do you want Caroline?” Klaus purred and she whimpered as his voiced echoed through her veins. He kissed his way across her flat stomach and Caroline rubbed her thighs together trying to create some friction; the sight only caused Klaus to chuckle. He enjoyed seeing her squirm and toying with her body; making her release that much sweeter. “You’ll have to tell me what you want, Sweetheart.”

“You. I want you.”

They had not left her small studio apartment in three days. After the moment in the woods when she first saw him, they did not want to leave each other’s side. They created a bubble that was just for them; rarely getting out of bed. It was their Claiming; a werewolf tradition that occurred when two mates meet, and they lay claim to one another. They marked each other, letting others know that they belonged to another.

For the first time in a year, Caroline felt whole.

                                                                  *

Caroline stood by her mother’s side, in the middle of the woods surrounding the town her pack claimed as their territory. The woods were bright with the morning sun shining through the branches. Birds were chirping overhead, and their songs made Caroline’s wolf unsettled. It did not help that her mother invited him. She was nervous and on edge; her wolf itching to reach out and attack but the moment she started to feel Klaus approach the clearing, all worry seemed to end; all that mattered was him.

The leaves bustled and the light breeze that caused Caroline’s hair to flutter caused her to catch his sent. His scent set her on guard; knowing that her mate was near before she set eyes on him. She could hear the cracking to the twinges beneath his boots as he and a few of his wolves hiked towards them. She heard how his feet moved faster and quicker; he could sense her too. The few members of her own pack could feel his presence but not in the way Caroline could.

Caroline felt her mate before she saw him.

Caroline was surprised that Klaus did not take her in the clearing, she would have let him, a fact that surprised even her, but she quickly learned that he was possessive; he wanted no one to lay eyes on her but himself. The moment she saw him with his dirty blonde hair, blue eyes and dimples; she could not focus on anything else. She vaguely remembered him introducing himself, his eyes never leaving hers. Without a thought or a care, Caroline had walked towards him, Liz calling her name; asking what she was doing, but she ignored her. All she could think of was putting her hands on him; touching him and feeling him.

Klaus let her.

It became quite apparent what was happening to all those around them, but she cared not. She didn’t even care that her own personal monster was there. A man in a suit stepped from behind Klaus and took over the conversation but Caroline did not bother to listen to him. All she could see was Klaus and the feeling of her wolf wanting to claim him; to submit to him. She wanted her scent on him, to mark him as hers. Caroline pressed herself as close to him as she could, pressing her body to him while her teeth nipped at his throat.

“Do you have a name Sweetheart?”

“Caroline.”

“My Caroline.”

                                                                *

As they lay tangled in her bed, the days slowly ticking by, neither cared for the outside world; only focusing on laying their claim. In the moments that came in-between; lying beside one another, their bodies covered in sweat; they talked. It felt easy to open up to him and she listened to every word that came out of his mouth. He told her of growing up in a hostile pack with an alpha who he had always known was not his biological father; calling Klaus’s real father out when he realized the child his mate carried was not his. How Klaus challenged him at the tender age of sixteen and won. Hundreds of wolves bowed to him and even when he was challenged, he conquered.

Caroline told him of her childhood in Mystic Falls; how almost everyone was a wolf and those who were not knew nothing of those who were. It was the best kept secret in the town. She told him of her father leaving when she was in high school for a man; abandoning the pack for one in Atlanta. They never spoke anymore. She told him everything she could.

Well, almost everything.

There was one thing she could not bring herself to speak of.

Klaus crawled up her body and gazed down at her; her eyes meeting his. She spread her legs for him for what felt like the thousandths time since she saw him three days previously. Klaus entered her, rocking his hips back and forth. His touch was never going to be enough. She knew she would always crave him, want him; the feeling of his body against hers was beyond the sex she had with the others she had been with; the one still bitter in her mind. Caroline knew it was because Klaus was her mate and that their lovemaking was far more primal than anything a heat could produce.

When they were able to pull themselves from one another enough to allow the rest of the world intrude into their sanctuary. Reality set in and no longer could they hide themselves from their mutual packs. Caroline pulled her phone from the spot she had tossed it days earlier, plugged it in and checked all the messages that had been piling up.

[Elena]: Text me when you can.

That was yesterday. Caroline bit her lip feeling like an awful friend. While her life was changing, faced with the upheaval and decision on whether she was leaving her pack for Klaus’s, Caroline recognized that in some ways, Elena would be facing the same choice but with a different set of circumstances.

[Caroline]: Hey, sorry. What’s up? [Elena]: Can I swing by? I need to talk. [Caroline]: Of course.

Klaus’s arms wrapped around her middle and he placed a kiss on the side of her neck. Caroline moaned but it wasn’t sexual, the feeling of his touch soothed her in a way that she had never experienced. The thought of leaving Mystic Falls terrified her. She had always assumed that if she found a mate, he would join her pack; Caroline never expected that she would be mated with an Alpha.

                                                             *

“I’ll never make you choose.” Klaus whispered to her in the dead of the night, holding her naked body close to him. The stars shined brightly outside her window and the light of the waning gibbous shined upon them through the glass; the full moon only days away. “The alpha here is your mother. I would never make you choose.”

“It’s a scary thought. Leaving.” Caroline leaned up and kissed him. “But I want to be with you. You’re my mate. And besides, New Orleans is not far. I can always come back for a visit.”

“Whenever you want.” Klaus vowed, pushing a small strand of hair behind her ear before kissing the top of her forehead. “She will always be welcome in New Orleans, Sweetheart. Your entire pack is welcome. The city is full of wolves already. What are a few more?”

“Can I ask for one thing?”

“Everything I have is yours, Caroline. Ask and it shall be yours.”

“One more full moon here. I want to run in the woods one last time before we go. I want you to run with me.”

                                                              *

Elena arrived quickly; the knock on the door sounded just in time for Caroline to put on her pants. Klaus jumped in her shower, knowing that Caroline would want the privacy. Elena looked as she always had; long brown hair, doe eyes and a kind smile that made the entire town love her.

Everyone knew the story of Elena Gilbert. A young wolf cub found roaming the woods alone who was no older than three. No memory or way to tell where she had come from; only stating that her name was Elena and she missed her cat. The town took her in, Grayson and Miranda Gilbert adopted her, and she became one of them.

“Hey. How are you?” Caroline opened her arms and Elena hugged her close. “I’m so sorry. I should have called and texted. This must be a shock for you but I just...”

“It’s fine Care. I get it. You found your mate and that would have taken all your time.” Elena blushed slightly, knowing what Caroline would have been doing for the last few days. While Elena was not mated with anyone, she had a relationship with Stefan Salvatore a few years back and Stefan had helped her through her heat more than once. Elena may be prudish, but she understood the concept of a claiming. “Where is Klaus?”

“In the shower.” Caroline replied, leading Elena to the sofa that sat near a window that overlooked the square of Mystic Falls. Caroline had sat in that exact spot a thousand times watching the people pass by in the early mornings. She would miss that view but was excited to see the bustle of Bourbon Street in the dead of night and in the early morning. “What is it?”

“It’s Katherine.” Elena whispered. “She wants me to go back to New Orleans with her. I just don’t know what I want.”

                                                              *

Caroline was distracted, Klaus’s hands were on her hips. She could not hear the voices of the wolves around her. She could not feel the light breeze that were rustling through the trees. She did not see the curious looks the few members of both packs were sending their way. It wasn’t until the man in a suit called for Klaus that her mate was able to turn his head and Caroline got a glimpse of her.

She was identical to Caroline’s best friend. She had the same features, but her expressions were different. She held herself differently and there was something harder about her than Caroline was used to seeing on Elena. If it had not been for the skintight clothing Elena would never wear, the curly hair and the seductive posture, Caroline would have never been able to tell them apart.

“My name is Katherine. I’ve been searching for my sister. Elena. Do you know her?”

                                                              *

“I was born Elena Peirce. My birth parents were John and Isobel Peirce. They died in a car accident twenty years ago. They got stuck in a flashed flood and their car went off a bridge. Katherine and I survived but somehow, I ended up roaming the woods. Getting lost. Liz found me before my birth parents’ pack could begin searching. Apparently, Katherine was in a foster home for a few days before the pack claimed her. Most thought I was dead but not Katherine. She never gave up the search.”

“How did she find you?”

“Klaus. He helped her track me down. It took a few years, but they succeeded.” Caroline’s brow creased. She did not know if she liked the idea of her mate helping another female wolf; Caroline’s wolf howled at the thought, feeling the need to claim him again. As though Elena could sense Caroline’s jealousy, she quickly added. “Katherine is mated to Elijah, Klaus’s brother.”

“Oh.” Caroline replied in a small voice and Elena gave her an understanding smile. Caroline’s wolf calmed and settled inside her. “Klaus won’t make you choose. If you come to New Orleans, he won’t make you cut off your relationship with your parents or Jeremy. Or if you decide to stay in Mystic Falls, you would always be welcome to visits Katherine or me.” Caroline bit her lip, reaching out to take Elena’s hand into hers. “It might be selfish of me, but I would love it if you came with me. I’m excited to start this new adventure but it would be nice to do it with a friend.”

“You’ll be having an adventure with Klaus.” Elena laughed, tossing her head to the side. “He is your mate and your new Alpha. Not only that but you’re going to be by his side. Holding a high position, standing next to the Alpha who commands the largest pack in the United States. Look at you Caroline. Destined to be the Queen of the Wolves.”

“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know if I’m strong enough for that.”

“Not maybe. Most defiantly. If anyone can do it, it’s you.” Elena told her, a flash of anger in her brown eyes that Caroline had seen many times in the past year. Elena did what she could to build that confidence Caroline had been lacking ever since. “How are things with you and Klaus? Katherine told me what it was like, the claiming.” Elena whispered, blushing bright red again. “She said it is intense. Like a primal need that is similar to but stronger than the heat only it is directed at one person.”

“Yes. That would be a good way to describe it.” Caroline paused before pressing onward. “You know that need that you feel when in heat?” Elena nodded. “It’s like that. You need to…mate…but unlike with the heat that need is for one person, your mate. But its more than just the relief you get from the act. It’s about marking that person. When he was inside of me, all I could think about, well, besides the obvious, was that he was mine and no one else could have him. That he was it for me and I was it for him.”

“It sounds like you and Klaus really have bounded.” Elena replied with sadness. There was a time when she thought that Stefan was her mate but Caroline, and everyone, knew Elena was confusing the intense need of her heat to a claiming. Stefan relived that pain that came with a female wolf’s heat. However, it wasn’t until a wolf by the name of Lexi came to town and Stefan was mated with her. Elena was heartbroken. “Have you told him about, you know?”

Suddenly it felt like a bucket of ice was poured over her. Caroline froze as the memory of ice blue eyes and pain coursed through her. Elena was the only one who knew, besides Grayson Gilbert, and Caroline had every intention of keeping it that way.

“No.”

“Caroline-“

“No. He will demand for a Howling.” Caroline hissed and Elena’s eyes hardened. She knew that her friend was only coming from a good place but it was too much; Caroline could not face it. Elena hated him as much as Caroline, almost more she did sometimes.

“Maybe he should.”

The conversation ceased when Klaus opened the bathroom door and stepped out. Caroline’s heartbeat increased at the sight of him. He wore nothing but the pair of jeans she had washed for him during the spare moments when they left the bed. He was shirtless and Caroline was torn between admiration of his form and growling at the thought of Elena seeing her mate shirtless. Klaus sensed her reaction and tossed her a smirk before grabbing his Henley.

He introduced himself to Elena but allowed for the two of them to continue their conversation while he made a few calls in the kitchen; checking on the status of his pack. Elena went back to discussing the possibility of her moving to New Orleans to be with her sister and not having to watch Stefan with Lexi; but cringed at the idea of leaving her parents and Jeremy behind. When Elena realized that Caroline’s eyes kept shifting to Klaus, and he returned the gaze, Elena bid her goodbyes with a small smile.

The moment Caroline shut the door behind Elena, Klaus came and wrapped his arms around her middle; something Caroline was slowly realizing would become a habit. Not that she minded. She loved the feeling of his arms holding her close. He leaned down and kissed her shoulder, causing Caroline to moan at the touch of his lips.

“Sweetheart?” Caroline gave a soft whimper of acknowledgment as he continued to nip at her skin. Her eyes fluttered shut and she tilted her head, allowing him better access to her neck. She wanted him to suck on her neck but instead he pulled away to place a soft kiss on the top of her head. “Why would I demand for a Howling?”

                                                                *

Her entire body burned. It felt as though she was dying. If she tried to move, she knew that the pain would only worsen. Her naked body lay bruised and broken in the woods. It was not as though she planned for it. Caroline watched as the leaves flowed in the breeze, landing on her. The night sky seemed to torment her as the waxing gibbus hung high among the stars.

She did not mean for it to happen. No more than he did. Perhaps it was it was foolish of them both to neglect protection, but the heat clouded her judgment. Made Caroline beg for release and he had been willing; eager. Yet, when the full moon came, and she did not turn; they both knew why. The next morning it was like he could sense it on her. Caroline remembered his angry face and the fear that surged through her.

Caroline had a cub inside her, and its father wanted nothing to do with it.

The pack would demand he care for it. He would not be able to shrink his responsibilities. He did not want children with her no more than Caroline wanted to be tied to him. She just needed someone to ease the pain. It would not be the first time a cub was the product of the heat; that was the point of them after all. Procreation.

He had dragged her into the woods and beat her until she could not longer move. He stripped her of her clothing, forcing himself inside her before beating her again. He claimed that it was no matter if he came inside her now, he would ensure that she bore no children of his. When he was done with her, he left her there to die.

If Elena had not found her, Caroline was certain that she would have.

“You have to tell Liz.” Elena pleaded with Caroline, but she refused. She did not want to have to suffer through a Howling; of everyone knowing what had happened to her. Elena had brought Caroline to her father, a doctor, and he cleaned her wounds. “Caroline. He can’t get away with this.”

“I just want to forget.” Caroline had whispered, begging both Elena and Grayson to keep their silence. They did, only because they did not want her to suffer more than she already had. “No one else knows that I was unable to turn the other night. I’ll pretend I did. I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings. I got hit by a passing car. Wolves heal quickly. I’ll be fine.”

“Caroline-“Elena started but Caroline shot her a forceful look. “Fine, but I still hate him.”

Caroline turned on the next full moon, feeling empty; her hand always going to the place her child should have been.

“I do too.”

                                                                 *

“I want a name.” Klaus’s teeth were clenched, and his fist balled. Caroline could feel the anger radiating off of him. She wanted to go to him, sooth him with her touch but she could sense that nothing was going to get rid of his fury but holding her assailant’s throat in his teeth; but she still tried. Caroline walked towards Klaus and placed her hands on his chest. She could feel his muscles relax ever so slightly but it did not release his tension completely. The rage he was feeling was unprecedented; even for him.

“Klaus-“

“A name Caroline.” She did not answer, at a loss for what to say. This is exactly what she wanted to avoid. Yes, it was painful to see him almost every day and know what he had done to her, but it was better than putting herself through a Howling. “He killed your child. His own flesh and blood and then he-“Klaus paused, sickened at the thought of what she endured. “I would have claimed that child as my own when I found you. I would have been a father if he did not want him.”

“But he wouldn’t have been yours.”

“Do you think that matters?” Klaus implored as though she had lost her mind. “A heat is a biological response for female wolves. I always knew that my mate would have had others before me. If a child was the product of it then so be it. As long as you are faithful to me- “

“I would never be unfaithful.” Caroline hissed, as though insulted at what he was insinuating. The mere thought of having another after the Claiming was nauseating. “And you better listen to me Klaus Mikaelson. I am not one who is willing to share her mate. I do not care if you’re my Alpha, I will not share.”

“It’s only you. It will only be you.” Klaus leaned down and kissed her hard, conveying what he was trying to say but couldn’t. Caroline wrapped her arms around his shoulders, hoping that her touch would be enough for him to forget his anger; but she should have known better. After a few moments, Klaus broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers. “I still want a name and if you do not want to go through a Howling; then I will challenge him.”

“And if you lose?” Caroline whispered, gripping him close. She could not stand for the thought of losing him so soon after finding him, was something that she could not stand for. Images of Klaus’s mangled body and him standing over her mate victorious made her stomach roll. “Please. Can we not just let this go? It was a year ago now. I’ve moved on.”

Lie.

“No. I can’t. Many things, yes, I would be able to let go. If he had just helped you through your heat, I may have been jealous, but I never would have called him out. He abused you. He killed his own child that was inside you and he raped you just to show that he had power over you.” Klaus hissed, the anger flashing behind his eyes once again. “He deserves a Howling.”

“You’d have to speak with my mother. He is part of her pack; not yours.”

“Do you honestly think that I would not disclose why I am challenging him to Liz?” Klaus questioned and Caroline closed her eyes, tears falling down her cheeks. Klaus’s shoulders slumped helplessly. He placed his hands on the side of her face, gently whipping her tears away. “I do not like seeing you cry.” Caroline stared back up at him. “Why do you want me turn a blind eye? Why are you not out for his blood? Make me understand.”

“I’ve never seen a Howling. I know what they are. We all do but to experience it firsthand? I don’t want to put myself through that.” Caroline whispered in a hollow tone. “The entire pack would know what happened to me and I just can’t…” She trailed off before finding her voice again. “They will look at me like I’m something dirty. A failure. Female wolves are taught to keep themselves protected. To prevent children until they want them. They will say it was my fault! That I deserved it.”

“No. It was not your fault, it would never be your fault, Sweetheart.” Klaus told her gently. “And the child? It was an accident. My mother never intended to get pregnant with me. Her heat occurred when her mate, our alpha at the time, was out of town. She needed relief and I was the result of that. That did not make her weak.” He leaned down and kissed her gently. She knew the rest of the story; for he had told her in the dead of night. Esther was mated to their Alpha, but he did not take it kindly when she bore another wolf’s child. “And hear me Caroline. You are a survivor. You are so strong and full of light. He is a monster who hurt you. He was just as responsible for the creation of that child as you were. If he was so concerned about preventing a pregnancy, then he should have worn a condom. You were in heat. Your mind was not going to be able to focus on anything else.”

“Thank you.” She was crying in earnest, tasting the salt of her own tears on her lips. The gaping hole that had been tearing at her insides felt raw but in a way that was bittersweet. She buried her face into his chest, terrified if she lost that contact that she would break down completely. She never had the felt such validation; always having to hide behind a lie that she started herself.

“When we have children, they will be loved. I will never harm you in such a way. You could not turn in the next few days at the full moon because my seed took root and I would not harm you. I will worship the ground you walk on because you would be giving me a gift.” Caroline looked up at him, resting her head against the spot over his heart; hearing its thumping. The sound brought her comfort. “But if it means that much to you, I’ll walk away. We will go to New Orleans and you will never have to see him again.”

“You would do that? For me?” Klaus nodded. Caroline could see the immense effort it was taking not to demand a name from her and call for a Howling at the next full moon. He would wonder who it was for the rest of his life. He would wonder if the wolf would visit his pack when Liz came to see Caroline. He would wonder if he welcomed the man who raped his mate into his home. Caroline realized that she did not want to have that hanging over her head; for their lives to be tainted in such a way. She gave him a year of her life and that was enough. “If we do this. If I give you a name and we do this, will you stay with me? You won’t leave my side?”

“I will hold your hand the entire time and when we change, we will hunt him down together.” Caroline searched his eyes, looking for a sign of dishonesty. She found none. He meant each and every word. He would stand with her, even if she faced scorn at the hands of wolves who would argue for his side.

“His name is Damon Salvatore.”

                                                                *

“I heard you got hit by a car, Blondie.” Damon sneered at her. “Better look both ways next time.”

                                                                *

A Howling always took place during the full moon, bleeding into its apex. The woods held a haunting look to it. Torches had lined the pathway to a clearing and dozens of people lined the edges; watching the spectacle. The silence was deafening. Not a single person spoke. They simple looked on. Listening to their Alpha.

Damon was in the center of a large circle on his knees. His blue eyes boring a hole into Caroline, but she just glared back. Klaus’s hand was gripped in hers, providing her strength; allowing her to stand tall as she faced the one thing, the one person, she feared most. A Howling was terrifying and far worse than she expected but there was one thing it lacked.

Scorn.

Her mother and her Alpha stared down at Damon as though he was dirty and pathetic; tainted by the acts he committed. She detailed his crime for that pack and hearing their hiss of anger was enough for Caroline. Klaus gave her hand a tight squeeze and it allowed the tears to fall freely. For the first time, Caroline realized that she was not weak. She was not broken.

She was far stronger than she had ever given herself credit from.

Liz passed her judgement.

Guilty.

Caroline looked around and slowly each and every wolf lowered themselves to their knees. They all bowed to her justice. Elena’s knees hit the ground first, ready to condemn Damon to a Howling. Katherine linked arms with her sister while Elijah bowed next to his mate. Neighbors and childhood friends stood behind Caroline. Everyone except one.

“Stefan.” Liz replied in a low tone. “Do you want to speak on behalf of your brother? Why should he be spared?” Stefan looked at his brother in sadness, his fate tearing at him. Lexi reached up, yanking on her mate’s arm; hissing her displeasure in his ear. Slowly, Stefan sank down to his knees. “Very well. Klaus? Do you want to proceed? The moon is almost full.”

“No.” Klaus told Liz and Caroline whipped her head around. That was the deal the two alphas had made. They would share the responsibility of handing down Damon’s fate. Caroline looked at her mate in question. Klaus just brought her hand, that he never once let go of, to his lips and gave it a kiss. Caroline knew what he was offering; a chance at closure. “Go. Sweetheart. I’ll be right here. I promised you one last run. Okay?”

With a pounding heart, Caroline dropped Klaus’s hand and made her way over to Damon. He was still kneeling and this time it was Caroline who towered over him. He looked at her with those same eyes she had been terrified of for the past year. She sank down so she was at his eye level and never looked away from him. This time she had all the power. Wolves would howl at the moon, their teeth gleaming with his blood.

“Run.” Caroline whispered. “Run as fast as you can Damon because we will be following you. This is no pack of yours. You do not belong here but you will die here.”

A/N: I just want to say, this story is not at all how I anticipated it turning out; but I love it.It is by far one of my favorites that I've written for Bingo. I think this one, Contraband and Songbird (that will be posted Friday) are my top favorites.

[todisturbtheuniverse]

FIC: Set All Trappings Aside [9/9] - COMPLETE

Rating: T Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition Pairing: f!Adaar/Josephine Montilyet Tags: Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, Class Differences Word Count: 3500 (this chapter) Summary: After months of flirtation, a contract on Josephine’s life brings Adaar’s feelings for her closer to the surface than ever. It highlights, too, all of their differences, all of the reasons a relationship between them would not last. But Adaar is a hopeful woman at heart; if Josephine can set all trappings aside, then so can she. Also on AO3. Notes: While the context for this story is the Of Somewhat Fallen Fortune questline, some of the conversations within it didn’t quite fit for this Inquisitor. The resulting fic is a twist on the canon romance. This Adaar and Josephine have featured in other fics, so you may miss a little context if you haven’t read Promising or Truth-Telling, which both come before this one.

Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

It was a good party, but Adaar's mood just wasn't right for it.

She'd drunk enough to set her stomach churning, enough to dull the pain of her superficial wounds, but not enough to muddle her head. No, that seemed dangerous. Everyone in the village, even Hammond, swore up and down that all of Koster's Carvers had been caught up in the tavern and outside of it—but maybe they were mistaken. A cruel voice in the back of her head whispered, Or maybe they're lying. 

She wanted to believe that becoming Inquisitor had made her paranoid, but really, ever since that night in the cellar, ever since someone had taken a saw to one of her horns, it had been there, underlying. Her current circumstances just...exacerbated it.

She didn't like to feel that she needed to watch her back when she came home. Made it feel like it wasn't home anymore.

Maybe it wasn't, little though she wanted to admit it. Before the hole in the sky, she'd returned once a year, maybe twice if the Valo-kas happened to be passing nearby. Was it really home if she spent only a handful of nights there every year? Or was it just a place she went to visit ghosts, ghosts who'd taken home with them when they went?

She made her way down the narrow path in the dark, putting the party at her back: Hammond, merrily passing out the local brew, espousing its virtues to Cassandra; Harriet, playing a jig on the accordion, Dorian and Bull in the midst of the dancing crowd, red with laughter; Marguerite and Wilfred and Lonnie, gathered around a card table, groaning as Josephine took another round with a look of polite glee. Josephine, drinking Hammond's beer like she didn't mind the taste. Josephine, catching Adaar's eye above the heads of the dancers...

There would be time for that. Soon.

She kept the lantern she carried shuttered, unwilling to ruin her night vision, and besides, she'd always liked the fields of Duskfield under the stars. It was a far cry from Skyhold, that was for sure. You could see Skyhold burning miles off, up there in the mountain ahead of you; if she turned back now, the fires of the celebration would already be nearly out of sight. Only the Dancing Star would remain.

She came to the turnstile. Her father's handwriting had faded with the sun, and she hadn't re-inked it in a long while—hadn't had the chance or the time. She trailed her fingers over the word they'd brought with them from Par Vollen, the word that had failed so bitterly in its duty of care to define them, the word she carried. She walked on. 

The house, merely a dark, empty shape among a missing piece of the field, came into view. Every time she returned, she found herself surprised by its size, by the idea that she and two others had fit there. It seemed desperately small now, compared to the world she'd walked, putting holes in her boots.

She veered away, off into the field on the left. The house would be there, when she was ready. But the ghosts could not wait another minute.

Through the waving grains, toward the tree that stood stark and twisted against the starry sky, oddly bleached in the moonlight. The field parted to the little clearing, its careful rock formations intact. She released a breath. Jana had kept care of this place. Even the bench beneath the tree only had a few dead leaves; Adaar carefully brushed them aside.

But she didn't sit on the bench. She stood before the gravemarkers instead, letting a little more light from the lantern out, the better to see.

Hammond had helped her carve them. He'd taken the chisel from her whenever she'd wept too bitterly to continue. Silently offered her a handkerchief when she was ready to press on. She'd seen a few tears sneak down his old face in those hours of labor, too. She'd felt, fiercely, that her parents had been loved—that she had been loved.

"This doesn't change that," she said aloud, though no one was there to hear her. "I know it doesn't. I know that's what you would say. I just wish you were here to say it, dammit." She drew a shaky breath. "Where are my manners? Hi, Ma. Hi, Dad. You would never believe what's happened to me, and I don't think I could explain it if I tried. I just want to sit with you for a while, if you don't mind."

She put the lantern on the ground beside her when she sat. The low breeze rustled in the tree's leaves, in the grain. Here, so far from everything, she could almost believe the world was the same as it had always been, that these past few months had not happened at all. It was unchanged, here, where she'd written Beloved Husband, Beloved Father; Beloved Wife, Beloved Mother on the stones. She was unchanged.

"I'll skip all the nonsense," she said, when she'd been quiet long enough to regain her composure. "But help me get this piece right in my head. I've met someone. She's...hmm. She's not what you'd expect, I think. As different from me as it is possible to be. But she's also brave, and clever, and kind. I think you'd like her." She paused, tipping her head back to let the breeze catch her hair, ruffling up her hair like her father's hand, like her mother's kiss. "I like her. But I'm afraid of her." 

With the words out in the open like that, they seemed very silly. She snorted. "I know it's stupid. But...hell, you both must have been afraid, right? You loved each other so much that you left everything else you knew. Sacrificed everything else you'd ever known. Each of your societies, and your collective society, combined. And you were happy. I saw it. I felt it." She drew a deep, shuddering breath. "I don't know if it's going to work out the same way for me, but you were right. What's life without a little risk, once in a while? And besides, I think...I think it might be time for me to move my roots somewhere else. For there to be a somewhere else for my roots to go. If there's a somewhere else left, after all my nonsense is through, anyway."

She brushed her fingers over the grave markers, over the words. They weren't here. Of course they weren't. They weren't sleeping forever in the dirt beneath her. Their ashes had been flung wide across these fields, over the place they'd chosen. It was the only place that had made sense to her. Give them back to the earth that had known such love, such care, from their hands.

They weren't here. But she felt them, anyway. The sharp edges of memory had faded, and she knew they would continue to crumble, but even when everything was out of focus, someday, she would still know them. Would know, always, what they wanted for her.

"You dreamed of bigger things," she said, her throat tight. "Guess I got it from somewhere, huh?"

Heartsore but decided, she stayed there, beside the markers, watching the stars, thinking. She wondered if they'd gone through this part, too. If, even when they'd decided, they'd been terrified out of their minds.

Probably. Probably they'd stayed scared for a long time. But it had been worth it.

She'd been there an hour, sore and tired and a little chilled, before she heard a voice call softly in the distance, "Adaar?"

Her heart spasmed painfully. She sat up a little from where she'd been slouched against the bench. The voice came again, closer this time, but the word had changed: "Herah? Are you out here?"

She steadied herself and called back, "Over here." She raised a hand, high enough to be seen above the grain in the slight glow of the lantern light, and waved.

Josephine emerged into the clearing, blinking a little; she carried her own lantern, but almost entirely shuttered, like Adaar's had been. She'd taken her hair out of all of its elaborate braids so that it fell, loose with waves, around her shoulders. There was a worried twist to her mouth, and Adaar felt a surge of guilt; she really ought to have told someone, anyone, that she was slipping away.

"Hammond told me you were probably out this way," Josephine said. Her eyes found the markers. "If I'm intruding—"

"Nah." Adaar waved this off. "I've been moping out here long enough. They'd want me to pull myself together."

Josephine offered a tentative smile, and sat on the ground, tucking her skirts beneath her, not terribly near Adaar but not terribly far, either. "I've never known you to mope."

"I wisely do it out of sight of other people, for the benefit of all." 

Josephine tilted her head a bit to one side. "Except you."

Adaar released a startled laugh. "How do you figure?"

Josephine looked to the markers, her eyes passing slowly over the letters. "If you mope alone, you have no one to comfort you."

"I suppose I'll have to carry on, then," Adaar said, "since you're here to comfort me."

Josephine gave her own breathless laugh, and offered her hand out, across the small distance between them. Adaar took it, intertwining their fingers.

Josephine looked up to the tree's canopy. "This is the oak?"

"Yes," Adaar said, unable to conceal how pleased she was that Josephine had remembered. "They added the bench, not long after they arrived. It felt like the right place for them, after they died. Sometimes, when I was a child, I'd wake up in the middle of the night, and I'd see this glow in the distance, beneath the tree."

"It sounds as if they truly loved one another." Adaar did not think she was imagining the wistfulness in Josephine's voice.

"It was embarrassing to me, back then. Now, I—I see how precious it was, what they had."

Josephine nodded, but didn't say anything more. They sat in a comfortable quiet for a little while; Josephine turned her face into the breeze now and then. The cozy, combined glow of their lanterns created a little pocket in this clearing, as if the rest of the world was held at bay by the shine, just for a little while. A secret, away from everything.

Adaar touched her father's gravemarker one more time, silently asking to borrow his courage. "Want to see the house?" she asked Josephine.

Josephine's face brightened. Surely she'd seen the shape of it as she'd walked past, searching for Adaar. Surely she knew it was nothing special. But she said, "Of course," as though delighted at the prospect.

Adaar got to her feet first, then helped Josephine up. They picked up their lanterns and moved away, back toward the path. As they walked, the backs of their hands brushed; Adaar took Josephine's hand this time, and she didn't pull away.

"Jana built her own place, a little further down the road," Adaar said, and pointed with her lantern past the closer house. Barely visible in the dark was another huddled shape among the fields. "She stayed in my parents' house, at first, but I think it felt too strange to her. Like I would have felt to keep living there, almost."

"Among memories," Josephine said.

"Right. But she comes through every month or so, dusts, airs the place out. I was never able to give much notice before I passed through."

"She wanted you to have a place to come back to."

"Yes," Adaar said, and left it at that.

They'd reached the clearing, the yard; together, they stood before the darkened house. She hesitated, but only for an instant.

"Come see," she said, leading the way toward the door.

The inside was much as it had always been: there, the humble kitchen off to the right with its hearth, shutters closed tight over the windows; there, the old armchair her mother had once sat in to darn socks, where she'd nursed her newborn child; there, the door to a passageway that could barely be called a hall, and two more doors at the end of it, leading to the two bedrooms. One—Adaar's—had been an addition to the original house, built by her parents. Jana and some of the other villagers had helped.

Despite the frequent airing, it still had the faint scent of misuse, of absence. It had always smelled of something delicious, a warm crackling fire, the spring breeze, when her parents had lived. Now it seemed a painful, empty shell.

There was a faint creak; she startled and looked around. Josephine moved systematically shutter to shutter, throwing them open. The night air drifted in, chasing away the stillness of neglect. Josephine leaned against one windowsill with a sigh, the breeze tugging at her hair.

"It's peaceful," she said over her shoulder. "A good place to grow up."

"It was," Adaar agreed, putting her lantern down on the kitchen table beside Josephine's. "Not…not magnificent, or anything, but still good."

Josephine turned to face her with a frown. "Not everything needs to be magnificent."

"Peace." Adaar shifted uneasily. "I know."

Josephine leaned back against the windowsill, her expression softening a little. "What's troubling you, Herah?"

A little of Adaar's anxiety melted away at that gentle voice, speaking her name. She took in a low breath. "You were right," she said. "I was afraid. I am afraid."

Josephine took a hesitant step closer. "Of what?"

"Oh, lots of stupid things." Adaar rubbed at her forehead. "That your family won't approve. That people will make snide remarks to you. That you'll have to work harder to extract what we need from our allies. That it will all add up, in the end, and we'll see that this was doomed from the start, and have only bitterness left for each other."

"Small worries," Josephine said, teasing but not dismissive. "Do not doom us before we've even had the chance to begin."

"You really don't worry about that? Any of it?"

"I can refute your points one by one, if you like."

Adaar gestured for her to go on. "Convince me, Ambassador."

She liked the coy little smile that came onto Josephine's face at those words. It was wonderfully distracting.

"My family, whenever we choose to make public declarations, will be all astonishment," she said thoughtfully. "Scandalized, but delighted. I've always been the pragmatic daughter, with no tendency toward feelings or frivolities. It will be such a relief to them that they'll hardly register who I have chosen, and when they do, they'll fall over themselves thanking you."

Adaar couldn't help but chuckle. Josephine smiled a little wider and continued.

"I have no fear of snide remarks. Frankly, the topics for condescension have been a little stale lately; perhaps this will liven them up. Besides, I have an arsenal of my own. I'm always looking for an excuse to use them. As for our allies...well, turnabout is fair play. They are hiding plenty of things that they think are salacious. I'm not above leaning on those secrets a little harder."

"You make interesting points," Adaar allowed. "And these?"

She unsheathed her daggers, dropping them one by one to the kitchen table. Josephine came forward, stopping just short of Adaar. Lightly, she touched one blade.

"You saved my life with these," she said softly. "You use them to great effect, never without thought, usually in the name of protecting others. But you have not fooled me into thinking they define you. They are only a part of you."

She looked up at Adaar; Adaar looked back, torn, wanting.

"That's the thing," she said. "It used to be simple, and now it's hideously complicated. If I went back to the Valo-kas, I wouldn't fit. Even coming back here, I don't fit. And I don't think I've quite made the leap to your world, either."

"And you don't need to. There is no my world. I do not have the authority to offer you something so abstract. There is just me. For now—to start—I would just ask you for a little time."

Josephine slipped a hand into the pocket of her dress, withdrawing a small, beautiful wooden box, polished to a high shine; even the golden hinges gleamed. She took Adaar's hand, turned it palm-up, and placed the box there. It fit neatly.

"What's this?" Adaar asked, momentarily thrown.

"A gift." Adaar got the feeling that Josephine had bitten her tongue on, Obviously.

"What for?"

She actually rolled her eyes, contrast to her fond smile. "As if you've ever made an excuse for the trinkets you give to me." At Adaar's raised brows, she huffed and said, "Very well, it is technically thanks for helping me with the House of Repose. In reality, though, I commissioned it as soon as you showed me the sketch."

"The sketch?" Adaar repeated, completely bemused now. "What sketch?"

"Open it and see."

Careful not to leave any marks in the varnish, Adaar opened the box. Nestled on a bed of dark green velvet was a delicate hourglass, gleaming in the faint light.

"I'm afraid I could only replicate one of the materials closely," Josephine said. Adaar lifted the dainty golden chain with numb fingers. "Wood, from a tree in Antiva. On the Montilyet estate, in fact. I'm certain it's not the same tree, but based on the sketch and the notes, I believe it's the same species."

Adaar could not have replied even if she'd known what to say; her tongue, usually so given to trip ahead of her thoughts, lay useless in her mouth. All the hair on her neck, her arms, stood on end. A ghost had walked right through her.

"And the gold your father used," Josephine continued, "that, of course, is irreplaceable, but the Valo-kas donated some for the purpose. The sand...Par Vollen is well out of even my reach, but I had some gathered on the shores of Haven. I remember…" Here, at last, she hesitated. "You seemed at home there. More so than in Skyhold. I thought you might like to carry it with you."

"You had the sketch in your hand for all of a moment," Adaar said, finding her voice at last. "How did you...it looks just like…"

"I have a good memory," Josephine said, with a modest smile. 

"I…" Adaar shook her head. "I don't know what to say."

"I have achieved the impossible. Herah Adaar, speechless." Some of Josephine's delight faded. "I hope I haven't overstepped. You do like it?"

Adaar held the hourglass out to Josephine. "Help me put it on?"

Josephine took it, plainly relieved. With deft fingers, she loosed the clasp, then fastened the chain around Adaar's neck; Adaar could feel her breath, just briefly, against her skin. She arranged the hourglass carefully, letting it fall into the V of Adaar's shirt, a little cool against her skin.

"I don't know how I'll ever repay you," Adaar said hoarsely.

"There is nothing to repay. This is a gift without strings. Though perhaps it lends a little weight to my request." Finally, Josephine's voice showed her nerves; it trembled a little. "I only ask for the next turn of the hourglass. That you set aside what you think might come, what might happen. Be with me, and when the sand runs out again, we will take stock of where we stand. Please?"

Adaar scraped a hand through her hair, driving the loose strands back from her face. "As we've established already, I can't say no to you."

Josephine's eyes gleamed. "That's not the same as saying yes."

There was not so much distance left between them now; Josephine had worked at it, chipping away right under Adaar's nose. The last of it fell away as she cupped Josephine's chin in her hand and bent her head to press her lips to Josephine's.

There had been a desperation, a stolen quality, to those other kisses—like a woman taking panicked gulps from the paltry spring she'd found in the desert, afraid that she would never drink again. But this was another thing entirely, a slow delight, something to be savored. She took her time, teased apart Josephine's lips with aching slowness, tangled her hand in Josephine's half-undone hair, lost herself in the sound of pleasure Josephine made in her throat.

When they parted, she drew just enough air to say, emphatically, "Yes."

Josephine did not wait for any further explanation; she, like Adaar, seemed to have decided that the time for conversation was past. She went up on tiptoe to kiss Adaar again, and Adaar picked her up to make it easier for her, arms tight around Josephine's waist. Josephine gave a breathless laugh of delight against her mouth. 

Adaar would still worry, she knew. But for now, she would set the trappings of fear aside. She would see where this turn of the hourglass took them.

[mercuriallycooperative]

Doom flags at her heels, Katarina really has a lot going on

(slight arc one spoilers, slight arc later spoilers, lotta long rambling thoughts)

So I’ve been keeping up with the manga for quite awhile and then remembered the light novels exist and then discovered the anime is existing and then realized “oh this is popular enough people are writing fic for it!” and then read a good fic and then I realized that this was a chance to articulate a thought that’s always in the back of my mind whenever I reread the manga and now that I’m watching like four let’s-watch youtubers as the anime goes on but like-

It has always struck me that like- as much as Katarina has a lot of sparkling happy fluffy moments and people she cares for a lot in this life, people that certainly I think she does love perhaps more deeply than even she realizes, and the audience is reminded so often "ha ha she still thinks she's doomed, she doesn't realize literally everyone has fallen in love with her and she's become crucial in their lives and hearts"- there’s also the other side of that-

That is that all the preparing she's been doing since she woke up with her past life memories at 8 years old- she's spent all that time running from a looming shadow at her back.

She's spent 7 years with a lot of excellent friends, capturing hearts and being a bright light in the world, but she's also spent all that time living with the fear that some of her friends might kill her, someday, or that she'll be made to leave them, or be discarded, and have to start a new life in a strange place for a third time- this time, alone. And she's been running from that all this time. Even for a slightly one-track mind with a bit of a blind spot for things too close to her, how much fear and worry do you have to be carrying, to be still as Concerned as we see her when she's 15, to keep up preparing for such a doom for 7 years?

And there are moments like when she’s visiting Sophia and is reminded of Acchan, that we see she does still have some wistfulness for her life-that-was. Heck, even when she’s fighting her way out of her magical coma thing. Wistfulness for the world that was. And she doesn’t seem to have spoken to anyone about any of this past-life stuff. Even if this is her world now- she lost a lot, when she died the first time.

Even if she’s usually more focused on either things right in front of her, or her looming doom (hardly an enviable distraction), that has to be a lot to bear and never breathe a word of. A lot to miss, and people she will likely never see again.

And of course she's considered very simple and direct and incapable of guile or scheming by even her dear beloved friends- and often times she is- but there is also is the fact that in 7 years she hasn't let on about the secret of her memories, or what she's preparing for, or what she's afraid of. She hasn't ever let on those fears of getting killed or exiled by people close to her, or the fact that all this preparing is just in case she has to leave them all forever. Just in case they make her have to leave them all forever. She does a lot of off-the-wall things, but nobody has ever gotten a real hint of what they're for. The most anyone has really gotten is a refrain of “just in case!”

(I went back to check- she's mentioned "In case I'm exiled," in some material. She has not mentioned "In case you exile me." There's something of a difference.)

Also like. I know she’s really memetically, uh, got a bit of a blind spot about how people feel about her (I’m pretty sure she just doesn’t care about the whole rules of society thing except when they make immediate trouble for her, which she’s in a position to mostly ignore- that’s less her lack of sense, I think, and more her contemporary sensibilities and a certain amount of unselfconsciousness coming just as much from not caring for some of the more implicit rules as it does not noticing them) (not that she doesn’t also have the sense of a single turnip sometimes, but like. still.).

But like, in the first episode’s worth of events, she has like three different head injuries, two of which result in unconsciousness, one of which results in getting a load of past life memories dumped into her head. It’s not unlikely that this happens, not frequently, but more than just the times we’ve seen, over the years. That can’t be good for her- especially because if she’s visibly fine there wouldn’t necessarily be any reason to apply any handy-but-rare healing light magic that could mitigate any medical repercussions of head injuries. Certainly, I would not be surprised if this affects her attention span or ability to put together some things, just a little.

Take that, along with the fact that given what we see at least about her parents in this life, pretty sure some of the obliviousness is genetic- and also the whole ‘preparing for her doom for seven years’ thing... When we’re afraid of stuff, our limbic system, our fight-or-flight-etc, goes all “yeet” in our brains and it does actually affect our ability to think things through. Like. We had a seminar at work about it and stuff. And constant stress, even constant low-level-mostly-in-the-background stress, is known to cause issues with both memory formation and retrieval. Which can’t be helping anything else happening here.

What I’m saying is, Katarina has a lot of actual potential physical reasons to have some of the really increasing amounts of obliviousness that sorta seem to show later in the light novels.

(Also, in fairness, some people just aren’t great with the subtext of the goings on around them, even if they can read the pattern fine in words on a page. I’m like that myself. Uh, not nearly as much as Katarina, given, as far as I know. But that’s a way that one can be, too, and it’s not mutually exclusive with the rest of this or anything.)

Aside from those- from what we get about her reflection on her life in the last world, it doesn’t seem like all of this is totally new to her character; I definitely feel like she was Like This last lifetime too. (Actually, yeah, went back to check, and in the light novel, in Acchan's chapter, Katarina was indeed Like This last time too.) But I think it’s possible that aside from new circumstances in this life accentuating these characteristics, that they’re the sort of thing that produces more, uh, pronounced reactions to situations, the bigger the situation is. Last life, she was a normal schoolgirl who didn’t expect anything life-threatening. This life, she’s been living in the shadow of her doom for 7 years, and she’s in the upper strata of Very Important People, With Harem Hijinks.

I think some of Katarina’s determination just really has this flavor of- “Well it just can’t be helped! I just gotta do the thing!” A sort of.... taking all the weight of the things that really are chasing her, and also some of the subtext-laden everything in a lot of her close relationships, and a little willfully going “well this is kind of a lot. you know what was also kind of a lot? preparing for my doom for 7 years! you know how I dealt with that? just getting on with it as best i can, blithely moving past all the things i wasn’t really equipped for, with twice as much energy as life threw at me!” Not consciously, necessarily, but there’s certainly an energy of eliding past the whole mass of situations down to the brass tacks of an action plan. Gonna get murderlyzed? Learn to fight back against being murderlyzed, with a sword! Lonely brother set to fall in love because of healing loneliness? Guess he’s not gonna be lonely anymore! I stole some relationship flags from people? Well they’re great folks, I’m sure they’ll be fine!

There’s a certain resilience to this particular response to the whole state of affairs that keeps the story of Katarina’s life in this world from being dragged down into the implications of all the little bits and troubles that come with both her getting isekai’d into doom flags, and also all her friends’ troubles in their youths. It’s part of what makes her so interesting, I think, that she’s able to just go along being herself, doing her rather erratic best, genuine, honest, loud and enthusiastic and kind, and producing very direct responses to the happenings around her. And people respond to that genuineness and directness and kindness.

Whether we’re reading it on the page or the characters are seeing it in person, I think there’s something very charming about that. Taking ‘wow this is a lot. life is... a lot.’ and getting down to ‘but being nice is simple, and being enthused is simple, and scowling at mean people is simple, and now it’s not as a lot anymore!’

The origins of Katarina’s directness and charm aside, in this life she has very much been rewarded for Being Like This. Here, I’m speaking a little more in response to how I’ve seen people getting exasperated at the increasingly pronounced amount of Bakarina-ness that I’ve seen so far in at least the translation of the later light novels that I got a chance to read; she’s... still quite oblivious.

But her life and the narrative has always rewarded that. Her good-natured kindness to people with sorrows has made her happy friends; her determination to go the direct and simple path through things has always cut to the heart of matters (even if she’s sometimes missed how she’s now rather at the heart of a lot of people now); her blithe disregard for a number of proprieties has been protected by both her noble parents who love her, rather a lot of overprotective friends, and her royal betrothed. Worry has only ever gotten her to an action plan and a drive to proceed with it; after she’s got those to work with (e.g. her “train in swords and magic to not be murderlyzed, keep Keith from being lonely, make a field to train in magic, make a romance novel friend” plans), she’s always had to learn to take her actions and then live her life pushing that worry out of the way.

If she’d drowned in worry about her doom instead of letting it propel her to action and then disregarding it in favor of living in the moments produced by her choices, then I don’t think her life since waking up with her old memories would have been as happy as it was.

(Actually, I have this theory that the ‘original’/no-memory Katarina was running in a similar way as our Katarina, only she responded to the worry with sharp eyes and teeth, instead of brushing it aside with a determined smile. But that’s an analysis for another time, possibly after more of the Verge of Destruction spinoff is out and I’ve reread it a bit more.)

So, all that being the case- why should she be less blithe about things? Why would she be more cautious? Why would she start worrying any more about things beyond her newly-lifted worries about her doom? Her determination to charge facefirst through situations with a good nature, direct problem-solving, and some slightly-suspect assumptions that have always been close enough to the heart of things before- that’s always seen her through.

(Also, like. After everything, when she’s finally, finally able to stop worrying about her doom flags- enjoying all the people and things she loves without digging into the bits and troublesome bobs of it all, getting in a sense a second new lease on life- she can be forgiven for wanting things to be as simple as she’s always tried to make her one most looming problem in the past.)

(Also also, she did have to go through the stages between “you’re all adorable but you’re all 8 and I’m like 16 and I literally cannot be attracted to you, that’s weird” and “well I guess you’re all the same age as me-in-this-life but a large part of me is still 16, so it’s still weird” and “I haven’t changed much over the years because living through the same years twice isn’t really growing up so much as it is being 16 for an extra year or four and then being 12 again and then 13 again and then 14 again and then 15 again and only then finally getting a chance to grow older than 16- and in the meanwhile wait shit now you’re all the same age as me for real. now you’re not just breathtakingly cute or beautiful like a freaking artwork, now you’re making my heart skip a beat, uhhhhhh”.

It’s not particularly surprising that after years of thinking “yeah but I’m older than you, you’re like 8″ that it’s going to take being blindsided multiple times for Katarina to get into the swing of “wait, you’re my age or older and now, suddenly you’re able to be hot. wtf.”)

I don’t really have a conclusion to all this, exactly.

Just that- Katarina may have the sense of a single turnip sometimes, albeit a very good-natured turnip, but while some of it is absolutely just How She Is Even At Peace, some of it’s most likely a response to quite a few environmental factors over the years. And her life has rewarded her for the type of resiliency that she’s used to face her doom flags- the doom flags she’s been politely carrying and deflecting the stress of for seven years.

Direct and simple and kind and uncomplicated in nature she may be- and a bit slow on the subtext sometimes- but Katarina Claes should not be mistaken for lacking in willful resolve where it counts, nor mistaken for lacking fears, nor mistaken for lacking in ability to plan and analyze. I’m pretty sure she just... concludes that kindness is best, people are good, and that this life and the people in it are worth it.

She’s got more to her than just “oblivious harem protag is oblivious and really nice”. And honestly, I think if you look at her closely, she’s a lot more reasonable than people make her out to be.

[virtchandmoir]

Tessa Virtue says goodbye to Canada with final cross-country tour

October 9, 2019

Tessa Virtue may have just announced her ice dancing retirement, but that’s not the end for her just yet — not even close.

Over the next two months, Canadian cities big and small are being treated to a farewell tour for Virtue and her ice dancing partner, Scott Moir. The beloved dancing duo are pairing up again for the cross-country figure skating show Rock the Rink.

While skating and non-skating fans alike are eager to see the duo — who captured hearts with their gold-medal-winning Moulin Rouge performance last year — one more time, the Olympic skaters will be joined by other young athletes on the ice at Rock the Rink.

Virtue and Moir will take to the ice alongside 27 Special Olympics Canada athletes, including 16-year-old Emma Bittorf, an avid golfer, ice dancer and huge fan of Virtue and Moir.

“I’m excited to see Tessa and Scott. This is the first time I get to meet them,” Bittorf said. “I look up to [them]. They do a really good job on the ice.”

Bittorf, decked in blue and sparkles, is set to open the Medicine Hat, Alta., tour stop on Oct. 19, but Rock the Rink isn’t where her career begins: the teenager took home silver in golf at the Special Olympics World Games in Abu Dhabi this year and is set to return in 2021 for skating.

Rock the Rink kicked off in Abbotsford, B.C., and will travel across the country, holding its final show in St. John’s, N.L., on Nov. 23.

Until then, Virtue is soaking up the magic of working with her former ice dancing partner and an incredible cast of young, inspirational athletes before taking a load off for the holiday season.

Global News caught up with Virtue, 30, over the phone while the decorated athlete was in Abbotsford preparing for her epic cross-country goodbye.

Global News: How does it feel to be heading out on your last Canadian tour?

Tessa Virtue: It was a really thrilling process putting together this particular tour for so many reasons. It’s layered by the fact that we have an incredible international cast of many people that we’ve grown up skating with, skaters we admire who have accomplished significant things on the world stage but who are also so creatively inspired and eager to collaborate, with this being our last tour.

How do you prepare for such a long tour?

It requires something athletically unlike anything else we’ve really known. It’s a straight 90- to 100-minute set of skating, and there are only nine cast members. In order to make it an entertaining and captivating show, we really need to exert a lot of energy. We’ve been rehearsing here in Abbotsford as a group for already three weeks, working 10-hour days on the ice to ensure that everything is in tight formations and we’re all ready to perform. Ultimately, we’re taking skating fans — and hopefully non-skating fans, too — on a journey where they feel something.

Working with Special Olympics Canada, which you and Scott Moir have done for a while, must feel pretty special, too.

Scott and I have been working with Special Olympics Canada for quite some time, and it’s obviously something that is just so close to our hearts. I think what we’re most excited about is just to share the ice with these incredible athletes and to showcase [them] all the way across Canada, to spread that message of inclusion, to showcase how the impact truly transforms lives of children, youth and adults with intellectual disability. We’re just honoured to come together and share that across Canada.

In a lot of things you’ve done off the rink, inclusion and empowerment have seemed very important to you.

It’s important for so many reasons. It’s necessary, it’s meaningful and so relevant in today’s world. These things need to be talked about, [and] a lot of the narratives need to change. It’s always been important for me to use this platform that I’ve been [given], and I’m grateful for it but I also take it seriously and I just think I’ve been so privileged to have been able to chase my dreams in a very unique way, and that’s because I received a lot of support from people around me. I would love for everyone else to get that opportunity as well.

You’re quite a role model for a lot of young people, like Emma Bittorf. How does that feel?

It’s something that we don’t take lightly. It’s an important part … of having some kind of platform. But you know, when you see what Emma’s accomplished, there’s a mutual admiration going on here, and that’s not just in skating. She’s also an avid golfer, a basketball player. It’s truly impressive. I just love seeing how Special Olympics has played a part in her life.

Canadians have been following your career for many years, but your Olympic gold medal win with Scott really captured the world.

Canadians always rally behind their athletes. We’ve always felt like we [were] just the luckiest kids to be able to represent our country on the world stage, and the outpouring of love and support we’ve received, whether that was our first time at the Games bringing home silvers after Sochi or announcing our retirement, it never wavered and continues to surprise us. Canadians never cease to amaze me, and they continue to support us. In all honesty, that’s made this touring preparation process that much more special because we know we’ve got to cross the country and get to say a final farewell to the people who have really been with us for the last two decades.

Was making the decision to retire tough for you, or did it feel like the right time?

Tough in that it’s always hard to step away from something you’ve known and loved for such a long time, but it feels right. Like most major decisions in our career, Scott and I just came to it very organically together. It’s a feeling thing. How lucky that we get to step away at this point in our career when we can do it on our own terms and [from] a place where we still have such passion for the sport. We’re excited for what’s to come. I mean, we get 28 times [to say goodbye], all the way across the country [to] some of our favourite cities, to celebrate the career we’ve had.

Are there any cities you’re particularly excited to return to?

There are so many cities that have played just critical parts in our story. Of course, a lot of the hometown stuff in the London, [Ont.], area is one. Vancouver, we have fond memories. It will be really fun to return to cities that don’t often get skating shows. [Last year], we were so surprised by the engagement of the audience and being able to share in that energy. It ignited something in us again as performers, and we were so used to striving for perfection, but instead, it’s really just about making people feel something and connecting with an audience in a very genuine way. For us, I can’t think of a better way to go.

Do you have any plans after the tour wraps up?

It will be important to take some time to reflect. The nice thing is we have the next two months to really let … it percolate, and then there’ll just be an inherent crash that happens after the tour, much like every other project. So it’ll be good to just sit back, and then, of course, we’re near the holiday season so finally getting some time with our families will also be really special.

I’m finishing my psychology degree right now, and my plan is to start my MBA at Queen’s in the fall. Just from an entrepreneurial standpoint, a lot of new business things. I’m really excited for some new projects, some new collaborations, and it would be nice to sink my teeth into something off the ice as well.

—Global News

[edgydepressedchoicesthot]

24: my love was stronger than your pride (any ES pairing)

Summary: Neither of them knew that this was the last time they’d see each other before Andromeda’s sacrifice made time reassert itself.

Something else they didn’t know is that the same force that tore them apart would bring them back to each other. Seraxa/Yvonne

ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23248093

A/N: Well, this one took a while. Apologies to @brightpinkpeppercorn for taking my sweet time with this. I originally asked for prompts to get myself out of my writing funk, and I decided to take the quarantine as a chance to use some new free time to start writing again. I hope you’re all doing okay and staying safe.

After getting the prompt, I thought a bit on what ship do to this for; Estela/MC, Quinn/Michelle, Craig/Aleister (idk lol). But seeing a post saying that Serafine in Bloodbound is Yvonne from the Vaanu!Ending (who she OBVIOUSLY IS DAMMIT), that got me thinking. When I was fresh in the fandom, I heard someone suggest Seraxa/Yvonne, and I kinda liked the ship. And after seeing the “Serafine is Yvonne” Theory Fact, I wondered: what has she been up to? Is she keeping in touch with the Catalysts? Has she been back to La Huerta? HAS SHE SEEN HER GREEN GIRLFRIEND AGAIN? And thus, this fic was born! I made a few alterations to the canon (Yvonne stuck around during the Cetus battle and helped out), but nothing so that it’ll be too unrecognizable. Enjoy!

BTW I am not responsible in any fashion if you injure yourself whilst trying to lick your elbow.

————————

The pirate was probably trying to be stealthy, but Seraxa still heard her coming.

Night blanketed Elyys’tel, and lanterns hung all over the Great Tree, made to look like their own star-filled sky.

Andromeda, just Handfasted, was off enjoying the night with their beloved. The rest of the Catalysts joined the Vaanti in the festivities. People danced by bonfires and played as many games to rival the ones from the last Valinorim. All the laughter, singing, and happy shouts melded together into one joyous roar.

The last Seraxa saw of Taari was he and Zahra running off to play what she had called “dodgeball”, leaving Seraxa with her thoughts.

“Not one for parties?”

That was the second time she and Yvonne had spoken. The first was just before Varyyn’s coronation, when she bid the Catalysts a fond farewell.

Seraxa had thanked, or at least acknowledged, Yvonne for helping to protect the Vaanti during Cetus’s attack. The pirate tipped her hat with a flourish and a wink, and called her “milday”.

Taari promptly asked if the pirate was her new girlfriend, and Seraxa assigned him a long list of chores after the Valinorim.

“I’m here for one, am I not?” Seraxa replied, not turning around.

“With the way you scowl like the sun’s in your eyes, you could have fooled me,” Yvonne was right next to her now, joining Seraxa in standing off to the side instead celebrating. It looked unfamiliar to Seraxa, since Yvonne seemed the type to waste no time in celebrating.

Seraxa also remembered the way the pirate arrived in the midst of Cetus’s attack to help, and how she led a crowd of Vaanti to safety deeper into the jungle.

“Truly though,” the pirate broke the warrior out of her thoughts. “Do you ever rest?”

“I am not fighting or preparing for a fight, so you can say I rest now,” Seraxa retorted.

“You’ve not touched a single drink the whole day, and watching everyone like a hawk does not help your case. In all the time I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you relax.”

“I wasn’t aware you were so keen on watching me.”

To Seraxa’s surprise, Yvonne blushed. She didn’t take that long to recover though.

“Still, with you being a military leader, that warrants a day off, no? Two, at the least?”

All the more reason I can’t let my guard down, Seraxa thought to herself. Everything seemed safe before Cetus attacked, and attacked he did.

Seraxa’s pride refused to acknowledge what might have happened if the Catalysts hadn’t come when they did.

“And I told you, I am resting. If we are to talk in circles like this the whole night, you’ll grow weary.”

“That I doubt,” Yvonne said quietly with a mischievous smirk that Seraxa didn’t quite understand. “You seem to have missed quite a show earlier,” the pirate continued. “The big one, Craig? He challenged one of your soldiers to a match.”

“Then Ursa is a dead man for sure-”

“He won.”

“Hm?”

“You heard correct,” Yvonne smirked. “Against several, actually.”

“He…he, an outsider, bested my warriors in a spar?”

Seraxa’s mind went through all the grueling exercise regimes she would put those warriors through to compensate for such a defeat (she will get names), before Yvonne spoke again.

“No no, they did not fight.”

“…Then what did they do?”

“Craig licked his elbow, and challenged one of your soldiers to do the same.”

“Whaa…” Seraxa’s jaw dropped.

“And several of your troops tried to succeed where the first had failed. None of them could.”

Seraxa…had no words. Elbow licking? She expected warriors under her command to be above making a fuss over something so ridiculous…

Her eyes darted down for a second to her left elbow; only for a second, but long enough for the pirate to catch.

“Try it.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“We both know you’re thinking about it,” Yvonne waggled her eyebrows. “Someone did manage to accomplish the feat, at last.”

“One person out of nearly everyone in Elyys’tel?”

“Yes. It was Grace. And naturally, she won the prize.”

“There was a prize as well?”

“Indeed. She had the privilege to watch as all who tried and failed form something they called a ‘human pyramid’. It was quite the disaster.”

A smile played on Seraxa’s lips, one that she couldn’t quite smother. Not overly large, but big enough to be visible.

The pirate leaned closer, eyes squinting as they inspected Seraxa’s face. The warrior’s cheeks heated up.

“What are you-”

“Checking to see if your face has cracked,” she said earnestly. “It appears intact, and lovely as ever.”

Lovely…lovely…

Lovely…????

Seraxa’s mind went blank, as if her mind was thrown into a time loop, focused on that one word.

The two of them stand in silence for a minute. Seraxa’s eyes glanced once at Yvonne, feeling an uncomfortable rising of anxiety at the awkward quiet.

She turned to Yvonne to speak. Later, when Seraxa thought back on that moment, she could never remember what she had wanted to say, because what happened next took over her full attention.

Yvonne leaned in and kissed Seraxa.

The kiss was like lightning; quick and intense. Yvonne’s lips were warm and searching, and pulled away.

Once again, Seraxa’s entire mind went blank.

When the warrior was silent for a few seconds, vulnerability flashed on the pirate’s face.

“I’m sorry, was that not-” Seraxa swapped their places with a kiss of her own.

“Don’t be sorry,” Seraxa said when they broke apart. “Unless it’s because you didn’t do that sooner.”

A laugh escaped Yvonne’s lips as they met Seraxa’s again.

Neither of them knew that this was the last time they’d see each other before Andromeda’s sacrifice made time reassert itself.

Something else they didn’t know is that the same force that tore them apart would bring them back to each other.

————————

Something Seraxa was used to waking up to was the sun’s rays shining through the windows of her home, or her cats’ morning playfulness dragging her from sleep.

This morning, she woke up to Yvonne, behind her in bed, tightening her arms around her lover in a secure hold.

Speaking of the sun, all of Seraxa’s windows had now been boarded up to keep it from shining through, accommodating Yvonne’s now-nocturnal nature.

It had been almost two years since the first time she had seen Yvonne after Andromeda’s sacrifice. The Catalysts when they made their yearly visits was always a welcome sight. But seeing with them, someone she had thought she’d never see again, was a surprise to say the least.

When everything had settled, and it was established that there wasn’t any trickery afoot, Yvonne had quite a tale to tell.

After being taken back to her own time, she said that she came into contact with creatures from the world outside of Vaanu. Creatures that made her into one of them, an immortal.

An immortal, with a regular need for blood.

Yvonne couldn’t stay on the island any longer than a month before the need for blood would become unbearable. Neither of them knew how Yvonne would take to Vaanti blood, if it would nourish or poison her, and Seraxa wasn’t willing to risk it. Pavos volunteered to run tests on Vaanti blood, and only ended up confirming what they feared.

Thus, Yvonne could not stay for any longer than three weeks at a time. And affairs on the outside world kept her from visiting as regularly as she would have liked.

It was probably for the best, Seraxa thought. Adventure was in Yvonne’s blood, and she was not meant to pick one place to live out the rest of her days.

Yvonne had told her all of this on the first few days she had come back; that she did not want marriage even if her nature wasn’t a factor, and said that she understood if a relationship with her was too much for Seraxa to handle.

Thoughts back to the present moment, she turned around, and joined Yvonne in a mutual embrace.

“Did I wake you?” Yvonne asked sleepily.

“Yes,” Seraxa smirked. “But I’ll have to get up soon anyway.”

“Can’t you order someone else to take care of your duties for the day?” Yvonne asked. “You need your sleep. And what good is authority if you can’t flaunt it every once in a while?”

Yvonne’s nature altered Seraxa’s sleep schedule quite a bit, but it was a worthy sacrifice.

“I’ll be back by nightfall,” Seraxa shifted and pulled Yvonne closer.

“That’s still too long.”

“You’ll survive without my embrace for a few hours,” the warrior resisted the urge to laugh.

“You’re so cruel,” Yvonne whined, snuggling closer.

“We’re here now,” Seraxa buried her face in Yvonne’s hair. “So until I hear a knock on the door, I’m yours.”

They’re not sure how long they stayed like that, wrapped around each other, until Yvonne poked Seraxa’s nose.

“You look too thoughtful for someone who just woke up,” Yvonne commented, and Seraxa finally noticed she was frowning.

“I was just wondering…” Seraxa began. “Before I met you, I was resolved to live a life without a partner. There would be no guarantee of a long life, so I did not want anyone to need me, a wife or a child, should I leave them behind.”

Yvonne stroked her face.

“That’s a lonely way to live, my dear.”

“For a while, I thought it was the only way I could live.”

Yvonne said nothing, and Seraxa continued.

“Both my parents died in battle when I was a child. It was a reality I had to face when I followed in their stead as a warrior, and more so when I was named War Chief. I’ve have so long to get used to the idea, that my pride wouldn’t allow me to indulge anything else.”

“Well it’s a good thing I plan to keep you around,” Yvonne said before giving Seraxa a deep kiss. “What we have might not be normal, but-”

“It is not normal, and I want it no other way,” Seraxa kissed Yvonne this time.

“Thank you,” Yvonne breathed. “For letting me in, and for having a place for me with you.”

“Thank your ability to break past a War Chief’s defenses, my love.”

“I’m afraid it was rather simple,” Yvonne curled up closer to Seraxa, nuzzling her head into her neck. “My love was stronger than your pride.”

Seraxa pressed a kiss to Yvonne’s head.

“And I thank the stars for that.”

 A/N: Seraxa is a little spoon, Yvonne is Serafine Dupont from Bloodbound, and both Craig and Grace can lick their elbows. I don’t make the rules I just think them up and write them into a story.

Also, Yvonne and Seraxa might not have the “living together” relationship I thought of when I started writing this, but in my mind this is the most realistic scenario for these two to be together. Yvonne’s too adventurous to stay in one place for the rest of her life, and Seraxa has a big sense of duty regarding her responsibilities to the Vaanti that I can’t imagine her giving up (even more so if she becomes Elyyshar when Varyyn leaves with Diego). So, in the end, these two have a long distance and open relationship (I strongly headcanon Yvonne/Serafine as polyamorous), but they love each other very much and fill their time together with as much lovey-doviness as possible.

Another thing, this is my first time writing a bilingual character while not writing up scenes directly from ES, so I apologize for any mistakes. Since I figured Yvonne is either in her late twenties or early thirties, and since being multilingual would almost be a necessity in sailing and adventuring, she would be a fairly decent English speaker. And I learned some of the biggest reasons for bilingual people slipping back to their native language is when they’re either really tired or go back and forth from speaking their native language to the other one. And since Yvonne is spending a lot of time lately around primarily English-speaking people, she probably wouldn’t have spoken much French at all. I hope I did it justice. I heard from other members of the fandom that PB butchered the way Yvonne and Tio Nicholas, both bilingual, would have spoke, so I wanted to do better and tread lightly. 

Finally, I have no idea what alien forces enable a select few to lick their fucking elbows and I don’t care to know.

[jeannereames]

I just finished ‘Becoming’ and I absolutely loved it! I just wondered if you believe that AtG and Hephaistion continued their romantic relationship throughout their lives or if you think they let that side of their friendship go as they got older as was more common at the time? Anyway! I absolutely loved ‘Becoming’ and I can’t wait to read ‘Rise’!

I’m guessing you’re asking about the historical people, as opposed to the fictional characters? I do hope/plan to continue the Dancing with the Lion series, and in it, yes, they will remain romantically involved. Whether or not future novels are bought, however, rests on how well Becoming and Rise do. (So if you want more, get the word out and post reviews. *grin*)

Yet, with regard to the historical men, I think it’s very hard to know whether they remained sexual partners as adults. And the reason it’s hard to know involves the difficulty of our surviving sources.

As soon as historians start talking SOURCES, a lot of folks tune out. It’s BORING. *grin* But in order to give an honest answer, I kinda have to Go There.

First, let me give the TL;DR version. If they were still sexually involved as adults, I suspect it was quite occasional. And the fact it was quite occasional (if at all), may be why we don’t hear anything about it in the sources (discussion to follow). After all, they were both extremely busy men with duties and responsibilities that sometimes kept them apart for months. If they were still sexually/romantically involved, they had what we’d today call a long-distance relationship at points…and without the benefit of cell phones.

It may have been a gradual “weaning” from each other, rather than anything sharp. So they may have been lovers as teens, then over time, each took younger beloveds, and finally, wives—all while remaining emotionally very, very close. (Although I suspect that, like any friendship OR love affair, they had ups-and-downs, fights and reconciliations.)

Now, here’s why the TL;DR summary above gets a big fat label: “SPECULATION.”

The sources are the only way we know anything about the past, and if they can’t be trusted, or at least not trusted in toto, we have a Really Big Problem. So let me lay it out.

Before I do, however, I want to remind readers that I DO think Alexander and Hephaistion were lovers, at least in their youth. But no, it’s not “obvious.” Theirs wasn’t a world especially reticent about same-sex affairs (*cough* see below), even if post-Christian, modern historians had trouble with it until the last 40 years or so. So if the (surviving) ancient authors don’t talk about them as lovers, even while discussing other same-sex pairs in the same damn text, we have to ask…why? One very real possibility is that they didn’t talk about them as lovers because they weren’t. Full stop. There could have been other reasons (I think there were), but let’s not flinch from being honest, here.

(This could have been a lot more graphic, but then I’d have to post a warning on my blog.)

So…back to our Persnickety Sources.

First, nothing has survived that Alexander wrote himself. We have a couple public inscriptions, but not one piece of writing, even a letter, from Alexander. (Any surviving letters are quoted in later sources, and probably aren’t real.*)

Second, nothing has survived written by anyone who actually knew Alexander, or even lived when he did, except forensic speeches from Athenian demagogues who mostly hated him (and weren’t writing histories anyway). One may as well trust Demosthenes on Philip.

The sources we do still have used histories written by those who knew Alexander, such as Ptolemy, Aristobulos, Nearchos, Marsyas, and even the court historian, Kallisthenes. They also used other texts of dubious worth, such as Onesikritos, who was made fun of even in his own day for writing “historical fiction.” And sometimes our later authors were using texts who, themselves, were using earlier texts. So we’ve got three (or more) layers, not just two!

Third, we have not just layers of sources, but layers in the CULTURE behind those sources.

The first layer is, of course, Macedonian. How did the Macedonians themselves view Alexander? We don’t know—not truly. Nothing survives from a Macedonian source, such as Marsyas or Ptolemy. (Some of you “in the know” might be thinking, But Polyaenus! No. Polyaenus lived 500 years after ATG; that was a very different Macedonia. [Yes, I used the Latin spelling, as he was Roman. ;p])

The second layer is Greek, but we have to qualify this. Layer 2.0 is Greece of the 4th century, especially Athenian reactionism, writing about the emerging Macedonian kingdom. There could be huge cultural differences even among Greek city-states. Case in point: Athens vs. Sparta. Greeks didn’t always understand Macedonians (sometimes, I swear, on purpose).

BUT we also have the increasingly homogenized Hellenistic world of the Successors, which was sorta like when you throw in a bunch of different colored shirts and wash them in hot water. You get a color-bleeding mess. Your red shirt (Attic-Ionic) might have a big blue streak (Doric) on it now. That’s sort of what happened to Greek culture as the Hellenistic era progressed. Lots of bleed. This had begun prior to Alexander, but he accelerated it like kerosene on a trash fire. We can call that Greek Layer 2.1, or something.

Then we have the Romans, and their culture, which, if similar to Greek, definitively wasn’t Greek in key ways. All our surviving sources were written as the Republic was collapsing and the Empire emerging, and by that point, Greece was a Roman province.

Again, we’ve got two groups here: Greeks living under Roman rule, such as Plutarch, Diodorus, and Arrian—who wrote in Greek—and then Roman authors such as Curtius, and later Justin, who wrote in Latin. But the Greeks under Rome shouldn’t be conflated with Athenians in ATG’s own day, or even under the Successors. The culture evolved and took on Roman shadings.

So that’s not just layers of sources, but layers of cultures trying to understand what people who lived a hundred or two hundred or three hundred years before them thought/believed.

Ergo, are we hearing what Alexander (or anybody else around him) really thought or intended? Or just what writers of the Second Sophistic (such as Plutarch) wanted him to model? Or how even later authors, such as Arrian, wanted to use him to flatter his patron, Hadrian?

What’s Roman, what’s Greek, and what’s Macedonian? Can we tease that out? I’d say it’s damn tricky, and often, flat impossible—although unlike some of my colleagues, I don’t believe it’s all Roman overlay. That goes too far in the other direction, IMO.

Last, we have several authors who weren’t writing about Alexander specifically, but have bits of Alexander lore embedded in their texts: Athenaeus’s “Supper Party,” or Polyaenus’s “Strategems,” or even Plutarch’s “Moralia,” just to name three.

Among these, especially later, we have authors writing material they (or later readers) tried to pass off as written by earlier authors. We often refer to these authors with the preface “Pseudo-” as in “Pseudo-Kallisthenes.” It was NOT written by Kallisthenes, but was later attributed to him.

So, now you have some idea of why Alexander historians want to pull our hair out!

But I detail that to explain why it’s so hard for me to give you any clear answer about whether Alexander and Hephaistion remained lovers as adults. Or even if they were lovers at all.

In none of our five primary histories of Alexander, nor in Plutarch’s other stuff, nor Athenaeus, etc. is Hephaistion ever called Alexander’s lover. This includes sources that do mention with apparent unconcern other pairs of male lovers. So this isn’t “the love that dared not speak it’s name.” The Greeks were pretty okay with talking about their boyfriends.

There could be OTHER reasons for deep-sixing mention of Hephaistion and Alexander as lovers, mostly having to do with status (some of which I touched on in the novels), yet the lack of clear affirmation is a problem. The only mentions we do have come from late sources, one of which belongs to that category of “pseudo-” authors I mentioned: Pseudo-Diogenes (in Aelian), as well as Arrian recording the Stoic Epiktatos. The philosophers are trying to make a point about the dangers of giving in to physical desire, so it’s hard to know how much credit to give these references.

Thus, we’re left with little besides the indirect (e.g., the Achilles-Patroklos allusions, etc.). Those have their own problems, which I’ll not go into now, as I’ve already written a small essay.

One potential reason for a lack of mention in our surviving sources is that any sexual love affair had been a product of their youth. What remained was a fiercely deep and passionate devotion. Before you pooh-pooh that—Of course they were still having sex!—consider modern marriages that have lasted for decades but no longer include sexual activity, at least between the married partners. Don’t be sucked in by Romance novel tropes.

When I was doing bereavement counseling (et al.), I ran into all sorts of arrangements that married couples made across time. Some marriages break up when the partners stop being sexually attracted to each other, and “cheat.” But others don’t, because it’s not “cheating” if it’s mutually agreed to. Or in some cases, the partners simply lost interest in sex as they aged…but didn’t fall out of love with each other. So they might have sex once a year? Maybe? That was enough. Or they had sex on the side, with permission. People don’t fit into boxes well, IME. Honesty was the hallmark of marriages that lasted even when they weren’t still having sex. I’ve known of marriages where the couples had stopped having sex years ago, but when one of them died, the other was completely devastated because of the enormous EMOTIONAL investment. I think that’s what hit Alexander when Hephaistion died. Maybe they were still having sex, at least once in a blue moon. Maybe they weren’t. That didn’t matter.

LOVE is deeper than sex, by a long shot. Which is why the Greeks counted PHILIA (true friendship) as the superior love to eros (desire).

So whether Alexander and Hephaistion were still sexually involved—or had ever had sex—doesn’t reflect the depth of their love for each other. We might not be told by the sources that they were lovers, physically, either as youths or continuing into adulthood. But the sources are abundantly clear that they loved each other best of all. When Hephaistion died, Alexander followed him about 10 months later.

(Final note: what I intend to do in the series, going forward, is a bit different from what I described here, but that’s why I specified this involves the historical men, not necessarily my fictional characters.)

*My reference to quoted material, such as letters—or speeches—not being real: it was a common practice in the ancient world for the author of histories, especially starting with Thucydides, to just MAKE SHIT UP. It was all about showing off one’s own rhetorical skills. I think, in a lot of cases, we are probably getting at least the gist of what was said. But NEVER, EVER, EVER trust the “transcription” of an ancient speech…unless it was actually recorded later by the author. So, say, Demosthenes’ Philippics are probably a cleaned up version of the speeches he delivered. But Alexander’s “Speech at Opis” is NOT what Alexander actually said.